IRU-DEA

Chamber of the Divine · Common Area · Third Level, Mer-Sekhara · Hut-Sekhara

“She was sitting when I entered. She looked at me as though she had been expecting me for thirty years and I was finally here. I have thought about this since. I believe she had been expecting someone for thirty years. I believe I was not the first choice. I believe I was simply the one who finally asked.”

— G.C.P.S.A., private notes, Khenet-Ura, 1170 A.P.

Iru-Dea (‘Chamber of the Divine’) is the room on the third level of the Mer-Sekhara where the Living Goddess receives those the priesthood permits her to receive. It is the only space in the Hut-Sekhara precinct that foreign visitors have ever entered. Plinius is the only Roman scholar to have been in it. His account is the only external description in existence.

Purpose / Function

The Iru-Dea serves as the formal audience space for the Goddess’s reception of visitors and as the site of certain priestly ceremonies conducted by Amenhotep-Sek in her absence. Its use as a ceremonial space without the Goddess present is, in the tabaxi understanding, a different function from its use as an audience chamber — not a lesser one, but a separate one. The College of Clergy’s calendar allocates time in the room accordingly.

Design

The chamber is rectangular, approximately twelve metres by eight, accessed from the interior basalt stair. The Goddess’s seat is positioned at the far end, facing the entrance. There is no platform, no elevation, no theatrical arrangement to make her seem larger than she is. She is small. The room is designed to make this immediately available, without preparation. Four light shafts cut through the pyramid’s mass angle natural light onto specific relief panels at specific times of day. The shafts cycle through all four panels across the year, illuminating each in its season.

Entries

One entrance: the interior stair from the second level, guarded at the base by a Medjat-Sekhara assigned to the audience-day roster. Access requires a formal priestly appointment. In six hundred years of the city’s existence, four foreign delegations have been admitted; Plinius’s was the most recent.

Sensory & Appearance

The room smells of the incense preparation used in the inner sanctum: not aromatic in the ordinary sense, but atmospheric — a quality of the air that Plinius describes as making the space feel larger than it measures. The light from the shafts is directional and warm. At the hour of his visit the illuminated panel was behind the Goddess’s seat, and the room was otherwise in shadow. He describes the effect as the room’s full attention directed at a single point.

Denizens

The Living Goddess Sekhara, is present in the Iru-Dea when she has chosen to receive visitors. She speaks Latin — she has been listening to Roman visitors for over a century and has had reason to learn. Her Latin, Plinius notes, has the precision of someone who uses a language as a tool for exact communication rather than for ease. When she is not receiving, Amenhotep-Sek uses the chamber for formal ceremonies. He is the only clergy member permitted to enter without the Goddess’s specific invitation.

Special Properties

DM ONLY

The panel the light shaft illuminated during Plinius’s visit depicts Rift XIII: a small figure at the centre of a space that might be a plaza or a rift opening, surrounded by larger figures facing outward. The small figure is the Rift event itself. The larger figures are the nine peoples of Aethermarch. They face outward because after Rift XIII the world they face will be different. Plinius understood this. He put the Goddess’s answer in his locked notebook. He has not published it. He has not told Merry Burrowfoot. The Goddess told him: ‘Tell the ones who come after you ask.’ The panel is illuminated at the same time each year. A player who is in the room when it is lit, and who makes the interpretation, holds information that changes the campaign’s understanding of Rift XIII’s nature. The Goddess arranged for this to be possible. She will know if it happens.

Architecture

Pale limestone on all surfaces, uninterrupted except by the relief panels and the four light shaft openings. The ceiling is plain. The floor is smooth, worn in a path from the entrance to the centre of the room that six hundred years of visitors have produced. The carved relief panels are, by Plinius’s assessment, the finest carving in the pyramid — superior to the exterior work, depicting scenes from the Goddess’s history from the Permutatio arrival through events he cannot date.

History

The Iru-Dea is believed to be structurally original to the first decades of the pyramid’s construction. Its relief panels were produced over multiple generations; the earliest, near the entrance, depict the Permutatio arrival. The panel behind the Goddess’s seat — the one the light shaft illuminates — is among the most recent in the chamber, dating by stylistic comparison to approximately 1150 A.P. The College of Clergy does not list it in its public accounting of the room’s contents. See Annales Mundi for full chronological detail.

Type

Room, Hall, Throne Room

Parent Location

KHENET-URA

Owner

SEKHARA

Owning Organization

Senedjem-Sekhara