Illyriad Broken Lands Naming Competition!

sorrowful Ruin

Augmentum

All names based on the sundering itself, or the state of the land afterwards, are at best ways to re-name the tower. It (Luna tells us) "was the center of the now defunct Order of Silver Light", so surely (existed and) had a name when it was their strong-hold, before the sundering.

By the looks of the land after the sundering, either someone meddled with powers beyond their ability to control or the tower's defenders found themselves besieged and in such desperate straits that they used a weapon of last resort, obliterating a vast host of enemies by convulsing the lands around the fortress. Given that this tower was the centre of the Order's power, and that the order is now defunct, I'm inclined to suppose the latter; the Order's enemies, uniting against them, came in great force to crush them, but were themselves destroyed.

Babbling prophets (see the Herald article) tell us the Silver Light was good for a thousand years, but to be wary of its heirs. Perhaps the order went to the bad, which might be why some vast force attacked it. Of course the heirs the prophets refer to may be those left after the sundering, in which case the silver light were good guys and we can guess the siege was by the forces of evil, crushed by the sacrifice of the last of the order, breaking the land to purge it of evil. Either way, I think it's safe to suppose the tower was named back when the Order was good. If the order turned, the name may have become ironic even before the sundering.

The eye of the storm survives unscathed, but nothing about the land around it today is any clue to how the land was before the cataclysm (which leaves plenty of scope for retro-fitting, hence for us to make up what we think was there). We also have no idea what language the natives speak, much less spoke. Seeking a name that predates the sundering, I thus suggest:

Argyros Pharos, from the ancient Greek for silver and light-house.

Technically, Pharos is the name of the island on which the ur-light-house was built: however, the name ended up getting used as the word for light-house, as here. In any case, this gives us some twist in the name, since our tower has indeed ended up on an island, regardless of the prior surroundings.

Given the association of "silver light" with the Moon, my second suggestion is:

Tor Selenos, combining a word for a tower (but equally for a peak) with one of the names sometimes used for the Moon.

Unfortunately, Dr. Strangelove gives no place-name for its secret Soviet über-weapon, or I'd have based a suggestion on that. If I think of a third in the remaining days, I'll follow up with it.

The tower is unlikely to be black by virtue of being tarnished silver, as I notice one commenter speculate. It'd be silly to make a tower of silver: it lacks the hardness for defensive structures and is insanely expensive. Silversteel, on the other hand, has good properties that might indeed make it worth enduring insane expense to use it as a building material. I know nothing of its corrosion behaviour.

Aral wrote: Good thinking, but now that people realize that won't it make the competition harder for you?

If it means we get better entries, so much the better. Winning would be nice, but helping the devs pick a good name for the tower is more important.

Dark Heart