A respected monastery dies out overnight a century ago, leaving behind rumors of Church artifacts and a magnificent jeweled orrery.
The Question
What happened to the Order of the Dawn — and where is the orrery now?
What We Know
- The Monastery of the Dawn sat near Halwa, likely founded on a religiously significant site (Master Humron, S3).
- Old, well-respected; centuries of recorded pilgrimages by important people (AHU library, S3).
- Held Church artifacts, details unknown (Master Baram, S3).
- Received a gift from a surviving prince of Averoigne after the Third Crusade — two independent accounts; the second identifies it as a magnificent jeweled orrery. (S3)
- Died out mysteriously ~100 years ago (~1639); the disappearance was “perhaps kind of sudden,” and no known church records describe why. (S3)
Answered (S5)
How they died. The party walked the site. The monastery sat over the Sanctum of Sethariel, and it was stormed — outer doors battered in with what looks like a siege weapon, flagstones crushed by something heavy walking, altar smashed, ~two dozen monks killed. Their bodies lay unburied long enough to be old corpses when someone finally tried to cremate them a few years ago, using the monastery’s own furniture for fuel and running out.
Why. Per The Abbot — the former abbot (Estelle’s word), still sitting in the octagonal chamber 100 feet below, still talking: “The red star rose, they broke the door, they broke my brothers, they broke the chains, they broke the gem, and then I touched the divinity and it broke me.” The attackers came for what was under the monastery.
Still unknown: who “they” were, and where the monastery’s Church artifacts went.
A comparison case (S9): the party has now found a second religious house built over a sanctum — the Moon sanctum, at The Mirror Lake. That one was buried by a landslide rather than stormed, its crystal shards are arranged rather than scattered, and its shrine still has a keeper — and, she says, a head priest who visits. Side-by-side table on that page.
Theories
CONFIRMED (S5): They were the keepers of the Halwa sanctum
The site is the sanctum. A Dawn Court monastery sat on the Dawn prison for centuries and took pilgrims to it. Whether “keepers” means jailers who knew, or devotees who didn’t, is the live question — see The Six Voices.
Theory: The orrery is an instrument
If leyline confluences shift with the stars, an orrery — a machine modeling celestial positions — is exactly the tool for computing when and where a sanctum manifests. A prince’s “gift” may have been the delivery of a key. Estelle’s independent confirmation that sanctums sit on confluences of magic, and that The Red Star marks when interactions are possible, makes this stronger, not weaker.
The Second Orrery (S5) — Examined (S6)
Estelle gave Farraj an orrery in a dream — about a foot in diameter, an assortment of metals — and he was holding it when he woke.
The party studied it on the voyage home, and recorded its initial settings before touching anything:
- Not magic. Not evil.
- Likely dwarven work — Clan Grum, who specialize in metalworking and devices, with their current major clanhold in far western Morrschatten.
- No more than 10–20 years old. It has been used somewhat, and it has been maintained — oiled and polished.
- Deliberately built from different metals so it keeps operating across temperature changes — i.e. it is engineered so that precision is preserved. Whoever commissioned it needed it to give the same answer in a cold room and a hot one.
- Some of the bodies it represents obviously align to known stars and constellations.
- 5–10 lbs, with a small tripod stand for ease of use — a working instrument, meant to be set up and read.
- Ari has taken charge of figuring out how to use it; the party bought maintenance materials on landing.
KILLED (S6): "It is the monastery's orrery" — but see the S8 copy theory above
The Monastery of the Dawn fell ~1639 and its magnificent jeweled orrery vanished then. This thing is 10–20 years old, made of plain assorted metals, by a living dwarven clan. It is not the monastery’s orrery. The monastery’s orrery is still missing.
Theory: It is a purpose-built instrument, and recent
Everything about the construction says tool: mixed-metal thermal compensation, a tripod, wear, maintenance. Nobody engineers temperature stability into an ornament. Someone in the last two decades wanted to compute celestial positions accurately, portably, and in the field — in a kingdom that has been at civil war since 1731. Compare the star-chart-over-leyline diagrams in The Recovered Documents and Master Najlad’s star-navigation work. If leyline confluences move with the stars, this is the machine for finding a sanctum.
Theory: It was somebody's, and Estelle didn't make it
It has been used and maintained — by someone, for some years, before it reached Farraj’s hands. Estelle says she has never visited a sanctum. So either she owns a sanctum-finding instrument she has never used, or she got it from whoever did. Ask her where she got it. Not yet possible — she hasn’t appeared since S5 (Aaron). → Partly answered (S8): she says it is a copy of an original — see below.
