Jogodi's Grand Temple

Jogodi, he's the god most associated with healing in the Lamaran pantheon, so guess what you get if you go into one of his temples while injured?

Free healthcare... if you pass a test they use to determine whether or not Jogodi or the God of Gods (different individuals but it's generally agreed that pissing off the second one brings bad joojoo) wants you to be healed...

Jogodi's Grand Temple is where all the best clerics - the best doctors including (mostly disowned) members of magic families whose abilities are utilized for the medical process - are and has the most advanced medical equipment and knowledge in all of Lamara.

Jogodi

Jogodi is the god of healing in the Lamaran religion, and is known for the following:

Jogodi was eaten by a monster that tried to absorb him into its being, but Jogodi absorbed it instead cos Jogodi built different. The process of being absorbed and absorbing gave him some kind of deep truth about Yaldabaoth, the root of all life, that even the God of Gods didn't have.

Kibo, a minor god who was hurt really badly by a monster trying to eat him, died and the God of Gods, able to bring gods and goddesses back to life in an instant, refused to revive him unless at least 4 in every 5 gods was willing to spend 3 days straight kneeling to the God of Gods to bring him back.

Jogodi took Kibo's corpse and revived him before the first day was even finished.

God of Gods infuriated. Banishes Jogodi out into the Chaos to be ripped apart but Jogodi comes back alive having tamed a powerful monster.

God of Gods kills the monster instantly.

Jogodi doesn't care.

Jogodi let back in with a reminder to never raise the dead and that the God of Gods can obliterate anything short of Yaldabaoth with ease.

Also Jogodi adopted a lost white dog. It's believed that white dogs of the same breed as this dog can smell whether or not Jogodi wants someone to be healed and will be hostile towards anyone not to be healed. They're almost never hostile, being extremely friendly 99.9% of the time, but if the one being used to inspect you is hostile then you're kicked out the temple and left to die.

check out the story this world is a setting for in this story-telling Discord (you can tell your own stories too): https://discord.gg/w9mQP3nFGq

Purpose / Function

Worship, reverence and learning from the ways of Jogodi, the god of healing. Healing the sick and injured is itself considered a form of worship to Jogodi, especially if someone's injuries or ailments happen to be similar to those of someone Jogodi supposedly healed.

It's also a place for study of the human body, and occasionally animals, which does include experiments (some of them very unsavory... if you come here with your kids keep an eye on them plenty of the clerics have responded to not receiving enough criminals and slaves to experiment on with trying to kidnap people as test subjects) and dissections.

Nobles can also get free dogs and puppies here, specifically ones that aren't white, if there happen to be any around.

Alterations

There've been tonnes of renovations and additions but the core structure has mostly stayed the same. Only about 30% of its secret tunnels were part of the original structure. Many buildings have been made around the main structure and Jogodi's statues, paintings, mosaics and other art are additions made since the temple's discovery.

Many of the additional buildings and facilities exist due to Mirkus, who has been dead for many hundreds of years.

Architecture

Vast solid marble pillars holding up a great, also marble, roof. In appearance it's a weird mixture of Viking church, cathedral and ancient greek temple.

Very anatomically accurate paintings and statues.

Has vast underground areas and many buildings built around it. This includes bathhouses with flowing water from springs up the top of some of the nearby mountains, hospital bays and smaller temples to less significant healing gods.

There is an entire town in the valley below the temple separated from the temple only by about an hour of going up a massive stone stairway... or you can be cool and use some of the secret tunnels.

History

The structure itself predates known history.

It was found in 803 BS (before Sarah, 0 BS being where the story set in this world starts) during one of Lamara's many wars leading up to its unification under a "single ruler" (vassals and delegated officials running everything go brrr).

The ones that found it were a band of mercenaries, trying to take a shortcut through some mountains so they could get to a siege and get paid for being present, who tried to loot the temple only to find that anything of value was already taken.

Word of this place leaked from the mercenaries to Krimin, who was leading the siege those mercenaries were trying to get to, who sent a detachment and some clerics to explore the place and find out more about it.

The Krysa Empire, basically the Lamaran Empire before the Lamaran Empire ruled all of Lamara, claimed it as a great temple. Over the next few decades there were many apparent miracles of people being healed of various injuries and ailments when near the temple, which in addition to a great temple complex being built near the Krysa capital led to it being reassigned from a temple to all the gods to one primarily dedicated to Jogodi and a few minor gods also associated with healing.

It continued as it was for some time, people coming to try and be healed and usually leaving disappointed or in bags.

And then Mirkus showed up. To clarify some things about Mirkus

- Mirkus's name was actually Marcus, he was just called Mirkus by Lamarans. Marcus was born in our world and appeared in Lamara after a patient at the hospital he worked at killed him.

