Setting:Tabula Gloria/Benalor/The Ebony Tower

The closest of the Benaloran ruins to the Empire other than present-day Fort Minnamack, the obelisk-like structure of the Ebony Tower had once stood as an example of Benaloran ingenuity and dominance in the mountainous region. Constructed of stone with an obsidian exterior polished to a reflective finish, the Tower was home to the College of Shapers, the preeminent institution in all of Benalor. After the calamity which consumed Benalor however, the Tower no longer stands as tall as it did over the nearby Canis Falls. Despite the main structure having fallen from the event, many of the subterranean levels beneath the Tower remained intact, providing an excellent opportunity for explorers to scour the ruins for ancient treasure and knowledge.

Situated directly west of the ruins at the Ebony Tower, the Canis Falls provided a dramatic backdrop for those who were traveling between Benalor and the Central Lands, with the former Tower rising high above the falls in its glory. Today, the Falls are as splendid as they were during Benalor's heyday, though there seems to be a growing monster presence directly around them. Sadly, this limits the opportunities of travelers to get close to the Falls, having to take a longer, safer route to reach the ruins beyond. There is also a rumor that there is a secret passage into some of the deepest layers of the Tower's subterranae behind the Falls for the truly adventurous explore to find.

The College of Shapers

Do not let the name mislead you, for the College of Shapers is nothing like the Department of Shapers of the Imperial University. Though there is evidence that the College may be a precursor of present-day Shaper Magic as the Empire defines it, the Benalorans saw Shaping as a combined process of physical engineering and magical augmentation, shaping the world around them into the forms they wished it to become. The practice of Shaping would usually involve the assembly of a machine by workers in a factory, which would then go to College's mages which would somehow breathe life into the machines to various degrees, depending on the machine and the task in which it would be assigned.

For instance, smaller machines of convenience, such as the quintessential Evertorch, were found to have the instructions for two spells etched upon it. The first spell would be upon the bottom of the grip, designed to absorb ambient mana into the device at that point. This absorption spell would be found on many other Benaloran machines, which suggested that it used mana primarily as a fuel source above all else. The second spell on the device was found on the rim of the torch before the opening, which converted the energy into light which would emit from the business end. The intensity of the light could be adjusted by a turn of the dial, the mechanism containing various components of the spell which dealt with such.

Further Distinction

The other difference between the Benaloran College and the Imperial Department lies in the structure and function of each. Unlike the scholastically oriented University, the College of Shapers functioned more like a guild than anything else, merely an official association of practicing Shapers. The structure of it was also very much like the traditional apprenticeships of the present-day guilds. An apprentice would be selected to join the College, in which it would learn the basics of Shaping on both the factory floor and in the magical laboratory - it was important to the Shapers to be able to perform both parts of the task instead of becoming either a grunt of the factory or a lofty mage. Once graduated, the apprentice would become a journeyman who would travel throughout Benalor to hone his craft until he attained the title of Master Shaper by the College. By then, he could either become an independent Shaper, or return to the College to train the next generation as well as assist on collaborative research.

It is also noteworthy that the College operated separately from the Benaloran administration, which focused more on maintaining order within as well as handling foreign policy. Though it had to follow many of the government's labor laws (which were surprisingly progressive at the time, protecting children under the age of ten from working in the harsh conditions of the factories), the College otherwise regulated itself. Annually, the College would send out a wave of Inspectors, who were tasked with ensuring that College-certified Shapers both within the College itself and among the independent Shapers in the Benaloran cities were maintaining the College's meticulous standards for Shaping. In the case of independent Shapers, the inspection was two-fold, for whenever they produced a machine, they had to make a duplicate for inspection. By College standards, the machine would have to be made for constructive and peaceful purposes unless otherwise commissioned by the Benaloran government or the College itself. This process was usually regulated within the College's laboratories, so that part of the yearly inspection for those working there provided to be a moot point.

Spies in the Tower

One such commission would be the development of the Ansals, fighting machines which were developed for the Weylosions in order to resist a likely Vashialian advance from the west. Though Benalor was usually wary of involvement in foreign disputes, it knew well of the growing threat of an increasingly militant Vashial at the time. As their intelligence suggested that the Central Lands were difficult to reach via the Forests, the easier vector for Vashial to overtake Benalor would be through Weylos. As such, an alliance was made and the Shapers got to work on the fighting machines. The beginnings of mass production were in swing at the Tower, the Shapers able to fully construct and augment the Ansals in record time, as time was indeed of the essence if the Weylosians' concerns were correct. At the core of the Ansals' prowess was not just how easily a pilot could operate the machine, and the various armaments equipped upon it, but a small device hidden inside the chassis called the Mana Redistributor, or the MaR for short, which consisted of both an Absorption spell which would sap the Vashialian mages' mana, and then a Conversion spell which would turn it into fuel for the machine.

The Ansals proved extremely effective at the Weylosian fort of Falmarch, driving back the Vashialians beyond the Ponban River to the west. The Weylosians however knew that the alliance with Benalor couldn't last, knowing that they would come in to take their lands in due time. They had to figure out how to make these machines themselves, and fast. Under the guidance of Weylosian tactician Tremaine Laurense, a group of spies posing as Weylosian diplomats were sent to Benalor with the task of stealing the technology for Weylos. Little did they know that it would take more than just schematics - which the College made public - to be able to make an Ansal. It took the sophisticated process of Shaping to make the Ansal functional. For months, the supposed diplomats took an interest in the College of Shapers, an amateur move which alerted the Benaloran authorities. The spies would be executed for their crimes, the Weylosian government never publicly admitting fault in the matter. But the Benalorans had a fail-safe available - the remote deactivation of the MaR's within the Ansals, rendering them inoperable.

