Dara Kazmak Monastery
Built on an island of the eastern coast of the Merdenkal Peninsula and named after one of the most famous of Nosferian's faithful, the monastery is a place of quiet reflection and study for the priests and magi alike. Here, amid the low stone and black lacquered wood pagodas, the brightest and most ruthless of the Elynthi come to study the dark arts.
Elynthi make little distinction between magic drawn directly from their god and that of more arcane sources and the monastery allows practitioners of both to exchange ideas with their peers in place removed from the shadowy and often dangerous politics of the mainland. While these politics never truly fade, it is tradition that no action or word be taken against another, either directly or indirectly, by those cloistered here. This arrangement has allowed practitioners to collaborate in ways otherwise impossible in Elynthi society, often achieving great and wonderous feats. It has also lead to relationships and alliances between estranged houses and, more than once, to ideas spawned from faith based-magic to spill into the arcane and vice versa.
Most Elynthi magi and priests spend at least a decade, if not more, of their lives on the windblown, rocky island. Frequented by storms blowing in from the sea of dreams, its central buildings, long and narrow and low, like the commissary, mess hall, and library, are all connected by underground tunnels cut into the earth years ago by enslaved Khadra who, some say, still haunt them. Each resident is granted a small stone cottage, many of which also connect to the tunnel system though well spaced across the island, ensuring that each has ready access to the privacy all Elynthi crave and practitioners often require. The only building rising above a story is the three story chapel dedicated to Nosferian.
One of the residents, generally one who has resided on the island for at least a century and is in his or her elder years, is always named Abbot. The position, generally elected, is an appointment for life - or at least until relinquished. Like other positions in Elynthi society, should the Abbott be killed, the killer is immediately granted the title.
In recent years a thirty foot crater sits, still smoldering and rumored to be filled with lava from the Nine Hells at the site of one of the cottages, a remnant of an accident from a recent Abbott.
Founding Date
1204 BC
Type
Monastery
Parent Location
Owning Organization