In the first month of the restoration of the Kestii Tower, slightly more than a hundred different people entered the Tower. Within six months, that number exploded to over three thousand, with most of the people entering multiple tis. Many entered as frequently as they could. The limit was no longer finding people below the first upgrade that were willing to visit the Tower; instead, it was the fact that there were many places that did not have a single static Challenge.
Ansuz could slowly overco that challenge by approving City Lords, as a fully approved City Lord could dedicate part of the Nexus to creating a Stable Challenge that led only to the Tower. Unfortunately, that had its own issues.
The news traveled incredibly quickly for a pre-technology culture with the help of ssengers who used magic to speed their journeys, but that only helped the cities whose leadership knew where the old nexus terminals were. If they couldn’t find them or they’d degraded too far, they had to start over from nothing, which took months even in the best case.
Once the city had a functional nexus terminal, the city’s leadership had to be approved by Ansuz. He was willing to work around the rules and find reasons to approve leaders, but there were so rules he couldn’t get around. The one that ca up the most often was the restriction against a Registry Master becoming the City Lord. You couldn’t hold both positions at the sa ti and there were even restrictions on the ti after you left one position before you could hold the other.
Sophia knew they were fortunate in how quickly it spread, despite the limitations. The Tower needed people to challenge it if it was going to rebuild itself and open the Gateways. Sophia did what she could, but that was very little at this point; it all depended on people who could enter the Tower. People who were the least powerful around.
The reasons people were happy to enter the Tower were varied, but there were three common thes. First, it allowed people without a Vocation-granting Feat to gain one simply by stepping inside. They weren’t all that hard to gain, but entering the Tower was even easier.
Second, Wisps seed to be easier to get in the Tower than in the outside world. While it wasn’t that different from taking on stable Challenges, it was far more accessible and you weren’t limited to the ones that were near you, which ant you didn’t face the seriously declining Wisp gain of repeating a Challenge.
Third, there were resources in the Tower that might not be available in the particular location any city happened to be in, which made it well worth the effort for Professionals as well, as long as they could get Called guards.
Tales also made their way back to Mazehold about all sorts of discoveries about the Templars. Most were bad; the Broken Blade wasn’t the only one who used the Hallowed under her as her own private army when they couldn’t disobey her orders or speak about them.
Oddly enough, the Broken Hilt in Izel was one of the ones without any real skeletons in his closet … or at least none that were found imdiately. Sophia was certain the man who tried to trap them all in Othala’s ruin was sent by the Broken Hilt, but there was absolutely no new evidence, even after Ais’lin Brightfall, Ci’an’s mother and Clan chief as well as the new City Leader for Izel, looked.
Sophia hated the fact that she was now famous. It wasn’t the sa as the fa of the Arena; this was fa that ca with etings. People wanted to get her opinion on things she didn’t care about or get her to agree to things so that they could take “Empress Sophia says …” to one of Mazehold’s leaders. Even people who didn’t want to take advantage of her that way wanted her to do things to help them, like design a very specific Imperial Sphere.
Sophia wasn’t doing anything like that. She wanted to talk to the Wanderer about Spheres before she did anything more than the ergency fixes to the ones the Broken Lord used. The last thing she wanted to do was handicap people who took advantage of the opportunities she offered, and she knew she didn’t know enough to design better Spheres than the ones that were created by previous Emperors.
Her desire to talk to the Wanderer was also the reason she hadn’t spent any of the Thread she gained since she reached the third upgrade. She already knew that there were hidden tricks that made it far easier to upgrade; when she combined that with the fact that no one in the Broken Lands seed to be able to reach the fourth upgrade, it was obvious that there was sothing the locals didn’t know. She had enough Thread to reach the next level, but that was all, so it didn’t really hurt to wait.
It was a relief when she could schedule a match in the Arena. When she first started competing, the crowd was distracting; now, it was simply part of the experience and one of the few tis when she wasn’t being bothered by issues or people she’d rather not deal with.
It was after one of those Arena matches when a ssage appeared in front of her, indicating that maybe things were starting to change once again.
Spoiler
Your Patron greets you!
I expected to speak to you sooner than this. Unfortunately, while I no longer have to hide my ssages in ones from the Guide, I still cannot send them freely.
I originally chose to hide my ssages in a place the Broken Lord could not look because you were no match for the forces at the Broken Lord's disposal and a ssage like this will reveal your location to any Patron. I am fairly confident it was also revealed to the Broken Lord, as all too many of my newly Hallowed were hunted down soon after I gave them instructions in the early days after the Tower fell. After that, I beca careful.
Before the Tower fell, a Patron could send ssages as often as they liked, while a Hallowed could contact their Patron once after each Patron ssage. Neither of those seems to be true now. I can only assu that this new limitation has sothing to do with the damage to the Tower and the effort to restore it.
