Sequestered Tabernacle
In a valley deep in the Dehennan Mountains, between the western Dragon Coast and the Kunlun Tundras, there rests a marvel. Though it is hard to find, thanks to the dangerous, fog-shrouded crags that surround it on all sides, the Sequestered Tabernacle is a paradise in the midst of this Northern harshness.
The Tabernacle Manse
Solar Aspected Manse •••
On a cliff overlooking the rest of the valley, the Tabernacle is a great manse of white marble and burnished bronze. It is roughly pentagonal in shape, three stories in height and capped with a dome of sky-blue glass that can pick out and amplify the sunlight shining through it, even on days when clouds hide the sun. It is surrounded by five tall minaret-towers.
The walls of its lower level are smooth, without windows and bearing only a single door, the great white oak and bronze double doors that the great staircase up the cliff-face leads to. The upper stories are marked with bronze-railed, balconies with drapes of gauze-sheer cloth at regular intervals, allowing the Illuminated who gaze out on the village to be seen in return.
=The Training Floor
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The Villages of the Tabernacle
Scattered through the Sequestered Vale, a several-mile long valley rich with melt-water flowing down from the mountains around them, are a handful of hamlets and small villages. All the denizens here are adherents of the Cult of the Illuminated; in many case, those who come to dwell here have had to flee their homes when their allegiance was discovered. Many of those who grow up here - particularly if they demonstrate any aptitude at leadership - may be insinuated into other places in Creation, starting new cells of the Cult, or reinforcing those that are flagging.
In general, though, these villages are made up of good, simple people who tend to the day-to-day demands of a rural, farming life. The fields and pastures of these villages provide all the food they need, plus more than enough to supply the Tabernacle. Strong second sons are usually brought into the service of the Tabernacle, and trained as temple guardians and the rangers who guard the outer edges of the Tabernacle's territory.
