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bakerstreet2020-04-30 09:33 am
marlowe_tops) wrote in bakerstreet2020-04-30 09:33 am
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The Tower
The Tower
From lighthouses to watch towers, towers are central features of life in many cultures, and they hold pivotal roles in many stories. Whether you're trapped in a tower, visiting a falconry mews, or enjoying summer from the deck of a water tower, there are all manner of adventures to be had involving towers.
Scenarios:
1. Lighthouse - Ever since ships have sailed the seas, lighthouses have been crucial to the safety of sailors and passengers. If you're a lighthouse keeper, it's your responsibility to keep the fire burning, and you may be isolated on the lighthouse rock for months at a time with only a fellow lighthouse keeper for company. Perhaps you're a guest at the lighthouse, or a tourist exploring the history of the lighthouse. Lighthouses have always drawn their own array of haunted tales, from ghost lights in an abandoned tower to monsters from the deep stalking the lighthouse keepers themselves.
2. Wizard's Tower - Wizards and witches have often favored towers. Perhaps you need the tallest tower in the castle for your astronomy lessons, or you yourself have been imprisoned in a tower in the midst of a dark forest. Perhaps you inhabit or stumble upon a whimsical tower held up by magic or constructed entirely of gingerbread.
3. Water Tower - The water tower is a fixture of many small towns, providing fresh water and good water pressure for the nearby populace. Many summer memories are made of climbing rickety old water towers to sit out upon the deck and watch the view, and there are numerous murder mysteries started by finding a body in a water tower.
4. Building a Tower - In any season, a rainy day's entertainment can be found in building towers of cards, books, jenga blocks, or cardboard boxes. Or you could take this more literally and undertake construction of a literal tower with stones, or bricks, or blocks of ice.
5. Tower of Treats - There are few things more festive for any special occasion than a tower of cakes or cookies. Trees of macarons and spun-sugar towers decorate the tables of this feast or the counters of this candy shop, or perhaps you're a baker challenged with creating a sugar tower masterpiece.
6. Ruined/Haunted Tower - There's something so atmospheric about an abandoned tower. It's an excellent place for a tryst, or to hide away from your responsibilities with a book for a couple of hours. But if you go by night, watch out for the ghosts who haunt the tower. They say that one poor soul was bricked up in a wall somewhere in the tower, and another threw themself from the tower.
7. Watch Tower - The tower is one of the most important types of defensive structure. A single tower can defend a valley against an invading army, and towers are good settings for holding watch against the night, all the more so if you have good company.
8. Skyscraper - In the modern age, towers can stretch into the clouds. Skyscraper residents of past and future, tourists to the big city, and giant apes bent on climbing the tallest thing in sight, everyone loves a good skyscraper. If you like your adventures on the steampunk side, many skyscrapers have zeppelin docking bays on their higher stories for setting off on journeys into the clouds. Just watch out for the lightning storms!
9. Tower Prison - The Tower of London is a memorable example, but towers make lonely, and secure places for prisons, whether you're down in the dungeon or at the top of the tower. In any case, it's sure to be lonely. You'll have to befriend your jailer or plot a clever escape with your cell mate, unless you have allies on the outside who are willing to help you.
10. Orc Villa - A black and imposing gothic tower stretches above a blighted landscape, striking fear into the heart of every elf, man, and hobbit for miles. But if you're an orc, it's cosy accommodations! Mud pits, hot springs, torture boutiques, weapons refineries, and an elf re-education clinic. Every amenity that the discerning orc could desire. Make Barad-dûr your next holiday destination.
11. Childe Roland - There's a tower, a knight (or a gunslinger), and a quest that you can never succeed except at great cost. It's a classic story of an ominous tower surrounded by the bodies of all those who have gone before. The tower is different for each seeker, and everyone has their own reasons for seeking it. As for what waits within, well, no one has yet returned to tell the tale.
12. Choose your own Tower - Belltowers, clocktowers, wicker men, falconry mews, there are hundreds of types of towers in the world, and a thousand stories for every one of them.
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