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.
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"
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. Still nobody has.
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.
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.
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. Sharper now: it is a datable, traceable Clan Grum object, so her answer is checkable
- Take Ismad’s letter to House Balventia and research the Order of the Dawn — the monastic order that sat on sanctum #1 for centuries
- Reach Clan Grum, or ask Clan Zum / Dolgrim Zum-Akar who commissions instruments from them
- Take the orrery to Master Najlad and Master Bahadir — it aligns to known stars, and they have the star-chart and notation work
- Search for records of what happened to the monastery’s property and artifacts — the jeweled orrery is still missing
- 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?