Towers of Sun, Earth, Moon, and Stars
Built by gwerin mages during the Third Age, the towers once stood near the Western empire's capital. When that capital was destroyed by a concept bomb during the civil war that ended the empire, the Four Towers remained and were one of the foremost centers of learning and knowledge. In the last minutes of the Cataclysm War, as the Cataclysm's wave of disruption swept toward them, the sages and residents of the towers activated the defensive mechanisms that displaced the towers into Shadow, hoping to transition back within hours once the wave passed. Or at least that was the intent. Instead, the towers were trapped in a demiplane without access to the outside. The inhabitants were divided as to how to manage. The Tower of the Sun, home to the arcane power-plant that supplied the facility, tried to burn their way out; instead they destroyed themselves and the inside of the tower. With this failure and the reduced power (and concomitant loss of food and water production), the Dark Lady, the cleric and leader of the entire facility, gave into paranoia and despair. She pledged herself and the souls of those in the facility to the White Skull in exchange for the knowledge and power to escape that demiplane bubble. With her sister Kinlanna (who was the administrator of the Tower of the Stars) as co-conspirator, she killed the sages of the library tower by placing the tower in stasis (and overriding the safety mechanisms) and summoned demons to enact a horrific ritual. A demon of rage was summoned and imprisoned in a ritual circle, its ever-flowing power being used to bring the tower facility back to reality. The other residents of the Tower of the Moon were sacrificed to an eternal living death to keep the demon imprisoned and aware. The Tower of the Earth, fearing the insanity of the Dark Lady, locked its doors and surrendered itself to Shadow in a bid for survival.
Time did not flow the same way inside the bubble as outside. Inside, only a few months passed, while outside nearly 200 years passed by. The towers resurfaced (along with the mountaintop on which they were built) in the middle of Lake Coy'in, which had formed where it once stood. The Dark Lady and Kinlanna escaped, passing through the Portal Network node to Kel'al'ar, where the dark lady took over the local government and Kinlanna married Phraya Hvang Ssa'ka to act as an intermediary. The towers stood mostly empty, surrounded by a divine barrier placed to keep the demonic corruption within from spreading outward.
Several years later, the Catalysts entered the barrier and liberated the facility, destroying the demon and ending the stasis effect (at the cost of the mind of the Tower of Stars), all with the help and sacrifice of the remaining residents of the Tower of the Earth.
Since then, the Towers have become a major hub of science and learning. The Sages are headquartered there, and the gwerin residents of the Crisial Kingdom have made it their capital. The Tower of the Sun has been rebuilt, and efforts are underway to extract as much information out of the immense library inside the Tower of the Stars.
