Ruined Tower of Zerapus The World of Greyhawk & The World of Greyhawk Wiki The current year for our World of Greyhawk campaign is set during 579CY. Inspired By Gary Gygax

The Tower of Zerapus stands four to five miles outside Hochoch, upon a rocky rise within the Dim Forest. Trees crowd its lower slopes, while a break in the woodland overlooks a broad stretch of low, mist-covered countryside. An overgrown track climbs toward the ruin, its surface littered with loose stones and exposed roots. From below, the tower appears as a narrow, broken silhouette above the surrounding foliage, its dark masonry blending into the wooded hillside.

Built from rough gray stone, the tower retains several stories despite the destruction of its roof and uppermost chambers. Its summit ends in jagged lengths of standing wall, with deep fractures running through the masonry below. Tall arched windows and smaller rectangular openings pierce the surviving floors, their interiors dark except for the faint green light sometimes reported within.

At its base, collapsed adjoining chambers form a jumble of low walls, empty doorways, and rubble. Ivy spreads through these lower ruins, and fallen blocks lie scattered across the rocky ground. In Hochoch, Zerapus is remembered as a learned but increasingly reclusive wizard whose studies eventually earned him a reputation for madness.

Stories describe rare books, peculiar instruments, and tightly sealed crates carried along the forest track to his tower. His dealings with the town gradually diminished, and those employed in his household supposedly departed under circumstances they refused to discuss. Over the years, recollections of an eccentric scholar became darker tales of a man willing to pursue knowledge regardless of its cost.

The most enduring rumors concern the catacombs beneath the tower. Some say Zerapus ordered chambers excavated deep into the rocky hill; others maintain that he discovered an older underground complex and enlarged it for his own purposes. According to local tales, those passages contained laboratories, summoning circles, and barred cells where he confined the results of his experiments. There, the mad wizard supposedly conjured unspeakable beings, questioned the dead, and attempted to bind creatures from other realms to his service. No reliable account establishes how much of this is true.

Zerapus’s disappearance and the tower’s destruction are usually linked in local storytelling. One account describes a flash of green light above the forest, followed by a thunderous crash that carried as far as the outskirts of Hochoch. Another claims that the upper chambers collapsed only years after their master vanished below ground. Some believe he was killed by something he summoned; others insist he remains beneath the hill, sustained or imprisoned by his own magic. The occasional appearance of green light behind the empty windows has given each version its share of believers.

Today, the tower is a familiar subject of warnings among Hochoch’s hunters, woodcutters, and travelers. Its exposed upper walls serve as a recognizable landmark, but few willingly linger among the ruins. Tales promise hidden wealth and forgotten spellbooks beneath the fallen stone, alongside sealed chambers that should remain undisturbed. Whether the catacombs hold anything more than flooded cellars and the remnants of a dead wizard’s work remains uncertain, but Zerapus’s reputation has outlasted both his household and much of his tower.