Blue Tower

Blue Tower

(Location)

Merchant

Monument

Locale

Eastgate, Absalom, Isle of Kortos

Type

Tower

Wares

Message and parcel delivery services

Affiliation

Winged Sandals
Lion Blades
Blue Lords (formerly)

Source: Absalom, City of Lost Omens, pg(s). 136–138

The Blue Tower is the tallest building within the city walls of Absalom, and the third-tallest building in the whole city. Residents across the city use both the Blue Tower, the northwestern Spire of Nex, and the peaks of the Kortos Mounts as navigational landmarks.

Structure

Above ground

The tower is made of pieces of light blue coral that resembles the spiraling horn of a unicorn, and it is topped with a stone lighthouse. Blue Tower is so tall that it can focus its light beyond the Flotsam Graveyard to mark a ship out of Absalom Harbor.

Below ground

The tower also has a sprawling underground basement that leads further down to a massive and secret vault habitat spanning the subterranean equivalent of eight city blocks. Known today as Little Oppara, this vault was intended to serve as a doomsday shelter for the Blue Lords, and it has its own streets, manor houses, artificial gardens, magical lighting and illusions that simulate the passage of day and night and fake the appearance of glistening golden rooftops in the Opparan style.

History

Built during one of the Radiant Festivals, the Blue Tower originally served as the headquarters of the Blue Lords from 1997–2920 AR, a part of the city's Age of Excess during which the group of minor Taldan nobles rivaled the Keleshite Cult of the Hawk for control over Absalom's governance.

In 2920 AR, earthquakes ravaged Taldor and Qadira, and the Blue Lords and Cult of the Hawk abandoned Absalom practically overnight, leaving the tower vacant. Coded messages, some of which purportedly date to the tower's heyday under the Blue Lords, continue to be found between bricks and near keystones of the tower.

Functions

Tenants

The tower is home to the Winged Sandals, an order of dedicated messengers who worship Iomedae. The Winged Sandals claim their origins back to Aroden. They say the order was commanded by Aroden himself to be ready to deliver messages to anywhere in the world. When magical means of communication fail or are not trusted, the Winged Sandals are capable of delivering a message to any place in the world.

Only three of the eight city blocks in the underground settlement of Little Oppara remain populated, with one of its manor houses used as a private office by Taldan Grand Ambassador Tolara Alverteen. Access to Little Oppara is prohibited without Alverteen's permission, and entrances are guarded by hired Javelin Gallery guards under Alverteen's direct employment.

Little Oppara also serves as a den of the Lion Blades, Taldor's espionage arm, in Absalom, with Alverteen their chief asset in the city. Thanks to a massive bribe to the Winged Sandals' leader Aftrin Undrol (paid under the pretense of "rent" for Little Oppara), Alverteen's agents haves unfettered access to all of the messages that the Winged Sandles handle.

Other uses

In addition to its use as a navigational landmark, the Blue Tower remains a popular picnicking spot for much of the city's wealthy, as well as being a site of much mystery and danger. Absalomians also use the tower's shadow as a sundial, and macabre gamblers have wagered on the "Blue Doom", in which they bet on which buildings might be destroyed by the tower's collapse.