I am not certain I would have contacted you earlier even if I could have, because what I have to say is difficult.
Thank you for correcting my error.
I should explain that, I suppose.
I spend far more ti on the surviving lands than the broken ones, because I can make a difference there. That does not an I forgot about the Broken Lands.
In the aftermath of the Tower's fall and the continued deaths of my Hallowed, I hoped that the Broken Lord would die. Over ti he did beco far less active. Imperial Spheres nearly vanished and I began to hope that the Broken Lands could take care of themselves. A few centuries later, it was clear that was not happening; generation after generation, people were shoved back from the places they call the Wildlands. Those were all once inhabited, out to what are now the borders. The lands beyond the borders were inhabited, too, but they fell outside the range of the Kestii Tower and were not Broken when the Kestii Tower fell.
In a way, you could say that I am responsible for waking him up after that. It was not my goal; I wanted to find out what was broken about the Tower, so I directed a few of my Hallowed to wander near the Maze. That was enough to trigger a series of expeditions to first explore and then settle Mazegate, which beca Mazehold. It quickly beca the easiest way to gather Wisps for the third upgrade, which helped push back the monsters for a ti as those third upgrade Called filtered back out of Mazehold.
Unfortunately, so of the people who entered the Maze woke the Broken Lord. It appears to have been a larger group and they were all "given" Imperial Spheres from those the Broken Lord corrupted. The Temple of the Broken Lord ca from that. There was little I could do; in their lands, Tower-blessed rulers have more power than Patrons. I did what little I could, but it truly was little.
Thank you once again.
--The Wanderer
[collapse]
Sophia shook her head and muttered, “Of course I took care of it. There’s no need to thank ; none of this was your fault. Soone would have eventually poked their nose in no matter what, that’s what humans do.”
Sophia didn’t need the apology, but she did have a question she wanted answered. Admittedly, she had no way to ask, but surely it was obvious that she needed to know how to reach the fourth upgrade?
Sophia sighed to herself, but she knew that the answer to that was that it probably wasn’t. She needed to gain four more levels before she could upgrade, so there was plenty of ti. Her Thread accumulation was pretty slow when she could only spend a few days in the Maze each month; the handful of Arena fights each week didn’t really move it at all. Sophia was beginning to think that they actually did nothing for her anymore except keep her reflexes sharp and give her a way to blow off steam.
They were completely worthwhile, Thread or not.
Sophia reviewed the Wanderer’s ssage again. She hadn’t found any way to see the ssages of Patrons to Hallowed, but she had seen a couple of other options appear on her Imperial Tower Hub page over the past six months, places that she could choose to invest the Tower’s energy. She hadn’t activated any of them because she wanted to save the energy for whatever was needed to open the Gateways. It seed likely that that feature was hidden away behind an unlock she didn’t have.
There was that option for Status-based ssages. That made sense as a place that might affect both how Patrons could send ssages and where the Emperor might be able to read them. It was one of many things Sophia hadn’t unlocked and she didn’t plan to now; it was surprisingly expensive even for “basic” ssaging.
It sort of made sense that the Broken Lord had it and she didn’t. Cliff had effectively reinitialized the Tower when he moved into it. It wasn’t sothing she thought was even worth the ti to go through. Maybe the earlier Emperors were worried about soone trying to overthrow them; Sophia would welco that.
She probably didn’t an that, though there were tis she’d happily give the position away if she could.
Other than the bad news that she was going to have to keep waiting to learn about the fourth upgrade, the Wanderer’s ssage was great to see. It ant sothing had changed, and that could only be good. It explained the Wanderer’s silence and also implied that the Tower was improving. Sophia already knew that because of the extra options that were slowly appearing, but it was good to have the confirmation.
She checked in with Cliff, but he was just as uncommunicative as usual. All she was certain of after talking to him was that the Gateways couldn’t be built yet.
It was two tendays after the Wanderer’s ssage that Cliff reached out to her and told her the Tower was ready for the first major upgrade and he wanted her to choose it. Cliff wanted them all but didn’t care what order he picked them in. He even explained what he could see, which was more than the Guide ever did.
Cliff presented Sophia with four choices. He could build the first level of the physical Tower, seed additional Challenges at Nexuses throughout the Broken Lands that would convert to stable Challenges after their first completion, upgrade the Tower’s internal challenge rating to allow Cliff to create areas suitable for first upgrade Spheres, or initiate the repair of the Broken Lands themselves. They all had different costs, and only one major upgrade could proceed at a ti.
That was the reason none were available earlier, apparently; making the Tower work was not easy. Cliff was finally confident he could afford the ti when nothing else could be enhanced to perform a major upgrade.
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