Nuitari’s thoughts went to his mother.
“Only one who is weak,” said Nuitari grimly. “And then only once.”
Appendix
Tower of the Blood Sea
By Jamie Chambers
Note: For more detailed information on the various topics presented in this Appendix, readers are referred to: The DRAGONLANCE Campaign Setting, published by Wizards of the Coast; The Towers of High Sorcery, a DRAGONLANCE d20 System Supplement, published by Sovereign Press; and The Kingpriest Trilogy, written by Chris Pierson, published by Wizards of the Coast.
Once a powerful bastion of knowledge and magic, the Tower of High Sorcery in the city of Istar rose to glory, then suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of religious zealotry. The structure was almost completely destroyed during the Cataclysm and lay buried in darkness while the waters of the Maelstrom churned around it. Now the Tower has been rebuilt in secret a stronghold for Nuitari the Black, and it has acquired a new name—the Tower of the Blood Sea.
The mighty wizard Kharro the Red sent members of the Conclave to find locations ideal for the construction of the Towers of High Sorcery, places where magical energies would be their strongest. A powerful White-robed wizardess named Asanta chose an insignificant town named Istar as the site of one Tower, much to Kharro’s ire. It wasn’t until Asanta shared her vision of Istar’s future glory that the leader of the Conclave approved.
Raising the Tower became the life’s work of Asanta, and as an old woman she led the powerful incantation that created the Tower from the bones of the earth. The beautiful, crystalline structure stood in strange contrast to the crude huts that surrounded it. Asanta died in peace, knowing that one day Istar would match her Tower’s glory. Sadly, her foresight did not reveal to her that Istar would also be the instrument of the Tower’s destruction.
The wizards who dwelled in Istar became instrumental in bringing peace and order to the surrounding lands and contributed greatly in the town’s rising prosperity. For long years, they battled Istar’s enemies and the forces of evil. People looked to magic as their savior, and magic always answered.
When the world was threatened by the Dark Queen, Takhisis, and her evil dragons during the Third Dragon War, the Conclave of Wizards devised a desperate plan to counter the threat. Meeting in secret in Palanthas, the wizards created the dragon orbs—powerful artifacts that would help turn the tide of battle. Unfortunately, when the armies of evil threatened Istar, the city’s wizards were busy in Palanthas and were not in Istar to render aid. The city’s leaders turned to the gods to save them, and it was the patriarch of the Temple of Paladine who rallied the people and called upon the god’s holy powers to save them. Paladine answered, and Istar was spared. The people of Istar now began to question whether or not they could look to the Conclave of Wizards for guidance and protection.
Thanks to this victory, the church of Paladine rose to ascendance in Istar and the city’s prosperity increased, so much so that Istar became the capital of a mighty empire. Its leader was the head of the church, who called himself the Kingpriest.
During this time, a conflict known as the Three Thrones War (in which three successors vied for the throne) turned popular opinion against the wizards in the Tower of High Sorcery. The Kingpriest actually sent a force against the Tower, but he was unable to penetrate its protective grove. Bloodshed was avoided, and for generations the wizards and the priests continued to live under an unofficial, uneasy truce. Peace came to an end when a Kingpriest named Belindas Pilofiro took the throne.
Treachery, misfortune, and violence brought about a complete rupture between the wizards and the clerics. Eventually, the Kingpriest formed the Knights of the Divine Hammer and sought to attack two of the Towers of High Sorcery. Rather than allow their powerful magic to fall into the hands of those who might misuse it, the wizards themselves destroyed two of their Towers and the cities in which they stood. Terrified by such power, the Kingpriest negotiated surrender terms with the wizards.
To save their Orders, the wizards agreed to withdraw to the Tower of High Sorcery in the forest of Wayreth and to abandon the Towers of Istar and Palanthas and give them to the church.
The Kingpriest was not quite sure what to do with these trophies of his victory. He briefly entertained the idea of making the Tower of Istar his private dwelling, but eventually settled upon an idea suggested by his advisor, the Silvanesti elf cleric, Quarath. The Tower of Istar was rededicated to holding the sacred artifacts of heretical religions. The massive chamber in which the artifacts were stored was named Solio Febalas—the Hall of Sacrilege.
At first only the prized relics of dark and false gods adorned the hall, but the Kingpriest’s zeal was great, and soon objects sacred to the gods of Neutrality were added to the storehouse as well. Eventually even artifacts of the gods of the good pantheon found their way into Solio Febalas.
As the power of the Kingpriest grew, so did his pride. He began to see himself as a god. At this, the gods were alarmed, and when the Kingpriest failed to heed their warnings, the gods came together to deliver their terrible punishment. Earthquakes sundered the Tower of Istar. Fire destroyed it from within. The gods threw down the fiery mountain from the heavens, and history records that the remains of the Tower of Istar were completely destroyed, along with the once-glorious city in which it stood.
The ruins of the Tower of Istar rested under the sea for many mortal generations, holding within it powerful and dangerous treasures. The gods of magic planned to eventually restore the Tower, planning to direct the Orders of High Sorcery to raise it back up from the sea. They did not believe that the world was yet ready to handle the dangerous artifacts that lay within and so these plans were destined for a distant future—one that would never come to pass.
Instead came the unexpected release of Chaos and the subsequent war that came near to destroying Krynn. Gods fought alongside mortals and the world was saved, only to be snatched away by Queen Takhisis and carried by her into another part of the universe. An Age of Mortals began, an age presumably without gods, although Takhisis was behind the scenes, working to make the world her own.
Her reign ended with the War of Souls. The gods found their lost world and the sacred constellations, moons, and planets returned to the heavens above Krynn. Takhisis was cast down from the immortal plane and slain.
The gods found a world in which sorcery and mysticism was flourishing, traditional magic almost forgotten. The Orders of High Sorcery, founded in the Age of Dreams, were now disbanded; its members were either dead or scattered. The gods went to work to reform the Orders. They forbade Dalamar the Dark from entering the Tower of High Sorcery that had once been in Palanthas, but which he had removed to Nightlund, and they left that Tower hidden until they could determine what to do with it. They set about working to ensure the future of the one habitable Tower that remained at Wayreth. In this, as they had been in the past, the gods of Magic were united.
Except for Nuitari the Black.
The god of dark magic still seethed with rage over the deception of his mother, Takhisis. He felt her betrayal keenly. Though still united with his cousins in the bonds of their magic and dedicated to magic’s cause, he wished to ensure his own power and his position upon Krynn.
The shattered Tower of Istar provided him with the perfect opportunity. Working with two powerful Black-robed disciples, who were unknown to the world and to the other two gods, Nuitari cast the incantation that would not only restore the Tower but redesign it to suit Nuitari’s needs. He had determined that the Tower of the Blood Sea would be a bastion of dark wizardry.