- Just to be clear literally every animal or person that has ever died went to the world that Lamara is in. It's just that everything still gets old and dies and can have kids, so almost everything and everyone is descended from things in our world rather than actually from it.

Mirkus was a brilliant doctor and, when he gained a name for himself, was branded the demigod descendant of Jogodi and brought to the temple, where he proceeded to reform the often ineffective methods used at the temple in favor of things like washing hands, making anesthetic from plants and other practices, including new ones he developed from the existence of magic and very different wildlife in the world he'd been transported to.

Mirkus married and had 3 kids with Doglana, a woman who'd been hired to assassinate him for changing the practices but changed sides when Mirkus saved the life of her father, and their youngest child took over the temple after his retirement.

Further medical treatments have been developed since through experimentation, although ritual taking up enough time and resources to be detrimental to the medical work has crept in over time, making it the best healing center and place of medical learning in all of Lamara. Healers in other Jogodi and general temples have usually spent at least 2 or 3 years studying in Jogodi's Grand Temple.

Tourism

Lots of sick and injured people.

Great place to go to learn about the human body, whether you're a doctor, artist or whatever your reasons.

During the story focused around Sarah, Sarah Bailey / "Seh-uh Belly" is taken to the temple in the hopes of it or its doctors magically curing her "amnesia" (stripping a soldier's corpse, wearing their equipment and then hitting your own head with a rock in order to pretend to be a soldier whose lack of knowledge of the local language or customs are the result of a head injury go brrrr).

This, of course, doesn't work but other ailments she's built up over the story so far, including multiple broken bones and several diseases her body has almost no immunity to, are successfully treated.

The ones taking her are an eccentric middle-aged nobleman with too much money to waste and a personal interest in Sarah's "condition", the 2 youngest - one of them being illegitimate - of said nobleman's 9 daughters and 5 of their bodyguards/servants/butlers/maids.

As much as the nobleman wouldn't have gone if he hadn't bought Sarah (unfortunately for Sarah, that soldier's uniform she took was that of a conscripted criminal and so the Pioneer Unit was well within its rights to sell her as literal property to a noble. Also she's unaware that she is literal property), he was meant to go with his daughters anyway in a coming of age ceremony, having formerly planned for one of the servants to fill his role in the ceremony instead.

It is here that she first meets one of her nieces (neither are aware of the blood relation), Sally, who bumps into Sarah while avoiding going to the baths with the other girls of her training unit because 1. She doesn't like her hair getting wet cos it weighs so much that it hurts her head and she thinks that if it's wet too often she won't grow as tall 2. Bullying and 3. Self consciousness partially fueled by that bullying.

Sarah, the noble's daughters and Sally vibe together splooging noble money on overpriced foods and stuff. Sally gets to do the coming of age ceremony, which includes being hit over the head with a stick and eating bread dipped in honey and which she normally wouldn't be able to do due to being a military slave, before going back to her training unit.

The nobleman not shutting up about Sarah's amnesia and how he believes the Jogodi temple can cure her catches the attention of a Jarlet, Jarlets being a magic family with memory-related abilities, setting in motion some of the further events of Sarah's A-plot and tying into the B-plot.

RUINED STRUCTURE
Unknown: Has gone through countless small renovations adding up to it being the place of healing it is today.

Founding Date

The structure itself predates known history: Unknown.

Alternative Names

The Great Healer's Temple

Owning Organization

Krysa Empire, or "just Lamara": It rules Lamara

Coming of age ceremonies can be done at just about any temple, but doing them at a major temple is considered to bring greater holy protection from harm and show prestige by being able to go to one despite many of them being quite remote (these oversized ancient ruins always seem to be found in the darn hardest-to-reach places and naturally are considered more significant than the things actually built during recorded history).

Jogodi's temple is, as a result, also a hub for noble children in Northern Lamara to go through their coming of age ceremonies, and a hotbed of tension as Jioctal's - a region of Northern Lamara with many cities due to trade networks extending beyond Lamara and lots of art - emerging merchant middle class often send their children to come of age there.

To clarify: the merchant middle class of Jioctal are viewed as a threat and also many of them are of mixed Lamaran and non-Lamaran ethnicity, causing them to be viewed as inherently inferior to Lamarans.

Jogodi's Grand Temple, as well as Jogodi's other temples, is also a place where tonnes of drugs are grown and processed due to the mountain range it's in having unique soil. These drugs, including pain-killers, anticoagulants, the occasional poison and aphrodisiacs (clerics double as marriage counselors: more often than not their only advice is "have more kids". They're also allowed to marry and have kids of their own, but aren't allowed to raise those children). Many of these drugs go missing in transit for reasons.