II. On Its Origins: The Elves and the Prisoner

To understand the Nameless Spires, one must begin not at the Crown of the World but at Sovyrian — the ancient homeland of the elves, half a world away.

The wisest Ilverani priest-scholars record that Ossoyo was first encountered near Sovyrian, in a vast canyon filled with a magical sea of mist. It was a massive creature — ice-blue, whale-shaped, and capable of floating through the air as easily as a fish through water. Those who encountered “the psychic whale” and inhaled its chilling, shadowy vapors developed paranormal powers of considerable magnitude. They also lost control of their minds entirely, becoming potent yet senseless thralls. The entity did not negotiate this arrangement. It did not ask. It simply breathed, and those who breathed in turn became its instruments.

Sovyrian’s High Families understood immediately that this thing could not be permitted to remain anywhere near the elven capital. At great cost — the records are vague on precisely how great, which in elven scholarship usually means the cost was staggering and the survivors preferred not to dwell on it — brave elves subdued, shackled, and transported Ossoyo to the Crown of the World. There, they sealed the beast beneath the thickest part of Golarion’s icecap and considered the matter settled.

The matter was not settled. It was merely postponed, by several thousand years, which to elven sensibilities may have felt like a reasonable interval but to the rest of us looks rather less like a solution and more like a delayed catastrophe.