Cult centre of Ajqyod at Mount Ruaj

In the religious tradition of the Eleven Cities, the fire god Ajqyod was predominantly an urban deity, worshipped by those for whom the circadian rhythms of sunrise and sunset meant more than the stately transition of seasons over which the water god Dahan held sway in rural communities. The one major exception to this was a substantial cult centre to Ajqyod which was attested to exist somewhere on the slopes of Mount Ruaj. This temple complex, supposedly quite large, is well-attested in pre-Wesmodian writings and appears to have survived the Wesmodian Reformation for a number of years before slipping into irrelevance possibly as late as 50 AWR.
The ruins of the temple complex are of great interest to the substantial number of thaumatologists who devote their time to the study of the cult of Ajqyod. Unfortunately written sources are imprecise about its actual geographical location and successive expeditions to Mount Ruaj to find it, although sometimes successful, have intriguingly turned up two drastically differing versions of what is to be found there.

Pre-Wesmodian history

The temple complex at Mount Ruaj is attested in some of the earliest written sources the Eleven Cities produced. Its establishment is mentioned in passing by Jalens of the South in his poem The Spring of Many Waters, wherein it is suggested that the fires of Mount Ruaj are the protracted death throes of the fire-demon Horphyod who was cast deep under the mountain by Ajqyod during the battles by which the established gods achieved supremacy over the Hundred Former Gods. Pilgrimages to the site are discussed in the mythopoeic poetry of Pindaros, which discuss a brass statue of the god which was said to stand four metres high, making it the largest such effigy in the entire region. These pilgrimages are said to have involved bathing in the geothermal waters surrounding the volcano's crater lake.
The temple was said to be staffed by clerics of Ajqyod who were protected as they went about their duties by a cadre of guards wearing brass armour. Examples of the armour have survived and are sought-after thaumatological artefacts. The priests who ran the temple appear to have had a somewhat contentious reputation. Pindaros rather romanticises them as the trusted custodians of a sanctified natural wonder. By contrast Wesmod views them very suspiciously, wondering where the earthly resources for such a lavish, extensively-staffed facility comes from and equating their control over access to the thermal pools as being akin to the corruption he sees in the clerics of Dahan controlling rural communities. The presence of female clerics at the temple - an oddity in that the urban cult of Ajqyod appears to have been an entirely male institution - also seems to have rankled with him.

Wesmodian Reformation

The urban cult of Ajqyod collapsed during the Wesmodian Reformation, mostly quite peacefully, although there were instances of violence, such as that which caused the Great Fire of Loros. Excavations suggest that the cult centre at Mount Ruaj held out for some decades after the Reformation, only gradually succumbing to the dwindling popular and governmental support which crippled its counterparts in the cities. Modern estimates make it clear that the cult centre was in use as late as 60 AWR, but abandoned no later than twenty years later.

Modern exploration and study

In the two and a half centuries since the cult centre was abandoned it was largely forgotten by the general population. The slopes of Mount Ruaj are thickly wooded and rugged and therefore mostly unpopulated, and in time even the precise location of the temple was forgotten. Geographer Kaydre Ysparo, who knew of the cult centre from literary references, claims not to have been able to find anybody among the local population who could give her its location in 124 AWR, when it have been lost for no more than fifty years; there was a general sense that there was something at the top of the mountain, but beyond local variations on the tale Ajqyod and Horphyod nobody could give her any detailed imagination. She sought the place out, however, after spending four days hiking on the upper slopes of Ruaj, and describes it in her Gazetteer of the Eleven Cities as being a badly-dilapidated and overgrown circular ritual space, probably given over to dancing, with a number of features that marked it as clearly associated with Ajqyod, but remarkably heterodox in relation to the god's other cults. The outbuildings, she claims, were mere foundations, and she did not investigate them further. Subsequent scholars have observed that four days is not very long to spend before finding a storied antique wonder, though Ysparo's luggage from her trip included two pieces of lobstered brass armour - a pauldron and a badly damaged helmet - which match those recovered by subsequent explorers.
The cult centre has been the subject of three subsequent excavations which interestingly threw up two drastically different sets of results. The husband-and-wife thaumatologist duo Rasendos and Anasyn Phylamoros explored Mount Ruaj themselves, located the temple, and wrote a lengthy chapter about it in their multi-volume history of the cult of Ajqyod, Vessels of Fire. Their conclusions pursue their own attempt to reconstruct an overall history of the worship of Ajqyod by arguing that the cult centre was a venue for rituals which had to be performed in this auspicious location, suggesting that it was maintained as such by collective effort of the other local cults of the god in the cities. Subsequent scholars doubt this, but few have been able to find the temple to actively refute the couple's suggestions as they uncharacteristically leave the precise location of the complex unstated.
The Dyqamayan thaumatologist Qolondym Sapheld took up the Phyalmoros's suggestion the temple needs further exploration but found a very different complex to what they report. Rather than a circular, open-air ritual space with outbuildings he discovered a triangular building sunk partly into the ground, surrounded by radiating pavements of dark stone inscribed with complex hieroglyphs which he claimed made him weak and nauseous to examine. These led to a series of plinths of similar stone, some of which still boasted the feet of large human statues or the bases of equally large obelisks. Sapheld, aware that these findings were radically at odds with those of previous explorations, made a series of sketches and drawings of the site and returned to Dyqamay to write up his findings and recruit a team for proper explorations. With this crew in tow, Sapheld travelled back to Mount Ruaj, entered the forests around the mountain, and was never seen again. His notes, interestingly, purchased at reputedly great expense by the Dyqamayan chapter of the Brotherhood of Rooks, an institution with which Sapheld had no known links.
Agrysal Roqoro had a broadly similar experience. His Open Dispatches on Thaumatologies records the triangular building Sapheld found, or something very similar. Entering this building with his team he explored a series of triangular chambers with baleful hieroglyphs carved on their walls and rhomboid pits in their floors which apparently served as access points for deep cellars. Holes in the walls of some of these pits indicated the existence of wooden staircases (long since rotted away in the humid atmosphere) while other holes - the deeper ones - had no such means of access. Roqoro writes of abseiling into these pits and discovering further writing on their walls and - upon reaching the chambers at the bottom - further holes leading to further sub-cellars. Rather than explore further he ascended back to ground level, where he found tree of his bearers dead, their bodies shaved of all hair and clothing and their eye sockets empty and evincing symptoms of critical frostbite, while the fourth assistant alternated between outbursts about "the weeping sun" and bouts of violent projectile vomiting. Roqoro abandoned his explorations and shepherded the hysterical survivor back down the mountain, though his companion bled to death under the care of a village healer several days later after biting off his tongue in a violent seizure. He has called for further exploration of the site but, having publicly reported the deaths and taken responsibility for them, he has had few volunteers to date. Given these experiences, however, Roqoro is keeping the location of the site a close secret.

Current status

Exactly what the cult centre of Ajqyod consists of is unclear; two radically different sets of scholarly impressions have been drawn from it. The possibility has been mooted that Sapheld and Roqoro may in fact have explored an entirely different cult centre to an entirely different god - possibly Maryas, though there is little direct evidence for this - than that to Ajqyod found by the earlier explorers. At any rate the temple stands as a tempting, slightly lurid mystery for researchers in the field.

Type

Outpost / Base