The party’s primary assignment from Uncle: follow up on three “sanctums” uncovered by the dissolved Order of the Owl. (S2)
The Question
What are the sanctums, are they the Deceiver’s work, and what did finding them do to the Order of the Owl?
Answered (S5)
What a sanctum is — per Estelle, a masked woman contacting Farraj in dreams: sanctums are the doors to the prisons of the Six Voices, the great angels who followed the Deceiver into rebellion and were imprisoned rather than cast into hell. Six, possibly seven. They sit at confluences of magic and predate the Empire, the Church, and the Old Elven Empire. Caveat: this is one source, unverified, and heretical by any Church reading.
Sanctum #1 is real, and the party has been inside it — the Monastery of the Dawn site is the Sanctum of Sethariel, the Dawn prison. It was broken open ~100 years ago: doors battered by siege weapon, monks killed, altar smashed, the chains broken, and the purple gem — a gateway from the physical to the spiritual — shattered. The Abbot survived it, “touched the divinity,” and is still down there, hostile. A second incursion 5–10 years ago left pitons on the cliff and tore open a wall to reach a hidden chamber.
The Red Star fits — Estelle: it may indicate the times when certain interactions with sanctums are possible. The abbot’s own account opens “the red star rose, they broke the door…” That closes the loop between The Red Star, the star-chart math, and the timing of the break-in.
Sanctums leave marks — encountering a fallen servant of the Maker can mark the soul (Estelle). Evidence: The Curse on Titus, and The Call at the Sanctum.
The Count Has Changed
The Order of the Owl found three: Halwa, the Averoigne mountains, badlands south of Cardacci. Estelle knows of three: Dawn (Halwa), Stars (south of Cardacci), maybe Moon (south of Hazad, nearer the coast). Averoigne is on the Owl’s list and not hers; Moon is on hers and not theirs. Four candidate sites, of a possible six or seven.
What We Know
- Source: The Recovered Documents — Order of the Phoenix interrogations of Order of the Owl members. (S2) Caveat (GM): the men questioned were mostly not direct witnesses to the events they describe. The party’s sanctum locations and descriptions are Owl institutional memory relayed under interrogation — second-hand at best. Verify against anything first-hand you can find.
- The Owl uncovered three temples/sanctums; the Phoenix worried they were the work of the Deceiver, and that the Owl became corrupt due to, or related to, them. (S2)
- Locations (S2/S3, Sanctum Research notes):
- North of the Circle Sea, near the free city of Halwa — suspiciously close to the Monastery of the Dawn
- In the Averoigne mountains
- In badlands south of Cardacci
- The documents also contain mathematical formulas, diagrams, and calculations — see The Recovered Documents for the star-chart/leyline analysis.
- Asked about “sanctums,” Master Baram had nothing; Master Humron’s association was the Monastery of the Dawn. (S3)
Theories
CONFIRMED (S5): Sanctums sit on leyline confluences that move with the stars
Estelle states sanctums are located at confluences of magic, and that The Red Star may mark when certain interactions are possible. Ari read the diagrams right. What remains open is the math — predicting a confluence, and what “interaction” the Red Star enables.
Original theory (S3)
Ari read the document diagrams as star charts overlaid on leyline confluences, implying leylines are mutable like the stars. (S3) If true, sanctums may only be locatable (or active) under certain stellar configurations — which explains why they stayed hidden for centuries, why the math matters, and why an orrery might be an instrument rather than a trophy. Supported by: Master Najlad’s star-navigation work resembling the diagrams; leylines being old elvish at their source.
CONFIRMED (S5): The Monastery of the Dawn sat on sanctum #1
The site is the Sanctum of Sethariel, and the monastery died because something broke in through the front door ~100 years ago and killed everyone. Their fate was indeed a preview. The surviving question is who broke in, and what they wanted with the gem and the chains. See The Monastery of the Dawn and the Orrery.
Theory: The Owl took something out
The second incursion (5–10 years ago) tore open a wall to reach a small hidden chamber — the one part of the temple that was concealed rather than smashed. Mamud’s westerners came back nervous, and the Order of the Phoenix was interrogating Owl knights about sanctums soon after. Whatever was in that chamber may be the actual subject of The Recovered Documents.
New Evidence (S5)
- The Owl expedition is placed. Mamud, the party’s guide, took a party of westerners to the same site ~5+ years ago — including a dwarf. They came back nervous. In Halwa the party found someone who remembers them: a dwarf, a big human, a few unremarkable others, a motley crew, lodged with a Cardacci merchant who was later caught up in the Owl/Eagle fight. Their pitons are still in the cliff and the wall they tore open is still open.
- Someone took something out of a hidden chamber behind that torn wall, 5–10 years ago. Contents unknown.
- A scholar, finally: Gandolfini — the Phoenix knight-confessor killed at the drop-off in S1 — was dean of the University of Krenau (Madeline Foussard, S5). Madeline also named several western astronomers and mathematicians. (Record those names.)
