I’m thinking about writing an adventure for cons in which magi and companions investigate an abandoned (?) wizard’s tower. This would specifically be a tower created with the spell. (Wizkids makes an amazing Watch Tower terrain set that would look awesome on a convention table)
This would be a relatively small covenant-exploration adventure with 9 floors—two underground and seven above. It would have sanctums for a few magi, a council chamber, and library. There’d be a Magic aura over most of it, but local exceptions are possible. The adventure is for young magi and companions, probably with a couple of shield grogs.
I’d like to open the floor to ideas. What is in this tower? In the spirit of brainstorms, there are no bad ideas. I ask that we not go down rabbit holes, pursuing any one idea for good or bad. This is the place to just throw anything at the wall that you think sounds cool!
I like the idea that it was a foe of another realm, so either faerie or infernal.
Since the infernal is more openly hostile and well understood in pop culture, I would say that it makes for the most obvious reason to have fallen.
There could be bandits who took up residence in the lower floors, making the most of a perfectly defensiblemisolated stone building, this let's things kick start with a fight.
Then a magical puzzle that acts as a defence to access the next floors, where some of the loot (maybe Vis, since it is a one off, they can use it to power their spells for extra pen against tje demons later) is as well as some "visual" story telling.
At the very top, an infernal aura has replaced the magic one and the party must fight a few demons who will vanish as they get heavily wounded. After that, they get a McGuffin, which sends them to he cellar, where a secret door is opened amd they get the main reward, whoch might be a magic item and maybe even find a mage turned into a statue, stuck in Twilight which they can rescue?
I always love interactions with the ghosts of former occupants. (Secrets revealed ... at least as they knew them)
Secret rooms where the "real" library is stored and accessed. ("Put z candle back"...)
What happens if a few wild animals come in, eat some weird vis, and mutate?
Find a secret lab dedicated/specialized for specific type of research (whatever one of the characters might like).
I once ran a covenant where the Merinita cast a powerful faerie spell that generated a Forest around it where all the animals became sentient ... and they had demands.
Love the concept of this as an exploration starter for a young group of magi!
It is one of the creations of Mad Hugh of Tytalus. Hugh has built a large outdoor lab which he builds towers in, and then experiments while he enchants it. Maybe this is one that he enchanted to move, sold it to a magus to fund his studies, and has become abandoned? Maybe this one has actually become an awakened object itself and is merely resting, and partway through the adventure it wakes up. I can picture it now "Hey? Why are my spells being resisted? Is there an Aegis of the hearth on this place" (no, the building itself has might) and later "Why is it moving?"
One of the levels is an experiment left by the previous inhabitants. It would have been fine, if they'd checked it after the appropriate time and left notes, but now it's hyper-concentrated the effect. Perhaps they were trying to make a rabbit (in a cage, constantly giving it all it needs) slightly smarter, and after the years it has become so wise as to be incomprehensible, able to see glimpses of the past and future, the true shapes of magic, perhaps even speak to the players directly.
At least one sanctum belonged to a paranoid mage and is really well protected, with the protections trapped and the traps protected against dispelling...
It's also important to not assume that the PCs will do this one level after the other. If you don't want them to fly up outside of the tower and go through the walls, you'll have to somehow prevent them from doing that.
I think exploring a covenant in AM should be a lot bigger than a simple dungeon run. The bottom level of the cellar is not accessible by any magical means, there are exotic wards in place that the PCs cannot dispel, and they have to find out what this is exactly.
Here's an idea: There are as many sancta as PCs. In order to enter the sanctum of a magus, they have to find out how he circumvented his own traps, maybe acquire some token that he used so he didn't get fried. Once the sancta are opened, they can read each magus' diary. The diaries tell them what the magi were up to and point to lab texts that contain breakthrough points. The PCs have to spend a season in order to translate the lab texts and learn the dead magi's shorthand. The diaries also point to some magic items that are keys to unlocking the cellar and that they have to investigate in the lab in order to find the trigger. (Maybe the lab texts for them are missing or incomplete. I discussed this scenario here) They need to look in the library which books were used last to get more hints. Maybe it contains initiation scripts for some virtue that's necessary and they need to read up on the cult lore first.
The point is: I want them to spend a year in the lab's towers, working to uncover it's secrets. Do their research, come together to share their puzzle pieces and determine the next steps, then get back to the lab for more research. They should get a feeling for who the magi were, re-trace their path, get into their heads to understand what's going on. It will take lots of real time to think about what to do, then fast-forward through the season. Then, as a reward, they can finally enter the cellar, where they discover some bound spirit/dragon/angel, and need to decide whether to release it or keep it imprisoned so they can harvest its power for themselves.
It's not a dungeon crawl, it's a mystical journey, and most of the rewards are earned along the way: breakthroughs, magic items, a new virtue.
As Bob replied, players can be very creative, and spontaneous magic allow for everything if dice are on the magi' side. Or if they have time and roll, roll, roll until success. Some players never stops trying. So it's best to think about things such as "coming from outside/bypassing doors by opening the walls/teleporting inside/sending senses inside rather than body".
Ars is a game where I have seen players try ideas I'd never think about but it made sense anyway.
IMS I had an NPC mage who valued his privacy, conjured his tower on the top of a wide (~25') flat boulder sticking out of marshy meadow. The boulder was low enough to see there was nothing on top, but high and steep enough not to be worth climbing after trudging though the marshy meadow.
Right after the tower was conjured, the mage used a pre-prepared enchanted item to turn the Structure invisible to outside eyes.
The PCs found the tower by spotting a significant number of bird bodies around the boulder, cause of death either a broken neck or shattered skull. And while examining the birds realised they were in the shadow of a structure they couldn't see.
Apart from the door being flush against the tower, requiring some high rolls to find it by touch, there was little to prevent them from entering. However the first grogs through the doorway had to roll for malaria, because of the bad air.
Eventually the PCs determined that one night a griffon had accidentally flown into the tower's chimney funnel, and died blocking the airflow. The sleeping mage and servants had choked to death from smouldering fires no longer ventilated.