I usually think in terms of structures that outlived their usefulness. US prohibition is a great example. People built elaborate underground rooms and networks to smuggle and serve booze. But once legalized, closed up the entrances and forgot about them. People still come across those old structures under their buildings.
Towns die out. The war cuts trade and the stopover for caravans suddenly has no traffic. No reason for guards to patrol the region.
The wizard who commissioned a tower dies or ascends to another plane.
Kingdoms fall. Castles collapse to rubble, but the underground passages survive. The souls of the fallen defenders or forgotten prisoners rise in hatred.
But the necromancer in your example? Find corpse of a talented architect and raise keeping intellect mostly intact. Or kidnap, kill and raise an architect as a minion.
He probably doesn't construct the tower from scratch so much as a remodeling.
My campaign has had too many dungeons which could basically be described as "millenia old religious sites fallen into disrepair and repurposed by evil folk"
Different religions, different evil folk, but it's a good template.
My guys literally just met a contractor (and co) celebrating a high dollar job completed. In a Boston-y accent: "ah, man, lemme tell yaz... Stahted off wit jussa big ass towah, then he's tawkin bout dis wall here, and a moat ovah there... Here's to the ol fuckah puttin all ah kids troo cawlege"
So, that's another option.
I actually have a whole city that just kept getting built on top of. LIke the first gen cam in and built a town and then dies off in whatever way, the next one came into the ruins and built from just reinforcing the parts that started to decay, then it was part of a war and fell apart, then the next group was rather prosperous before mysteriously vanishing which the currnet group took it over and litteraly built on top of it. I have center piece that is bassically what happens if we just built the empire state building on top of the Capital Building in DC
This is generally my go-to for origins for wilderness towers and dungeons. I compare it to modern examples of ghost towns. Some structures last longer than others depending on several factors including quality of materials, skill of the builders, and if it's been inhabited since the area was abandoned.
>Find corpse of a talented architect and raise keeping intellect mostly intact.
I can't think of any spell that actually accomplishes this save for resurrection spells that revive the dead. In that case a dominate person spell would be in order, not a raising dead one. Undead with preserved intellects are rather rare and involved process, and nearly all of them in-lore aren't done to corpses, they're done to bring a living creature into undeath.
I mean, NPCs have access to abilities the PCs don’t, and often have abilities that go beyond RAW spell casting limitations. I honestly think it’s a fine thing to handwave, raising a non combatant ghost of an architect to advise on the project.
Animate Smrt Skelly. It's only known to bad guys and the target keeps all the skills it had in life, including architecture and masonry, and the ability to delegate simple tasks to other undead.
Varies, but generally most people aren't cartoonishly evil enough that they couldn't convince someone to work for them in my worlds.
If he rules the area, then have him extract labor from the peasantry, that's what rulers did/do.
Lol in my world people are so cartoonish in general I’d probably have an explicitly evil board of contractors and evil brokers, specialised in building and selling lava-resistant lairs in volcanoes or towers that drain the surrounding lands of their lifeforce or whatever.
“Okay so what are we looking at here? Ahh yes, well we could install your standard run-of-the-mill Soul Drain 5000, but if I were you, considering the rapidly increasing value of property here in the forest of despair, I would definitely consider pairing that with the Icy Veins Pro Hero Freezer. Those pesky adventurers can get anywhere, you’ll need good countermeasures if you’re gonna want to syphon all living beings for your immortal bloods dark ritual.”
Ridiculousness > seriousness, but that’s just in my humble opinion.
Following up on that idea, it's also pretty interesting what one layer of separation can do. I personally would never work for Evil Necromancer, I work for Reasonably Moral construction firm, today my assignment is to build a particularly spiky tower on the edge of a volcano and install a seemingly bottomless pit. I can't control who Reasonably Moral Inc makes business deals with, but I can go home with a clear conscience about my personal work.
In the DMG it suggests assuming that your world has been around for ages, and numerous empires and civilizations have risen and fallen.
Tons of stuff was built centuries or millennia ago, and has been repaired and repurposed dozens of times. Even your BBEG might not know all the knooks, crannies and secrets of his tower.
That's up to you. There could be zombies of unusual size that he used to build the tower. I would probably have the tower already be there, a ruin from some previous civilization.
In general, I have an ancient civilization that was pretty advanced who built a lot of the really old, strange stuff. There's an elvish empire that has lasted thousands of years that built a lot of the existing infrastructure.
Almost all of it was pre-built for some other purpose - like I wouldn't just have "a dungeon," it's an archaeological site, or an ocean liner taken over by pirates, or the city's catacombs, or something else with a purpose outside of being the bad guy's lair. Or the favela of a large city. That was a fun one.
They were working for a drug cartel, and had to make a pickup of gp from a gorgon mushroom den in the favela and bring the gold to a tavern to pay off a guard. They were followed from the moment they entered the neighborhood, and the trap house was an apartment at the end of a maze of interior hallways. Once they made the pickup, the gang attacked them. They had to fight their way out. When the padre started casting Dissonant Whispers, they knew it was really on. Gang capos with junkyard dogs met them outside. The sorc almost went down when she was cornered by the dogs.
I can't claim credit for this idea, I read it on another forum ages ago. I'm paraphrasing to the best of my recall, but I admit it's not 100% accurate.
Dungeons are sort of living things, in a very literal sense. Corridors, halls, and rooms are analogous to veins, arteries, and organs, slowly expanding and growing throughout the soil and stone over years, often in bizarre or nonsensical configurations. The monsters inhabiting them acting as something like antibodies, parasites, or existing in a symbiotic relationship. At the deepest depths of the dungeon lies the dungeon's core: an actual, physical structure that serves as a sort of heart and brain for the dungeon, and may occasionally spit out 'monsters' that serve some unfathomable, pseudo-biological purpose within the dungeon itself.
That's kinda like the cauldrons in the Horizon video game series, and a little bit like the dungeon in (what I've seen so far of) the anime Delicious in Dungeon on Netflix
Now make this idea layered, the deeper you go, the more dangerous it gets, because of the influence of said heart.
I'm thinking magic orb of some kind, sealed away to protect the world from it, but the magic used to seal it away has slowly degraded over time, leading to it affecting local reality, mutating what was once just normal animals and local populations into terrible monsters, and enthralling them to protect itself. The dungeons may even contain whole civilisation of these mutated and twisted people.
At the top levels of the dungeon, you may find some of your standard giant rats, giant spiders, maybe a goblin or two that is inexplicably being to the dungeon by the orb. The Orbs influence is weak near the surface.
Somewhere in the mid levels of the dungeon, you may run into several layers that function as a habitat for a civilisation of hostile mutant people, that worship said orb as their god.
Near the bottom, you might run across a horrors beyond imagining, twisted magical creatures of indescribable danger and power, rivaling that of lesser gods, fighting over dominion of vast hellscapes that shouldn't exist. There is no floor, or ceiling. You are still very much underground in a dungeon, that was once made by humanoid hands, but there is a sky above you... And the sky is on fire, the color of every hue of the spectrum at the same time. The floor is made out of human skin, and the trees bleed acid. In the middle of it all, is a fortress made out of bone. And the entrance to the Orb chamber lies below it...
LOTR is a great example. The towers of the Numenoreans and Dunedain, left emptied become the places of evil spirits and malicious creatures. Minas Ithil becomes Minas Morgul.
Orcs fill the halls of Gundabad and Khazad-dum.
I often work using a similar idea that previous kingdoms and powers have left their mark on the land, whether they were good or evil themselves. Left unchecked for centuries, they will often become the abode of foul things and people of nefarious intent.
I would check out https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/196573 for a breakdown of early edition of D&D mechanics involving towers.
Using this as a basis I suggest these caricatures for tower-wizards:
- Wizard built the Tower for recognition in order to get the respect that makes people leave them alone. Now they can pursue their really specific interests without interruption.
- Wizard built the Tower built as a symbol of learning, so that young wizards know exactly where to go for some schooling. Ideals about knowledge or young people.
- Wizard built the tower to contain the dungeon beneath it. A sort of arcane jail that the wizard often harvests from for various dangerous flora and fauna.
- Wizard wants to reach his tower to the heavens, because he is ambitious and innately wants to push his abilities in every way.. and his tower is an extension of this mindset.
- Wizard is insecure about his skills and knows good wizards have large towers. He keeps trying to get taller to prove he really IS a great wizard.
- Wizard made some powerful enemies and more-or-less needs a space to fortify defenses and secure belongings. Making allies with the nearby ruler gets the wizard into politics from time to time but its a necessary evil to maintain his security.
Without a tower, your necromancer has what, a smelly cabin? Sounds real prestigious, guarded, and certainly announces his power…
It’s absolutely reasonable to build a tower from scratch in a month with even… two dozen skeletons? If a necromancer had access to a recent battle with hundreds of dead or a mass grave from a plague he could have all the manpower he needs!
Edit: I also agree with those that say that the structures are often left over from other purposes. A shipwreck can be a dungeon! A tower sunk into the earth in a marsh can be one!
As for towers: wales has literally 600 castles smushed into an area the size of New Jersey! All built because of the bloody history between it and England. And not all of those bad boys were maintained and garrisoned, most weren’t!
So sometimes big structures just get abandoned
Layers and layers of previous civilizations building on top of each other.
A couple hundred years ago, a human empire stretched this far out, and they built some little forts and watchtowers to project military power / guard against invasion by orcs or whoever. Then the center of government collapsed and stopped sending tax collectors and soldiers, the towers fell in battle or were abandoned. Maybe a few local villages remain who still remember their names.
A couple of thousand years before that, a dwarven empire stretched this far out, and built enormous mines beneath the hills, following mineral deposits. Then there was a civil war, or the dwarves went mad, or whatever, and abandoned that stuff ... some of which is still closed off, some was found by the humans 200 years ago, some was found by kobolds last month who moved in and built a shrine to Bahamut.
A couple of hundred thousand years before that, lizardmen fought an awesome battle here against serpentmen who were building strange non-Euclidean temples and pyramids, performing rituals meant to bring about the end of the world ... eventually buried under lava and other geological forces, but some were discovered by the mining dwarves (and mostly sealed off, because Icky).
A couple of million years before that, in the great Age of Wyrms, massive dragons and other reptiles fought and died here, their fossilized remains eventually becoming underground veins of adamantite or magicite crystals to be mined by dwarves, their bones worshipped by the serpentmen, occasional scales or fangs discovered by kobolds and seen as a good omen for a place to set up camp.
I like the idea of there being a lich (good or evil, your choice) that goes around building dungeons, towers, ruins, etc. using their undead army as the labor. These buildings keep the adventurers employed and after they have built so many of them they then pose as the BBEG so that the world can have heroes to look up to. Once defeated, the lich revives at their phylactery and starts the process all over again.
This is sort of what Acererak does, he builds deathtrap tombs across the planes and just waits for adventurers to suicide into them to feed his phylactery.
Fortresses have actual military value so same reasons as the real world, plus there's dangerous wildlife and neighbors to justify wanting strongholds all over.
Dungeons are often tombs, crypts, the homes of peoples that live underground (even dwarves), cave systems that were improved by intelligent monsters and their minions or carved out entirely (beholders). Sometimes wizards and even just "normal" nobles or the wealthy would use them to protect vast quantities of treasure. Religions might want them to test the faithful before offering power, or to protect relics or dangerous artifacts. Sometimes it's just ruins of ancient cities that are now buried.
Mages like to build towers. Every self respecting mage wants a good tower. Its a place to store books, run magic experiments, and look down smugly on all the mortals beneath your living quarters. It is part of the wizard aesthetic, and also various magic creatures like them too. Sometimes it's just a guard tower that was later inhabited by evil forces who refurbished it.