- An orrery arrived. Estelle gave Farraj a foot-wide orrery of assorted metals in a dream; he had it on waking. See The Monastery of the Dawn and the Orrery.
- Estelle owes the party an answer on the star/leyline charts — she took them away to study.
New Evidence (S6)
The orrery is a machine, and a recent one. Not magic, not evil, likely Clan Grum dwarven work, only 10–20 years old, used, maintained, built from mixed metals to hold precision across temperature changes, on a tripod, with bodies that align to known stars and constellations. The party recorded its initial settings before touching it; Ari is learning to operate it. This is a working celestial-computation instrument, commissioned in living memory. See The Monastery of the Dawn and the Orrery.
The two surviving Owl knights were found — and they are not sanctum witnesses. Visenne de Tarrand and Isabel d’Allais at the Citadel of Gazra know nothing of the Owl’s first (Summer 1733) visit to Halwa. Their trip was Fall 1734 and its entire purpose was smuggling Isabel — the knight commander’s daughter — into Hazad because her gift is heretical in the West. Jean-Marie, the knight closest to the commander and the one who would have known more, died in the Halwa fight.
The witnesses problem is now closed, badly
The party’s theory since S4 was that the Halwa captives might be the only Owl knights the Phoenix never reached — possibly the only direct witnesses anywhere. They found them. Neither was on a sanctum expedition, and the one man on their mission who might have been read into the order’s real business was killed by the Eagle five years ago. The party still has no first-hand sanctum testimony from anyone but The Abbot and Estelle — one of whom tried to kill them and one of whom may be Phoenix.
But Isabel’s father commanded the order that ran the 1733 expedition, and nobody has asked either woman a single question about sanctums. That is the gap to close.
Uncle’s Men have set the terms. Ismad (S6): the sanctums, the Six Voices and the orrery are obscure, the party needs help, and they are to be quiet about all of it. The Estelle relationship is to be run as an agent contact — play along, don’t get recruited, learn more — with Uncle and Maajid suspecting she is Phoenix. And the party has a letter of introduction to House Balventia for the Order of the Dawn, with the sanctums “not totally off the table” with Lusia Balventia and Haroun’s experience absolutely off it.
The Sanctums Are Dated Now (GM)
| # | Site | Found |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Northern Averoigne — the “Averoigne mountains” site | Spring 1731, the season the red sun rose |
| 1 | Monastery of the Dawn, north of Halwa — the Sanctum of Sethariel | Summer 1733 (Mamud’s expedition) |
| 3 | Lands of the Corrupted south of Cardacci — Estelle’s Stars | Summer/Fall 1735 |
Two things follow:
- The Averoigne site was first, by more than two years — and it is the one Estelle does not know about. It is also in a kingdom whose entire ruling order was overturned that same summer.
- The interrogation records postdate Fall 1735, so they belong to the Spring 1736 purge in which the Order of the Owl was dissolved and its members executed. The party’s primary evidence is the Phoenix’s case for killing them. See The Fall of the Order of the Owl.
And the Owl’s conduct doesn’t look corrupt. In the years between finding sanctums they killed an unformed demon of warped white radiance in southern Morrschatten (Fall 1732) and a snake demon at Stoccarda alongside the Order of the Gull (Summer 1735). The first was summoned from a book — On the Summoning of Guardian Spirits — that promises Celestials and delivers demons, signed Benedicto Malipiero. That is a second thread running beside the sanctums, and it may be the one that actually got them killed.
Next Steps
-
Travel into the desert with Achmed’s guide— done, S5 -
Investigate the Monastery of the Dawn site— done, S5; it is the Sanctum of Sethariel -
Work out what the orrery is— done, S6: a recent, maintained Clan Grum instrument. What it does is still open, and Ari is on it - Go back to Visenne de Tarrand and Isabel d’Allais and ask about the sanctums. Nobody did. Ismad’s release-to-custody offer is still open
- Take the letter to House Balventia — the Order of the Dawn, and (discreetly) whether the Phoenix used divination magic during the war forty years ago
- Chase Clan Grum — who commissions precision orreries from them, and when
- Get Estelle’s reading of the star/leyline charts; ask what she wants in return
- Decide the next sanctum: Stars (south of Cardacci, on both lists), Moon (south of Hazad — closest, and unknown to the Owl), or the Averoigne site Estelle doesn’t know about
- Pursue Krenau and Gandolfini’s university connections — write down Madeline’s scholar names first. Note the university burned in the Fall 1731 sack (GM); establish what survived before planning a trip around it
- Chase On the Summoning of Guardian Spirits — a second, separate thread the Owl was working
- Ask what the Owl found in northern Averoigne in Spring 1731, two years before Halwa
- Await Master Bahadir’s research on the unfamiliar mathematical notation
- Learn enough star/leyline math to predict confluence positions — and where The Red Star fits
- Open question the party has not faced: do they report any of this to Uncle, the Eastern Church, or nobody? The Curse on Titus may force the issue
- Related standing question: Why Did the Phoenix Knights Come to Hazad