The Tower Maze

Story so far

The Tower Maze rises about fifty levels into the sky from the middle of The Eighth Floor's grassland. Its front door carries a single warning: enter and you must reach the top before being allowed back down, with no teleporting or phasing permitted inside. No other information is given — crawlers debated whether the tower was optional or the only way to unseal the stairwells far below the floor's holes.

Each flight ends at a landing of five one-way doors, each supposedly hiding a different danger; choosing correctly makes the others vanish, leaving an empty hall and more stairs. Everly and ten mercenaries climbed it in hours using Gordon's Compass of Vertical Labyrinth Management. The round room at the summit held only a pedestal and a paper note revealing the entire structure was a Sponsored Trap built by Dictum Waystation Controls, Limited to slander Gordon Waystation Outfitters. A trap door then opened, the ascent route closed, and the ceilings began grinding downward level by level. Seven of Everly's ten mercenaries died in the first ten flights of descent; she and the last two were crushed in meter-deep sand.

Appearance

A tall, wide tower of roughly fifty stories standing alone on a flat grass lowland; inside, plain stairwells, empty hallways, and landings of five identical one-way doors, lit at the bottom only by sickly yellow ceiling lights amid pouring sand.

Role

The eighth floor's cruelest set piece — a fifty-level ad campaign disguised as a puzzle, and Everly's tomb.

Relationships