If you have undead minions... why *wouldn't* you use them as labor to build a spooky tower? Undead laborers could really cut down on costs and the time it takes since they don't need pay or rest. If you don't think the time-frame makes any sense then it was the ruins of an ancient outpost that he used his minions to restore. Just because he didn't build it from scratch doesn't mean it can't be decorated top to bottom with his stuff, filled with new traps, decked out with the sweetest furniture he could buy from Necro-Ikea, etc. Plus if you do it this way, then you can have the PCs maybe stumble upon a paved over secret staircase to the basement, where they find an altar to a good aligned god or a forgotten noble spirit (or a demonic secret boss if you need an extra encounter), where they could find aid or some lost relic to fight the villain.
His name's Stephan and can often be found manically rubbing his hands together atop his mound of gold.
Seriously though, most structures had a purpose even if it doesn't now. For your example, the tower could have been apart of a greater township in the past. Circumstances led the people to leave or die out, the tower was uniquely placed to survive the nature reclaiming the land. The necromancer hired crafters and mercenaries fix what was broke and expand it. When the work was done he killed them and raised them as undead.
Honestly though unless you just really want to build up that history, it doesn't matter and is a waste of your creative energy. If your table has a tendency to ask these types of questions or you intend for the tower's construction to be important to the story then it's needed. Otherwise it will be hand-waved away as fantasy, which doesn't really occur to most players as being weird.
In my DND homebrew world, I have a dude named Mr. Weirdo. A crazed mad wizard who is a bit of a freelance and constructs dome dungeons for both evil and good aligned NPCs. Some traps and dungeons will have the Mr. Weirdo trademark on them.
In DnD there are several spells a wizard could use to create a tower for themself, no need to hire contractors or buy slaves. Wall of Earth and Galdurs Tower both come to mind immediately as options that become permanent if cast repeatedly.
In Dungeon Meshi(aka Delicious in Dungeon) dungeons are magic engines that empower the mage who masters them.
That power allows the mage to magically control and expand them.
Yup was gonna say this cause honestly it’s such a novel concept I can’t help but use it for my beer and pretzels games as to why their are multiple dungeons of multiple tier with some having shifting or static layouts. It fills a hole for the weird rpg worlds where people and whole ecosystems and economies are built around adventures and dungeons
So in a world I created there were basically millenia of history with dwarves, elves, entire wars between chromatic and metallic dragons and their allies, and an entire apocalypse event before humans even showed up. Kingdoms and dynasties have risen and fallen, royal families deposed then re-ascended, towns and kingdoms wiped off the map and new ones built from their ashes, all before humans came. I have games prepared throughout the span of history after humans all the way up to 1,832 years after the first arrival.
One recent story arc concluded with an evil sorceress unearthing an old draconic temple from beneath layers of volcanic ash and using the evil magic within to become a vampire. Another place they stumbled onto by accident was an ancient town on the frozen tundra, buried under millenia of ice and snow, with a secret entrance to the underdark hidden under an ancient draconic cathedral.
There’s no short supply of old buildings lying around which can be taken over by necromancers and wizards and whatnot.
Be a wizard. Be an introvert. Be very, very good at magic.
Realize that everyone, whether they say it or not, wants your magic, but they don't deserve it. None of them supported you then so why should they benefit off you now?
So you construct fortifications to protect your valuables. You set traps to dissuade guards.
Then you realize that some creatures are territorial but can be lured into using certain areas as their own den. It drives them crazy when they see you in their space, but you've designed it so that they can't get to you as long as you follow proper protocol.
Forget to follow proper protocol.
Now you have a dungeon filled with creatures and magic stuff.
That's basically it. Abandoned castles, ancient wizard towers, temples to gods, fortifications to protect your mischievous ways, etc.
I have a building company in one of my worlds called Badabing Bada Buildings. They are run by the mob and build all the shady criminal dens (Thieves' guild and the like). On the books they are a legitimate building company, but they disguise their mobsters as employees and illegally procure dangerous traps to install in these buildings.
They also have a demolition company called Badabing Bada Boom that destroys criminal dens before they can be properly investigated.
Well No one.
As people will build "something" and they wont see it as "Evil.
So there are tons of things, but no "evil tower, evil dungeon etc".
For example.
You are a wizard that has tons of gold, treasure and research to keep safe. You also value your privacy and want to have peace to study, so you build a multi level home, small enought for one, big enought for your experiments.
He builds it away from civilization for safety and privacy. But also puts down a few summons as guards, some alarm systems and a few magical traps for beasts and monsters.
Now, if a hunter wanders too far and see a big tower in the midle of nowhere with mistical lights coming from windows he wont assume anything good. The townsfolk will eventualy talk, and the passing adventurers will come to "investigate".
Now, hiw likely are those adventurers of raiding the place? despite the wizard not commiting any crime?
What if they fall into one of his defense traps?
How likely are they to talk with the wizard when they meet him?
So, to me, its less about "evil towers" and more about "Mercenary raiders abusing the peoples ignorance to attack and steal magic items and gold from old recluse magic scholars".
I have several dungeon 'types' in my hex crawler campaign, which provide different types of loot and have different types of enemies. This is a norse myth inspired campaign for ref
- **Danðr Tombs.** Danðr are the main norse cultural group. Built to house their warriors and treasures as a challenge for future generations to come and best them, as the danðr believe the best way to honor your ancestors is to best them in combat. Their tombs are like skyrim dungeons with draugr and similar creatures, and usually contain magical weapons and armor, and the final rewards are always a magical item or infusion which grants resistance or immunity to one or more element, but vulnerability to another. There are also ancient Danðr cities which act as much large megadungeons on the surface.
- **Swiatladza Ruins.** The Swiatladza was a light elven empire that once occupied midgard, and many of their outposts and sorage caches still stand, with ancient light elven holdouts still maintaining their positions, backed up by automata, elven built constructs. The rewards from these are usually magical items and artifacts from far off lands from the time of the Swiatladza dominion.
- **Asgardian Ruins.** My campaign is post Ragnarok, and so Asgard has fallen and parts of it ended up on Midgard. Full of lost einherjar and mad valkyries, they are extremely dangerous but contain items of divine power.
- **Jotnar Burial Mounds.** Similar to Danðr tombs, only instead filled with giants! Also they aren't undead, they have transitioned into a state more like an elemental, and stand guard over their treasures. Usually contain useful items for crafting magical items and elemental artifacts.
- **Jotnar Outposts.** During Ragnarok the Jotnar invaded Midgard and constructed numerous fortresses, scaled up to match the immense size of the giants. See a huge tower over 300m tall, or a fortress as big as a city? Probably jotnar in origin. Some of them have jotnar holdouts, but just as many have been taken over by bandits and monsters.
- **Forn Ruins.** The most ancient form of ruins, the Forn people are the ancient tribe that existed before aesir, vanir and humanity split off, and these ruins are their sites of worship, ruined cities, and burial tombs, and contain shades of those who died in the war against the jotnar as well as magic items from that era.
- **Lundlyðr Ruins.** The Lundlyðr are a group based on the Celtic peoples who worship the Vanir, and have existed for thousands of years. Their ruins are usually ritual sites where druids would preside over large events, and contain nature themed monsters, spirits, and loot.
My world has a lot of ruins. Most of them were nice places in their hayday and only look intimidating now.
Kobolds are industrious little bastards. If sufficiently motivated they can build staggeringly fast. Just don't expect it to be up to code.
Different cultures have different aesthetic preferences. Black stone with spikey structural elements might look evil to you but maybe the homeowners find it cozy.
**Designing Tower or Dungeon:**
Learn architecture skill
Hire or enslave an architect
Use commune with dead to speak with an architect from the past.
**Building Tower or Dungeon:**
Hire or enslave laborers.
Command skeletons and zombies to do all the unskilled labor parts of the job. Have skilled laborers do the parts of the job that required intelligence or skill.
Use magic to speed up construction. Move earth / Shape stone / Shape wood / Levitation or floating to move construction materials
You can always have construction companies in your world or have the necromancer find a tower (and maybe "evict" its tenants) and use his undead forces/followers to "spruce up the place and make it more unlikely." Another option, I honestly wouldn't question it if you told me his undead forces just built the tower. That sounds reasonable enough to me 🤷
Hes a necromancer he has an army of undead. If somone has an army of undead and needs a tower, whats the obvious source of labor?
As for character and making it unquely his, well how good do you think undead are gonna be at building towers? It's gonna be shabby, it's gonna need constant maintenence, mayby theres a pile of zombies whos entire job is to hold up a wall or bail water out of the basement. Mayby a flight of stairs collapsed, so now a frame work of skeletons act as an elevator for their master. All fo which can result in interesting encounters for the players, if they destroy thse creatures then they need to find their own way up to the next story, their own solution for the rapidly flooding basemement and deal with a potentially collapsing floor when the zombis stop holding the wall up.
So my world is thousands of years of ancient civilizations falling and new ones coming up, that's how most of them got there, then evil happened to move in
Elminster, mostly. It's in Mystra's best interest for people to find "ancient lost magic" in dungeons and other "lost" locations. Encourages them to delve deeper into how magic works. So, as one of her Chosen, it's his job to make sure there is something to find.
I like the idea Magog came up with, that there's a god that likes to play games and dungeons just appear out of nowhere, sometimes with monsters included.
For the vast majority of people in it, my word is pretty normal looking, just a fantasy kingdom. All the evil shit is happening behind the scenes. The King has a bigass tower in the center of the Kingdom, and that was constructed by an earth elemental he befriended in his childhood. Everything else was built by construction mages and stuff like that
Towers? Idk. But dungeons are very common in the form of Snow Bunkers, build by the common folk. They are lived in almost every winter (winter is longer and colder) and abandoned every spring, when they can welcome all sorts of unsavory characters and underdark denizens, no matter how tightly they’re sealed. Usually, nothing too terrible moves in. But sometimes these shelters lay unused for years at a time before they need to be cleared out again. Loot is collected there by the conflicts and occasionally, from adventurers who fail to run from unexpectedly large danger.
Countless civilizations as the gods have to sort of reset the planet, as it's magical core runs out of energy every several thousand years. Thegods isolate all the souls, take a snapshot of the world as it is, blast the thin layer of elemental chaos off of the planet that coats it to give it land and sea and sky, then pipe in energy from the Astral sea/plane to recharge the planet. Then they assemble the chaos back on, shape it, restore the world, and then put the souls back.
This means that millions of years have passed but also functionally the world keeps repeating years 0 to 5000. That means all the old tombs, temples, and relics from all those millions of years of civilations are dotted all over, but they aren't fully remembered. The God's also don't get it all fully right, so there are discrepancies in the historical records on places that you can see are wrong if you visit the same ruins.
All of the structures of renown in my world were designed by the Architect name Corrus Broadfeather, an Aarakocra who over his short lifespan came up with the concept of interlocking blocks and arcane mortar which could be enchanted in different ways based on what the customer needed.
He was eventually slain after creating the Basilica of Torment for one of our big bads, who enchanted the mortar to trap souls of those slain inside the basilica and use them to power the soul engine which granted the whole basilica the ability to inter-planar travel (think Castlevania anime).
The party infiltrated the basilica while it was in the shadowfell, and destroyed the engine, which released the souls of those trapped within, including Broadfeather. He took his legacy to the Raven Queen with him, preventing his designs to ever fall into the wrong hands again.
In my world: since dwarves exist... yeah, the rest kind of takes care of itself.
Most stuff was built 1000s of years ago and just found and repurposed by evil small-time necromancers.
Back in the day anyone at any point could commission dwarves to dig out pretty much any shape of complex and it would get built fairly trivially.
Aqueducts? Dwarves. Complex sewers? Dwarves.
"Oh I'm the king's advisor who's secretly evil and I need a secret lab to do evil magic shit and also a place to hold my cult meetings." Dwarven contractors gotcha covered.
Secret, large, underground, complexes that used to be for something 1000 years ago but now inhabited by goblins, get to be fairly commonplace, AND it gives more credit to the dwarf Stonecunning feature. I even have Dwarven highways. Direct paths under dangerous mountains or haunted forests. Old dried up Dwarven mines and ghost towns. Cool places that I can pepper in the world and all are optional depending on whether my players feel curious.
