Owner: Doctor Fate
Designation: Power Foci
Affiliation: Doctor Fate
First Appearance:
- More Fun Comics #55 (May, 1940)
Brief:
The Tower of Fate was created as a safe haven for the host(s) of the "Doctor Fate" persona and as such the tower contains many valuable artefacts and tomes, both magical and non-magical, to that have been accumulated by the various "Doctor Fates" throughout their careers.
While originally physically appearing as a slim, but tall, brick tower crowned with ramparts standing alone in a forest clearing near the town of Salem, Massachusetts, the Tower "proper" actually rests on "The Nexus of the Subtle Realms" and exists outside conventional space and time. As the tower has no physical doors or windows, only the Doctor Fate may freely enter or leave unassisted. The Doctors can allow other persons or objects to enter the tower, but only if they are touching them.
History:
Having been residing within the tower for over forty years, Inza eventually began to resent her effective imprisonment in the tower and her life as a mere observer and medic while her husband was repeatedly being controlled by Nabu to fight the forces of Chaos. She would write a journal during her frequent moments of isolation and at one point attempted to write a biography about herself and her husband.
When the forces of Order surmised that it was better to let Chaos take over and wait for it to destroy itself they withdrew from the conflict between the two forces and the world plunged into the "Kali Yuga" (the Age of Chaos) and Nabu's power began to weaken. As a result, Kent and Inza began to age and Inza's mind broke due to the insanity rampant around her. After she committed suicide within the Tower, Kent was left to fight the forces of Chaos alone.
Nabu guided Kent into finding a new Doctor Fate; Eric and Linda Strauss, and Kent himself was allowed to die; his body buried next to his wife's outside the Tower and their spirits were placed inside a "heaven realm" inside the Amulet of Anubis by Nabu. When Nabu disavowed himself from the forces of Order shortly thereafter for their actions, he was cast back to Earth; destroying the Tower in the process.
Using Kent's corpse as a vessel, Nabu resided within the Strauss' Dakota Apartments in New York City to guide the pair in their duty as Doctor Fate until, after two years of fighting the forces of Chaos, Eric was killed by the magic that Nabu had used to age him to adulthood and the mantle of Doctor Fate began to reject Linda from using its power. Returning to a rebuilt Tower, Nabu had Linda and their friends help return Kent and Inza to the mortal realm before Linda died subduing the "Anti-Fate". As the souls of both Eric and Linda were transferred to the bodies of Eugene and Wendy DiBellia to serve as the parents and guardians of a mystically important child, Nabu was reborn as the pair's newborn child, whom they raised alongside their initial charge.
Able to use Doctor Fate's power free from Nabu's control but not wishing to remain within the Tower as they had previously done, Kent and Inza magically connected the Tower to an apartment building in New York City that Kent had inherited from his father in the 1940s. While the Kents still visited the Tower when in need of research or to use the site as a power foci (such as during the War of the Gods incident), the duo largely resided within their apartment until the Zero Hour incident when Extant separated the pair from the artefacts of Doctor Fate.
Unable to retrieve the artefacts before they were acquired by mercenary Jared Stevens, Kent and Inza were able to transport Stevens to the Tower before he could deliver the artefacts to his employer but the artefacts refused to bond with them again. As the Tower was invaded and both Inza and her husband were killed by minions of the demon Kingdom, the Amulet of Anubis was destroyed in the battle and the resulting explosion destroyed the Tower once again.
While Stevens survived the explosion and became the new avatar of Fate, the Tower and amulet's combined destruction left a tear in reality where the Tower once stood near Salem, Massachusetts.
Left barren, the Tower's ruins were ransacked by various mystics and sorcerers who sought to acquire the various mystical artefacts that the Tower once contained. Learning of this, Stevens and Sentinel (Alan Scott) united in an attempt to thwart these mystics only to bare witness as Master Ashram misread a scroll of summoning and accidentally turned the tear into a doorway to hell that enabled Blaze and Nekron to enter Earth's reality.
With Stevens' help, Sentinel was able to close the doorway and seal the tear before Nekron was fully able to enter Earth's reality.
Cursed to wander the Earth forever as ghosts by Nabu after they aided in thwarting his attempt to break the sanctioned unity between the Lords of Chaos and Order (seeing the alliance as a "perversion"), the Kents wandered the ruins of the Tower until Sentinel acquired the aid of the Spectre (Jim Corrigan) to allow them admittance into Heaven.
After Jared Stevens was killed by Mordru, the Tower was restored once again and the Artefacts of Fate returned to remain within the tower until the new Doctor Fate, Hector Hall, was able to claim them. Following his possession of the mantle, Hector made the Tower accessible from an invisible doorway within a park in Salem.
As part of his plan to gain control of the world, Mordru, along with Obsidian and Eclipso (the three dubbed the "Princes of Darkness"), usurped the power of Doctor Fate and took control of the Tower until Hector took the power back.
During the return of the Curse, Hector was overpowered and Salem overrun. Due to this the Tower was physically modified and remained so even after Hector returned and defeated the villain.
Following Hector's discovery that his missing wife, Lyta Hall (aka Fury), had been placed inside the Amulet of Anubis by Nabu, he returned her to the normal world and the two lived together within the Tower until it was invaded by the Spectre during his attack on all magical beings. The Halls were de-powered and banished to a hell dimension by the Spectre where the two would eventually die, although their souls were saved by their son, Daniel Hall.
At the conclusion of the Elongated Man's journey after the Infinite Crisis incident, Ralph Dibny ended up on the inside of the Tower where he confronted Felix Faust, who had been posing as the Helmet of Nabu for weeks in an effort to fulfil another of his infernal bargains. Turning the tables on Faust and his master; Neron, Ralph tricked Neron into killing him with his own wedding band, sealing both Faust and Neron within the Tower with the help of a spell Fate had taught him. Both Neron and Fauth would eventually escape however, Neron under his own power and Faust by tricking Black Adam after the death of his wife Isis.
In spite of the mantle of Doctor Fate finding a new wearer in Kent V. Nelson, the Tower would remain unused until after the universe was reset by Barry Allen following the Flashpoint incident.
Kent Nelson Era
Inza Cramer-Nelson Era
Jared Stevens Era
Hector Hall Era
Trivia[]
- To permit Inza to pass through the tower's walls, Doctor Fate cast a special spell over her. It had the unexpected side-effect of retarding her aging-process like Kent's.
- Doctor Fate can sense whether someone is trying to enter the tower.
- If Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson) was ever in trouble, he would flee to the tower via a "spell of detection" that reaches beyond the multiverse. This spell would detect his wife, Inza Nelson, so he could use her as a beacon to reach the tower.
- The most valuable possession in the tower is the Orb of Nabu, an all seeing orb that lets the Doctor see past, current and future events. If someone other than the Doctors are touching the orb, similar information shall be revealed about them. The Orb of Nabu also warned Fate of potential dangers within the DCU and beyond.
- Although existing in an alternate dimension, the Tower can be reached by anyone with the knowledge of its location, although finding anything within its infinite expanse takes specific knowledge of the Tower. Hourman's Timeship is also capable of reaching the Tower.
- The tower's labyrinth holds doorways to every corner of the universe, every dimension known and unknown.