Temples stand in almost every named region of Antiterra, defined by door, doorkeeper, password and taboo: above all, a threshold.
| Type | Building / institution |
| Spanish entry | Templo |
The sunken desert temple
Reached on dragonback past a crag-covered hill in a desert depression: a sunken stone “cube, a prism, with some projections and some false doors”. Windowless, with openings above for light and air, it “must be quite dark”, yet “a glow” shows inside. Its western part is “all destroyed”; its solid ebony doors (“a kind of cypress, really”) have fallen forward, and the remaining door is shut. It can be skirted on the right; its roof is walkable.
The Temple of the Lord
Also called the Temple of Solomon, in Jerusalem on the Esplanade of Alaxa; under work. It “has two domes”; “most of it looks like a mosque”, with bell and tower. Stained glass and carved wooden lattices admit light and air; arabesques and diagrams cover the walls; there is recent scaffolding. Torch-bearing soldiers escort visitors in; sectors four and five fill with candles and thick scents. Two retaining walls enclose it, with exits through sectors nine to six. Stairs come up from the Al-Aqsa Mosque; a southeast staircase descends to the crypts.
Around a central courtyard: stables, library, reliquary, scriptorium, dome, mosque, hospital, alchemy laboratory, master rooms ten to fifteen assigned to one group, and crypts.
Other temples
- Glastonville: “a large stone building with major arrow slits”, Lutheran Protestant.
- Unplaced: a small square cathedral with hipped roofs, stained glass and porches.
- An island’s center: the ancient temple of duality.
- An oasis: ancient temples to Seskee and to the Ram Amun.
- Mexico: a ruined temple with an underground part, keeping a magic mirror.
- The French region: the Temple of Saint Maurice.
- Byzantium: the temple Sofía.
- Five kilometers from a lake: the Temple of Zeus.
- Unplaced: the Temple of Sol Invictus, “also called Jelmario and many other names”; the Temple of Baphomet, where the Templar symbol was seen; and the Temple of the Mirror, which “only a dragon can find”.
Law and role
A temple has a doorkeeper priest, important in “a rather dark temple”, and a password; whoever enters without it “is going to have a serious problem”. The Temple of the Lord holds about thirty guards. “One cannot fight in the Temple of the Lord”: striking in a church is taboo, making it a sanctuary. People are brought mounted to the Temple of Zeus for protection.
- The Temple’s canons ceded nearby land to the order, and the king “gave the Temple of Solomon to a group” of knights, founding an order.
- Beneath the Esplanade lay “the wisdom, the seals”, the faith’s mightiest relics.
- The Temple of the Mirror hosts games of platforms; its mirror wall can break and be magically repaired.
- The great theater stages The Mysteries of the Temple, an Egyptianizing serial, more fashionable than Matías el Inválido.
History
The Romans’ destruction of the Temple, killing everyone, still orders the Holy Land; on the Esplanade “so much blood ran, since the Crusades if not before”. Paris has “temples of love” and temple-libraries that compete “with what used to be the solares”.
Open questions
- The password: the record is corrupted there. The cause of the desert glow: the sentence is cut.
- Whether the Temple of the Mirror and the temple of duality are one.
- The spelling of Seskee is doubtful.
- Whether the doorkeeper’s temple is the desert one.
- What the sectors are; who raised the scaffolding; the cults of Sol Invictus’ temple and the Temples of Love; what the solares were.