The Simurgh

The tower rose at an angle, neither vertical nor horizontal but also both, in a beautiful duality.  The tower was also a single staircase.  Standing at the top, the Simurgh looked down at all 777 stairs that spilled out onto the landing and, a few feet further, the mountainside beyond.

At the top, she walked past her door before they sat on her divan.  Feeling peckish, she considered eating a flan, but instead chose to go for a flight.  She spread all sixty of her wings and flew out all thirty of her windows.  

Below the tower was the Garden of Earthly Delights, draped with all sorts of treasures and seldom-remembered plants.  Trespassers were turned into birds when they entered the garden, and most of them still flitted between the honeysuckles.  They were searching for new songs, and would not be allowed to leave until they found one.

Each birdsong is a spell, and each spell is a demon, and for this reason birdsongs are very important, and must be watched carefully.  If a newly discovered song was dangerous, the Simurgh would very rapidly feed it to one of the great orns that roamed the garden, shoving through the boughs with their heavy heads, awaiting permission to be hungry.

About the Simurgh

The Simurgh is one of the few creatures that existed on Centerra prior to the Time of Fire and Madness.  It is said that she does not know everything, but that she knows the answer to any question that a human is capable of asking.  (Put another way, her unknowns are our inconceivable.)

She has 9 Hit Dice but has a couple of powerful abilities, such as Being Both a Swarm and a Single Creature (which is more advantageous).

Although conversing with the Simurgh is both pleasant and enlightening, she represents something inconceivable according to our current worldview.  This dissonance causes trauma, and eventually insanity.

But it is not the same madness as one would gain from staring up the cloaca of Cthulhu.  It is perhaps better described as an enlightenment that allows to one to see the world from a different point of view.  Every way of seeing is also an infinite number of ways of not-seeing.  This madness merely permits another way of seeing.

Which is all nice and poetic in theory, but in practice it involves walking off cliffs and being unable to see (or even perceive) things that are clearly visible.