The wizard’s tower at the edge of Freedale — home of the witch Morgana, abandoned for roughly two decades and locally believed to be haunted. The Fallen broke in at the close of Session 8 and cleared it in Session 9, finding Morgana’s body, her correspondence, and a working scrying pool.
It is now effectively a party asset: they hold the guardian’s command amulet, they have copied the roof’s teleportation runes, and they can return whenever they like.
Layout
Five levels above ground plus a basement. A single spiral staircase connects all of them; the ground-floor front door is locked and unyielding, which is why the party’s first entry was a rope to the third-floor balcony.
| Level | Contents |
|---|---|
| Basement | Morgana’s forge (where she built her constructs), a warren of small rooms, and the chamber holding her body. The door was barred from the outside |
| 1st floor | Entry hall, foyer, bathroom, closet, pantry, sitting room — and the guardian on patrol |
| 2nd floor | Ring corridor around a sealed inner chamber, patrolled by floating orbs; the chamber holds the scrying pool |
| 3rd floor | Bedroom (writing table, chest) and dining room/kitchenette; the balcony the party entered by |
| 4th floor | Library/study (south) and storage room (north), plus a fire-trapped hall leading to Morgana’s workroom |
| Roof | Open to the sky: a teleportation circle and nine statues of the Agents |
Defenses
- The shield guardian (1st floor) — the third of the constructs Morgana built with Verelda. Answers to its command amulet, which the party now holds. Currently stood down.
- The orb corridor (2nd floor) — orbs radiating strong evocation, drifting counter-clockwise at walking pace. Anything they sense takes a lightning bolt. Passable by moving with them; Asha crossed wearing a lightning-resistant cloak found upstairs. Still active.
- The fire statues (4th floor) — twin statues firing crossing cones of fire at anything on the floor between them (a rolled barrel was reduced to ash in one trigger). Bypassable along the ceiling. Úlfr permanently disarmed them by scratching off the small glyph etched into each statue’s neck.
Notable Features
The Scrying Pool (2nd floor)
The font Morgana mentions in her journal — “I’ve watched them through the font for the better part of a decade.” A pool of water radiating strong divination magic.
Morgana built it so anyone proficient in Arcana can use it once per day, free of charge, effectively casting Scrying. Targets make a Wisdom save, with a large penalty if the caster knows them well or possesses something of theirs. This is how Asha located her mother.
The Roof — Nine Agents and a Circle
A permanent teleportation circle, whose runes the party has copied.
Ringing it, nine winged statues — one per canonical Agent, with the disputed tenth (The Moon) absent. Each has a basin with a lit flame; five burn dark blue, four burn ordinary fire. The flames are magical and tied to their specific Agent, and the blue-flame group shares something the others don’t — unknown what. Identified so far: Earth, Saturn (front and center, not blue), Venus, and Pluto.
The Workroom (4th floor)
Behind the fire trap: a hanging orrery of celestial bodies and orbits, a work table of notes (where the copy of the letter to Verelda was found), potions, and symbols drawn on the floor in chalk.
The chalk radiates transmutation; the symbols are abjuration — protection. Leif worked out it’s an infusion circle: something placed at the center gets imbued with abjuration magic. Morgana was warding something in her final months.
The Component Store (4th floor)
Morgana’s storage room, full of jars and boxes of spell components — feathers, coins, dust, string. The party can source any material component up to 500 gp of value here. It paid for itself immediately, covering the Identify cast on the guardian amulet.
The Foyer Mail (1st floor)
A pile of dusty, never-collected mail, including Verelda’s reply letter under the seal of the Academy — undelivered for twenty years while Morgana lay in the basement.
The Basement, and What Was In It
The basement door was barred from the outside with planks — someone wanted something to stay in. Beyond it, Aren sensed necromancy, and the party fought two ghouls (one already wounded by something they never identified) and then a ghoul and a ghast.
In the last room: Morgana’s body — dead about twenty years, but with flesh eaten within the last few days by the ghouls. Her eyes had been gouged out before death and her face covered with a mask; her corpse carries the marks of a prolonged magical battle. Aren spoke last rites over her. The Guardian Command Amulet was in her pocket.
(How the ghouls got into a barred basement, and what wounded one of them, are unresolved. Aren re-barred the door on the way out.)
Related
- Morgana — its builder and occupant
- Freedale — the town it stands at the edge of
- Verelda — co-designer of its guardian; her letter was found here
- Guardian Command Amulet — the “charm” that commands the guardian
- White Forest — what Morgana watched from here, and where she died
- Agents — the nine statues on the roof
- The Fallen — cleared it in Session 9
First Appeared
Session 8 (July 22, 2026) — described by Freedale’s tavern-keeper; entered via the third-floor balcony at session’s end. Fully explored in Session 9 (July 29, 2026), and slept in that night.