Temple of Amarath in Osterhn

The temple of Amarath stands in the small town of Osterhn in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, below the hill from which the castle looks out. It is built of stone and wood rather than marble, but has marble columns and a door about two men high that stays open day and night. No knights guard its door; inside, priests can be seen at work.¹²³⁴

Across from the entrance, in the hall of prayer, stands a statue of Amarath, poorly dressed and barefoot, with a cauldron before it. A narrow stair leads down to small rooms used for brooms, food and cold storage.⁵⁶

Its people

The innkeeper Exalon counted three people at the temple: the priest Godwin, his acolyte Nordman, and a priestess, Ketnis. In his judgement Ketnis would not have the authority to hand out medicine, and Godwin, though he might wish to help, might be too afraid.⁷⁸

When the newcomers came by night, they found only Nordman, wiping the floors and setting the seats in order. He told them that the temple never sells medicine for profit, though it may ask the cost of the ingredients, and that the town's doctor made effective remedies at prices the poor could not pay. Saying that he had been forbidden to give medicine to the sick woman they asked about, he took a thick brownish mixture already prepared for her from a cupboard and handed it over secretly, without charge; it ought to have reached her two days earlier. It was no magical potion.^910111213

Nordman also told them that until a few winters before, a knight of Amarath had lived in the town and could keep the worst oppression in check, but he had been lost in a goblin attack. The Yellow Eye goblins, he said, always knew which way travellers leaving the town had gone, whether through good scouting or because someone told them.¹⁴¹⁵

Customs

Osterhn has no priest of Rakash and no graveyard keeper; the townsfolk bury their dead together and a priest of Amarath comes to say the words. The temple is generous with alms and takes food and blankets for the poor as well as money; its open donation box usually holds copper and silver.¹⁶¹⁷

The Sunday service is held when the sun is at its highest and is widely attended; it lasts about an hour, and the temple cannot hold everyone at once. When Kemp Corvus visited armed, a temple servant asked him to leave his swords at the door next time, since the tools of killing have no place in the house of the lord of mercy.¹⁸¹⁹

A priestess of the temple led the prayers for mercy when two farmers were held as hostages by Jasper, and afterwards called the townsfolk to the next Sunday's service, holding that to settle things by talking was the way of Amarath.²⁰²¹

After the great goblin assault on the town, the badly wounded were carried to the temple and the lightly wounded to the Golden Ladle. A priestess tended Kemp's heavy bruises and cracked ribs with praying hands, and the bruises faded before the eyes of those watching.²²

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When the companions brought back the fallen master of the town, they did not chain him in the square but locked him in the temple's small retreat room, clean but cell-like, with a high narrow window. The priestess would allow no cruelty there and saw that he was fed and given water.²³²⁴

At the trial Godwin bore witness for the temple. Jasper's body was to be shown for a day as a warning and then buried outside the holy cemetery with a priest's blessing, since the temple of Amarath wishes even the executed to pass on.²⁵²⁶²⁷

The funeral of Sarah Lia Galanodel filled the church to the last pew. Her plain rosewood coffin was carried on shoulders into the garden while Exalon played a slow piece, and she was buried in the soil of Osterhn under a marble stone in the shape of a seated woman with a violin, bearing only her name. The priestess went on praying at night through the full moon so that no evil spirit would trouble the dead.²⁸²⁹³⁰