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The Sunkshrine
The Sunkshrine of Methusil
Constructed at the height of Ardashir’s legacy, for generations the Methusil Sun Shrine of Celestia was a center for religious and political undertakings in the area and a testament to the nation’s elaborate wealth. The cathedral dominates the city’s older and now-sluggish southwestern sector, erected of locally-quarried marble, limestone, and imported lumber. The building originally vaunted a brilliant ceiling of latticed glass and hand-carved elm, gilded with etchings that doubled as a calendar by tracking the sun’s evolving zenith. Other aspects of the building, such as carefully-spaced crystal chandeliers which reflected the midday sun only on major holidays, were similarly dual-purposed.
More than two decades ago and several years following Methusil’s formal secession from the Ardashir empire, the area’s winters and summer seasons began to wane. The wet seasons of spring and fall, when warm currents from the Hazeth Sea met cold air from the Ahaltic Plains, extended and intensified; over the course of three years, a once-blissful skyline succumbed to constant thunderstorms and unending icy gales. Sunlight became a rare phenomenon and the area fell into short-lived poverty as agriculture and trade staggered.
The sun’s disappearance was viewed as an ill omen by the increasingly-skeptical common folk; more pessimistic views declared divine betrayal. The unending weather appeared to prove Celestia’s fallibility and her local faith was fatally undermined, scattered to sunnier portions of the Ardasi empire along with their wealth and talents. The clergy was unable to offer an explanation as fields flooded, illness spread, and houses collapsed; their divinations on the matter went unanswered or were riddled with discouraging information. Inevitably, the city’s church never regained from this tragedy and extended efforts to investigate the matter made little headway. The cathedral itself, through torrential weather, theft, and vandalism, has since fallen into disrepair: its once-glorified presence today blemishes the rain-cursed landscape like an open wound.
Few residents of Methusil willingly describe themselves among the Celestian faithful, now, and many refer to this event as an intellectual awakening. Although small shrines to the Wayfinder and Vellunan were erected since the cathedral’s collapse, both religions failed to draw a dedicated following and have fallen into forgotten, albeit not-as-scorned, aspects of the city’s culture.
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