Affiliation: historically College Arcanum; presently controlled by the Brass Blades
School: Conjuration
Status: Outside College control
Adamantis Tower is the ancient tower of Conjuration constructed by the College Arcanum near its founding and named for the first Master of that school. It later passed into the control of Zhaken Amberheart and became one of the most consequential losses in the College’s later history. The Brass Blades now control the structure.
Architecture and Study
Adamantis was built around the principle that location is a relationship rather than merely a fixed point. Its exterior could appear comparatively conventional: a great stone tower with attached halls and an elaborate entrance complex. Inside, however, rooms can exceed the dimensions suggested by the exterior, corridors meet at geometries that should be impossible, and doors matter more than windows.
Historically, the tower was a major center for teleportation, summoning, extradimensional spaces, conjured matter, magical transportation, and the establishment or disruption of relationships between distant places. Its controlled arrival chambers were particularly important for experiments involving unfamiliar creatures or travelers because the tower was designed to receive dangerous or unexpected arrivals without granting them immediate access to the rest of the complex.
Defenses
Adamantis governs arrival before it resorts to denial. Unauthorized teleportation, portals, and similar effects within its area of influence can be redirected into fortified reception chambers rather than simply failing. Summoned creatures can likewise be diverted into spaces intended for containment until their nature and authorization are determined.
Once a threat is recognized, the tower can alter relationships among its own thresholds. A door that usually opens into a classroom may instead lead to a guard station. Protected areas can become temporarily unreachable from ordinary routes. Corridors can effectively return intruders to earlier locations even when the visible passage appears to continue forward.
Against more dangerous Conjuration, Adamantis can sever or quarantine magical connections. Portals may collapse, summoning effects can be disrupted, extradimensional access points isolated, and sections of the tower cut off from external teleportation.
The tower’s greatest known capability is its inherent power to teleport itself as a complete structure. Foundations, rooms, occupants, stored objects, and internal extradimensional spaces can move together. This is not an ordinary spell cast upon the building by its Warden. It is a function built into Adamantis itself.
The limitations of that power are not well understood in the modern era. College records suggest that the tower cannot simply be used as a convenient vehicle without condition or consequence, but surviving accounts disagree over prepared destinations, recovery periods, internal states, and other possible constraints.
Zhaken and the Loss of Adamantis
Adamantis was lost long after the ancient College schism associated with the disappearance of four other towers. Zhaken Amberheart, whose life had been prolonged unnaturally by magical means, controlled Adamantis for a period that may have lasted centuries.
In 8752 SE, the Brass Blades reached the tower in the Aessjorthe Plains while pursuing Zhaken. After completing a ritual that attuned him to the Clockwork Heart, Zhaken invoked Adamantis’s own spatial systems and teleported the entire tower away. The disappearance demonstrated that he understood a foundational capability that the modern College either had forgotten or could no longer operate reliably.
The Blades later gained control of Adamantis. In 8753 SE, the College entered negotiations seeking the return of the tower, but current general accounts continue to place it under Brass Blade control.
Warden Attunement and Control
Historical records describe Adamantis Wardens as practitioners with especially strong affinity for Conjuration. Their attunement involved passing through a sequence of thresholds whose destinations could not be predicted in advance while maintaining a stable sense of relationship to the tower despite repeated changes in apparent location.
Like the other Eight Towers, Adamantis possesses limited nonverbal magical awareness. It can recognize authorized relationships and respond to intruders with more flexibility than ordinary wards. Whether Zhaken was genuinely accepted by the tower, deceived or coerced its systems, or found a way to bypass that recognition remains unresolved.
The College’s modern restrictions on tower control chambers were shaped heavily by this failure. Zhaken proved that knowledge of a tower’s deeper systems could be as dangerous as an external assault and that an insider who discovered forgotten functions might gain powers the College no longer understood how to revoke.