The Heavenrider Program

Soon after, the Benalorans tried to invade the Central Lands to stem an incoming Vashialian advance, only to be locked into a war of attrition with the magical army. It would be a battle in which they lost gravely, retreating the scant remains of their troops back into the mountains. With Benalor terribly disgraced from the failed attack and with the government facing intense opposition from its people, it commissioned the College to devise a machine which would ascend into the Heavens Above. Strapped on funds after the war effort, the College postponed production on all of their other projects in order to complete what would come to be called the Heavenrider Program. Numerous tests would prove that the machine could both ascend into the Heavens and come back to Benalor unharmed, prompting the government to allow specially-trained ambassadors to board the machine, along with a highly classified box of cargo. The launch was successful and Benalor was in uproar - perhaps something could be gained by this trip to restore Benaloran prestige.

The College served as mission control for the Program, using the complex spells etched into the machine to track its location, the integrity of the hull, the health of the ambassadors, so forth and so on. The ride went smoothly until they reached a particular point in which the Imperials would later call the Heaven's Horizon. Once it reached there, a heavy pocket of mana interfered with the machine's spells, cutting off communications with it and its crew. This was somewhat expected, as the tests showed a brief lack of communication at this point, the spells on board calibrated to adjust accordingly. However, communications never resumed and the machine never returned to Benalor. After waiting for hours, the mission had to abort, the Heavenriders on board assumed as killed in action.

History knows the rest of the story from there, the story of the Wight's fall to Benalor and the cataclysm which ensued. The Tower was summarily destroyed in the event.

War of the Colleges

Interestingly enough, the history of the Ebony Tower continued past the terrible end of Benalor and into the Empire of For'Channar. During the early formation of the Empire, old mages of the Vashialian tradition and even surviving Shapers from the former Benalor who survived the Three-Way War and the end of their own nation were integrated into the new government, soon forming magical Colleges of their own. These Colleges were not structured and regulated like that of the Benaloran College of Shapers, and were certainly more politically motivated. With the ascension of Margurim II to the throne came the founding of the Imperial University. By the new Emperor's decree, the various Colleges of magic established in the Empire and its bounds would be evaluated by the Chancellor for inclusion into the University as officially sanctioned forms of magic, to become Departments under the new College of Magical Arts. Unsurprisingly, this move infuriated those who practiced some of the more dubious traditions, including the Fleshmages of the ethnic Vashialians. Many of these mages rescinded their Imperial citizenship and headed elsewhere to continue their studies. Given the shambled and dangerous state of Vashial, many relocated to the subterranean halls of the Ebony Tower's ruins.

The Emperor would not stand for such subordination and would send a battalion of the newly-minted Battlemages to the ruins to rout out the detractors. A painter, mage, and intellectual who moved out to the ruins would be the first to hear of the plot. Guyle Bezier was a jack of all trades to many, and certainly an eccentric to go along with it. He pioneered the mentally intensive art of Mnemonics, which used mana like a paintbrush, transcribing the artist's thoughts and emotions onto a magically-reactive surface. It was not this for which he made the exodus to the Tower's ruins, but rather his intellectual outrage at the Empire's policy on cherry-picking the magic which can be used there. Being the renaissance man he was, Bezier also possessed a silver tongue, rallying many of the other mages there with an eloquent, impassioned speech about the Empire's oppression upon free thought and free expression. The Battlemages were met with resistance once they got to the ruins, but the brief "War of the Colleges" was handily won by the Battlemages' discipline as well as their strategy. Bezier would be among those who would surrender, brought back to Tabula Gloria in chains, living the rest of his days in prison.

The Ruins Today

Though the Ebony Tower experienced a large brunt from the disaster which ended Benalor, there is not nearly as much magical radiation present there, as with the Wastes of Vashial. Other than the usual array of hostile creatures stalking the mountains, and an occasional Drakonid ambush, explorers and intellectuals alike freely travel between the Empire and the ruins of the Tower today. Some entrepreneurs even tout the ruins as a prime tourist attraction for those traveling east. Despite the relative lack of danger in the trip itself, retinues of soldiers and Battlemages usually accompany those going there. There are many portions of the maze-like subterranae still unexplored by Imperial eyes, perhaps hosting relics of old. There may still be security machines still running in the deep halls, easily able to kill an unsuspecting explorer. There are definitely scores of tiny Limmians scouring through the ruins, set upon the task of rebuilding the impossibly destroyed facility with whatever they can find. It is usually best to avoid them whilst exploring - one blasted opening you may have walked through before may be sealed by the Limmians by the time you make your way back.

An even greater threat within lies in the mages which were neither killed nor captured during the War of the Colleges. Most of them would likely have died by now, but given many of the forbidden magics practiced by the rogue mages, some of them may have survived to this day, immensely more powerful now than they were during the time of Margurim II. Of course, some of them may have simply reproduced, producing a line of mages taught to harbor hatred for the Empire and its brethren.