The Wizards tower
The Thousand levels of the tower of Wizards are whispered of in the deepest legends of the galaxy. Most assume it is little more then legend but it is simply a place few can find, and even fewer can return from. Once every hundred years emissaries are sent out to scour the galaxy for sensitives, to seek the next generation of adepts who will ascend the levels of the tower, and if they survive eventually ascend to the title of wizard and the long path of wisdom that accompanies that life.
Beings sensitive to the ways of magic usually manifest their abilities early in life, if the emissaries don’t find them most dye in a few short years, remembered as lunatics or demons for their actions while in the throes of barely understood powers. The tower is A place where sensitives can study in safety, and learn how to control their gifts.
Some say it was founded in the time of Illyria, but the truth is it was ancient even when the mother of an empire was born. The tower is almost as old as reality, so old as to have become in its own way intelegent. It protects its wizards like a mother hen from the lords of rot and demon princes that would prey on sensitive minds. The only entity in creation that might have the power to breach its walls is the shadow king but it is doubtful he would try without the power of the throne of etheria.
In all the eons of the towers existence there has been but a single human taken into its halls. Upon entering the halls of the tower he shed his name and past like a silkie sheds her skin, and took to the endless research and learning of the hallowed tower. As days turned to years the man with no name delved ever deeper into the catacombs of the deepest levels of the library seeking knowledge most thought lost, eventually discovering records from the time of Illyria. The incomplete journals of the wizard Ba’al and the forging of the first great blade. The nameless wizard had long sought the knowledge of how the soul swords, the blades of the Knights of Illyria were made, and he found pieces of what he sought. Pieces enough that the human thought he could recreate the great working. To forge a soul sword would prove his worth and elevate him from acolyte of the wizardly orders to become a wizard of the 999th level, centuries before his time. He had the arrogance and impatience of youth.
The nameless one gathered the ingredients and ascended to the undying fire of the towers peak, a cold fusion blaze that made the tower blaze in the dim light of the morning. Carefully following the complicated tasks that Ba’al had laid down in his journals, he took to the weeks long task of forging the blade in the fires of the beacon. The eldritch heat gave the steel an energy that made it crackle and shiver beneath his hammer, and finally as he carved the last ancient sigle into the glowing steel the nameless wizard realized he was ill informed of the true cost of the task he was undertaking. To forge a soul sword required a sacrifice of equal repayment. And as his very essence was ripped from his mortal body the first sword of power to be forged in countless centuries since the fall of illyria gained life and thought its first thought.
Shards of Etheria 