Tower of the Gods

"Lo, and before him stood the mighty Anchor, the most holy and the first of creations. And thus, did Tal look upon the structure and dictate that his work was finished. And he looked out to the formless sea and he nodded to his brothers and sisters and he declared that their work was to begin"

- from The Dictate of the Six, Book the First: Tal

Overview

The Tower of the Gods, the Six Sided Edifice, the Old Place, the Anchor, and many other names have graces the most ancient structure on Aelios. The Tower pierces both plane and firmament and stretches infinitely towards the heavens and, presumably, infinitely under the surface of the world. On the clearest days it can be seen from nearly any point of the world and many travelers have taken to using it as a reference point along their journeys, the most notable of which are the religious adherents that walk the Pilgrim's Road.

History

The Tower as a structure has existed throughout the entirety of Aelios' recorded history and is the foundation of the majority of the various human cultures' stories of the origin of humanity as a race. Modern historians have confirmed accounts of the towers existence well back to the ancient empires and kingdoms that existed prior to the Starfall, debunking a long held theory that the tower heralded, or even caused, the ancient catastrophe.
Despite flourishing religious and scientific communities that have sprung up around the Lake of the Gods surrounding the tower there have been very few examples of anyone standing before the edifice itself. Study and worship must, therefore, be performed at a respectful distance or found in supporting texts recorded by humanity's ancestors.
Following humanity's discovery and mastery of the arcane more accurate assays into the Tower were thought to be possible, however, it defies even the most powerful of divination. The structure itself has been observed and the physical makeup of the faces of the structure can be analyzed from a great distance. This has done more to confound scholars as each person who attempts a scrying may see something different on each wall of the Tower, regardless of background or belief.

Religion

It is unknown when the tower was first named an object of worship or whether it is something that was always venerated as such but with the general acceptance of the Cult of the Six among humanity as the leading pantheon of gods the belief among most religious people is that the Tower was created by or housed the six deities of the pantheon and from them the rest of the world was built with it at the center. Historians mostly lack the evidence to refute this belief as even older texts and evidence indicates that a pantheon of six gods bearing a similar structure was worshipped as far back as the pre-starfall kingdoms. Regardless of what history may dictate, however, the Tower is a place of pilgrimage for adherents of any or all of the six who make their way down the established route of the Pilgrim's Road.

Structure

The Tower is a six sided structure, all sides appear to be equal in width from long distance observation and each side appears to be composed of a different material. The materials are believed to be identified as marble, ebony, obsidian, granite, glass, and opal. The composition, detailing, and even quantity of each material seems to change with each observation by each observer that leads to much confusion as to whether the Tower is even a static structure. Archaeologists and arcanists have spent lifetimes recording the tower from a distance trying to ascertain any pattern of these changes in observation and will likely spend lifetimes more until a way across the lake surrounding the structure is discovered.

Lake of the Gods

Surrounding the Tower is a large placid lake that seems to be unaffected by the passing of time or change in weather or environment in the area. The water level in the lake does not recede in times of drought or flood its banks with rainwater no matter how large the deluge. The surface of the lake is obscured by dense mists that defy physical or magical travel, nearly always returning a brave explorer to shore at some other point of the lake and, sometimes, not returning them at all. Mundane or magical flight above the lake typically leads to more disastrous results as the flyers strength or spells fail and plunge them into the water below and, to date, no airship captain has dated to risk their vessel to the same fate. There are no points for a mage to grasp on the shores of the Tower's small island for short or long range teleportation spells. Despite all of this the lake does not seem to be a malevolent force as many of the small settlements around the shore are able to feed themselves on fish safely harvested from the shallow depths.