Shrine of the Suffering

The shrine to Ilmater, the god of martyrs and patient endurance, stands in a small, quiet square in Heapside. The Shrine of the Suffering is an unremarkable stone structure. Here, the poorest Baldurians can receive free meals and enough coppers to pay their way through the city’s gates.

The structure stands on the entrance to a series of crypts. For a small donation, anyone can have a dead friend or loved one interred in the vaults, where corpses fester in the dark and feed the hundreds of sewer rats that enter through wall chinks. When a person’s bones are clean, a worshiper of Ilmater takes them into the attached ossuary chambers, where they are stored by type. It might seem an ignoble end, but for many impoverished residents, the shrine offers the only kind of holy-ground burial they can afford.

Kindhearted citizens from all ranks of society donate small amounts to pay for the shrine’s upkeep, supplies for its ministries, and the livelihood of its priest and his two acolytes, who are also his children. Even after ten years, Brother Hodges acutely feels the loss of his beloved wife, but he bears it well with the aid of his younglings, Hansen and Sissa, who are not yet old enough to marry. The community treasures all three. The Gate’s poorest residents especially enjoy chatting with Brother Hodges or his offspring, even when the priest has no food or coppers left to give.

Whenever discord takes over the streets, Brother Hodges does his best to help anyone in need. If circumstances in the Outer City worsen, the priest petitions the dukes, the peers, and the Flaming Fist to  be merciful in their judgments and actions.

Type

Shrine

Parent Location

Lower City