Theory: It is a leash
Unprompted gifts from entities who want to know where you go next are rarely free. “Not magic, not evil” is what Haroun can detect, not a guarantee. Before anyone uses it to find sanctum #2, establish what it does when it isn’t being looked at.
Estelle: “a copy of the original” (S8)
Estelle told Farraj the orrery is a copy of the original and may not work exactly the same — she can’t accurately recreate it in the dream. (S8)
Theory (the party's, S8): It is a reverse-engineered copy of the monastery's orrery
The orrery the party holds is the S6 object — 10–20 years old, Clan Grum work. The party suspects it is a reverse-engineered copy of a much older version: the jeweled orrery given to the Monastery of the Dawn long ago (Aaron). That would square the KILLED verdict below (it isn’t the monastery’s orrery) with Estelle’s word “copy”: someone had access to the original, or to good records of it, within the last twenty years — a century after it vanished from a stormed monastery — and had a dwarven workshop rebuild it as a precision field instrument. Whoever did that is the next link in the chain. The corollary: the party is computing sanctum locations on an instrument its giver says “may not work exactly the same.”
What it does (S8). At Al-Hakim University, Master Bahadir showed the document math to be equations requiring inputs about angles on a sphere; Ari thinks the orrery supplies some of the inputs, and after a few days had three candidate lines on a map. Master Najlad read its rings as specific stars, constellations, the moon, etc. — and was intimidated by the orrery and how it was produced. So the instrument theory below is no longer theory: it is being used as an input device for the Owl’s equations.
The checkable lead
Clan Grum keeps books. A precision orrery built to hold tolerance across temperatures is a commission a clanhold remembers. This is the first thing in the whole sanctum investigation the party can verify against a real workshop in a real place — if the clanhold survived the War of the Three Princes, and if anyone can get there or write to it. Dolgrim Zum-Akar and Clan Zum’s yearly Meet are the obvious way to ask without going west.
The Order of the Dawn — the Route In (S6)
Ismad gave the party its research channel: House Balventia, who have been involved with the church for centuries, with a letter of introduction. Uncle has been cultivating Lusia Balventia for years.
Constraints: the sanctums and the new cosmology are to be raised with her only carefully — not totally off the table — and Haroun’s temptation not at all.
The Route, Taken (S7)
The visit happened. The library’s yield for this mystery:
- An Auvernian pilgrim visited “The Order of the Dawn” — in an Old Imperial rendition of an account from when Averoigne was first converted. Confirmed (Aaron): that is this monastery’s order — the earliest reference to it the party has seen, and proof the pilgrimage tradition ran from the far West.
- The order’s name now has siblings: Day (→ Phoenix), a Moon order anathematized with its head Aurelius Balventius, Dusk, and the Stars-revering early Owl. The Order of the Dawn was one of a set — see The Orders of the Five Courts, which is where the “what happened to them” question now lives.
- The Countess has no religious-history specialists at court — the trail she offered instead leads to Abbess Zafara in Uryula, whom the party met and asked: she didn’t know anything about the old orders (per Justin).
Next Steps
-
Visit the monastery site near Halwa— done (S5); it is the Sanctum of Sethariel -
Examine the orrery properly— done (S6): dwarven, recent, a working instrument. Ari is still learning to operate it -
Ask Estelle the provenance of the orrery.— partly answered (S8): a copy of the original. The party suspects a reverse-engineered copy of the monastery’s jeweled orrery. Next: who commissioned the copy, and from what? -
Take Ismad’s letter to House Balventia— done (S7): four days in the library; the Order of the Dawn question now lives at The Orders of the Five Courts - Reach Clan Grum, or ask Clan Zum / Dolgrim Zum-Akar who commissions instruments from them
-
Take the orrery to Master Najlad and Master Bahadir— done (S8): Najlad read the rings (stars, constellations, the moon); Bahadir’s equations take its readings as inputs - Search for records of what happened to the monastery’s property and artifacts — the jeweled orrery is still missing, and if the copy theory holds, someone had it (or its plans) 10–20 years ago
- Look for any surviving members’ accounts or church investigations circa 1639 — the Church appears never to have investigated a massacre of two dozen monks, which is itself suspicious
- Who cremated the bodies a few years ago, and why did they care enough to try and not enough to finish?