Welcome to another installment of Locational Awareness. This semi-regular series seeks to explore interesting, noteworthy locations to include in your campaign world and suggest ways in which you can use them. After all, an adventure or encounter is only as good as the location in which it takes place.
The Temple of Issera is a massive and striking building of unknown origin. Its architecture is both utterly ancient and strikingly modern, the techniques both completely alien and reassuringly familiar. Its slender, alabaster towers gracefully stretch up to dizzying heights as if they were attempting to reach out and touch the gods themselves. They are supported by intricate buttressing that seem to grow from the base of the building organically like the branches of a tree. It is unclear who originally built the temple or what it was originally built to honor or glorify. It has, however, managed to retain relevance throughout the centuries for its very peculiar, and potentially insidious trait.
The Tower, or more specifically the sanctuary around which the rest of the tower was built sits atop a very old and very powerful locus of arcane energy. In the distant past, a powerful divination ritual was cast in the hopes that the energies of the locus would amplify it. Not only did it allow the spell to perform well beyond it’s normal capacity, the energies of the spell were folded into the node of magical power, making the spell a permanent part of the location. No one knows who or what cast the original ritual or what happened to them, but their legacy has retained importance for centuries.
It is believed that the Temple started as a small sanctuary built around the node and the rest of the tower constructed around it at a later date, mostly likely after the tower initially changed hands. This is something that has happened several times over the years as governments rise and fall and other factions come into power in the area, hoping to take control of and use the site for their own purposes. It also appears that the tower has been taken by force more than once over the years, judging by the apparent damage and repairs. However, it does not appear that any of these battles has ever resulted in the complete destruction of the temple.
The Gray Brothers, a cloistered order of religious scholars that seek to answer the questions of existence itself have maintained control and care of the Temple for the last two centuries. They dubbed it the Temple of Issera, the name of their goddess. The towers have been transformed into expansive libraries housing scrolls and tomes on nearly every topic imaginable. Scholars and sages from across the land, faithful and secular, make their way to the tower to learn from the Gray Brothers and to study from their collection.
The temple is a destination that many other people across the land make pilgrimages to. This is not necessarily because they believe in the mission of the Gray Brothers or their goddess. They instead hope they prove worthy enough to enter the central sanctuary, a place known as The Chamber of Echoes. This room is the sanctuary the rest of the temple was constructed around, and it is here that the results of the ritual cast so long ago remain. The residual spell energies that flow across the land from this nexus of ley lines bring sounds and sights from across the realm to this spot. It is a thing of absolute cacophony to most, but those that possess the discipline to separate the signal from the noise are sometimes able to see and hear things from distant lands. If they possess special skill they may even be able to see echoes of the past or catch glimpses of things that have not yet happened. Those especially sensitive to the energies have stated they are can hear and see things from further away, but they are always muted and incomplete; whispers from shadows.
Many people, the Gray Brothers included, have linked the visions and sounds to divine experience, and so many religious pilgrims from every faith make pilgrimages to the temple each year. There they hope to prove themselves capable and worthy of being allowed into the Chamber without being driven mad by the experience. It is an unfortunate truth that most who enter do not possess the strength of will to survive the experience with an intact psyche. As a result, the Gray Brothers are very selective about who they allow to try. Those broken by the trials of the Chamber are cared for in an expansive network of cells built below the surface. Some resilient few eventually recover and are allowed back into the world. Most descend further into madness until they eventually succumb to whatever it was they saw or heard within the room and die below the Temple grounds.
As stated above, the Temple has had more than one owner over the years. Various kings and warlords have attempted to take the Temple as their seat of power in an effort to utilize the power of the Chamber of Echoes as a method of gathering information on their enemies and to keep a close eye on their own populations. This tactic has been tried by several different rulers over the years with varying levels of success each time.
Many different religions have used their site for their own means as well, ordaining priests and clergy, interpreting the various visions as signs from their chosen deity. It has, perhaps unsurprisingly, never stayed in one group’s hands for very long. That the Gray Brothers have managed to keep hold of it for as long as they have has shocked many people that know the history of the site. They don’t have a military, primarily being a religion of peace and education. They do, however, have a devoted group of Templars that guard the Gray Brothers when they leave the Temple and act as security for the Temple itself.
So now you know the basics of the Temple of Issera. But what good is a location without some means of including it in your own game? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
The Pilgrimage
Probably the easiest and most obvious use of the site involves the PCs being tasked either by an NPC or by providence to make a pilgrimage to the site to receive a vision from the Chamber of Echoes. This vision can either be the carrot or the stick in the adventure really, but the real seed here is the journey to the Temple in the first place. The term “pilgrimage” connotes some difficulty in the journey, spiritual or otherwise. Figuring out what that might look like for the group or each character individually can set up incredibly emotional and personal encounters and gaming sessions. Making it to the Temple and determining if they are worthy enough to receive a message from the Chamber can ultimately be secondary, if the lessons they learn about their characters on the way there are potent enough.
Site of Contention
Another easy way to include this site into your game is to give it personal meaning to the characters and then threaten it from outside forces. Whether they are members of the Temple’s defenders, members of the Gray Brothers themselves, or believers in their mission doesn’t matter. But a personal connection with the Temple and its mission makes for a powerful string any GM can tug on, and one a skilled GM can tug on in multiple ways without being heavy handed. Just because The Gray Brothers have held the Temple for the past two centuries doesn’t mean that there aren’t other groups out there that would love to control the site for their own ends.
Conflict, be it a nearby warlord sending his military forces to besiege the Temple and its occupants or infiltrators from a sorcerous cult attempting to insert themselves into the ranks of the Temple’s defenders to take it down from within can provide material for many, many sessions. It also gives the GM many NPCs that they can develop to a much deeper level and have them forge personal connections with the PCs, making them potentially more effective and memorable characters.
The Day the Magic Died
I have started a campaign with the ominous phrase, “the Chamber of Echoes has gone silent.” A statement like this can set the stage for the entire game, regardless of whether the Temple is a major part of the campaign or simply a starting point. It speaks to a larger problem within the campaign – something is wrong with magic. Discovering just what this is and stopping or circumventing the problem becomes the main thrust of the adventure seed.
The collected knowledge of the Gray Brothers becomes a powerful resource for the characters as they research into what they’ve learned and find new avenues to explore, meaning that the Temple of Issera can itself be a stronghold and base for the characters (and can even let you fold in the adventure seed from above). This plot also gives built in hooks (and possible plot complications) for characters that utilize this force for their characters, giving them reason to be personally invested in the game and its outcome.
Dark Forces
What if the Gray Brothers aren’t what they seem to be? What if they aren’t actually protecting knowledge, but instead hoarding it for personal use or even later destruction? What if they are harvesting the people driven mad by the visions they receive from the Chamber of Echoes for their own dark purposes, turning them into devoted, but crazed agents and assassins for their cause?
An NPC that is important to the PCs goes missing, and the only thing they know is that he was leaving on a journey to the Temple hoping to receive a vision at the invitation of the Gray Brothers. Did he know something about their secrets and needed to be silenced? Did he have a special skill that they wanted for their own aims? Investigating this matter slowly unravels the secrets of the Gray Brothers and can turn them into compelling and complex villains depending on their ultimate goal within the campaign.
Ben Erickson