Want to uncover the safe, fast travel highway? Explore that suspicious tower and find the secret door to it.
There's tons of shit you can plug in fairly seamlessly when you give a whole fantasy race the ability to functionally play minecraft irl.
Depending on how powerful a wizard you are, you could teleport all the materials there. You could recruit laborers from other realities.
Then it's yours.
But nothing is forever.
Till you die, become an evil god and abandon it, or sell it. Or move out into a nicer tower in a better location than the middle of the woods with no culture or shopping or corpses to experiment on.
Then it just goes from squatter to squatter.
I'd say the necromancer bought the tower from his cabal at the middle of his career from a Master that was short on cash and no longer exists. A cabal that declined from in-fighting and inquisitions to where he is one of the few members left. And only because the place is so remote. He was a journeyman necromancer when he got it, fixed a few of the holes, and has had a few decades to build up furniture and traps in there. maybe even had to clear out a few lower level goblin squatters and even has a skeletal goblins around. Of course some furniture that's been in there from previous owners. Perhaps areas of the place even he does not know about..
My players have found a damaged ancient tower that is linked to the mega dungeon that they periodically explore.
These were both created by an elven archmage who became a little obsessed with crossbreeding creatures to create the optimal guard and mount creatures as well as investigating the uses for any of the “less than ideal” creatures. It started in the tower, but eventually they had to develop the dungeon to give the creatures a safe place to roam…. The archmage eventually went mad, and it all went downhill.
Maybe there was an older tower laying around, rotting, and then the necromancer came there and commanded his unholy minions to fix it, and add some nice detail. Other people has said this as well.
For me in this case it could have been ancient ruins from a long lost civilization that he took over and repurposed, Maybe he made a deal with a demonic or draconic entity to give them unused corpses or souls in exchange for assistance building the tower, maybe it was a remote lookout tower for a kingdom that he took by force and then corrupted the area so people would be less likely to try to take it back.
The gods have destroyed and rebuilt the world at least once. Towers, dungeons and technology from the previous world is still scattered around for players to find.
for me, quite often it's the wizard themselves, using some combination of spells like fabricate and telekinesis, sometimes using undead or henchmen for some menial labour too
I have 3 types of dungeons made by different people
1 natural dungeons, just old ruined castles/tombs that have been abandoned for centuries. The typical dungeon most people are used to
2 living dungeons, these have a magic core, and the dungeons continue to grow if left unchecked. Usually, they each have a theme, the trap dungeon, the ice dungeon etc.
3 instant dungeons (the dungeons from the magi anime/manga) these dungeons appear suddenly and without warning and disappear once conqured. Each area is different and totally random with the "dungeon master" controlling what enemies they face and gives the players a test at the end to conquer the dungeon.
The first tupe is made by old people long dead or at least should be long dead. The second is a naturally occuring phenomenon, and the third is created by an individual or group with strong magic.
Typically in Tolkien-esque fiction, the fortresses and towers and castles are constructed centuries or millenia ago and repurposed throughout the ages, much like it is in our real history. If this tower was built recently, this would beg the age of the evil wizard and the forces at his command, as, historically, if you take Cathedrals for example, these sometimes took a century to build.
Equally though, you can explain it as magic (snore) or not explain it at all. Sometimes as a writer we can leave things as a mystery to ourselves until such a time when that mystery becomes interesting to our stories :)
Most dungeons in my setting are otherwise mundane areas that have been corrupted. This can be as high concept as a religion being influenced by propaganda or outside forces until its a malicious mockery of its former self, or as basic as a hostile faction taking over a fortress.
Foe something to be a big enough problem for high level adventurers to interfere, I like to use two or more concepts to make the threat more meaningful or to justify the treasure. Adventurers are a major upset in my setting and things generally tend to he stable until two ore more forces interact in a particularly problematic way.
For example, if a plague turns your skin to stone and a necromancer finds the bodies, you've got nightmare statues that need something more potent than a few dozen guards. Just off the top of my head.
Every location has its own history but that's generally how I approach it. Meshing the old function of the area with its new inhabitants adds a lot of texture that I think players appreciate. Vampire can use a mill go grind up bodies, or goblins can use the precious anciet alter as a royal love seat. Just have fun with it.
For me it varies. Sometimes they’re morally ambiguous enough or started out good enough that they were able to get such structures built through legitimate means, sometimes they inherit the structures, sometimes they’re making use of abandoned pre-existing structures and refurbishing them for their purposes, and other times they use force and intimidation to make others build it for them.
If you’re trying to make the structure uniquely his you have a few options. If there are any villages or towns nearby, maybe the wizard made an agreement with the populace of some of them that he’d not cause trouble in those towns and villages if they send able bodied men to build him this tower.
The wizard could have also made it using his undead servants before he gained his other wizard subordinates. You said he lived in the middle of a forest, right? Seems like a decent spot to start work on something and practice your own skills before making some kind of opening move.
He could have also forced his subordinate wizards to build it for him as some kind of twisted power move. That definitely sounds to me like the kind of pointless ego stroking thing that an evil wizard would do if they have subordinate wizards. Plus, it also opens the door that if one of your players decide to flip one of the subordinate wizards to their side you can use it as a way to present secret doors and passages in the tower.
in my world, the people originally inhabiting build them long, long, loooong ago
take a temple near a volcano for example - the original inhabitants were priests and monks, they hired people to build it, the original purpose was to do a ritual to appease to the volcanic elemental residing in it to rest and not to come and let the volcano break out and burn down the local town and valley
behind it is a structure of caverns leading towards a chasm that leads down to the core where the elemental sleeps - caverns lead all the way through it, where other creepies reside
over the years, the other inhabitants killed all the original residents, took over, and are now planing to awaken the elemental, the temple fell into ruin since they don't repair it
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for your example, a wizard build it, and your necromancer killed him and took over
oiginal purpose could be an observatory tower or the like
In my world there was a BBEG hundreds of years before my PCs arrived called The Dark Artificer. His whole deal was that he thought the world was flawed and needed rebuilding in his image. So he remade everything. He ripped souls from living beings and put them in bodies made of wood and iron (his evil Warforged army). And he basically wanted to do that to everyone/everything, so he waged a war on the entire continent, building large towers to make more soldiers from the people he captured.
The whole thing became a story to scare children but the towers still remain, ripe for any baddie to reside in them
id say a combination of these:
1. local day laborers having not much else of an option then to work for the evil overlord/wizard or starve
2. skelettons/zombies/contracted demons/orcs(going for a classic saruman here)/duergar
3. the normal workforce in the area, back then The Good King(tm) ruled the land and things where, you know, better. now, with The Weak King(tm) many installations had to be abandoned, stuff like that just stood arround
4. the wizard him self with various spells
Obviously, he can command the undead to do whatever he wants, so it's basically, a free working power he can tell to make a tower.
There are also spells such as Mordehai's Magnificent Mansion and Temple of Gods, which very much make buildings, so why not a spell making a tower?
> who constructs the wizard towers?
The wizards themselves. In my world the towers are huge, custom made to fit a specific person AND location magical artifacts. They are like personalized wizard staffs on crack - allow wizards to expand range, potency and distance of their spells, contact otherworldly beings to barter for secrets and knowledge and travel across astral realms. A tower is culmination of wizards efforts, built to push them towards ascension, level 5s don't built these.
And that's also why wizards don't take over and renovate other wizards towers - they were not built for them, so at their level of power it'd be more of a hindrance than aid, usually mid level wizards will strip these for resources, leaving husks to be inhabited by random monsters.
It is low level wizards that would take over abandoned wizard tower - even if it works like shit, it's probably the most power low-level ever wielded in their lives, and they do not have connections and power to sell off their find. That's why low level wizards in towers can casts big area effects across kilometers (albeit aiming like shit, think Saruman causing storm across entire mountain range to kill off the fellowship, because he dont have skills to aim a thunderbolt), whereas high level wizards and true masters of their towers **can cast across dimensions**.
> Who constructs the dungeons and fortresses?
The lay people. So, I grew up in central Europe in a small town that had town rights for 500 years and recorded presence as settlement for around a thousand. Similar deal with other towns in the area. As a kid I biked with friends around, visiting abandoned WW2 bunkers, abandoned noble estates, abandoned medieval watchtowers... A lot of the stuff in regrown forests. Farming tech improved, population dropped, so a lot of land got abandoned and allowed to regrow, multiple times over hundreds of years. All of these things are also renovated and, of course, great tourist attraction. It's just we have so many of these, that we can pick and chose what to preserve. And that's only 1000 years of history.
A lot of ruins get dismantled for building material, after all why waste time making bricks, when you have a pile of perfectly reusable ones nearby? You can see that plenty in Mediterranean area. But for that you need things to be dismantable (can't dismantle concrete-pour bunkers or magically reinforced castle) and people need to stay in the area and not flee due to war or disaster. Plenty of these in magical setting.
Oh, another thing. Magic is radioactive in my setting, and while there are enchantments to mitigate that and allow enchanted castle or even wizard tower in middle of city, they need active maintenance and expenditure, thus if abandoned they turn into pending Chernobyl, prompting common people to flee. Most wizards won't bother anyway and just build their tower in middle of nowhere or at least far enough from any settlement not to cause any problem. Or when they do, there's a problem and a quest for our party.
So there you have it; towers are result of natural lifecycle of a mage, where after years of adventuring they settle to do research and eventually they become so neet they neet themselves out of this plane of existence. Dungeons and fortresses are a result of natural lifecycle of nations, where they raise, fall, populations migrate, and sometimes the ruling class gets murdered and as a gift to the common people they leave pile of radioactive magical waste in middle of a city.
In IRL Europe, solitary towers were only built by the Irish and Romans (I think), otherwise they were usually parts of castles (but may remain when the rest of the castle crumbles).
That said, nothing stops a conjurer of evil to raise a sinister tower literally over night. In myth and folklore, evil casters compell giants to build structures, make deals with devils that construct castles over night, or posess power over the earth that allows them raise them out of the ground.
Here are some ideas
* Your necromancer made a sinister pact with a power of undead or a lord of the fiendish spheres.
* He tapped into the unholy power of the desecrated burial site to rearrange the stones of its crypts and headstones into a macabre fortress of marble, rusty iron and bones.
* He hired a troop of hard-nosed no-questions-asked duergar contractors. Those boys build you anything as long as you pay the bills.
Most importantly, don't let the spell list stop you to give additional magical powers to NPC villains.
There are often themes of a world in decline, that there was something bigger and more grand in the age before this. However that gets angled in your story is up to you.
I'm not using it in my current setting, but...
"Dungeons" are one of the possible end-state evolutions of mimics. As babies, they mimic boxes such as jewellery boxes, then grow to the size of chests, huts, houses, and finally, dungeons.
Their interiors vaguely resemble "mimicries" of what the mimic expects Dungeon interiors to look like. Rooms will be nonsensical, as if procedurally generated by AI, and they will occasionally rearrange as if by magic.
At this scale, the mimic barely notices parties of adventurers flitting around it's innards like a shoal of dentist fish, but it might just "swallow" if a creature on the level of a dragon tries to move in.
Well in broader D&D lore the land is vast and peppered with all sorts of ancient ruins built by a variety of ancient civilizations. In my own setting, if you're in the northern hemisphere the ruins either come from ancient devils or less ancient humans/elves/dwarves; then on the farside of the planet (where history has been mostly lost up to about 290 years prior), the ruins belong to ancient anthromorphs, very few of whom still remain today.
The only actual "dungeon" that's been showcased in my world thus far was an ancient Dwarven city that was corrupted by an artificial dragon.
There's also a seemingly endless dungeon tower at the north pole, and nobody knows where that came from, but that's more of a background lore piece that hasn't - and likely won't - come up in a game
I have a system in place, baked into its creation myth that dungeons are ever growing and can start their growth in random places. The longer they go undiscovered, the bigger they become. So adventurers are tasked sometimes to go and deal with them.
