Relic

Relic is the Tower’s most important material form of advancement. A Relic is not merely an enchanted possession: it can add damage, unlock an Ability, complete or disrupt a Build, define a Climber’s fighting method, and become bound to memories of first success. Because Relics are also objects that can be sold, stolen, recovered, consumed, or lost, they connect power to ownership and survival. The category therefore sits at the intersection of the System’s rules, personal ambition, and the dangerous material history of the Tower.

Definition and Acquisition

Relics enter the story through several channels rather than through a single standardized supply. Will’s inheritance begins with the Uru Drake scale that arrived at Saint Gertrude’s Orphanage bearing only his name and address. The leather satchel associated with it looks plain, yet its material behavior suggests subtle enchantment: it always fits, never sits off-balance, and weighs slightly less than it should. The object establishes an early pattern for Relics, in which an apparently ordinary exterior can conceal a technical or magical function.

The acquisition of a Relic can also be ritualized. When pemmican touches an Altar, a beam of light descends, grows brighter, and flashes until the sacrifice disappears. The System then presents the choice of Primary Abilities, including Phantom Hand. In this framework, advancement is not simply the discovery of treasure; it is a transaction involving Sacrifice, an Altar, an interface, and a resulting Ability. The repeated appearance of System notices such as “Quest Received!” and “New Quest!” places Relics within a larger procedural economy in which rewards and obligations are formally announced.

Relics are also encountered as commercial goods and battlefield resources. A merchant displays an apparatus that drains blood from victims to make arrowheads and a wand that strengthens cold Abilities, showing that the category includes specialized devices whose value depends on a user’s intended combat method. Will later acquires five rings, two amulets, a bangle, and a tiny dagger from Travis’s father’s office. Their provenance is theft, but their immediate status is practical: they are valuable equipment that can be assessed, exchanged, or integrated into a Build.

Effects, Slots, and Build Logic

A Relic’s importance lies in what it does and in how its effect interacts with other equipment. Ben’s first Relic, Sting Ring, adds a small amount of acid damage to attacks. Once he has Charge, it can also launch an unerring acid bolt. The ring therefore illustrates a two-stage form of value: its passive effect matters immediately, while its more dramatic Ability depends on a later resource or progression state.

The same tension governs Will’s relationship with his first Relic. He is fond of it even though selling it and replacing it with cheaper Relics would give him a more complete Build. Sentimental attachment and optimization pull in opposite directions. A Relic can be both a keepsake and an inefficient allocation of an equipment slot; the better choice for survival may require surrendering the object that marks an earlier achievement.

Specific Relics are classified by bodily position and tactical function. Cloak of Misty Escape occupies the torso slot, while Headband of the Sharpshooter belongs to the equipment associated with a Ranger’s precision. Will examines Alicia Zodiac’s kit after her corpse is cut from the ice, and the preserved body bears Relics across nearly every part of the body except the missing head. The arrangement makes equipment legible as a visible record of a person’s combat identity, even when the person’s life and name have been reduced to a corpse in the ice.

A Relic may also be valuable without fitting the wearer’s chosen construction. Loth examines Ring of Arcane Endurance and considers it tempting, but rejects it because it is merely good rather than synergistic with her Build. Later, she slides other rings across a table to Will after both recognize that the items are off-Build for them while still being highly valuable. Build logic thus creates a distinction between abstract worth and personal usefulness: an item can be excellent, expensive, and still wrong for a particular body of abilities.

Phantom Hand and Imprinted Effects

Phantom Hand gives Relics a particularly flexible relation to the body. Its associated Ability, Relic Focus, requires the sacrifice of a Relic Worm so that the Ability’s Scaling can apply to any Relic effects imprinted on Phantom Hand. This transforms equipment from something carried in a conventional slot into something that can be transferred into an Ability-bearing construct. The Relic’s effect becomes part of a composite system, while the Relic Worm supplies the cost of making that expansion possible.

The arrangement also clarifies why Will’s missing hand does not simply mean the end of his equipment-based progression. He asks Leon to add a lanyard to his new weapon because he expects the practical problems of fighting with one hand, yet Phantom Hand offers a different route: Relic effects can be gathered, scaled, and used through an artificial or supernatural extension. The story consequently treats bodily limitation as a design problem within the Build rather than as a purely medical condition.

This design logic favors combination over isolated strength. A single Relic may be impressive, but an effect becomes more consequential when it can be imprinted, scaled, and coordinated with other abilities. The category therefore supports the book’s broader progression structure: equipment is not only loot to be collected, but a grammar through which a Climber engineers a fighting style.

Ownership, Loss, and Material Consequences

Relics repeatedly expose the unstable boundary between possession and dispossession. Will’s later haul from Travis’s father’s office consists of multiple rings, amulets, a bangle, and a dagger, but acquisition does not guarantee a stable future. When he equips recovered equipment and checks his statistics, the act resembles an inventory update; when all of his gear except his amulet and rings later disappears, the same system becomes an image of vulnerability. Progress can be quantified through equipment, yet equipment can vanish while the character remains alive.

The category also carries the residue of death. Alicia Zodiac’s body is preserved beneath clear ice, still wearing Relics and accompanied by a bow, but without a head. Will inspects and recovers her kit while the corpse is cut free. The Relics survive their owner, turning personal power into salvage and making the dead part of the living economy of Climbing. In this setting, recovery is materially useful but morally and narratively charged: equipment preserves a trace of a former build even after the person who created it is gone.

Relics can be destroyed or repurposed rather than merely worn. A Consumable Relic grants its full effect when the user consumes only 80 percent of it; the remaining 20 percent may be reserved to ferment a new Consumable Relic if powdered Relics, time, and additional Charges are supplied. Its Scaling depends on Resistance. This rule makes consumption a form of controlled partial destruction and turns Relics into raw material for further production. The item is simultaneously a finished tool, a resource reserve, and a possible seed for another item.

Ring of Total Freedom and the Meaning of Relics

Ring of Total Freedom exemplifies how a single Relic can alter the relationship between a body and its environment. The ring hides itself while gradually wearing away Physical, Mental, energy-based, causal, and Ability-based Bindings. It helps the wearer escape grapples, adhesives, and engulfing attacks, resist slowing debuffs, and pass through spaces considerably narrower than the body would otherwise allow. Its Scaling depends on Focus. Rather than increasing damage directly, it expands the wearer’s available actions by loosening constraints imposed by enemies, matter, and abilities.

That function gives the category a thematic center. Relics promise power, but their deeper importance lies in converting danger into a problem that can be manipulated: acid becomes ranged offense, a corpse becomes a source of equipment, a damaged body becomes a site for Phantom Hand, and a binding becomes something that can be slowly worn away. Yet the same objects expose dependence. Will’s fondness for a first Relic competes with the demands of an optimized Build; Loth’s judgment separates general quality from synergy; and the disappearance of nearly all Will’s gear demonstrates how quickly accumulated power can become absence.

Relic is therefore both a game-like equipment class and the Tower’s material archive. Every item carries an effect, a slot, a cost, or a rule, but it may also carry a history of inheritance, sacrifice, commerce, theft, death, or loss. Through Relics, the book makes progression tangible: ambition appears as inventory, identity appears as Build, and survival depends on knowing when an object should be treasured, combined, sold, stolen, consumed, or abandoned.