Urasen Observatory

Located in the Tamque Region of Mosvador, in the inland, dawnward end of the country, the Urasen Observatory is still not a fully understood site. Conflicts on the nearby border between Mosvador and the Voskuan Republic have made it challenging to obtain funding for long-term archaeological work in the area, but a team from Bruxaria University have been able to conduct preliminary examinations of the site.
Originally made up of five equidistant structures, only two are left partially standing; all that remains of the other three are the foundations. The two that remain standing were at least two stories tall. It is not yet clear what the uses of the three demolished buildings were, but the two that partially remain are believed to have had their upper floor– or floors– used for observations, and the lower floor used for storing records and measurements.

Purpose / Function

While it is believed to have been used for astronomical observations, researchers are uncertain if that was the site's primary purpose. The name Urasen Observatory comes from the deity of the same name. One of the more poorly understood Lizdah Era deities, Urasen was the god of stars and so the presence of their iconography at such a site is unsurprising; it is also one of the few sites with materials directly referencing them. On the inside walls of the remaining structures, there are somewhat weathered but still intact murals depicting various constellations and yet-to-be-identified figures against a black background lightly dotted with stars. One area in particular stands out; on the section of wall directly across from the entrance to the structure, there are no stars. It is a roughly oval-shaped area, about six feet tall and 4 feet wide that lacks any of the stars or additional drawings featured on the rest of the walls, leaving an empty black space.
Because of the time and detail spent on the murals, it hypothesized that the area could have also been a place dedicated to the worship of Urasen, with observing the stars merely being one aspect of that worship.

Denizens

Birds seem to have intermittently reclaimed some of nooks and crannies of the remaining structures, with old nests in corners of book shelves, as well as in a cabinet with the door broken off.

Special Properties

As the final part of their preliminary exam, researchers utilized glasses made with ceslyx, a mineral known to have a luminescent response to the presence of magical energy. The researcher who first put them on was forced to almost instantly remove them due to the intensity of the light; they would experience flash blindness for the next 24 hours. Fellow researchers had to hold the glasses well away from their faces, and even then struggled to really make out what they were looking at. Whatever the source of the magic was, it seemed to be coming from the ground, had a defined outline, and was quite large, larger than the entirety of the site at about 70 feet long. Precise measurements were not possible from the ground in the time the researchers had remaining, but it seemed to have a humanoid outline, curled on its side.

Architecture

The buildings were constructed out of fired mudbrick coated with stucco coating on the inside and outside of the walls. They were all round buildings, 30 feet in diameter and spaced the same distance from each other in a pentagonal shape. They had narrow, arched windows, only about two feet wide and five feet tall.

RUINED STRUCTURE
Approx. AE 1

Founding Date

Unknown

Type

Observatory / Telescope

Owning Organization

Mosvador