Tesem Temple of Shadow

The Temple of Shadow, once a monastery dedicated to the Queen of Dreams now the home of Iskaral Pust.   It is located in Seven Cities.

Description

' Like massive limestone slabs each resting against the other, the cliffs rose from the desert floor the height of four hundred arm-spans. Gouged across the weathered face were deep fissures, and tucked inside the largest of these, a hundred and fifty arm-spans above the sands, was a tower. A single arched window showed black against the bricks.' - (DG, UK MMPB, p.104)

'The squat, cyclopean walls leaned and sagged in the lower levels, as if buckling under the weight of the stone overhead. Dust sifted like water from the ceiling joins in places, leaving pyramids on the paving stones' -(DG, UK MMPB, p.458)

'A place of healing. Solitary reflection, repository of scrolls and tomes, and insatiable nuns....' - Icarium  DG, UK MMPB, p.114

'The entire main floor of the monastery radiated in a circular pattern around a single room that was occupied by a circular staircase of stone leading down into darkness...'The level we're on is carved from living rock - the cliff's limestone. It's rather soft. But beneath it are cut granite blocks. I believe the crypt is an older construct.'...The spiral steps showed the last vestiges of marble tiling, but the passage of many feet long ago had worn most of them away. Beneath, the hard granite defied all evidence of erosion.

The stairs continued down and down. At the seventieth step they ended in the centre of an octagonally walled chamber. Friezes decorated each wall, the colours hinted at in the many shades of grey. Beyond the staircase's landing, the floor was honeycombed with rectangular pits, cut down through the tiles and the granite blocks beneath removed. These blocks were now stacked over what was obviously a portalway. Within each pit was a shrouded corpse.

...

'These paintings do not belong to the cult of the Queen,'...the scenes on the walls revealed a dark mythos. Thick fir trees reared black, moss-stained boles on all sides. The effect created was of standing a glade deep in an ancient forest. Between the trunks here and there was the hint of hulking, four-legged beasts, their eyes glowing as if in reflected moonlight...The hallway (beyond the barrier) stretched before them, a wide collonade lined by twin columns that were nothing less than the trunks of cedars. Each bole was at least an arm-span in diameter. The shaggy, gouged bark remained, although most of it had fallen away and now lay scattered over the floor.' - (DG, UK MMPB, p.171-3)

The Hidden Chamber

'At the lowest levels of this temple there lies a chamber. Its floor - flagstones - displays a series of carvings. Inscribing something like a Deck of Dragons. Neither Icarium nor I have seen anything like it before. If it is indeed a Deck, it's an Elder version. Not Houses, but Holds, the forces more elemental, more raw and primitive.' - Mappo -(DG, UK MMPB, p.455)

'It has the feel of Kurald Galain, that is all. The feel of Dark. It is not Omtose Phellack nor Tellann. Not Starvald Demelain. I know of no other Elder Warrens.' -(DG,UK MMPB, p.173)

'...the hallway ended three hundred and thirty paces later, opening out into another octagonal chamber, this one with its floor raised a hand's width higherthan that of the hallway. Each flagstone was also octagonal, and on each of them images had been intricately carved, then defaced with gouges and scoring in what seemed entirely random, frenzied destruction...The air stank of sorcery, old, stale and clammy and dense with power. Like waves of heat, magic bled from the flagstones, from the images carved upon them and the wounds many of those images now bore...(Icarium) 'the stench from those claw marks differs from what rises from the flagstones themselves'...(Mappo) 'Soletaken. D'ivers. The spice of shapeshifters...The Path of Hands...The Gate - it's here.'' - (DG,UK MMPB, p.173-4)

The Mysterious Part:

'More than a gate, I think...Look upon the undamaged carvings - what do they remind you of?'...(Mappo) scanned the array with growing certainty, but the realization it offered held no answers, only more questions.'I see the likeness, yet there is an...unlikeness as well. Even more irritating, I can think of no possible linkage...' - Icarium - (DG,UK MMPB, p.174)

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