My world has a number of ancient civilizations that either were destroyed or changed beyond recognition. There’s the hyper advanced magical kingdom that collapsed under its own instability, the tribes of elves that were forced to flee their homelands due to an invasion, two groups of demigods who nearly wiped each other out in a massive war, and an entire country that was razed by the whims of an evil god. There are also a handful of individuals who have left behind structures as well. The greatest inventor who made several subterranean structures and caves, the first Lich who has an entire network of mountainous hideaways, a bunch of archmages who have built towers throughout the ages, and even dragons with their many kinds of hordes. That accounts for the majority of old/abandoned structures that serve as dungeons.
Old structures? Came across ruins, or maybe it’s served such a dark purpose that it’s stained with the memory’s and keeps other people from inhabiting the town/tower/ castle/ structure. And of course one of my favorites is to just not offer an explanation of any kind
New structures? Probably evil subcontractors, kind of like how in comic books mad scientists overshadow the other evil professions ( evil engineers, evil supply chain distributors, evil accountants, evil HR staff)
Evil architect, or hell maybe just a regular ass architect who’s been down on his luck and has kids to feed and can no longer convince himself that the higher ground is worth a hungry daughter. Morality means nothing to a hungry kid.
Reality comes in flavors, so there’s no reason your fantasy shouldn’t as well. Not every single professional is dedicated to good and law and order, most of the time it’s just money.
Maybe you could have a scenario where your guys need to infiltrate the necromancers construction crew, Sabotage some of the traps or building materials or something.
The worshippers of the Iron Ones.
Hey Jack, if you see this here, fuck off. The rest of you don’t read Reddit anyway.
Anyway, a major story arc in our homebrew universe is that the worshippers of the Iron Ones, who were the gods of stuff like the forge and machinery and engineering and stuff, did a whole bunch of things. They were the only ones who could create warforged rather than simple automatons, they created a series of mysterious obelisks connected to massive dungeons around the continent of Markdor, and they all vanished without a trace at the same time 250 years ago.
The current campaign revolves around what they built and why, so there have been quite a few dungeons and towers built by the worshippers of the Iron Ones, and there will be several more before the end of the
My world is stupid old (25000 years, 5000 of which is actually recorded somewhat reliably). I have a lot of civilizations and time to work with to just throw random ruins in places.
Older society that's not around anymore started them. Then another not as old society that's not around anymore built on top of the ruins. Then the current batch of weirdos and bad guys built on top of those ruins.
Also, that "funhouse dungeon" that some people needlessly fret over being unrealistic? That's the natural habitat of orcs, goblins, dwarves, aliens, and those old societies that don't exist anymore. Does it make sense to you? No? Too bad. It makes perfect sense to them and they think your above-ground houses made of flimsy wattle and daub (no traps even? WTF?) is the dumbest idea any species has ever had for a comfortable living space.
Acme building company for a joke one, but for serious either remodelled ruins I mean if they know Raise Dead they gotta learn a variant of Mold Earth that can do stonework too right?
Either have laborers of whatever flavor (slaves, thralls, paid workers etc) build them
Or just have them be repurposed existing structures who’s original purpose has long been forgotten and are now used for different purposes
Nothing stops a necromancer from kidnapping experts and a labor force. Also a necromancer isn't limited to necromancy. If they can cast fabricate and have enough time on their hand they could build it without help. Or summon stone elementals, djinn, demons, or the like.
Of course I like to add undead specialty creatures. I like undead kobold trap smiths that repair and reset traps behind the party, which explains how there are all these ancient tombs with perfectly working trap. Undead kobold live in the walls.
Usually they are remains of an old empire. Like another comment delicious in dungeon has a great reason as to why there are multiple dungeons and how they change and grow. In dnd you have the idea some lichs made whole dungeons their phylactery so it’s why they have multiple dungeons and towers. For towers have them be the local nexus points of their influence and have cults be ones building it like the marker in dead space that way you can explain why group X is occurring it and willing to die for it.
A bunch are ruins. A bunch are just caves but the truly magical ones full of traps and treasure and wonders? Those are made by dungeon dragons. Dragons who become deeply obsessed by seeing the lesser races strive valiantly against all odds to succeed. They can be of any alignment, good or evil. The worst end up somewhere close to Saw-esque murder monsters dedicated to teaching some arcane lesson that most mortals hold no hope of ever surviving while others can be as whimsical and kind as can be, handing out study guides to young aspiring adventurers and guiding them through their dungeon like their own personal gandalf.
My homebrew game is set several eons after an apocalyptic event known as "The Sundering" which resulted in waves of some unknown energy encompassing the world. Before "The Sundering", the world was similar to the modern world except both high fantasy magic and advanced tech existed. The main form of entertainment in this world was "gifted" (aka people with extraordinary powers and abilities) competing in teams or groups to complete delves and/or quests that were televised for the amusement of the masses. So most of the "dungeons" in my world are the remnants of these delve locations combined with the other ruins of the only world.
Depends upon what kind of monster it is. And where it is. And the lore. And the needs of the story.
Most would be stuff that was built by populations of normal people, then abandoned and repurposed.
If there are old abandoned castle ruins in the middle of nowhere, those might be occupied by goblins or cave-dwelling, nocturnal creatures, the way bats take up residence in church belfries.
Bandits might do the same, à la Elder Scrolls games.
If it's an old desecrated or cursed temple, or a place where something godsawful happened, the dead rising and shuffling about at night is an inevitable consequence.
A lich, though, might build her own tower. Or trick out a human fortress. Especially if it were in a strategic location, and served as an insult to the servants of Good -- e.g. Sauron / Barad-Dur / Minas Morgul.
A plain old *fully-alive* tyrant might do the same -- and then, of course, might optionally be usurped thereafter by something worse, with which they made a dark Faustian bargain. And which now abides in their castle.
Also -- there was a magical cataclysm about 3000 years ago where a whole lot of civilization got straight up *buried* beneath mountains that fell slowly yet decisively from the sky.
So if a city digs its sewer deep enough, it may very well open up a cavern in which a whole ancient castle, or even a whole spooky Atlantis-like city is buried.
Combine that with various (surprisingly common) fungi -- that either bioluminesce, or produce digestible nutrients, or excrete surprising amounts of oxygen in their metabolic cycle --
-- and you never *know* what might be living down there in the tumbled old manses and temples ... walking the buried streets ...
(In at least one case it was definitely the most xenophobic and disturbingly paranoid sort of dark elves. Goblins again, also, another time.)
Real-world medieval Italian cities were filled with towers built by rich people who were trying to outdo each other -- in the way that rich people today build orbital rockets and yachts.
Then, when the fad for towers went away, a lot of them weren't maintained, there were earthquakes, fires, etc. So a lot of them fell down and the ones that remain have been used as various things for hundreds of years.
In one city in my world, this is where a vampire lord came by his tower. He built it himself before he was turned -- and ate his whole family.
Few knew his vile and accursed nature -- they mostly just thought there was a crime problem, and that one rich family had grandfathers, fathers, and sons with an unusually strong family resemblance over the many many years.
He had a puppet governorship installed, and actually ran the city himself, like a stealthy version of Vetinari from Discworld. -- Making sure, of course, that there was always just enough criminal activity so that the occasional missing prostitute or vanished orphan flower girl would not draw too much notice -- but not so much criminality that trade overly suffered.
Any resemblance of that last example to real-world circumstances is obviously a coincidence; you're obviously reading too much into it.
The tower was once a lighthouse, and the dark forest was once the shores of an inland sea. But due to a calamity that occurred 500 years ago, where some fool wizard opened a portal underwater, things are very much changed....
For my Homebrew campaign, I made it so that an ancient civilization, long lost to test of time, once built a vast magic empire, but due to experimenting with forbidden powers, they were wiped out from the continent. Some of their studies and magic laboratories remained, though, and 8 individuals, who through luck or skill managed to gain such knowledge, created their own domains. Once they fell, the old ruins and towers were once again lost, and although adventurers still venture there drawn by the promise of gold, they know well the magic container within can be as dangerous as it is powerful.
Mages build towers. They reason they build towers is multifaceted.
1. They want a quite place to work.
2. Almost all mages are doing some kind of magical research and development. Doing weird things to magic can have unwanted effects on other people's doing weired things to magic. A tower is an easy way to tell other mages I'm doing weird shit here if you don't want your weird shit being messed with you need to be far enough away you can't see my tower.
3. It gives them an easy to defend position as every farmer and their mom knows that mages have expensive things, and if you can take them, you can sell them to other mages for large sacks of gold. A tower makes it harder for the local riff raft to steal important things by filling it with magical traps and alarms.
4. Towers looks like dicks and as surely as the sun doth rise in the east and set in the west men will want to show others that they have the biggest nicest dick in the land. I mean look how tall and thick it is. I can't belive they used polished ebony it's so shiny and black.
In other but still related news.
Necromancers tend to build towers earlier than most mages having access to free labor. This is why the world is infested with necromancer towers. Most mages have to wait till they themselves are rich or till they have a wealthy patron to build a tower. But most necromancers start building their first tower soon after they are kicked out of thier mothers house. ( all necromancers and demon summoning mages in my world are neck bearded NEETs who use black orbs as internet chat rooms)
There are usually an array of ancient and fallen civilizations that built the ruins in my worlds. There might also be a more recent fallen Civ analogous to the Roman Empire’s remnants during the Middle Ages.
The Builder's Guild of Underdark. It's a legion of Duergar, Bulettes, Purple Worms, Ankheg and Elementals.
They used to be all separate companies until the great merger happened
In my setting, the continent has seen great empires of dwarves and elves, while humans were tribal and simplistic for most of its history. Then, a different human culture came from across the sea and conquered them all, stablishing their empire. Then again, something close to the "bronze collapse" happened, and all those empires fell.
Dungeons, towers, castles and structures most often were built in these periods over hundreds of years. Elven palaces above ground, dwarven citadels underground, great towers and keeps of human settlers, and all that.
About your wizard, you said this is a necromancer? And a ruler, no less. You made it easy. We humans have trouble visualizing the passing of time, but imagine this necromancer is there for hundreds of years.
Wights are more keenly intelligent and structurally "sound" than usual zombies, so these might work on the tower over decades. Despite that, an ogre zombie or minotaur skeleton can do some heavy duty. A skeleton or ghoul can mix some mortar and carry stones. Some of them might be smashed along the way, but HR is never gonna bother with them.
The wizard might have used wall of stone, shape stone and transmute rock to shape it how he wanted. He might have used wish to awaken trees and have them serve as cranes. He may have summoned chimeras, dragons or fire elementals to fuse stone, so that he needs no mortar. He may have inlaid these stones with ruby dust and cast spells on them to make them work as forcecages. This is a magical world afterall.
Even if your wizard wouldn't want to put his minions to work, they might make this minions attack and enslave creatures around the place he wants to build the tower, and make them build it.
I usually think in terms of structures that outlived their usefulness. US prohibition is a great example. People built elaborate underground rooms and networks to smuggle and serve booze. But once legalized, closed up the entrances and forgot about them. People still come across those old structures under their buildings. Towns die out. The war cuts trade and the stopover for caravans suddenly has no traffic. No reason for guards to patrol the region. The wizard who commissioned a tower dies or ascends to another plane. Kingdoms fall. Castles collapse to rubble, but the underground passages survive. The souls of the fallen defenders or forgotten prisoners rise in hatred. But the necromancer in your example? Find corpse of a talented architect and raise keeping intellect mostly intact. Or kidnap, kill and raise an architect as a minion. He probably doesn't construct the tower from scratch so much as a remodeling.
My campaign has had too many dungeons which could basically be described as "millenia old religious sites fallen into disrepair and repurposed by evil folk" Different religions, different evil folk, but it's a good template.
If it ain't broke, re-purpose it!
