Cass' Tower
Standing in plain sight on a hill overlooking the fishing and farming village of Aelfisborough, a tall basalt tower stands like a foreigner amongst fields of golden wheat and quiet pastures of grazing sheep. Once home to an alchemist with limited social graces and an unfortunate enthusiasm for kidnapping villagers and transmuting them into insectoid abominations to pursue his research, the tower is now home to the mercenary sorcerer Cass, the previous tenant having been evicted by fire and sword. And also bullets.
Within the nearby vicinity of the tower, inside a wildflower-covered hilltop clear of the surrounding fields and pastureland, are a greenhouse and a pond, where once grew valuable plants for an alchemist's practice. Under Cass' oversight, the pond has been cleaned up and subject to significant landscaping, recessed and sheltered from outside view in an enclosure of decorated shrubs and a rock garden. The greenhouse has been converted into a sizeable workshop, containing a small forge, a large 3D printer, and several machines for metal and woodwork. The approach to the tower is a stone path, which cuts through a discreet ha-ha, leading up to the front door, with another path around the side splitting off to the workshop and the pool. The entrance to the tower itself sits well above ground level - a climb of nearly two meters vertically up a staircase that leads up to a sturdy wooden door. One gets the sense that whoever built this tower, they expected to be able to deny access to the tower as they please, though currently it seems easy enough to make the climb and knock directly on the door's prominent metal knocker, if they wished to do so.
The inside structure of the tower looks much the same on every floor - each floor consists of a single circular, open room with basalt walls and a wooden floor. Small windows dot the walls to let in some natural light, though for the most part illumination is provided by soft glowing magical spheres, which nestle inside small recesses in the walls and ceiling. The walls on every floor but the top and bottom are hugged by a staircase which spirals around the tower both up and down, granting access to floors both above and below.
First Floor
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This floor serves as both a general living space, and a kitchen, which takes up roughly a rear third of the floor
The forward space has been set up with a pale grey sofa and matching squishy arm-chairs ringing a glass-topped coffee table and flanked by a small bookcase. Most of the books, of course, are not in the bookcase, but rather tend to be scattered across the table, the arms (and seats) of the sofa, or on the floor. Behind the sofa, a large, well insulated reptile enclosure sits upon a low counter, serving as a home to Ptolemy and Berrossus, Cassandra's pet lightning lizards. A curved flat-screen TV (Trismegistus brand, wide-screen HDTV, sorcerously powered) hangs on the wall opposite the sofa, close to the front door. The remaining space has been decorated with woodblock flower prints, and a baby grand piano dominates the center of the room, between the fore and the rear areas.
The rear part of the room is a functional kitchen with plenty of counter space, a refitted “electric” oven range, and most of the various modern appliances and amenities one would expect to find in a kitchen, albeit most of them seem to run on magic, rather than electricity. A double row of pegs above one counter is home to various knives and kitchen tools, within easy reach, and underneath some flying cabinets is a rack of hanging wine glasses.
Attached to the bottom floor is a turret containing a small half-bathroom, for use by the host and guests.
Sub-Basement and Cellar
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Underneath the first floor, this bare, un-decorated room which sits half-above ground and half-underground currently serves as a larder of sorts. A number of shelves around the room hold stocks of dry and canned goods that didn’t fit in the pantry of the kitchen above, but most notable is the number of wine racks, as well as small casks, sporting a burgeoning collection of fine wines of various varieties, mead, cider, beer, and other booze.
Below that, a second room serves as a cellar, currently largely empty, except for a small number of chests and crates filled with whatever junk Cass didn’t want to have lying around.
Second Floor
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The second floor room is a cozy library and study. The walls are lavishly decorated with a number of sorcerous-looking wall hangings and scrolls, giving the room an enclosed, warm feeling, with one side decorated with a large stone slab with the fossilized imprint of a squid sprawled across its face. Underneath this slab is a large writing desk, scattered with a few paper journals and a laptop computer, with a tall desk chair. The rest of the room is arranged with a number of bookshelves, filled with magical tomes, indexes, encyclopedias, treatises, and other intimidating looking books, though at least one shelf is instead partially stacked with a row of servers, connected to a pair of routers and an odd device that seems to be magically powering the whole set-up. In between the shelves is a very plushy armchair, big enough to curl up into, and a small side table, in front of a magical fireplace, completing the cozy atmosphere of the room.
Third Floor
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This floor of the tower serves as somewhat of a sorcerous workshop. The back of the room is centered around a slightly raised platform, with a heavily smoothed and polished hardwood surface. A shelf on one side of the platform is laden with summoning supplies - chalk of different colors, tin boxes of dried incense and reagents, a set of iron tongs, and a small stool. A tall locked cabinet and some chests are filled with various magical devices and tools. More of them, including a number of magical artifacts looted from the original owner of the tower, hang from a pegboard, the way one might expect mundane tools to be. Below them, on the other side of the summoning floor, is a long, semi-circular enchanting bench, covered in scraps and bobs from one of the occupant's countless projects.
Fourth Floor
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The next floor has been converted into something resembling a mishmash of an armory and a personal gym/training space. Hanging from the walls are several racks meant for holding weaponry. For the most part, these are currently occupied by several staves, some appropriately magical looking, and some not, but also several small swords, rapiers, and daggers. The middle of the floor is covered by a large mat, and a few pieces of physical training equipment, pull-up bars, weights, and the like, are pushed near the wall opposite the weapon racks.
Fifth Floor
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The top floor of the tower is the only room which breaks with the otherwise, enclosed atmosphere of the rest of the tower. Here, large windows open up in four cardinal directions, allowing for both plenty of light and outside air to circulate freely through the room. It's pretty sensible, then, that this most pleasant of rooms serves as Cass' bedroom - to the back of the room is a large bed footed by a thick green rug, and the ceiling is decorated by stylistic tapestry with creeping wildflowers, perfect for tracing the eye across while anxiously awake at 3 am. Near the bed, a large chest, wardrobe, and small bookshelf and table carry a variety of personal belongings, and a small stand with a vase filled with dried flowers and herbs gives a pleasant scent to the room. At one window a telescope and astrolabe has been set up, with a small stand with notes for astronomy.
To the front quarter, a large turret encloses a spacious and luxuriously appointed bathroom, with a large tub perfect for lounging in.
Aelfisborough
The village of Aelfisborough, once a scant farming hamlet with a small handful of people eking out a meagre existence under the fearful shadow of the nearby tower, has undergone somewhat of a revival. Under the protective aegis of the wizard tower's new occupant, who had driven away the previous ownership and some of the surrounding monsters, the village has grown to encompass a population of a few hundred, including those residents of the farms and homesteads sprawling out over the surrounding miles around the western shore of Aelfis Lake. The village itself, clinging to the side of the lake, is about what you'd expect of a large-ish farming village, with houses and community buildings clustered around a large village green and market, including a small temple (shared and maintained by a pair of priests to Chauntea and Lathander), village hall, inn, post office, general store, apothecary, and smithy. Cass, for their part, has maintained a somewhat aloof, though cordial relationship to the village, visiting infrequently on market days for groceries, to collect mail, and occasionally to visit the smithy, in exchange for which they themselves are regarded by the villagers with a somewhat possessive pride and awe, for the 'local' wizard.