The Tower of Knowledge is a monastic order of knowledge, philosophy and magic, “sacred to Ectreus”, “of the light”, whose main seat is a tower in Adwen. Full identification of magic objects is only done there; expedition money and recharges pass through its counter.
| Type | Institution / building |
| Spanish entry | Torre del Conocimiento |
The seat in Adwen
It stands “in the shadow of the Palatinate”: “literally a tower” of several floors, rising from “the only limestone rock here” on the mountain. Four carved dragons flank the facade sculpture. The entrance hall has room for carts. Inside: a conjuration counter, a treasury for expedition money, and a restricted library. Beneath lies a place “they never finished mapping, cleaning”.
Services
- Identification of magic items.
- Recharge: 3,000 gold pieces per charge.
- Purchase: its agents may “pay you 5,000” for relics; useless items are broken down to “take the magic out” for new objects.
- Library: copying a spell takes days.
- Conjurations by contract with patrons and mercenary masters.
- Exchange: the treasurer changes an expedition’s surplus.
“The lord of the Tower of Knowledge” coordinates missions and issues permits; companies “were paid at the tower”.
School and censorship
It teaches sorcery; its “little stickers” are tied to the spell Kindle Flame (talismans, symbols or tools; unclear). It awards prizes; the children of Drago Balcán, Luminita among them, have a frame of prizes. It watches doctrine: “they look very closely at any books where there is something they might perceive as chaotic”. A cultist monastic order meets there at night; the quotation describing it is broken.
The congregation
“We are part of a larger congregation,” says the Tower of Augen; the voices speak of “the Towers of Knowledge”. In fortified cities a chapter takes the form of a Charter House: a small embassy with a legate and his officiating mage, and at its door a medical quarter of hospitals. Vitalis withdraws “to his tower of knowledge to report”.
Conflicting accounts
- Other towers, none attributed to Adwen: a hollow ten-meter masonry tower with two wooden doors; a thirty-foot battlemented one; one sixty meters deep; a twisted one with spirals; a “mouth of the tower”; a refuge in Hell; an iron one by Beta’s coliseum; Dinas Park’s in Westmark; Caldero’s.
- Whether “Tower of Knowledge”, “Tower of Sorcery” and “White Tower of sorcery” are one house is unresolved.
Open questions
- How many towers form the congregation and who heads it.
- Whether “the lord of the Tower” and “the master of secrets” are one office; whether each seat has a treasurer.
- Whether a tower haunted by a ghost for fifteen or sixteen years is this one; what lies beneath.
- What “in the keystone of the tower” (en el clave de la torre) names.
- Whether “the tower” where one of the three stakes must be driven, with the Lair of the Gorgon and the Casa Petra of Sigurá, is this one.