Stone Tower

The Stone Tower is a location from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Description
Stone Tower stands to the east of the abandoned kingdom of Ikana. It is easily the largest crafted object in Termina, its height being surpassed only by the mountain of Snowhead, and is multiple times taller than the Clock Tower. It has countless holes on the surface which could be windows, or "murder holes", through which boulders fall. The interior is a huge vertical shaft with floating blocks which move when a certain switch is pressed. The black abyss below the first level implies that there are many sub levels.

History
It is unknown why the Stone Tower was built and by whom. Considering the puzzles and difficult road, it might have been a hideout or military headquarters a long time ago, or it might have been the base of the Garo since their leader is lurking in the temple. However, Igos du Ikana states, "Stone Tower is an impregnable stronghold! Not a hundred of my warriors could topple it!", implying that he died while he and his army tried to climb it, but if so, it is puzzling why would build a huge castle so near the enemy stronghold and not something simpler. Another theory is the tower might have been built by the Four Giants since it would have been extremely difficult for human beings to build it such a massive and complicated structure without today's construction equipment. The Tower also contains a reference to the Triforce: after inverting the tower so it goes upside-down, the floating stones you can jump across have the Triforce on the bottom (what you'll be standing on). Also, the pillars in east Termina field that are standing on either side of the road leading to the tower, have the Triforce on them.

The Temple
The Tower might also be nothing but a protective cluster for the even more puzzling Stone Tower Temple, located on top. The fourth Giant is held there by the giant centipedes Twinmold. The most wondrous thing of all is the Ruby Emblem directly under the temple entrance. If the emblem is fired upon with a Light Arrow, gravity is reversed and objects are now attracted to the sky instead of the earth, further implying that the tower was not built by humans. It also explains the numerous sub-levels which keep the tower from falling down to the sky. The gravity-flip must be restricted to Stone Tower since the seas and people in Clock Town are still there afterwards and time moves normally.

The lair of Twinmold is reached by falling into the sky through a hole in the flipped temple. The hole differs from the other pits since sand appears to float in it and vaguely forms a whirlpool, through which the sky and sun can still be seen. The hole appears to be some kind of portal to a pocket dimension, since when Link falls through it, he finds himself not falling into the sky, but into a seemingly endless desert where Twinmold lives. In the desert there are some small pillars with several Majora's Mask pictures carved into it; this might imply that this was the home of the creators of Majora's Mask. Exploration of the desert is very restricted since if Link walks too far off, he will sink into the sand at an incredibly rapid rate. This might mean that the sand on the arena is on a mountain, or maybe even an ancient temple (possibly the one used by the ancient tribe that created the mask).

The Garo as the creators of Majora's Mask
The tower has clear connections to the Triforce, Majora's Mask, and the Four Giants. The fact that the Eastern Giant is held at the top of the tower seems to indicate that he was tasked with protecting the Stone Tower Temple. The presence of the Triforce also is puzzling, as whoever built the tower obviously had knowledge of its existence. It is possible the Garo, the shadow warriors whose leader is found within the Stone Tower Temple, were the creators of Majora's Mask, and that the pocket dimension Link fights Twinmold in was once a temple they had built to house the mask, or possibly the place in which they sealed it away since gamers learn that the "ancient tribe" sealed the mask away "in shadow." Due to the statement of Ikana's Igos du Ikana that his army could not topple the Stone Tower, it seems clear that whoever was inhabiting the temple eventually became enemies of the kingdom of Ikana. Igos also mentions that when the "doors of the Stone Tower" were opened, a curse flowed from its summit that laid waste to the entire region. This could possibly be the reason he and his soldiers attempted to climb the tower, to shut off the source of the curse and to destroy the ones that opened the doors of the Stone Tower.

