Luke was one of those children who was told the story of the tower when he was young and upon hearing multiple people express their belief that the tower existed somewhere in the kingdom, he decided to set off to find the tower. Luke was obviously no child, in fact, he had recently celebrated his 20th birthday but this was his first time on the road. He had never been so far from his home village, which he was very fond of. So why was he leaving it then? Well, the favor he hoped to ask the mage was related to it, his village was cursed. Crops were failing, livestock were dying and a slew of other issues plagued their small town, Luke hoped that if he could find the tower, and pass the trials rumored to exist inside of it. He could bring prosperity back to his village.
It had been approximately a month since Luke set out, and in that time, he had gotten used to the whole adventuring thing, well at least he thought so. He was currently searching a thick patch of woods for the mage’s tower, however the search wasn’t going too well. He had searched up and down this particular forest and he was seeing nothing magical at all. Eventually he tired of his search and found a decent clearing and set up camp for the night. After a few moments the fire was lit and he was cooking some meat over it. This search may have been a failure, but at least there was plenty of animals to hunt, he would eat well tonight. So, Luke ate his fill and fell asleep
Early next morning Luke awoke and like always prepared to pack his things, however something was different about the clearing this morning. As Luke groggily rubbed his eyes and stood up he noticed that there was now a massive stone tower at the other end of the clearing.
“Holy shit…” Luke said, just standing there in awe.
Luke rubbed his eyes once more and stared up at the tower. He pinched himself multiple times, just to make sure this wasn’t just a dream.
“I found it, I actually found it!” Luke said, jumping with glee.
He stared at the immense tower, wondering for a moment just how tall it was. He then turned away, reminding himself that as much as he wants to enter the tower, he should clean up camp and prep and gather his gear first. So, after a few minutes of gathering his things, he stood in front of the wooden door that lead to the tower interior.
“According to the stories, the inside is different for each person…” Luke said to himself, going over the story in his head with hopes that it would help him. Then he finally reached for the doorknob and went inside.
He found himself in a small room, dimply lit by a small chandelier hanging from the center of the room. At the center of the room there was a small table, as Luke approached the table he saw that there was a small box alongside a note laying there. He picked up the note and read it to himself aloud.
“Welcome Luke! I admit it’s not often that someone with selfless intentions comes through here, but that certainly doesn’t mean the tower will go easy on you. Now, you may be wondering about the small box on the table, well allow me to explain. Within that box is a magical artifact called the Ring of 3, you will be using it to solve the towers trials. Just speak a sentence to whoever or whatever you wish to change and the target will change so that those 3 words will apply to that object or person. For example, call a young girl ‘big ugly brute’ and she will immediately turn into something or someone that could be described as a ‘big ugly brute’. Now, you may think that with such a powerful artifact the trials will be easy and they might very well be so. However, in the end I will be judging you not that you reached the top, but how reached it. See you then!”
The letter had no signature, but it could only be from the mage atop the tower. He briefly looked over the contents of the letter once more, focusing particularly on the part about the ring. He then turned his attention to the box on the table and carefully picked it up and opened it. There was indeed a ring inside, he carefully picked it up and placed it on his ring finger. He admired it briefly, the ring itself was rather plain, so the fact that something so simple could contain such power fascinated him. However, he did hold a bit of disbelief, so he decided to test the ring. He looked around scanning the room for something to test it on. He settled on testing it on the box the ring came in, so he placed it on the table and pointed the ring at it.
“Turn this red.” Luke said.
In the blink of an eye the once brown box was now colored red. Luke picked it up with amazement, his head swimming with possibilities. As he put the box back down on the table, he noticed there was something new, a golden key and a new note.
“That wasn’t there before…” Luke wondered aloud as he picked up the new piece of paper, he noted that the other note had disappeared. Once again, he read the note aloud.
“Having fun with the ring are we? Well feel free to experiment all you want, but don’t forget you have a tower to climb! Speaking of which I nearly forgot to about how you climb this tower of mine. You must achieve certain goals on each floor to get a key which can be used to advance just by saying the words open sesame. It may be somewhat simple, but it’s sort of supposed to be. Anyways, pretty sure that’s it, hope to see you soon the last guy took almost a month to get to the top!”
Luke was looking forward to meeting this mage, he seemed to be an interesting person just from reading these notes. Luke turned his attention to the key, it seemed to completely be made out of gold. Luke decided that he could test the ring more later, so he held the key and spoke as instructed.
“Open Sesame.” As the words left his mouth, a blinding light filled the room and he found himself elsewhere.
The first thing he noticed was that the key was no longer in his hand, instead there was a small slip of paper which had the following text:
“Floor 1: retrieve the key from the village head.”
He looked around at his new environment, he seemed to be right outside of the village mentioned on the slip. He glanced at the ring of 3 as he pondered his next move.
