The realm of Algoron awaits.

Who Weeps in the Tower of Shalonesti?
(Friday Oct 2, 2026)

Being a true and faithful account set down by Master Odric Pennywhistle, Correspondent at Large, who walked a great many leagues for this story and would like that noted.

Gentle reader, I came to Shalonesti to write about its gardens. I am leaving with something quite different.

On my first night in the city, a little past the second bell, I heard it. A thin, broken weeping drifted down from high in the palace tower and lingered over the rooftops of Emerald Lane. I asked the innkeep who it might be. He set down his cup, looked at me for a long moment, and told me the kitchen was closed.

I asked a palace guard. He said there was nobody in the tower. I asked him why, then, a guard was posted at the foot of a stair leading to nobody. He said that was a very good question and that I should ask it somewhere else.

I asked an elderly elf feeding pigeons in the square, a woman who told me with some pride that she had seen three centuries come and go. She said the weeping was older than she was. It was older than her grandmother, too, and her grandmother's grandmother had heard it as a girl. When I asked whose voice it was, she said, "That is the strange part, scribbler. No one has ever known." Then she scattered the rest of her crumbs and walked away.

Consider this, reader. The elves of Shalonesti forget nothing. They remember every insult, every treaty and every unpaid tab. Yet in a city of such long memories, nobody can tell me who has been crying above their heads for longer than any of them have been alive. Either all of them have forgotten, or all of them would rather I did.

My inquiries led me at last to the palace itself. I am told the Duchess of Shalonesti holds the only key to the uppermost room. I was granted a brief audience. She was gracious, she was weary, and she chose each word with great care. She would not say who waits up there. When I pressed her, she said she could not, which is a different thing entirely.

Then she said something I have turned over in my head every night since. She said that some doors are not hers to open for her own people, but that a stranger, someone with no name in this city, might be another matter. She mentioned the tower, glanced at the ceiling, and our audience was over.

I am a journalist, reader, not a hero. My knees do not care for stairs and my nerves do not care for ghosts. So I put the question to you, the bold, the curious and the foolish. Somewhere above the palace something has been grieving for longer than memory, and the one woman who holds the key is waiting for an outsider to ask her about it.

If you go, I beg you, come back and tell me what you found. I have a deadline.

Master Pennywhistle is presently lodging at an inn on Emerald Lane, where he reports he still has not been served dinner.