The Garo rediscover Majora's Mask
Another more likely possibility is that the "ancient tribe" that created Majora's Mask built the tower and the Stone Tower Temple. Whoever built the tower had some knowledge of magic, since they infused the Ruby Emblem with the power to invert the tower and reverse gravity. This would also explain the appearance of the Triforce both within the temple itself and on the statues that line the way to Ikana Canyon, since the dark tribe was skilled in magic and likely knew of the Triforce due to its limitless magical power. Perhaps to mock the Triforce, they created Majora's Mask in a manner similar to the Fused Shadow of the Twili, but found that their creation caused entirely too much trouble. If this is so, they could have sealed the mask away within the pocket dimension of Twinmold inside the very temple they created it within as stated earlier before their race disappeared. Centuries later, the Garo could have taken control of the tower some time later as a means of a headquarters from which to fight the rival kingdom of Ikana, and accidentally re-opened the pocket dimension, rediscovering the mask in the process. The unsealing of Majora's Mask could then have created Twinmold to inhabit the pocket dimension and act as the source of the curse that turned Ikana into a wasteland. If this is so, the Garo could have turned the Stone Tower Temple into their base of operations and sparked a war against the kingdom of Ikana, in which Igos and his soldiers attempted to climb the tower to defeat the Garo and "close the doors" of the Stone Tower Temple to stem the curse that was slowly turning them into undead skeletons. Igos and his soldiers died in the attempt to climb the tower, (some evidence of this would be that after Keeta is defeated by Link he tells him, "Tell them the war is over" refering to his soldiers) and the Garo were cursed as well by the birth of Twinmold. In this manner, Majora's Mask found its way back into the world and into the hands of the Happy Mask Salesman years later. This would explain why both the Ikanans and the Garo are cursed as a result of the Stone Tower Temple and explain the unsealing of Majora's Mask since the Garo appear to have a little knowledge of magic and it appears unlikely the Mask Salesman would know the necessary magic to unseal the mask from its resting place.

Avian species
This theory states that Stone Tower was originally a home for an ancient Avian race (such as the Oocca or the Rito). This race created the Stone Tower, but not for the same purposes as its later uses were. The many "holes" on the temple served as living quarters for the members of this race, and the temple perhaps served as a town center or something similar (such as a place of worship for the Giant of the Eastern Canyon). The evidence of this is that the tower has many holes that serve very little practical purpose and that it would be very difficult to traverse, let alone make, a place with so many gaps unless the beings that made the tower had wings.

Later this race either died out or was conquered by another group. Whatever happened, the Giants' followers later inhabited the tower. They realized that, as it already was, it was well defended because of the difficulty moving around in it. This new group used magic to create a massive system of traps and other self-defensive mechanisms for the tower. Years later, this group drifted away from the tower and settled around it forming the kingdom of Ikana.

After many prosperous years, Ikana started disputing with a foriegn nation. This nation sent the Garo to spy on Ikana. They decided that the now uninhabited Stone Tower would serve as a decent base of operations. The Garo started investigating the temple by climbing through the eyeholes of the temple, because they realized that the main door might have been trapped by the former inhabitants.

The Garo spied on Ikana and dug the passage under the well so they could enter the castle without drawing attention to themselves. They were caught and attempted to retreat back to the temple as Igos du Ikana and his men pursued them. They forgot about the traps and unleashed a curse by opening the formal entrance to the temple. The curse slew them all and years later the events of Majora's Mask take place.

Termina's Tower of Babel
Another theory suggests that the Stone Tower was built to reach the heavens. An ancient people built Stone Tower as a stairway to the heavens. They would invade the Sacred Realm and slay the Goddesses of the Triforce, using the power of the Giant's Mask, proveing once and for all that the four Giants were superior to the three female deities.

The Goddesses were not pleased, so they let their divine Light Arrows fall into the hands of these wicked people. When the Light of Justice shone upon the blood-stained emblem of the tower, it rearranged things. The world was reversed so that the earth was positioned in the heavens and the sky was beneath the people's feet.

The people came across a strange portal in the sky, and when they entered it they were transported into another dimension. But this dimension was not the Sacred Realm they had hoped to find. The universe had been flipped upside-down, and so the stairway to the heavens had become the road to Hell. This dark realm consisted of a vast desert scorched by violent sandstorms. And in this realm there lived an evil being, a monster that had been sealed away after its makers realized the extent of its dark powers.

It was Majora's Mask. The wicked people delighted in their discovery, and brought it back with them into their world. They built monuments to the mask in both the desert and in the temples of their own world. And so their world became marked by the devil. This cursed land was thus given the name Termina, because it was doomed to end.

Twinmold as a corrupted guardian
Still another theory states that the Garo did indeed create the mask, but when they realized how evil and powerful it was, they sealed it into the pocket dimension with Twinmold to guard it. They also implanted the Ruby Emblem to assure that only one who had the power to defeat the mask could actually reach it. Then they where killed by Igos De Ikana, in the proccess releasing the curse, leaving the Stone Temple-and abandoned. If this theory is true, it would seem that the Stone Tower is, in fact, the "shadows" where the mask was locked away(referring to the Happy Mask Salesman's line to you at the start of the game.) The Happy Mask Salesman apparently didn't realize that the mask was evil, removing the mask from its prison. Twinmold, either corrupted by the masks dark energy when it was released or twisted by shame when the mask was removed, transformed into the form Link fights. The happy mask salesman was on his way through the woods to Clock Town, possibly to sell the mask, but was waylaid by the Skull Kid. Another side effect of the release was the dark energy twisting the spirits of the Garo, that still lingered in the temple, into the demonic creatures known as Garo Robes.