Oracle of Atura

The Oracle of Atura is a temple located in Tsewa and dedicated to the god Uriah, the Sun Radiant. It is widely considered to be the oldest, continuously occupied temple to Uriah in all of Holos and has been kept by a group of Sun Soul monks called the Order of the Moth.

Purpose / Function

The Oracle of Atura is a temple dedicated to the sun god Uriah. It specifically venerates a variant form of Uriah called Uriah, the Allseeing Disk. To this end, the temple is kept by a group of Sun Soul monks called the Order of the Moth, or the Moth Monks. These monks specialize in divination magic and oracular works, peering into the future just as Uriah peers into the Material Plane through the sun's disk. More standard services to Uriah are still held in the temple, but most folk who make pilgrimage to the Oracle do so to ask a question of the monks that can only be answered through divine magic.

Architecture

Like most ancient Temekanian structures, the Oracle of Atura was built of sandstone using the post and lintel method of construction, and many of the buildings are aligned astronomically with stars associated with divination and Uriah. Columns are adorned with decorated capitals which were made to resemble the papyrus reeds and cedar needles. The exterior of the complex is comrpised of massive structures characterized by thick, sloping walls with few openings, possibly echoing a method of construction used to obtain stability in mud walls. Flat roofs constructed of huge stone blocks support the main temple complex area.

History

When the Oracle was first built during the Mithril Era, it housed a branch of the Royal House of Temekan. Whenever a new Pharaoh of Temekan took the throne, they first had to journey across the Marrow Desert and bathe in the Fountain of Uriah, a sacred spring located just outside the Oracle in the Tsewa Oasis. The ceremony was overseen by Moth Monks from the Oracle of Atura, during which it was believed that the new Pharaoh would be imbued with the actual divine blood of the deity Himself and emerge as a true God-King. The ceremony could be repeated multiple times whenever the Pharaoh felt that his connection to the divine was waning or if they thought that it would be prudent to publicly reaffirm their place within the social order through an important ritual.

Alternative Names

Monastery of Moths

Type

Temple / Religious complex

Parent Location

Tsewa

Owner

Uriah

Owning Organization

Order of the Moth