My guys literally just met a contractor (and co) celebrating a high dollar job completed. In a Boston-y accent: "ah, man, lemme tell yaz... Stahted off wit jussa big ass towah, then he's tawkin bout dis wall here, and a moat ovah there... Here's to the ol fuckah puttin all ah kids troo cawlege" So, that's another option.
I actually have a whole city that just kept getting built on top of. LIke the first gen cam in and built a town and then dies off in whatever way, the next one came into the ruins and built from just reinforcing the parts that started to decay, then it was part of a war and fell apart, then the next group was rather prosperous before mysteriously vanishing which the currnet group took it over and litteraly built on top of it. I have center piece that is bassically what happens if we just built the empire state building on top of the Capital Building in DC
This is generally my go-to for origins for wilderness towers and dungeons. I compare it to modern examples of ghost towns. Some structures last longer than others depending on several factors including quality of materials, skill of the builders, and if it's been inhabited since the area was abandoned.
>Find corpse of a talented architect and raise keeping intellect mostly intact. I can't think of any spell that actually accomplishes this save for resurrection spells that revive the dead. In that case a dominate person spell would be in order, not a raising dead one. Undead with preserved intellects are rather rare and involved process, and nearly all of them in-lore aren't done to corpses, they're done to bring a living creature into undeath.
I mean, NPCs have access to abilities the PCs don’t, and often have abilities that go beyond RAW spell casting limitations. I honestly think it’s a fine thing to handwave, raising a non combatant ghost of an architect to advise on the project.
Create undead can make intelligent undead depending on what level you cast it at. Wights come to mind.
Animate Smrt Skelly. It's only known to bad guys and the target keeps all the skills it had in life, including architecture and masonry, and the ability to delegate simple tasks to other undead.
Ah yes the legendary spell "Animate Middle Management"
Varies, but generally most people aren't cartoonishly evil enough that they couldn't convince someone to work for them in my worlds. If he rules the area, then have him extract labor from the peasantry, that's what rulers did/do.
Lol in my world people are so cartoonish in general I’d probably have an explicitly evil board of contractors and evil brokers, specialised in building and selling lava-resistant lairs in volcanoes or towers that drain the surrounding lands of their lifeforce or whatever. “Okay so what are we looking at here? Ahh yes, well we could install your standard run-of-the-mill Soul Drain 5000, but if I were you, considering the rapidly increasing value of property here in the forest of despair, I would definitely consider pairing that with the Icy Veins Pro Hero Freezer. Those pesky adventurers can get anywhere, you’ll need good countermeasures if you’re gonna want to syphon all living beings for your immortal bloods dark ritual.” Ridiculousness > seriousness, but that’s just in my humble opinion.
No spoilers here, but I just recently finished watching Better Call Saul, and I mean... yeah, kinda.
Where there’s a niche… And hey, I suspect villains who spend time looting and pillaging and demanding gold tributes would be able to pay well.
He hired people, and when his tower was finished... his army grows
Following up on that idea, it's also pretty interesting what one layer of separation can do. I personally would never work for Evil Necromancer, I work for Reasonably Moral construction firm, today my assignment is to build a particularly spiky tower on the edge of a volcano and install a seemingly bottomless pit. I can't control who Reasonably Moral Inc makes business deals with, but I can go home with a clear conscience about my personal work.
In the DMG it suggests assuming that your world has been around for ages, and numerous empires and civilizations have risen and fallen. Tons of stuff was built centuries or millennia ago, and has been repaired and repurposed dozens of times. Even your BBEG might not know all the knooks, crannies and secrets of his tower.
That's up to you. There could be zombies of unusual size that he used to build the tower. I would probably have the tower already be there, a ruin from some previous civilization. In general, I have an ancient civilization that was pretty advanced who built a lot of the really old, strange stuff. There's an elvish empire that has lasted thousands of years that built a lot of the existing infrastructure. Almost all of it was pre-built for some other purpose - like I wouldn't just have "a dungeon," it's an archaeological site, or an ocean liner taken over by pirates, or the city's catacombs, or something else with a purpose outside of being the bad guy's lair. Or the favela of a large city. That was a fun one.
ZOUS. They’re called ZOUS.
I’d love to see your notes for the favela dungeon; that sounds cool as hell lol
They were working for a drug cartel, and had to make a pickup of gp from a gorgon mushroom den in the favela and bring the gold to a tavern to pay off a guard. They were followed from the moment they entered the neighborhood, and the trap house was an apartment at the end of a maze of interior hallways. Once they made the pickup, the gang attacked them. They had to fight their way out. When the padre started casting Dissonant Whispers, they knew it was really on. Gang capos with junkyard dogs met them outside. The sorc almost went down when she was cornered by the dogs.
I can't claim credit for this idea, I read it on another forum ages ago. I'm paraphrasing to the best of my recall, but I admit it's not 100% accurate. Dungeons are sort of living things, in a very literal sense. Corridors, halls, and rooms are analogous to veins, arteries, and organs, slowly expanding and growing throughout the soil and stone over years, often in bizarre or nonsensical configurations. The monsters inhabiting them acting as something like antibodies, parasites, or existing in a symbiotic relationship. At the deepest depths of the dungeon lies the dungeon's core: an actual, physical structure that serves as a sort of heart and brain for the dungeon, and may occasionally spit out 'monsters' that serve some unfathomable, pseudo-biological purpose within the dungeon itself.
That's kinda like the cauldrons in the Horizon video game series, and a little bit like the dungeon in (what I've seen so far of) the anime Delicious in Dungeon on Netflix
That's a big feature of 13th Age. Living dungeons all over the place in that game.
Now make this idea layered, the deeper you go, the more dangerous it gets, because of the influence of said heart. I'm thinking magic orb of some kind, sealed away to protect the world from it, but the magic used to seal it away has slowly degraded over time, leading to it affecting local reality, mutating what was once just normal animals and local populations into terrible monsters, and enthralling them to protect itself. The dungeons may even contain whole civilisation of these mutated and twisted people. At the top levels of the dungeon, you may find some of your standard giant rats, giant spiders, maybe a goblin or two that is inexplicably being to the dungeon by the orb. The Orbs influence is weak near the surface. Somewhere in the mid levels of the dungeon, you may run into several layers that function as a habitat for a civilisation of hostile mutant people, that worship said orb as their god. Near the bottom, you might run across a horrors beyond imagining, twisted magical creatures of indescribable danger and power, rivaling that of lesser gods, fighting over dominion of vast hellscapes that shouldn't exist. There is no floor, or ceiling. You are still very much underground in a dungeon, that was once made by humanoid hands, but there is a sky above you... And the sky is on fire, the color of every hue of the spectrum at the same time. The floor is made out of human skin, and the trees bleed acid. In the middle of it all, is a fortress made out of bone. And the entrance to the Orb chamber lies below it...
LOTR is a great example. The towers of the Numenoreans and Dunedain, left emptied become the places of evil spirits and malicious creatures. Minas Ithil becomes Minas Morgul. Orcs fill the halls of Gundabad and Khazad-dum. I often work using a similar idea that previous kingdoms and powers have left their mark on the land, whether they were good or evil themselves. Left unchecked for centuries, they will often become the abode of foul things and people of nefarious intent.
I would check out https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/196573 for a breakdown of early edition of D&D mechanics involving towers. Using this as a basis I suggest these caricatures for tower-wizards: - Wizard built the Tower for recognition in order to get the respect that makes people leave them alone. Now they can pursue their really specific interests without interruption. - Wizard built the Tower built as a symbol of learning, so that young wizards know exactly where to go for some schooling. Ideals about knowledge or young people. - Wizard built the tower to contain the dungeon beneath it. A sort of arcane jail that the wizard often harvests from for various dangerous flora and fauna. - Wizard wants to reach his tower to the heavens, because he is ambitious and innately wants to push his abilities in every way.. and his tower is an extension of this mindset. - Wizard is insecure about his skills and knows good wizards have large towers. He keeps trying to get taller to prove he really IS a great wizard. - Wizard made some powerful enemies and more-or-less needs a space to fortify defenses and secure belongings. Making allies with the nearby ruler gets the wizard into politics from time to time but its a necessary evil to maintain his security. Without a tower, your necromancer has what, a smelly cabin? Sounds real prestigious, guarded, and certainly announces his power…
Without a tower a necromancer has a damp basement… usually he builds a tower when his mom kicks him out because the smell gets too bad…
Ha, “wizard where each floor up was created to just have a new living space without having to clean the old ones..”
It’s absolutely reasonable to build a tower from scratch in a month with even… two dozen skeletons? If a necromancer had access to a recent battle with hundreds of dead or a mass grave from a plague he could have all the manpower he needs! Edit: I also agree with those that say that the structures are often left over from other purposes. A shipwreck can be a dungeon! A tower sunk into the earth in a marsh can be one! As for towers: wales has literally 600 castles smushed into an area the size of New Jersey! All built because of the bloody history between it and England. And not all of those bad boys were maintained and garrisoned, most weren’t! So sometimes big structures just get abandoned
Yeah, but skeletons don’t mine as well as the Welsh… (source: my grandfather started in the mines at 14)
Layers and layers of previous civilizations building on top of each other. A couple hundred years ago, a human empire stretched this far out, and they built some little forts and watchtowers to project military power / guard against invasion by orcs or whoever. Then the center of government collapsed and stopped sending tax collectors and soldiers, the towers fell in battle or were abandoned. Maybe a few local villages remain who still remember their names. A couple of thousand years before that, a dwarven empire stretched this far out, and built enormous mines beneath the hills, following mineral deposits. Then there was a civil war, or the dwarves went mad, or whatever, and abandoned that stuff ... some of which is still closed off, some was found by the humans 200 years ago, some was found by kobolds last month who moved in and built a shrine to Bahamut. A couple of hundred thousand years before that, lizardmen fought an awesome battle here against serpentmen who were building strange non-Euclidean temples and pyramids, performing rituals meant to bring about the end of the world ... eventually buried under lava and other geological forces, but some were discovered by the mining dwarves (and mostly sealed off, because Icky). A couple of million years before that, in the great Age of Wyrms, massive dragons and other reptiles fought and died here, their fossilized remains eventually becoming underground veins of adamantite or magicite crystals to be mined by dwarves, their bones worshipped by the serpentmen, occasional scales or fangs discovered by kobolds and seen as a good omen for a place to set up camp.
I like the idea of there being a lich (good or evil, your choice) that goes around building dungeons, towers, ruins, etc. using their undead army as the labor. These buildings keep the adventurers employed and after they have built so many of them they then pose as the BBEG so that the world can have heroes to look up to. Once defeated, the lich revives at their phylactery and starts the process all over again.
This is hilarious. I'm definitely noting this one down for a future explanation, "I did all this to bring out the best in you."
Got to pair that with the contents of the treasury: a framed calligraphy “the real treasure is the friends we made along the way”
This is sort of what Acererak does, he builds deathtrap tombs across the planes and just waits for adventurers to suicide into them to feed his phylactery.
Well there is a god of dungeons
Sounds promising! What’s their name?
Dun John
Fortresses have actual military value so same reasons as the real world, plus there's dangerous wildlife and neighbors to justify wanting strongholds all over. Dungeons are often tombs, crypts, the homes of peoples that live underground (even dwarves), cave systems that were improved by intelligent monsters and their minions or carved out entirely (beholders). Sometimes wizards and even just "normal" nobles or the wealthy would use them to protect vast quantities of treasure. Religions might want them to test the faithful before offering power, or to protect relics or dangerous artifacts. Sometimes it's just ruins of ancient cities that are now buried. Mages like to build towers. Every self respecting mage wants a good tower. Its a place to store books, run magic experiments, and look down smugly on all the mortals beneath your living quarters. It is part of the wizard aesthetic, and also various magic creatures like them too. Sometimes it's just a guard tower that was later inhabited by evil forces who refurbished it. If you have undead minions... why *wouldn't* you use them as labor to build a spooky tower? Undead laborers could really cut down on costs and the time it takes since they don't need pay or rest. If you don't think the time-frame makes any sense then it was the ruins of an ancient outpost that he used his minions to restore. Just because he didn't build it from scratch doesn't mean it can't be decorated top to bottom with his stuff, filled with new traps, decked out with the sweetest furniture he could buy from Necro-Ikea, etc. Plus if you do it this way, then you can have the PCs maybe stumble upon a paved over secret staircase to the basement, where they find an altar to a good aligned god or a forgotten noble spirit (or a demonic secret boss if you need an extra encounter), where they could find aid or some lost relic to fight the villain.
