Baifa Monü Zhuan
- Intent: To continue to extend the lore of Atrisia
- Image Credit: Generated with AI
- Canon: N/A
- Links: Kazue Stone
- Structure Name: Vael Aser
- Classification: Temple
- Location: Atrisia
- Affiliation: Atrisian Commonwealth
- Accessibility: The temple's location presents a study in contrast: difficult to find, but easy to navigate once inside. The structure itself is fairly remote, nestled high in the snow-packed mountains. The only visible sign is a single, seamless dome of kazue stone, which is rendered nearly invisible from the outside against the snowy peaks. Despite the challenging journey to find the entrance, the interior is designed for easy transit. A central, rotating spire grants access to the various internal rooms and gardens. Since each room is accessible for one full day annually, people can easily roam within the currently open sections.
- Description: The Temple of the Atrisians is a colossal structure, mostly concealed undergroundwithin the mountain. The above-ground component is limited to two linked structures. The visible top layer is a glittering, highly-polished white marble dome. It's masterfully carved and precision-cut to interlock, giving the appearance of a single, monolithic piece of stone. Beneath this dome lies a circular chamber with a central spire that descends deep into the planet's interior. This central shaft is immense, measuring 2,093.976 meters in depth and consisting of 687 circular, stacked rooms. Walkways descend through a series of galleries, revealing the temple's sheer scale as a massive structure encased within the mountain's shell. At the base, the structure connects to and draws from an underground river. The central spire revolves, powered by geothermal energy, and is capped by an orrery representing the Atrisian solar system. The spire's rotation is synchronized with the planet's orbit: a single yearly revolution grants access to the six hundred and eighty-seven central rooms, with only one room's doorway open for a single day before being sealed again.
Gardens: These are middle sections situated between the central spire's walkways and the mountain's exterior shell. They are overgrown and rarely tended, creating a wild, natural sanctuary within the stone. The gardens are maintained by an ingenious, automated system of mirrors and ice-fed irrigation. This design requires almost no input from a sentient being, ensuring their survival in the temple's austere environment.
The Spire: Is the temple's core mechanism, consisting of the stacked ring rooms revolving around a central pillar. Its rotation is a precise, yearly cycle, designed to align with the planet's solar revolution, thereby opening a single ring room's doorway for one day before it rotates out of alignment. The spire is powered by simple, durable geothermal taps, built for longevity and requiring minimal maintenance to ensure its constant, slow-moving revolution.
The Obsidian Docks: At the very base of the spire, where the temple connects to the underground river, lies the Obsidian Docks. Fashioned from rough-hewn, black volcanic rock, these docks are less a place of welcome and more a stark, functional loading point. Worn stone steps descend into the murky, frigid waters, where chained, flat-bottomed skiffs are moored. Flickering, phosphorescent fungi cling to the damp walls, casting an eerie, green glow on the narrow passages that branch off into the mountain's deeper reaches. These tunnels lead to the 'Deep Cells': ancient, purpose-built caverns carved out for holding particularly dangerous or sensitive individuals, long before the temple's current purpose. The air is heavy here, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and forgotten echoes.
SECURITY
Low: Built with a very remote and hard to reach location and exterior walls that blend in with the snow and ice very effectively. There are no real defenses aside from heavy Kazue Stone doors and its location. The visible dome is interlocking and solid looking kazue stone.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The temple's existence was unknown for millennia until its accidental discovery by the Atrisian Commonwealth during a geological survey and exploration mission. The pristine, almost invisible nature of the marble dome led the expedition team to dub it simply "The Temple," lacking any other frame of reference for the structure's scale or function.
Initial attempts to understand the mechanics were slow. The central spire's intricate design utilized physics and engineering principles unseen in contemporary Atrisian architecture, suggesting an advanced, pre-unification civilization. It took extensive research to finally map the spire's complex rotation to the planet's annual orbit, revealing the structure's time-locked nature and confirming its function as a kind of colossal astronomical clock.
The true purpose of the temple was unlocked not by technology, but by narrative. Murals covering the interior galleries offered tantalizing, if fragmented, historical records. They depicted a legendary era, predating even the Unification Wars that shaped modern Atrisia. The dominant theme is a ferocious battle against an entity that "intruded upon the mountains," waging war against the Atrisian pantheon itself. This being is described in vivid detail as a cosmic disruptor, causing chaos in the heavens until it was ultimately defeated.
The murals' climax reveals the temple's terrifying primary function: a high-security, celestial prison. It was constructed to perpetually contain the vanquished entity in the deepest, base level of the structure likely in proximity to the underground river and the Deep Cells. The elaborate, time-locked design ensures that the prisoner can only be seen and spoken with once a year, a singular annual opportunity granted exclusively to the Keeper of the Temple. This ritualistic control highlights the grave importance of the entity's containment.
Recognizing the weight of the legends especially given the established Atrisian wisdom, famously voiced by the Maple Harte, that "legends on Atrisia tended to be true somehow" the Commonwealth has adopted a strictly cautious approach. Small, highly specialized teams are deployed to the site. Their mandate is to study the temple's mechanisms and structural integrity without causing any disturbance. The priority is not exploration, but preservation of the imprisonment function, ensuring that a forgotten, world-ending threat remains locked away.
Continuing with many of their restoration efforts the Commonwealth has developed around the ancient prison. Maintaining it over overtly modifying it so that it can be a completely low tech solution to their problems. The strength of the kazue stone it is carved from and shaped by means it will withstand a lot of attack and punishment. The general within the area using it for the worse prisoners that they need with its massive size able to keep them maintained for a year so only the guards have to worry about a single person.
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