Spire of Sisyphus

Your party finds itself travelling in circles (or is it spirals?). In the distance, you’ve spied an ominous spire but, for one reason or another (lack of food, gut-feeling, remembered rumours, etc.) you decided to bypass it. However, the longer you go on, the more you feel you are being led, by some cunning means, nearer and nearer. You travel until night-fall, finally coming to what looks like new terrain, but when you pass a rocky rise, you find yourself at the gate of an imposing ruin of a tower. The outside is adorned with all manner of bizarre sculptures; some remind you of monsters of the desert, some of creatures from song and tale, while others are wholly alien to you. Moreover, the style is unlike any you have ever seen, creating a surreal and disconcerting dreamscape that covers nearly every inch of the walls. As you approach, you can discern, beneath centuries of dirt and grit, that it must have, at one time, been painted with a cacophony of colours. As you brush some dirt away, it reveals an arabesque pattern of half a dozen colours, all disconcertingly undimmed by time. Likewise, for a ruin, the spire is in relatively good repair; there are obvious signs of wear, but otherwise, it seems structurally sound. It is close to the end of the day and, as the last rays of the setting sun hit the garishly painted stone gate, it slowly sinks into the ground, revealing a gaping maw of blackest black within.

This is the Spire of Sisyphus, The Last Gnome. He is in fact a kaisharga defiler who specialises in illusion, enchantment, and necromancy. Driven mad by time, Sisyphus was bound to his tower long ago for reasons now lost (or perhaps he simply stays there of his own accord and is unwilling to leave). He warps the land around him with illusions, enchantments, and other, more nefarious spells, forcing people to play a game of his own devising with him. Sisyphus has ample power, but only feels compelled to use it in pursuit of his art. He carefully constructs various tests of his opponents’ resolve, loyalty, perseverance and so on. Participants are presented with magically derived situations that allow The Last Gnome to learn what he sees as the ‘truth’ of his opponents. If his opponents can persevere and figure out why they are playing the game and whom they are playing against (using clues that Sisyphus leaves during each situation), then Sisyphus will reveal himself and grant the party release and an additional boon. If they fail, they die, usually horribly. Sisyphus is a nihilist, pessimist, and cynic. He long ago grew bitter with the world for one reason or another but found great catharsis in his magically derived art. Rather than capitulate to or contend with the world order however, he created his spire, a demi-plane or pocket world, which he uses alternately as both parchment and palette for his seemingly deranged performance art. He believes that life is absurd in Athas and that only by recognising the absurd condition of one’s existence can one hope for transcendence. Although often viewed as evil and antagonistic, he is, in fact, simply content to make his art and interact with his ‘audience’. Being immortal and existing on the margins of Athasian society, he is simply unmoved by most mortal concerns. That being said, he will often refer to his ‘Great Work,’ which seems to indicate that his madness does serve some greater purpose.

Sometimes he dons the guise of King Hanaskaman, though whether he was ever the true king, like everything else about him, remains a mystery.