Temple of Kirin
The eponymous "pyramid" from the district of the same name in Mendhalia, the Temple of Kirin is one of the most grand structures in the empire and perhaps in Ankaluun.
Oculi Populus operates as a sect of the church and maintains a small presence within the temple but most of its members spend their time at the schools and universities that they founded and run.
The leaders of the Kirinian Church, including the Archpriest of Kirin, make their home in the temple. Other priests of lower rank also spend their lives within the temple, ministering to those who come to celebrate the wisdom of Kirin.
Alterations
The catacombs below the temple have been expanded over the years, but the last such expansion was at least two millennia ago. While the inside of the temple was originally a massive open space with very few internal rooms, it has also been modified over the years. Roughly half the previously empty space has been replaced with various rooms, shrinking the open space in the center and progressively building up and along the inner walls of the structure.
Architecture
Its three-sides rising to a point some 15 stories high, gleaming with an opalescent brilliance courtesy of the unique white stone from a long forgotten quarry. It is one of the 4 largest structures in Mendhalia and the home and crown jewel of Kirinism.
History
Older than the Kirinian Empire and built sometime during the Age of Creation, the church is a wonder of architecture and a monument to the influence Kirin had and continues to have over the lives of many in Ankaluun. The best estimates of scholars puts the beginning of construction around 3000 years before the Sundering. Countless Archpriests and others of renown within the church have been laid to rest in the catacombs beneath the temple that spans at least 10 levels. Myths and legends abound of strange cults and wandering undead within the lower levels of the catacombs but the church steadfastly insists that such tales are fiction and blasphemous. Nevertheless, it is believed that nobody outside the church has been more than a level or two down into the catacombs in hundreds of years or more.
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