The Towers are known for their history, and the ancient architects that built those marvels. Few ever deliberately venture to them, for a variety of reasons -- their isolation, the difficulty in climbing them, and, not least, their occasional inhabitants. The Tower of Day is one such, playing host to the Hill Giants, who do not have an Agdu of their own.
In the forests to the north of Talbot, in the foothills of the Flintcliffs, lies the ruin of the largest of the Towers. It stands at the top of a cliff, so that the height of the Tower from the bottom of the cliff to the summit of the Tower is a distance of roughly 600 ft.
It was built centuries ago for the use of the Hill Giants: the Hill Giants, smaller and more nomadic than most of their cousins, refused a mountaintop dwelling, choosing instead to wander the lowlands. Their parents, the Elder Giants, not wanting to cast them off into the wilderness without some shelter, had the Tower of Day built.
On Approaching the Tower of Day
"On the edge of the cliff as it overlooks the hills and valleys of the Flintcliffs -- and even further on, to the centre of the Kingdom -- the Tower of Day rises like the peak of a mountain from the trees. Its vast walls are untouched by time, but the long pathway, with arches of stone lifting it up to the doorway in the Tower's face, is been broken and cracked over the millennia. Here and there on the massive structure are equally massive handprints and crude drawings, evidence of Hill Giant activity."
As a nod to the smaller size of the Hill Giant, this Tower does not sport the traditional winding path to the summit: instead, a path was built into a vertical door. On the inside, though, much is the same as in the other towers: inside is an intact celestivere, the petrified tree-trunk that serves to hold the celestivere and provide a way of climbing through the Tower, the goliath quarters and the carvings that show the history of their people.
This Tower is also positioned above a cave system that has formed in the cliffs below. Difficult to enter except via a rope strung from Nomad’s Leap, the cave is covered in water at the entrance, but hides an exceptionally old shrine at the back of the cave, concealed behind a hidden entrace.
Fall or Fly
On the western face of the cliff over which the Tower of Day is built lies the ominously named Nomad’s Leap. While none argue that the spot has been given that name, the reasons for the title change from storyteller to storyteller.
Some claim that it is named after a giant, despairing of the decline of his people, threw himself to his death there. Some believe that this is the very spot that the Cloud Giants first learned to fly. Some believe that the ‘nomad’ is something else entirely.
Whatever the reason, all agree: stay well clear of the Tower of Day on the first full moon of the year. For then – solid or spirit – the nomad will return to his leap…
Nomads' Shelter
The Tower of Day was – and is still occasionally – used by the Hill Giants as a meeting-place and shelter for the desperate in the times in their wander-filled lives when they needed such a place. The Hill Giants are not as rigid and cultured as their mountain-dwelling counsins. They prefer solitude, isolation, and the wandering life of the nomad. However, the Tower of Day goes still play host to them on particularly inhospitable days.
Many find it surprising how unobtrusively the Hill Giants can move, for creatures so large. Few would be able to tell whether one was roaming in the forests near their village. And it does surprise the few travellers who camp out at the ruin of the Tower for weeks at a time, when they wake the following morning to find themselves sharing it with a Hill Giant in a blizzard or a storm
Shrine of the Ancients
Beneath the Tower of Day, the falling rocks from the cliff-face in the past decade have revealed a cave system worn into the rock by the steady passage of water from above. The caves, which are the lair of an old and wily wyvern, also contain the hidden entrance to an ancient shrine. Passing through the entrance of the cave, into the chamber farthest from the opening, one will find a smooth, stone floor, with the symbol of a stylised dragon on it. A blood offering – a cut smeared onto the stone – will open the doorway into the shrine below.
Inside, the shrine itself belonged to the children of the Elder Dragons, millennia ago. Precisely why they built it here, so far away from their own lands and under the very nose of their hereditary enemies, the Elder Giants, is a mystery… but their reasons could not be benevolent.
Shadows of an Ancient War
As is told elsewhere, the goliath myths claim that there was once an ancient war between the Elder Giants -- the titanic, mountain-sized giants who created all lesser giants -- and their counterparts, the Elder Dragons. In the days before history, they warred, and passed that war onto their children.
There are many myths about the beginning of the war, its heroes and villains, and -- not least -- its prophecised end in the Scalemount Prophecies. Goliaths will tell their children about their ancestral grudge, and claim that the Agdu and the Tor were in fact created as defenses for this conflict.
Whether this is true is hotly debated, but the Shrine beneath the Tower of Day does provide some evidence to its veracity, though very academics will ever venture into it.