Connects to hex: 00.09, 25.04.01, 41.02, 43.08 and 45.09.
Overview
By the edge of the world stands a lighthouse. The glass at its top has been smashed and its whitewashed walls are smeared with anti-elf graffiti.
Where the whitewash has been scratched away, a red metal shines through. The entire lighthouse was seamlessly cast from copper.
If you follow the staircase around the outside of the lighthouse you can come to the light itself. Its fuel rotted away long ago, but if you talk to Crossbow Henry (41.02) he will insist that some nights the lighthouse shoots its beam out over the Edge strongly enough for him to make it out.
Many years ago a curious traveller asked the Weeper (43.08) about the lighthouse that lies not so far from his tower and came away with this story:
Once the lion priests (25.04.01) maintained the lighthouse (although they did not build it) and said that the light they shone showed that their god gave hope in even the greatest darkness. They also helped those returning from expeditions past the World’s Edge for the Keepers would throw down a great rope ladder to travelers emerging from below, back in those days when going beyond the Edge was less perilous.
The Keepers served alone in the lighthouse for lonely two year terms. The last of them was a young man by the name of Nikos Farver. He had loved an elf lady who had given up the forests of her homeland forever for the cities of men and he gave her all of the kindness that his foolish heart possessed. She rewarded him with smiles and long talks over bottles of hobgoblin shroomwine but little else. Nikos grew mad with infatuation and began pressing gifts into her hands, crude ugly things in elven eyes, and finally professed his love to her in verse that flew from his heart like a plump chicken.
She laughed in the way that elves do, meaning no harm, but Nikos stormed out in anger and went to the lion priests and begged to be allowed to be the next Keeper of their lighthouse, preferring the loneliness of isolation to the loneliness of living alone among thousands.
Long did Nikos brood in his lighthouse, his thoughts growing darker and skittering between the walls of his mind, and when his appointed two years as Keeper had passed he saw his replacement walking with his escort up to the tower. Knowing that the time had come for him to return to his homeland and see the elf lady walking, talking and laughing with others in the places that he gone with her he panicked and trained the house’s light on his replacement, who burned up under its radiance like an ant under dwarven glass. For many years Nikos remained at his post, swinging the light wildly and scrawling mad rants against elvenkind on the walls. He had no need to eat, for the lion priests had woven a potent spell around the top floor of the light house so that anyone who stayed there would need but a rare sip of water and the light of the sun upon their face to receive sustenance. Some say that Nikos remains there still, although if there is any truth to those rumors he is ancient indeed…
Connections
- The lighthouse may hold some hints about the fate of the Weeper’s daughter (43.08).
- The priests who once supervised this lighthouse’s operation once had a disagreement with those of the Salt Point lighthouse (00.09), which resulted in the priests of Salt Point being wiped out.
- The kobolds that are making an exodus up over the Edge seem to be avoiding the Lost Lighthouse (45.09).
Hooks
How far into the earth does the lighthouse go?
What is Crossbow Henry doing far enough from his paranoid haunt to be able to see the light?
Who lights the flame, and for what purpose? Is it Nikos or his ghost?
Who has a forge large enough to cast a thing?
- Is the elf lady in the story the Weeper’s daughter? What happened to her anyway?
- Is Nikos still in the tower? His ghost?
- If the lion priests didn’t build the tower, then who did?
- Is the spell on the top floor of the tower still intact?
