The why of towers

Image by HBKerr

A tower is like the landscape's way of saying 'I have a quest for you'. Or 'someone with a beard down to his navel and purple robes lives here'. Sometimes you need a tower and you need a better reason for it than simply 'wandering tribes of architects and engineers'. Hopefully these tables can help.

This tower is

1. a square wooden structure with a stone ground floor.
2. a circular building of mortared fieldstone.
3. a reinforced stronghold with arrow slits and ramparts.
4. built up in layers of different construction.
5. a ruin repaired with a ramshackle conglomeration of branches, sticks and animal hides.
6. built from an odd material like obsidian, hardened lava, a giant tree trunk, etc.

It was built to

1. be a toll house on a travel route
2. be part of a signal network
3. house an order of holy knights
4. keep a watch for fires
5. defend a nation's borders
6. house a wizard's lab

and it overlooks

1. a forest.
2. a trade coast.
3. hills and pastures.
4. cliffs and ravines.
5. a village.
6. a marsh.

Nearby you can find

1. a ruined smithy.
2. a small cottage.
3. livestock pens.
4. extensive stables.
5. a graveyard.
6. an old battleground.

It has been used by

1. an astrologer studying the stars
2. a druid studying the winds
3. a bandit gang watching a trade road
4. generations of shepherds sheltering from the weather
5. tanners practising their smelly trade away from settlement
6. smugglers storing their contraband

and it's currently

1. unoccupied.
2. a den for wild beasts.
3. home to a hermit.
4. visited by travelling rangers to leave secret messages for each other.
5. abandoned and accursed.
6. used as a campsite by travellers.

Rumour says

1. at sunset on the Summer solstice its shadow points towards a buried treasure
2. an evil noble was imprisoned in it and went mad
3. a gang of robbers walled up one of their own alive inside
4. if you make an evil wish at the highest point it will be granted
5. the ruler's spies meet there under the new moon to discuss what they've learned
6. it was built on the site of a structure from an older civilisation

and an odd thing about it is

1. the tiny airship moored to the roof.
2. sometimes there's an extra window.
3. its image reflected in water shows it in its early years.
4. eerie lights visible in the windows at night.
5. sometimes there's a fine black horse hitched at its door.
6. unknown plants growing around its base.

(Thanks to Spwack of the Slight Adjustments blog for the generator code.)