cawna’s infinite tower

Far from being an adventure module in the traditional sense, this month I wanted to write a purely narrative scenario that GMs could build the nitty-gritty around. I’ve painted the story and the characters with broad strokes in the hopes that it could easily slot into a larger campaign and I’ve omitted references to specific spells, abilities, or creatures that would pigeonhole this as an adventure for a specific system. Also here’s a playlist to accompany the story. Enjoy!

—

In a sleepy village tucked away among rolling hills and thick woods, parents tell their children of Cawna, the old lord’s daughter. They tell how she used to love to ride into town to play with the villagers’ children and listen to their parents’ tales. They tell how when she got older she’d ride down to hold hands and talk sweetly to boys and girls she took a fancy to. One day, they say, her parents found out about this and became far stricter with her. They told her to stop dallying with the peasant children because one day she would have to marry a noble lord. Thereafter Cawna didn’t come to town as often, but when she did she was a whirlwind of dances, cups of wine, stolen kisses, and empty promises that one day she’d stay.

When one day Cawna stopped visiting the townsfolk altogether, most everyone chalked it up to her having been married off into some distant noble family. But in truth, her parents had made an ill-phrased and ill-timed wish to the wrong person, damning Cawna to an unspeakable fate. No one outside of her family’s castle saw her again after that day.

Cawna’s parents, in their desperate desire to control their daughter, had attracted the attention of one Miranda. She appeared at the gates to their manor one night claiming to have witnessed Cawna’s disobedience and offering to help correct her behavior using magical means. Unbeknownst to them, Miranda was actually a supernatural entity with the power to grant wishes as she deemed fit. The noble lord and lady wished for Cawna “to be kept somewhere where she can’t get into trouble and no harm can come to her” and Miranda, in her way, granted them that wish. With a word and a gesture she added a new tower on to their manor with a seemingly infinite staircase, though it appeared normal from the outside. She assured them that Cawna was safe in the room at the top of this tower.

The noble lady, Cawna’s mother, tried to climb the stairs in the new tower but couldn’t reach the top; she climbed for hours until her legs failed her. After a week or so of trying to scale the tower, Cawna’s parents largely gave up trying to reach her that way. Walking around the manor grounds sometime later they discovered that they could see and hear their daughter through a small window at the top of the new tower. She asked her parents what had happened and why she was unable to descend, and they told her that they didn’t fully understand but that at least this way she was safe. After that Cawna refused to acknowledge her parents for any reason, but every so often she would wail, sing, or otherwise call out hoping that some kind soul would hear her and seek to free her from the tower.

Cawna

Imprisoned at sixteen years old, Cawna has been living in the highest room in an infinitely tall tower in her family’s manor for years. The only way she can communicate with the world outside the tower is by shouting from the one window in her room, in a desperate hope that someone will hear and try to rescue her. She is the only child of her noble parents, the lord and lady of the manor, the village, and the surrounding farmland. She rejected most aspects and expectations of her aristocratic life much to her parents’ chagrin and was an extremely ill-behaved girl in their eyes.

Cawna loved the common people in the town she visited and wished to be like them rather than noble as she was. She fell in love with one of the villagers shortly before her imprisonment but kept it a secret from her family. To date, that villager waits for Cawna or news of her to come to the town and has refused to marry or take a lover since her disappearance.

Despite her years-long imprisonment Cawna has not aged at all, Miranda having apparently considered the passage of time as harmful. Similarly, she has retained most of her sanity. She is in all senses unharmed by her circumstances, per the phrasing of her parents’ wish.

Cawna’s parents

While insisting they truly love their daughter, Cawna’s parents are very set in their values and traditions and believe that they know what is best for her even when it is directly contrary to her wishes. They see common folk as inherently less than themselves and other nobles and think that any contact Cawna has with them risks physical or psychological harm to her.

Currently they are in their seventies, ailing, heirless, and living in less comfort than they are accustomed to without the bride price they were counting on from Cawna’s eventual marriage. Cawna’s father continues to believe that her confinement was the right course of action but her mother has her doubts, albeit privately.

Miranda

Little is known about her origins, true nature, or the scope of her abilities, but a few scholars who study esoteric topics have connected multiple instances of inexplicable and extraordinary goings on to the appearance of a woman dressed as a jester who goes by the name of Miranda. What academics have gathered is that she is somehow drawn to people with overwhelming desires to change their circumstances, whether for good or ill. She delights in granting such wishes to people, though she usually does so in a way that highlights the manipulative, jealous, or controlling nature of the wish. For example, one young woman wished to her that her former lover and his new wife would be “happy together forever” in an obviously jealous and sarcastic tone, and Miranda turned the couple into an ettin afflicted with near-contstant laughing fits. Records indicate that she is also known to beneficently grant wishes made in good faith, but they generally draw less attention than ‘be careful what you wish for’ cases.

Scholars speculate that Miranda is capable of undoing her magic but it has yet to be confirmed. It is thought that she would be most inclined to do so should the initial wisher have a truly genuine change of heart, realizing that they made their wish out of a desire to do harm in some way.

The tower

From the outside Cawna’s tower appears perfectly normal. It is only somewhat taller than the castle’s other towers and is made of the same stone as the castle as a whole, though someone familiar with architecture or masonry would recognise that it is at least one hundred years newer than the rest of the construction. It is about eighty feet tall and about seventy-five feet up is a small window through which Cawna can communicate if she desires to.

On the inside the narrow tower is simply a spiral staircase, walled on either side by stone. The tower has no windows, torches, or other sources of illumination and becomes pitch black after only a short ascent. Most notably, the staircase appears to go on infinitely. Cawna’s mother has attempted to scale the tower many times over the years, sometimes even bringing supplies for a multi-day climb, but the tower never changes. Cawna’s mother suspects that perhaps magic could render the tower finite or somehow allow someone to reach her daughter otherwise, but she is sceptical of magic since it is what sealed her daughter away in the first place.