Ragnarr: Post Ruined Temple

There's a lot of ways to build a temple. The way a temple's built can tell you a lot about the god that's worshiped there. If it's got man sized cages to hold the sacrifices, it might be a problem, for instance. If it's got a bar better stocked that most pubs, your probably looking at a dwarven god, and so on.

I've never seen a temple of Pelor. That says something about him, too, at least in the parts I've been. I've been to Pelor's orphanages, his soup kitchens, his hospitals, but I've never seen more than a small chapel to the fellow.

It's a lot of what I love about Pelor. He's got it down. If you've got the money to build a temple, you've got the money to build something to help the lives of a whole arseload of people. And sure, temples might bring the occasional person to Pelor, but Pelor's folk know who he is. The people who are brought over might make a shrine to him, between them and Pelor, and they don't need anybody else to tell them that Pelor saved their lives.

But why would you build a temple you don't want anybody in? I mean, some of the Helmite temples are pretty damn fortress like. But those are usually staffed by a platoon of scowling Helmites, so that they can get out of the way and let people in. If the people can't get in, they won't pray to Helm, and the poor Helmites won't have any money to buy every one of their guards a third pole axe. But they're not big on, say, traps. They'd like to kill invaders, sure, but they discriminate a wee bit. They don't kill folks who want to give them money.

So what sort of bastards would build a temple that was trapped out the ears?

The sort of temple being built by folks who don't need the money. People with enemies, sure, who are trying to destroy them. Folks with so much power, so much wealth, that they don't believe they need anyone else's.

That's who we're fighting. Bastards with so much power that they didn't think they needed anyone else's to win the war.

They were wrong, last time. But I wonder if they learned that lesson, then. Perhaps that's why they have the crystals. This time, they'll make sure they have all the power and all the wealth before they move.

It would make sense of the trading city take over, too. They aim for the money to be theirs.

Which could make them all the more dangerous. By the time these bastards come out of hiding, they may already have more power than they ever had before.

May the light of Pelor show us the shadows they hide in before that happens.