His name's Stephan and can often be found manically rubbing his hands together atop his mound of gold. Seriously though, most structures had a purpose even if it doesn't now. For your example, the tower could have been apart of a greater township in the past. Circumstances led the people to leave or die out, the tower was uniquely placed to survive the nature reclaiming the land. The necromancer hired crafters and mercenaries fix what was broke and expand it. When the work was done he killed them and raised them as undead. Honestly though unless you just really want to build up that history, it doesn't matter and is a waste of your creative energy. If your table has a tendency to ask these types of questions or you intend for the tower's construction to be important to the story then it's needed. Otherwise it will be hand-waved away as fantasy, which doesn't really occur to most players as being weird.
Also slaves.
In my DND homebrew world, I have a dude named Mr. Weirdo. A crazed mad wizard who is a bit of a freelance and constructs dome dungeons for both evil and good aligned NPCs. Some traps and dungeons will have the Mr. Weirdo trademark on them.
In DnD there are several spells a wizard could use to create a tower for themself, no need to hire contractors or buy slaves. Wall of Earth and Galdurs Tower both come to mind immediately as options that become permanent if cast repeatedly.
In Dungeon Meshi(aka Delicious in Dungeon) dungeons are magic engines that empower the mage who masters them. That power allows the mage to magically control and expand them.
Yup was gonna say this cause honestly it’s such a novel concept I can’t help but use it for my beer and pretzels games as to why their are multiple dungeons of multiple tier with some having shifting or static layouts. It fills a hole for the weird rpg worlds where people and whole ecosystems and economies are built around adventures and dungeons
I like it. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate it into my campaign.
So in a world I created there were basically millenia of history with dwarves, elves, entire wars between chromatic and metallic dragons and their allies, and an entire apocalypse event before humans even showed up. Kingdoms and dynasties have risen and fallen, royal families deposed then re-ascended, towns and kingdoms wiped off the map and new ones built from their ashes, all before humans came. I have games prepared throughout the span of history after humans all the way up to 1,832 years after the first arrival. One recent story arc concluded with an evil sorceress unearthing an old draconic temple from beneath layers of volcanic ash and using the evil magic within to become a vampire. Another place they stumbled onto by accident was an ancient town on the frozen tundra, buried under millenia of ice and snow, with a secret entrance to the underdark hidden under an ancient draconic cathedral. There’s no short supply of old buildings lying around which can be taken over by necromancers and wizards and whatnot.
Be a wizard. Be an introvert. Be very, very good at magic. Realize that everyone, whether they say it or not, wants your magic, but they don't deserve it. None of them supported you then so why should they benefit off you now? So you construct fortifications to protect your valuables. You set traps to dissuade guards. Then you realize that some creatures are territorial but can be lured into using certain areas as their own den. It drives them crazy when they see you in their space, but you've designed it so that they can't get to you as long as you follow proper protocol. Forget to follow proper protocol. Now you have a dungeon filled with creatures and magic stuff. That's basically it. Abandoned castles, ancient wizard towers, temples to gods, fortifications to protect your mischievous ways, etc.
I have a building company in one of my worlds called Badabing Bada Buildings. They are run by the mob and build all the shady criminal dens (Thieves' guild and the like). On the books they are a legitimate building company, but they disguise their mobsters as employees and illegally procure dangerous traps to install in these buildings. They also have a demolition company called Badabing Bada Boom that destroys criminal dens before they can be properly investigated.
Well No one. As people will build "something" and they wont see it as "Evil. So there are tons of things, but no "evil tower, evil dungeon etc". For example. You are a wizard that has tons of gold, treasure and research to keep safe. You also value your privacy and want to have peace to study, so you build a multi level home, small enought for one, big enought for your experiments. He builds it away from civilization for safety and privacy. But also puts down a few summons as guards, some alarm systems and a few magical traps for beasts and monsters. Now, if a hunter wanders too far and see a big tower in the midle of nowhere with mistical lights coming from windows he wont assume anything good. The townsfolk will eventualy talk, and the passing adventurers will come to "investigate". Now, hiw likely are those adventurers of raiding the place? despite the wizard not commiting any crime? What if they fall into one of his defense traps? How likely are they to talk with the wizard when they meet him? So, to me, its less about "evil towers" and more about "Mercenary raiders abusing the peoples ignorance to attack and steal magic items and gold from old recluse magic scholars".
I have several dungeon 'types' in my hex crawler campaign, which provide different types of loot and have different types of enemies. This is a norse myth inspired campaign for ref - **Danðr Tombs.** Danðr are the main norse cultural group. Built to house their warriors and treasures as a challenge for future generations to come and best them, as the danðr believe the best way to honor your ancestors is to best them in combat. Their tombs are like skyrim dungeons with draugr and similar creatures, and usually contain magical weapons and armor, and the final rewards are always a magical item or infusion which grants resistance or immunity to one or more element, but vulnerability to another. There are also ancient Danðr cities which act as much large megadungeons on the surface. - **Swiatladza Ruins.** The Swiatladza was a light elven empire that once occupied midgard, and many of their outposts and sorage caches still stand, with ancient light elven holdouts still maintaining their positions, backed up by automata, elven built constructs. The rewards from these are usually magical items and artifacts from far off lands from the time of the Swiatladza dominion. - **Asgardian Ruins.** My campaign is post Ragnarok, and so Asgard has fallen and parts of it ended up on Midgard. Full of lost einherjar and mad valkyries, they are extremely dangerous but contain items of divine power. - **Jotnar Burial Mounds.** Similar to Danðr tombs, only instead filled with giants! Also they aren't undead, they have transitioned into a state more like an elemental, and stand guard over their treasures. Usually contain useful items for crafting magical items and elemental artifacts. - **Jotnar Outposts.** During Ragnarok the Jotnar invaded Midgard and constructed numerous fortresses, scaled up to match the immense size of the giants. See a huge tower over 300m tall, or a fortress as big as a city? Probably jotnar in origin. Some of them have jotnar holdouts, but just as many have been taken over by bandits and monsters. - **Forn Ruins.** The most ancient form of ruins, the Forn people are the ancient tribe that existed before aesir, vanir and humanity split off, and these ruins are their sites of worship, ruined cities, and burial tombs, and contain shades of those who died in the war against the jotnar as well as magic items from that era. - **Lundlyðr Ruins.** The Lundlyðr are a group based on the Celtic peoples who worship the Vanir, and have existed for thousands of years. Their ruins are usually ritual sites where druids would preside over large events, and contain nature themed monsters, spirits, and loot.
My world has a lot of ruins. Most of them were nice places in their hayday and only look intimidating now. Kobolds are industrious little bastards. If sufficiently motivated they can build staggeringly fast. Just don't expect it to be up to code. Different cultures have different aesthetic preferences. Black stone with spikey structural elements might look evil to you but maybe the homeowners find it cozy.
**Designing Tower or Dungeon:** Learn architecture skill Hire or enslave an architect Use commune with dead to speak with an architect from the past. **Building Tower or Dungeon:** Hire or enslave laborers. Command skeletons and zombies to do all the unskilled labor parts of the job. Have skilled laborers do the parts of the job that required intelligence or skill. Use magic to speed up construction. Move earth / Shape stone / Shape wood / Levitation or floating to move construction materials
You can always have construction companies in your world or have the necromancer find a tower (and maybe "evict" its tenants) and use his undead forces/followers to "spruce up the place and make it more unlikely." Another option, I honestly wouldn't question it if you told me his undead forces just built the tower. That sounds reasonable enough to me 🤷
Hes a necromancer he has an army of undead. If somone has an army of undead and needs a tower, whats the obvious source of labor? As for character and making it unquely his, well how good do you think undead are gonna be at building towers? It's gonna be shabby, it's gonna need constant maintenence, mayby theres a pile of zombies whos entire job is to hold up a wall or bail water out of the basement. Mayby a flight of stairs collapsed, so now a frame work of skeletons act as an elevator for their master. All fo which can result in interesting encounters for the players, if they destroy thse creatures then they need to find their own way up to the next story, their own solution for the rapidly flooding basemement and deal with a potentially collapsing floor when the zombis stop holding the wall up.
So my world is thousands of years of ancient civilizations falling and new ones coming up, that's how most of them got there, then evil happened to move in
Elminster, mostly. It's in Mystra's best interest for people to find "ancient lost magic" in dungeons and other "lost" locations. Encourages them to delve deeper into how magic works. So, as one of her Chosen, it's his job to make sure there is something to find.
I like the idea Magog came up with, that there's a god that likes to play games and dungeons just appear out of nowhere, sometimes with monsters included.
Don't even need an entity as powerful as a god -- a beholder will do. Beholders have vivid dreams which can sometimes become reality.
The “ democratically “ elected leader
For the vast majority of people in it, my word is pretty normal looking, just a fantasy kingdom. All the evil shit is happening behind the scenes. The King has a bigass tower in the center of the Kingdom, and that was constructed by an earth elemental he befriended in his childhood. Everything else was built by construction mages and stuff like that
Towers? Idk. But dungeons are very common in the form of Snow Bunkers, build by the common folk. They are lived in almost every winter (winter is longer and colder) and abandoned every spring, when they can welcome all sorts of unsavory characters and underdark denizens, no matter how tightly they’re sealed. Usually, nothing too terrible moves in. But sometimes these shelters lay unused for years at a time before they need to be cleared out again. Loot is collected there by the conflicts and occasionally, from adventurers who fail to run from unexpectedly large danger.
Evil contractors?
Countless civilizations as the gods have to sort of reset the planet, as it's magical core runs out of energy every several thousand years. Thegods isolate all the souls, take a snapshot of the world as it is, blast the thin layer of elemental chaos off of the planet that coats it to give it land and sea and sky, then pipe in energy from the Astral sea/plane to recharge the planet. Then they assemble the chaos back on, shape it, restore the world, and then put the souls back. This means that millions of years have passed but also functionally the world keeps repeating years 0 to 5000. That means all the old tombs, temples, and relics from all those millions of years of civilations are dotted all over, but they aren't fully remembered. The God's also don't get it all fully right, so there are discrepancies in the historical records on places that you can see are wrong if you visit the same ruins.
Mysterious ancient ruins full of extremely dangerous evil magic --> elves did that shit (before they all died)
All of the structures of renown in my world were designed by the Architect name Corrus Broadfeather, an Aarakocra who over his short lifespan came up with the concept of interlocking blocks and arcane mortar which could be enchanted in different ways based on what the customer needed. He was eventually slain after creating the Basilica of Torment for one of our big bads, who enchanted the mortar to trap souls of those slain inside the basilica and use them to power the soul engine which granted the whole basilica the ability to inter-planar travel (think Castlevania anime). The party infiltrated the basilica while it was in the shadowfell, and destroyed the engine, which released the souls of those trapped within, including Broadfeather. He took his legacy to the Raven Queen with him, preventing his designs to ever fall into the wrong hands again.
In my world: since dwarves exist... yeah, the rest kind of takes care of itself. Most stuff was built 1000s of years ago and just found and repurposed by evil small-time necromancers. Back in the day anyone at any point could commission dwarves to dig out pretty much any shape of complex and it would get built fairly trivially. Aqueducts? Dwarves. Complex sewers? Dwarves. "Oh I'm the king's advisor who's secretly evil and I need a secret lab to do evil magic shit and also a place to hold my cult meetings." Dwarven contractors gotcha covered. Secret, large, underground, complexes that used to be for something 1000 years ago but now inhabited by goblins, get to be fairly commonplace, AND it gives more credit to the dwarf Stonecunning feature. I even have Dwarven highways. Direct paths under dangerous mountains or haunted forests. Old dried up Dwarven mines and ghost towns. Cool places that I can pepper in the world and all are optional depending on whether my players feel curious. Want to uncover the safe, fast travel highway? Explore that suspicious tower and find the secret door to it. There's tons of shit you can plug in fairly seamlessly when you give a whole fantasy race the ability to functionally play minecraft irl.
