It’s a bit misleading to say The Arcanum Tower, because in reality it works like multiple. There’s the giant main tower in the middle, that reaches up as far as the eye can see. Directly expanding the main tower around it, there’s many more towers. When space around the main one ran out, they started building more around the secondary ones. Like a termite mound that keeps expanding sideways.
Each secondary tower boasts of their own teleportation facilities to a different world. And as the priests manage to identify opportunities to connect to new ones, another tower is built. Each one tends to be decorated with crafts and arts from the world they connect to. And they all sport different levels of business.
The Arcanum Tower is, of course, a central hub for inter-world trade and travel. Secondary towers to particularly rich worlds tend to be much bigger and provide ample infrastructure and space to move wares around. Every tower has at its top a glass ceiling, crafted minutely to channel specific moons, planets and stars.
The Arcanum Tower is built at the center of a great confluence of ley lines. These paths carry the influence of all three of the light gods. A crucial point that allows the tower to exist. You see, even if the Tower is mainly used by Vynoran priests, the influence of all three gods is required to properly open doors between worlds.
The main Tower is where most of the priestly and scholarly work is conducted. It is a library, a university, a laboratory. A place of knowledge. Massive not only upwards but also downwards. Reaching deep inside the earth, where new materials are harvested. As a matter of fact, it is the underground resources that allow the tower to thrive. Here the white stone is blessed with supernatural strength that allows the tower to continue expanding.
There’s also, of course, the crystals that serve as catalysts to the portals between worlds. Their unique composition allows them to be infused with the precise energies required to open doors between worlds. And now, we finally get into the details of what the actual work of the priests is in this Tower.
The same moons can be seen in all worlds, you know. Valrei, Jackal, Seris and Haven. There is also Sol, of course. These astral bodies serve as crucial catalysts to channel the energies required to infuse teleportation crystals. But they alone are not enough to bridge worlds.
Synchronicity. In two different worlds, there are two different smiths. One is crafting a mighty spear. The other is crafting a sturdy shield. They both bring their hammers down against the red hot metal. The exact same sound resonates in both worlds. Such “coincidences” are our bread and butter. A secret language, written into existence itself. A connection between all of creation.
In the Tower, priests spend hours upon hours researching all the minutiae of creation. Paying close attention to the presence of a particular pattern. Minuscule sparks of power that evidence the presence of synchronicity. That is the thread, a thread that is a word, a word that never “repeats”. When a word-thread is identified, it means that all places where it is written are actually only one.
Priests are trained to hold onto that feeling, that spark of synchronicity. To study it, to learn its shape, its spelling. It takes months or even years, and the joint work of many priests. But when it’s done, the resulting word is a coordinate, a coordinate that points to a thread, a thread that is a spark, that grows into a fire that is a crystal. A crystal that is a door.
Eventually, Azohra rose to power. As the central hub of trade, travel and information between worlds, it is only logical that a critical border such as the Arcanum Tower would need to be fortified. And so, priests were quickly outnumbered by the soldiers and guards.
But darkness surrounded the tower and the amount of prisoners kept piling. From within and without Vrystoria, the whispers of Libilia turned the hearts of men everywhere. Quickly the underground mines were also converted into a dungeon for the prisoners. Priests and soldiers from across all worlds came to reinforce the tower. The best of the best, from Arryatlee and from every other kingdom that wanted to fight the darkness.