Holy Temple

The Holy Temple at Mt. Daneasus is one of the most beautiful and impressive temples to ORB in the land. The Temple is the center of religious life in the city, and also a major pilgrimage site.

Creation

Carved from solid rock, rather than built, the main temple facility was completed in the Year of the Sun 675 after more than two centuries of work. Outlying buildings and additional facilities, including the reliquary, were constructed from 675 until 843. One of the largest religious facilities in Crescent, this Temple became a second home to the Church of ORB, rivaling the Spire in terms of influence, wealth, knowledge, and political power.

Carved from the very rock of the Mountain itself, the Temple is located at the heart of the city, under a specially designed chimney that allows ORB's light to shine upon the altar.

Destruction

It was in the Year of the Sun 843 that disaster apparently struck. The College of Mages, in the midst of a war with the Church, struck at Mt. Daneasus, and caused the Temple, and all its priests and servants to vanish without a trace. All that was left were the bottom three stairs of the staircase that had led to the main Chapel, and which now led to a perfectly spherical hole in the rock, 600 yards across.

Fortunately, the destruction of the Temple was accompanied by very limited casualties, as most of the normal occupants had been called by Valanthe Amakiir to the Grand Concert Hall in Luminaux. There, they took part in the ritual magic that brought low the Jade Tower.

The Temple, however, was believed lost forever.

Sìorraidh

The temple residents who vanished, mostly a small Templar force and some attending priests, were immediately beatified by Field Marshal Bright-Eyes, and the site declared an inviolate Holy Site.

In 980, Duram Gangi calls a pilgrimage to the site of the Temple a requirement of the true practice of the Faith of Light, there to pray for the fallen.

Normal prayer ritual requires walking once around the perimeter of the crater (a journey of approximately a mile), kneeling at the base of the stairs for dawn prayers, and the ceremonial throwing of a flower into the crater. Traditionally, it's a small white flower called sìorraidh (eternal, in dwarven).

Oddities

Several notable oddities were observable at the Temple Site.

The ley lines which run through the city and cross at the very altar, simply stopped at the border of the missing temple, and then picked up again at the other side, as though nothing had happened. It is unclear what caused this phenomenon.

The missing section of crater was perfectly spherical, as measured by the best dwarven and gnomish surveying tools. The Temple Site was used at times to calibrate such instrumentation.

The flowers, rather than piling up into mulch, seem to disappear at dawn each day.