Tower Ob Caligni is the windowless black octagonal tower of the Black House in the Mountains of Úrsula, a “mansion of risk” where each floor must be won or died through. It is the spine that marks an entry from the negative energy plane to a positive one, and the seat of Garkhan’s throne.
| Type | Place (tower, fortress) |
| Location | Mountains of Úrsula |
| Height | 90 m (disputed) |
| Floors | 8, counting the ground floor |
| Spanish entry | Torre Ob Caligni |
Location
The tower stands in a zone of “brownish-black mountains” where the territory seems to blur. The zone is not marked on known maps, and magical travel there fails: those who try may land off target. Those who arrive reach the plaza at dawn.
Description
An octagon of fairly fine black stone, without a single window: five, ten, fifteen meters wide against ninety high. It is half twisted and has eaves; by moonlight, on the hardest days, it shows spirals “of four things”. An octagonal plaza opens in front; the building stands alone. Seen from hell it is “a dark spine crowned by the Sphere of Annihilation”, with Garkhan on the throne at its highest point, and there “you feel the weight of the black tower… and of guilt”.
Eight steps without symbols lead to a double door, six meters wide by five high, of the same stone, opening outward without lock or bolt. It has two huge rings “of silver or a whitened metal”. The building itself has no magic; only the rings radiate conjuration. All its magic sits at the points of passage: rings, curtains, traps, and conjurations of the school of Shadow.
Eight recurs throughout: eight sides, eight steps, eight curtains, eight doors to the second floor, eight floors, eight chairs at the final table, an octagonal plaza.
Origin and purpose
A powerful sorcerer raised it, perhaps over five hundred years. The tower “would be the spine that marks an entry from the negative energy plane to a positive one”, an axis at a point of planar thinning on both sides. It is dedicated to chaos in the aerial realms and crowned by a Sphere of Annihilation. It is a sworn objective — “they go to the Black Tower and finish off that damned house”.
The ascent
The ground floor holds an emerald fountain “although the tones were rather black”, eight side curtains, a chess temple, a warriors’ hall, gaming tables and statues. A master of ceremonies receives visitors and must be fought. The whole has been called “a pancake of shadows”.
Entry is a fixed ritual. Each visitor places a coin or something important in the fountain, declares a wager and a wish — “Why did you come here? Explain it” — and leaves through one of eight doors to the second floor. The curtains open only to those who face a proposed game; otherwise stone lies behind them. The rule: «Para pasar a la próxima sala, uno tiene que morir. O ganar.» (“To pass to the next room, one has to die. Or win.“)
Iron doors and an elevator link the chambers; the ride feels like a transition between planes or moments, and conjurations brought along dissolve in the new chamber. The mechanism is weight-sensitive: the Brocks of the wheel game jam it.
Each floor corresponds to a deadly sin; three are named: lust, greed, wrath. The second floor is a 30 × 30 m room, 15 m high, where Sibila is faced. The final room, where Ob Caligni waits, measures 25 × 28 m, 15 m high, with a table and eight chairs. Another square room of 30 m holds a table and two chairs. At the top are a penthouse with a larger terrace, a hatch, and a pit. Below the tower lie another pit with “the mine inside” and an area never fully mapped or cleared. The tower also holds platforms, the Uncle’s Gallery, death symbols, “an estate at the end”, magical traps and many monsters. On the third floor were “las cedres”.
Inhabitants
- The Bogeyman said: “My dad worked here.”
- Antino entered “through the mouth of the tower”.
- A disturbed ghost held the tower for some fifteen or sixteen years, calling and screaming at people.
- An unnamed creature, seen only by its face and “little elf ears”.
Other towers
Not to be confused with the White Towers of Bahía Blanca in the south, the Golden Tower of the Golden House, the Tower of the Tempest of the Treza foothills (now gone), the Tower of Calypso, the Sigurad Tower (defended by some eighty sorcerer-monks), the tower of Dinas Park in Westmark, or the tower of the mage Kaldeo.
Conflicting accounts
- Height: ninety meters is the figure recorded; another voice stretched it to three hundred, another says “almost 100. A bit more”.
- Floor order: one version gives the gladiator arena first, the hall of baneful women second, and the wheel of life and death (a chess game) third. The other puts the infamous women on the third, torturers of a wheel of fortune on the fourth, misfortune on the fifth, and the pit at the top.
Open questions
- The full list of eight floors and their sins is not recorded.
- Whether the builder is the same Ob Caligni of the final room is not confirmed; the name Torre Negra (“Black Tower”) as an equivalent awaits ratification.
- Whether the thirty-meter reflective basalt tower of the storm valley (where someone was tortured, lived in permanent blindness and broke free) and the Tower Ojura (where Garkhan was condemned to take his former torturer’s role) are this tower, each other, or three different ones is unresolved; the measurements differ.
- What “las cedres” are (perhaps coffins), and whether the upper and lower pits are one axis, are unknown.
- What happens to one who loses and does not die, and what the offering grants beyond bringing the wish closer, are unknown.
- Whether the “mouth of the tower” is the double door is unknown.