Landmarks of the Holy City

• The Grand Temple of Voltan is a proud edifice of high spires and golden domes, the holiest site both within Lescatie's capital and the kingdom itself. Seated atop the highest hill within the city's walls, it can be seen from just about any street and square. A great flight of stairs set into the hillside is constantly abuzz with pilgrims, priests, and monks - at least, save for on holy days, where the Matriarch performs an offering of thirty oxen at an altar atop the steps in a grand public ceremony. Tracks down the sides of the stairs are used to guide the flow of blood from sacrificial beasts.
• Just across from the Grand Temple, the Holy Archives is at once a monastery and a fortress, protected by a select guard of paladins and staffed by monks; their duty is such a sacred one that only those who have been raised in the cult since childhood may access the heart of the library. In addition to sacred texts - some dating back centuries and kept carefully preserved - the Archives also house the relics of many saints. More unscrupulous sorts could easily find a fortune within the Archives' vaults, but is it worth bringing down the wrath of the gods - and the many protective wards and guardians that hold them?
• Also within the inner walls that enclose the Grand Temple and the Holy Archives is the Old Fortress, which once housed the barracks, chapel, and armory of the Order of Lescatie - the holy knights who carried out Voltan's will in many wars across the land. Though it still maintains a garrison, most of the knights now live and train in the New Fortress, which was constructed to patch a gap in the city's walls that invaders were (embarrassingly) able to exploit during the revolution, and which faces the exterior of the city rather than being situated at its heart. Even still, the Old Fortress is an imposing edifice, with thick ramparts and cavernous halls that dwarf the skeleton crew that now oversees it. Some say, in fact, that some treasures of the Order's vaults were never moved to the New Fortress - and that there are secrets within that none of the knights living there now know of.
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  The Royal Palace sits at the south end of the city. Here the Royal Family find themselves sequestered in idle luxury; the Matriarch and her husband also have extensive apartments here. As of late, the Palace's great hall has been converted into a council room for visiting diplomats, who pay visit to the Holy City as a sort of neutral forum to discuss matters that concern the various lands, with a round table to put no undue importance on any parties in particular.
• At the northern end of Lescatie is the Classical Quarter, so called because it is home to several scholarly institutes that perform study in old classical tongues. This includes libraries and scriptoria attended to by monks of Mimir, schools of higher learning, and orders that pursue more esoteric goals - all of whom might have some arcane tomes or another, for those who know where to look.
• The Rue Solaire runs from the Classical Quarter to the Temple District, and encompasses much of Lescatie's high society. It is the area where the city's wealthy and powerful reside, and has grown to be a hub of culture, with well-tended gardens and plenty of cafes, artistic studios, bathhouses, upscale markets, and "bathhouses" to be found. Many names of great renown frequent these spots...and many of them have their own secret agendas.

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  The Plaza of the Bells serves as one of the largest marketplaces in the city. On most days, it's busy enough, with many shops overlooking the square (which contains a great fountain and a shrine to Nehalennia, the goddess of commerce), but on market days, the Plaza is overtaken by so many stalls that it becomes a sea of awnings and a maze of narrow alleys. In addition to typical market fare, one may find icons, incense, and sacrificial animals being peddled by the representatives of the city's temples. The Plaza gets its name for the basilica that sits along its eastern side, which once announced the time by the ringing of bells - it has long since been replaced by a clocktower, but the name stuck.
• Another of Lescatie's many squares holds the Fatestone, a towering pillar of limestone that has stood in the city since time immemorial. It is said that it may only be moved by the hands of the gods, and no mortal effort has been able to make it so much as budge. When the stone does move, rotating about its base, it is a sign that a great turning point in the world is coming.
• The Rue des Saints is a path that meanders through the streets of Lescatie, passing by statues and shrines dedicated to various saints venerated by the different cults. These range from the celebrated to the obscure, and the statues too range from towering marble edifices to cruder wooden sculptures. Notably, although the procession always begins at the equestrian statue of Matto the Great (himself canonized in the Cult of Voltan), there is no one accepted route, as rival cults and jealous sculptors have added more statues over the years that branched the paths out in different directions. Pilgrims to the city will often pay local guides to lead them through the Rue des Saints, but no guide will lead them down a path that will hit every saint, and to do so would be impossible without significant backtracking.
• If the Classical Quarter is named for the speech of its scholars, so too would be the Silent Quarter. The Holy City has attracted all sorts of monastic orders, and a whole district is set aside for monasteries and convents. Though enclosed within the walls, these facilities operate as isolated communities in and of themselves and rarely interact with those outside of them, hence the name (that, and because of the amount of residents under vows of silence).
• Lescatie has its fair share of guilds, though due to the proximity of authority both worldly and divine, they are limited in the power they can exert in comparison to those of other cities. Still, the most striking guild hall is that of the Guild of the Jam-Makers, which boasts large stained glass windows and elaborate balconies bedecked in sculpture. Many other guilds have noted its grandeur is rather disproportionate to the importance of the guild itself.
• Burning Row is a street with a grim history - it was once where officials of the cult would execute perceived heretics on pyres, and their blackened skulls were mounted on pikes lining the road as a warning to the impious. In practice, this was more often a convenient excuse to bump off political rivals and rule by fear. Wilmarina I's tenure as Matriarch has seen no such executions, but the name remains - and some still note the faint smell of burning late at night.

Art by Nathan Lucas