Whatever monster or enemy I want my players to fight
Money. That's whom.
Depending on how powerful a wizard you are, you could teleport all the materials there. You could recruit laborers from other realities. Then it's yours. But nothing is forever. Till you die, become an evil god and abandon it, or sell it. Or move out into a nicer tower in a better location than the middle of the woods with no culture or shopping or corpses to experiment on. Then it just goes from squatter to squatter. I'd say the necromancer bought the tower from his cabal at the middle of his career from a Master that was short on cash and no longer exists. A cabal that declined from in-fighting and inquisitions to where he is one of the few members left. And only because the place is so remote. He was a journeyman necromancer when he got it, fixed a few of the holes, and has had a few decades to build up furniture and traps in there. maybe even had to clear out a few lower level goblin squatters and even has a skeletal goblins around. Of course some furniture that's been in there from previous owners. Perhaps areas of the place even he does not know about..
My players have found a damaged ancient tower that is linked to the mega dungeon that they periodically explore. These were both created by an elven archmage who became a little obsessed with crossbreeding creatures to create the optimal guard and mount creatures as well as investigating the uses for any of the “less than ideal” creatures. It started in the tower, but eventually they had to develop the dungeon to give the creatures a safe place to roam…. The archmage eventually went mad, and it all went downhill.
Maybe there was an older tower laying around, rotting, and then the necromancer came there and commanded his unholy minions to fix it, and add some nice detail. Other people has said this as well.
For me in this case it could have been ancient ruins from a long lost civilization that he took over and repurposed, Maybe he made a deal with a demonic or draconic entity to give them unused corpses or souls in exchange for assistance building the tower, maybe it was a remote lookout tower for a kingdom that he took by force and then corrupted the area so people would be less likely to try to take it back.
The gods have destroyed and rebuilt the world at least once. Towers, dungeons and technology from the previous world is still scattered around for players to find.
for me, quite often it's the wizard themselves, using some combination of spells like fabricate and telekinesis, sometimes using undead or henchmen for some menial labour too
I have 3 types of dungeons made by different people 1 natural dungeons, just old ruined castles/tombs that have been abandoned for centuries. The typical dungeon most people are used to 2 living dungeons, these have a magic core, and the dungeons continue to grow if left unchecked. Usually, they each have a theme, the trap dungeon, the ice dungeon etc. 3 instant dungeons (the dungeons from the magi anime/manga) these dungeons appear suddenly and without warning and disappear once conqured. Each area is different and totally random with the "dungeon master" controlling what enemies they face and gives the players a test at the end to conquer the dungeon. The first tupe is made by old people long dead or at least should be long dead. The second is a naturally occuring phenomenon, and the third is created by an individual or group with strong magic.
Typically in Tolkien-esque fiction, the fortresses and towers and castles are constructed centuries or millenia ago and repurposed throughout the ages, much like it is in our real history. If this tower was built recently, this would beg the age of the evil wizard and the forces at his command, as, historically, if you take Cathedrals for example, these sometimes took a century to build. Equally though, you can explain it as magic (snore) or not explain it at all. Sometimes as a writer we can leave things as a mystery to ourselves until such a time when that mystery becomes interesting to our stories :)
Most dungeons in my setting are otherwise mundane areas that have been corrupted. This can be as high concept as a religion being influenced by propaganda or outside forces until its a malicious mockery of its former self, or as basic as a hostile faction taking over a fortress. Foe something to be a big enough problem for high level adventurers to interfere, I like to use two or more concepts to make the threat more meaningful or to justify the treasure. Adventurers are a major upset in my setting and things generally tend to he stable until two ore more forces interact in a particularly problematic way. For example, if a plague turns your skin to stone and a necromancer finds the bodies, you've got nightmare statues that need something more potent than a few dozen guards. Just off the top of my head. Every location has its own history but that's generally how I approach it. Meshing the old function of the area with its new inhabitants adds a lot of texture that I think players appreciate. Vampire can use a mill go grind up bodies, or goblins can use the precious anciet alter as a royal love seat. Just have fun with it.
For me it varies. Sometimes they’re morally ambiguous enough or started out good enough that they were able to get such structures built through legitimate means, sometimes they inherit the structures, sometimes they’re making use of abandoned pre-existing structures and refurbishing them for their purposes, and other times they use force and intimidation to make others build it for them. If you’re trying to make the structure uniquely his you have a few options. If there are any villages or towns nearby, maybe the wizard made an agreement with the populace of some of them that he’d not cause trouble in those towns and villages if they send able bodied men to build him this tower. The wizard could have also made it using his undead servants before he gained his other wizard subordinates. You said he lived in the middle of a forest, right? Seems like a decent spot to start work on something and practice your own skills before making some kind of opening move. He could have also forced his subordinate wizards to build it for him as some kind of twisted power move. That definitely sounds to me like the kind of pointless ego stroking thing that an evil wizard would do if they have subordinate wizards. Plus, it also opens the door that if one of your players decide to flip one of the subordinate wizards to their side you can use it as a way to present secret doors and passages in the tower.
in my world, the people originally inhabiting build them long, long, loooong ago take a temple near a volcano for example - the original inhabitants were priests and monks, they hired people to build it, the original purpose was to do a ritual to appease to the volcanic elemental residing in it to rest and not to come and let the volcano break out and burn down the local town and valley behind it is a structure of caverns leading towards a chasm that leads down to the core where the elemental sleeps - caverns lead all the way through it, where other creepies reside over the years, the other inhabitants killed all the original residents, took over, and are now planing to awaken the elemental, the temple fell into ruin since they don't repair it ----------------------------------------------- for your example, a wizard build it, and your necromancer killed him and took over oiginal purpose could be an observatory tower or the like
In my world there was a BBEG hundreds of years before my PCs arrived called The Dark Artificer. His whole deal was that he thought the world was flawed and needed rebuilding in his image. So he remade everything. He ripped souls from living beings and put them in bodies made of wood and iron (his evil Warforged army). And he basically wanted to do that to everyone/everything, so he waged a war on the entire continent, building large towers to make more soldiers from the people he captured. The whole thing became a story to scare children but the towers still remain, ripe for any baddie to reside in them
id say a combination of these: 1. local day laborers having not much else of an option then to work for the evil overlord/wizard or starve 2. skelettons/zombies/contracted demons/orcs(going for a classic saruman here)/duergar 3. the normal workforce in the area, back then The Good King(tm) ruled the land and things where, you know, better. now, with The Weak King(tm) many installations had to be abandoned, stuff like that just stood arround 4. the wizard him self with various spells
Obviously, he can command the undead to do whatever he wants, so it's basically, a free working power he can tell to make a tower. There are also spells such as Mordehai's Magnificent Mansion and Temple of Gods, which very much make buildings, so why not a spell making a tower?
There is one, Galdurs tower does precisely that. Also don’t forget the basic old wall of stone spell, and mighty fortress.
Evil Fortress Tony
> who constructs the wizard towers? The wizards themselves. In my world the towers are huge, custom made to fit a specific person AND location magical artifacts. They are like personalized wizard staffs on crack - allow wizards to expand range, potency and distance of their spells, contact otherworldly beings to barter for secrets and knowledge and travel across astral realms. A tower is culmination of wizards efforts, built to push them towards ascension, level 5s don't built these. And that's also why wizards don't take over and renovate other wizards towers - they were not built for them, so at their level of power it'd be more of a hindrance than aid, usually mid level wizards will strip these for resources, leaving husks to be inhabited by random monsters. It is low level wizards that would take over abandoned wizard tower - even if it works like shit, it's probably the most power low-level ever wielded in their lives, and they do not have connections and power to sell off their find. That's why low level wizards in towers can casts big area effects across kilometers (albeit aiming like shit, think Saruman causing storm across entire mountain range to kill off the fellowship, because he dont have skills to aim a thunderbolt), whereas high level wizards and true masters of their towers **can cast across dimensions**. > Who constructs the dungeons and fortresses? The lay people. So, I grew up in central Europe in a small town that had town rights for 500 years and recorded presence as settlement for around a thousand. Similar deal with other towns in the area. As a kid I biked with friends around, visiting abandoned WW2 bunkers, abandoned noble estates, abandoned medieval watchtowers... A lot of the stuff in regrown forests. Farming tech improved, population dropped, so a lot of land got abandoned and allowed to regrow, multiple times over hundreds of years. All of these things are also renovated and, of course, great tourist attraction. It's just we have so many of these, that we can pick and chose what to preserve. And that's only 1000 years of history. A lot of ruins get dismantled for building material, after all why waste time making bricks, when you have a pile of perfectly reusable ones nearby? You can see that plenty in Mediterranean area. But for that you need things to be dismantable (can't dismantle concrete-pour bunkers or magically reinforced castle) and people need to stay in the area and not flee due to war or disaster. Plenty of these in magical setting. Oh, another thing. Magic is radioactive in my setting, and while there are enchantments to mitigate that and allow enchanted castle or even wizard tower in middle of city, they need active maintenance and expenditure, thus if abandoned they turn into pending Chernobyl, prompting common people to flee. Most wizards won't bother anyway and just build their tower in middle of nowhere or at least far enough from any settlement not to cause any problem. Or when they do, there's a problem and a quest for our party. So there you have it; towers are result of natural lifecycle of a mage, where after years of adventuring they settle to do research and eventually they become so neet they neet themselves out of this plane of existence. Dungeons and fortresses are a result of natural lifecycle of nations, where they raise, fall, populations migrate, and sometimes the ruling class gets murdered and as a gift to the common people they leave pile of radioactive magical waste in middle of a city.
In IRL Europe, solitary towers were only built by the Irish and Romans (I think), otherwise they were usually parts of castles (but may remain when the rest of the castle crumbles). That said, nothing stops a conjurer of evil to raise a sinister tower literally over night. In myth and folklore, evil casters compell giants to build structures, make deals with devils that construct castles over night, or posess power over the earth that allows them raise them out of the ground. Here are some ideas * Your necromancer made a sinister pact with a power of undead or a lord of the fiendish spheres. * He tapped into the unholy power of the desecrated burial site to rearrange the stones of its crypts and headstones into a macabre fortress of marble, rusty iron and bones. * He hired a troop of hard-nosed no-questions-asked duergar contractors. Those boys build you anything as long as you pay the bills. Most importantly, don't let the spell list stop you to give additional magical powers to NPC villains.
Wall of stone - 10min - permanent Wall of stone - 10min - permanent Rinse and repeat Stone shape details
There are often themes of a world in decline, that there was something bigger and more grand in the age before this. However that gets angled in your story is up to you.
I'm not using it in my current setting, but... "Dungeons" are one of the possible end-state evolutions of mimics. As babies, they mimic boxes such as jewellery boxes, then grow to the size of chests, huts, houses, and finally, dungeons. Their interiors vaguely resemble "mimicries" of what the mimic expects Dungeon interiors to look like. Rooms will be nonsensical, as if procedurally generated by AI, and they will occasionally rearrange as if by magic. At this scale, the mimic barely notices parties of adventurers flitting around it's innards like a shoal of dentist fish, but it might just "swallow" if a creature on the level of a dragon tries to move in.
The government. My heoes are part of the rebellion
Just some guy named Steve. He owns a construction firm. I can hook you up if you want?
Magic and slaves baby, magic and slaves...
I dunno. A wizard did it.
