The Tale of Kurn's Tower
There's much mystery surrounding the Cursed Tower of Kurn. We all know that Kurn Machta, the Dread Torturer, was the trusted general of Emperor Rile Sathir and the construction of the Tower began under his reign. But what is not often told is the tale of how Kurn became Rile's most trusted general or whatever became of him."
Kurn Machta had been an up and coming field officer under Venril Sathir's reign. Ever obsessed with returning his lost lover, Drusella, to life Venril had sent out innumerable campaigns to find items, potions, and spells that may bring her soul back from Ethernere and restore her body.
Kurn had just returned from one such campaign when Venril was overthrown by his son, Rile Sathir. Some dismiss the timing of the events and his subsequent promotion as mere coincidence. Others have been more suspicious.
What had made Kurn so trusted in the eyes of Rile? Had he found something in this last search? Is this when Kurn took on the mantle of the Dread Torturer? We may never know, but soon after, during the great expansion of the Sebilisian Empire, construction of a tower stronghold in the Field of Bone began.
Named after Rile's trusted general, Kurn Machta, the tower housed an immense collection of torture devices, which Kurn took sadistic delight in personally using against enemies. Several of which he had captured during his bloody campaign in Warslik's Wood.
He may have lived to regret this decision, but not for long. It seems one of his prisoners escaped to the nethermost depths of the dungeon. It was an area of the tower that had been sealed off long before, said to have held plundered treasures and torture devices, alike.
From there, the prisoner managed to dig a tunnel, escaping the confines of the nightmarish tower. Unfortunately, the route the prisoner carved dropped him within the burynai burrows that had existed below the Field of Bone. The escapee died quickly at the claws of the burynai treasure defenders, but he was not to be the last.
Believing this to be an attack by the surface races, and an attempt to steal all of their treasures, they retaliated. It was not long before the burynai took Kurn's Tower, and later killed the Dread Torturer, himself, with his own devices of torment. But it would appear that this is not where his story ends, as even before the Shattering, during the Age of Turmoil, rumors of his undead remnants persisted.