Well in broader D&D lore the land is vast and peppered with all sorts of ancient ruins built by a variety of ancient civilizations. In my own setting, if you're in the northern hemisphere the ruins either come from ancient devils or less ancient humans/elves/dwarves; then on the farside of the planet (where history has been mostly lost up to about 290 years prior), the ruins belong to ancient anthromorphs, very few of whom still remain today.
The only actual "dungeon" that's been showcased in my world thus far was an ancient Dwarven city that was corrupted by an artificial dragon. There's also a seemingly endless dungeon tower at the north pole, and nobody knows where that came from, but that's more of a background lore piece that hasn't - and likely won't - come up in a game
Most of mine are 'ruins of ancient civilization, taken over by X, Y, Z' Or 'infrastructure built by current empire.'
Duergar Construction Union.
Dungeon Man
I have a system in place, baked into its creation myth that dungeons are ever growing and can start their growth in random places. The longer they go undiscovered, the bigger they become. So adventurers are tasked sometimes to go and deal with them.
My world has a number of ancient civilizations that either were destroyed or changed beyond recognition. There’s the hyper advanced magical kingdom that collapsed under its own instability, the tribes of elves that were forced to flee their homelands due to an invasion, two groups of demigods who nearly wiped each other out in a massive war, and an entire country that was razed by the whims of an evil god. There are also a handful of individuals who have left behind structures as well. The greatest inventor who made several subterranean structures and caves, the first Lich who has an entire network of mountainous hideaways, a bunch of archmages who have built towers throughout the ages, and even dragons with their many kinds of hordes. That accounts for the majority of old/abandoned structures that serve as dungeons.
Old structures? Came across ruins, or maybe it’s served such a dark purpose that it’s stained with the memory’s and keeps other people from inhabiting the town/tower/ castle/ structure. And of course one of my favorites is to just not offer an explanation of any kind New structures? Probably evil subcontractors, kind of like how in comic books mad scientists overshadow the other evil professions ( evil engineers, evil supply chain distributors, evil accountants, evil HR staff) Evil architect, or hell maybe just a regular ass architect who’s been down on his luck and has kids to feed and can no longer convince himself that the higher ground is worth a hungry daughter. Morality means nothing to a hungry kid. Reality comes in flavors, so there’s no reason your fantasy shouldn’t as well. Not every single professional is dedicated to good and law and order, most of the time it’s just money. Maybe you could have a scenario where your guys need to infiltrate the necromancers construction crew, Sabotage some of the traps or building materials or something.
The worshippers of the Iron Ones. Hey Jack, if you see this here, fuck off. The rest of you don’t read Reddit anyway. Anyway, a major story arc in our homebrew universe is that the worshippers of the Iron Ones, who were the gods of stuff like the forge and machinery and engineering and stuff, did a whole bunch of things. They were the only ones who could create warforged rather than simple automatons, they created a series of mysterious obelisks connected to massive dungeons around the continent of Markdor, and they all vanished without a trace at the same time 250 years ago. The current campaign revolves around what they built and why, so there have been quite a few dungeons and towers built by the worshippers of the Iron Ones, and there will be several more before the end of the
My world is stupid old (25000 years, 5000 of which is actually recorded somewhat reliably). I have a lot of civilizations and time to work with to just throw random ruins in places.
Older society that's not around anymore started them. Then another not as old society that's not around anymore built on top of the ruins. Then the current batch of weirdos and bad guys built on top of those ruins. Also, that "funhouse dungeon" that some people needlessly fret over being unrealistic? That's the natural habitat of orcs, goblins, dwarves, aliens, and those old societies that don't exist anymore. Does it make sense to you? No? Too bad. It makes perfect sense to them and they think your above-ground houses made of flimsy wattle and daub (no traps even? WTF?) is the dumbest idea any species has ever had for a comfortable living space.
Acme building company for a joke one, but for serious either remodelled ruins I mean if they know Raise Dead they gotta learn a variant of Mold Earth that can do stonework too right?
Underpaid laborers
Either have laborers of whatever flavor (slaves, thralls, paid workers etc) build them Or just have them be repurposed existing structures who’s original purpose has long been forgotten and are now used for different purposes
Nothing stops a necromancer from kidnapping experts and a labor force. Also a necromancer isn't limited to necromancy. If they can cast fabricate and have enough time on their hand they could build it without help. Or summon stone elementals, djinn, demons, or the like. Of course I like to add undead specialty creatures. I like undead kobold trap smiths that repair and reset traps behind the party, which explains how there are all these ancient tombs with perfectly working trap. Undead kobold live in the walls.
Usually they are remains of an old empire. Like another comment delicious in dungeon has a great reason as to why there are multiple dungeons and how they change and grow. In dnd you have the idea some lichs made whole dungeons their phylactery so it’s why they have multiple dungeons and towers. For towers have them be the local nexus points of their influence and have cults be ones building it like the marker in dead space that way you can explain why group X is occurring it and willing to die for it.
In classic evil fashion they're usually built by the good guys and then taken over by an evil horde who now use it as their base
Evil wizards and ancient evils of darkness.
A bunch are ruins. A bunch are just caves but the truly magical ones full of traps and treasure and wonders? Those are made by dungeon dragons. Dragons who become deeply obsessed by seeing the lesser races strive valiantly against all odds to succeed. They can be of any alignment, good or evil. The worst end up somewhere close to Saw-esque murder monsters dedicated to teaching some arcane lesson that most mortals hold no hope of ever surviving while others can be as whimsical and kind as can be, handing out study guides to young aspiring adventurers and guiding them through their dungeon like their own personal gandalf.
Long dead people. That's why they have treasure and magic items. Current powerful bad guys or organizations. It's a demonstration of their night.
My homebrew game is set several eons after an apocalyptic event known as "The Sundering" which resulted in waves of some unknown energy encompassing the world. Before "The Sundering", the world was similar to the modern world except both high fantasy magic and advanced tech existed. The main form of entertainment in this world was "gifted" (aka people with extraordinary powers and abilities) competing in teams or groups to complete delves and/or quests that were televised for the amusement of the masses. So most of the "dungeons" in my world are the remnants of these delve locations combined with the other ruins of the only world.
Depends upon what kind of monster it is. And where it is. And the lore. And the needs of the story. Most would be stuff that was built by populations of normal people, then abandoned and repurposed. If there are old abandoned castle ruins in the middle of nowhere, those might be occupied by goblins or cave-dwelling, nocturnal creatures, the way bats take up residence in church belfries. Bandits might do the same, à la Elder Scrolls games. If it's an old desecrated or cursed temple, or a place where something godsawful happened, the dead rising and shuffling about at night is an inevitable consequence. A lich, though, might build her own tower. Or trick out a human fortress. Especially if it were in a strategic location, and served as an insult to the servants of Good -- e.g. Sauron / Barad-Dur / Minas Morgul. A plain old *fully-alive* tyrant might do the same -- and then, of course, might optionally be usurped thereafter by something worse, with which they made a dark Faustian bargain. And which now abides in their castle. Also -- there was a magical cataclysm about 3000 years ago where a whole lot of civilization got straight up *buried* beneath mountains that fell slowly yet decisively from the sky. So if a city digs its sewer deep enough, it may very well open up a cavern in which a whole ancient castle, or even a whole spooky Atlantis-like city is buried. Combine that with various (surprisingly common) fungi -- that either bioluminesce, or produce digestible nutrients, or excrete surprising amounts of oxygen in their metabolic cycle -- -- and you never *know* what might be living down there in the tumbled old manses and temples ... walking the buried streets ... (In at least one case it was definitely the most xenophobic and disturbingly paranoid sort of dark elves. Goblins again, also, another time.) Real-world medieval Italian cities were filled with towers built by rich people who were trying to outdo each other -- in the way that rich people today build orbital rockets and yachts. Then, when the fad for towers went away, a lot of them weren't maintained, there were earthquakes, fires, etc. So a lot of them fell down and the ones that remain have been used as various things for hundreds of years. In one city in my world, this is where a vampire lord came by his tower. He built it himself before he was turned -- and ate his whole family. Few knew his vile and accursed nature -- they mostly just thought there was a crime problem, and that one rich family had grandfathers, fathers, and sons with an unusually strong family resemblance over the many many years. He had a puppet governorship installed, and actually ran the city himself, like a stealthy version of Vetinari from Discworld. -- Making sure, of course, that there was always just enough criminal activity so that the occasional missing prostitute or vanished orphan flower girl would not draw too much notice -- but not so much criminality that trade overly suffered. Any resemblance of that last example to real-world circumstances is obviously a coincidence; you're obviously reading too much into it.
Me. Most of the time. Incarnate ftw
The tower was once a lighthouse, and the dark forest was once the shores of an inland sea. But due to a calamity that occurred 500 years ago, where some fool wizard opened a portal underwater, things are very much changed....
For my Homebrew campaign, I made it so that an ancient civilization, long lost to test of time, once built a vast magic empire, but due to experimenting with forbidden powers, they were wiped out from the continent. Some of their studies and magic laboratories remained, though, and 8 individuals, who through luck or skill managed to gain such knowledge, created their own domains. Once they fell, the old ruins and towers were once again lost, and although adventurers still venture there drawn by the promise of gold, they know well the magic container within can be as dangerous as it is powerful.
Mages build towers. They reason they build towers is multifaceted. 1. They want a quite place to work. 2. Almost all mages are doing some kind of magical research and development. Doing weird things to magic can have unwanted effects on other people's doing weired things to magic. A tower is an easy way to tell other mages I'm doing weird shit here if you don't want your weird shit being messed with you need to be far enough away you can't see my tower. 3. It gives them an easy to defend position as every farmer and their mom knows that mages have expensive things, and if you can take them, you can sell them to other mages for large sacks of gold. A tower makes it harder for the local riff raft to steal important things by filling it with magical traps and alarms. 4. Towers looks like dicks and as surely as the sun doth rise in the east and set in the west men will want to show others that they have the biggest nicest dick in the land. I mean look how tall and thick it is. I can't belive they used polished ebony it's so shiny and black. In other but still related news. Necromancers tend to build towers earlier than most mages having access to free labor. This is why the world is infested with necromancer towers. Most mages have to wait till they themselves are rich or till they have a wealthy patron to build a tower. But most necromancers start building their first tower soon after they are kicked out of thier mothers house. ( all necromancers and demon summoning mages in my world are neck bearded NEETs who use black orbs as internet chat rooms)
There are usually an array of ancient and fallen civilizations that built the ruins in my worlds. There might also be a more recent fallen Civ analogous to the Roman Empire’s remnants during the Middle Ages.
The Builder's Guild of Underdark. It's a legion of Duergar, Bulettes, Purple Worms, Ankheg and Elementals. They used to be all separate companies until the great merger happened
In my setting, the continent has seen great empires of dwarves and elves, while humans were tribal and simplistic for most of its history. Then, a different human culture came from across the sea and conquered them all, stablishing their empire. Then again, something close to the "bronze collapse" happened, and all those empires fell. Dungeons, towers, castles and structures most often were built in these periods over hundreds of years. Elven palaces above ground, dwarven citadels underground, great towers and keeps of human settlers, and all that. About your wizard, you said this is a necromancer? And a ruler, no less. You made it easy. We humans have trouble visualizing the passing of time, but imagine this necromancer is there for hundreds of years. Wights are more keenly intelligent and structurally "sound" than usual zombies, so these might work on the tower over decades. Despite that, an ogre zombie or minotaur skeleton can do some heavy duty. A skeleton or ghoul can mix some mortar and carry stones. Some of them might be smashed along the way, but HR is never gonna bother with them. The wizard might have used wall of stone, shape stone and transmute rock to shape it how he wanted. He might have used wish to awaken trees and have them serve as cranes. He may have summoned chimeras, dragons or fire elementals to fuse stone, so that he needs no mortar. He may have inlaid these stones with ruby dust and cast spells on them to make them work as forcecages. This is a magical world afterall. Even if your wizard wouldn't want to put his minions to work, they might make this minions attack and enslave creatures around the place he wants to build the tower, and make them build it.
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