Sacred Precinct
by hughpierre
The sacred precinct of Sangsalgu is the center par excellence of divine atonement and one of the most prominent centers of liturgy in the valley.
It articulates two basic functional complexes:
the Religious
- Sponsor many Temple Shrines
- Lavish offerings to the gods according to calendrical cycles
- Promote the Great Divinities in regular progressions
- Stage Grand Ceremonies
- Offer relief from the great misfortunes
the Political:
- Respond to external needs and natural disasters
- Sponsor the State Cults
- Ensure the well-being of all citizens
- Ensure agricultural and military success
- Host lavish rituals for important events
Demographics
Many foreign dignitaries settle within and without the Sacred Precinct. Ethnic Sang of the noble class also conjugate around Sangsalgu proper with many taking on roles as pochteca or warriors or priests.
However, the sang as a people incurred such heavy loses in their migration into the valley; that even their triplet birth rate could just barely maintain full-blooded descendants. As a result, the sang name has morphed into defining people who live in Sangsalgu.
Government
The precinct is the official base of the supreme government to the Triple Alignment.
Temple Offices
Temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca along the linear plazas hold various offices that answer to the Great Speaker and Snake Woman.Precinct Calmecac
The Precinct's calmecac is a residence hall for priests to live and work, as well as to school future priests, administrators and politicians. It is also where fresh graduates are put to work on menial tasks as part of their upward progress.Red Temple
Dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and meeting place of the Council of Four when its members are deliberating among themselves. It is decorated with beautiful paintings and contain long painted benches composed of two panels: the upper one bearing a frieze with undulating serpents in bas-relief and the lower panel showing a processions of armed warriors converging on a grass ball.Burnt Palace
A secure residential building dedicated to accommodating foreign dignitaries without proper means of housing themselves. Ambassadors, special officials and their staff who are given rooms here generally not important enough to be granted room and board within the "Prison of the Gods", but still worthy enough for special treatment. The Burnt Palace got its name for the old palace site that burned down during the Women's War.Tlachtli or Teutlachtli
The ball field where games and ceremonies are performed by various priesthoods. Several groups of Speaking Councils also arrange public gatherings for discourse and promoting agendas.Defences
Snake Wall
An undulating wall around the Sacred Precinct, well-within the surrounding four campas and twice a man’s height. Three parts of the snake wall's subterranean elements also function as a sewer to doubly fertilize farm lands or drown invaders in waste.Industry & Trade
Religion and politics in the Triple Alignment are mutually dependent on each other, and blend together to transform the foundations of an ever-expanding state.
Religious Complex
Centralized Liturgy
There are many localized patrons of differing faiths inside the Alignment (especially of those conquered and delivered to the God Prison), in addition to the state sponsored ones. It is seen as the government's duty to acknowledge and celebrate all of them so as to maintain the "Favour of the Gods" where failure to show proper reverence to all of them or favour a select few over the rest is believed to bring the gods' wrath onto the empire. To better accomplish this, large public rituals are conducted according to the ritual calendar where the dates of all community cults are aligned with the state's agricultural calendar for combined festivities every month.Center-Periphery
The Great Lakes can be thought of as the largest place of worship for many city states, given the number of ceremonial processions to the lake, bogs, springs, fields and forests on the shore. The construction of a floating city on Lake Coco would later serve as an important meeting place for the people coming from the surrounding area to philosophize, debate and discuss issues of state. The precinct's central place, therefore, became the center of a huge network that directed its members to support a government in its efforts of integrating a huge population. And through ostentatious demonstrations of the heights of their bloodiness, prowess in battle and cultural glory, seek to weaken resistance to its hegemony.Political Complex
The sacred precinct employs many political maneuvers meant to glorify sang prestige and demean rivals. The precinct's political model is one of reciprocity, where men offered members of their own tribe as sacrificial victims: to be as containers for the gods or as food for them. In exchange for these offerings, the gods delivered their gifts to man, thus sacralizing political power. This takes on a crueler aspect when ones considers that former city leader to vanquished states, if they were themselves not chosen, witnessed the slaughter of their own warriors who had previously been captured in battle, and might have been their own kin, under the throng cheering screams.Infrastructure
The walled center of the city encompassing a huge plaza surrounded by a dozen religious and governmental buildings. Dominating the precinct’s skyline is the as-of-yet-incomplete great temple of power. In front of it, and in the precinct center, is the round pyramid to the war god. There is also a ball court, noble and temple schools and luxury apartments for administrative nobles arrayed around the remaining grounds.
Assets
Huey Tzompantli
A particularly tall skull rack used for the public display of human skulls, whose victims were the war captives and sacrificial offerings made to the gods. Normal tzompantli are scaffold-like construction of poles on which heads and skulls were placed after holes had been made in them. Huey Tzompantli distinguishes itself from the wooden palisades of other districts' racks by the permanence of a massive masonry platform composed of thirty long steps measuring fully 8 rods in length by 4 rods wide at its summit. On the precinct's skull rack holds 60,000 skulls, most of which are those taken during Flower Wars from many different theaters.Guilds and Factions
Embassies
By invitation of the Great Speaker, cities send delegates to represent foreign leaderships and send state gifts.Bad Diet
A delegation of 200 nobles from Bad Step cities with powers in commerce and legal say in the pursuit of war.Toik Observers
A small team of the College's many experts in matters of which the government knows nothing.Altepetl Delegates
Every other city-state wanting relations with Sangsalgu and the Triple Alignment send an ambassador(s) who are often housed in the God Prison.Council of Four
The inner circle of elites and nobles who advise the Emperor. These men are typically the major generals of the Cuachicqueh, Cuāuhtli, Ocēlōmeh and Otōntin who base themselves in the Cuachic, Cuauhcalli, Ocēlōtcalli and Otomitl buildings.Speaking Council
The various interest groups of loose intellectuals with unofficial political pull for particular governmental decisions and issues.Architecture
All buildings within the Sacred Precinct are made of painted stone. Even the ground on-which people walk is, forgotten by many, of spanning man-made platforms and plazas straddling across narrow stretches of lake water that still flow beneath and between the Black Salt Islands.
Temples built inside the precinct are distinguished by the predominance of open spaces on roofs and plazas surrounding the massive pyramidal temples coloured red, green and yellow over white plaster.
It makes a stark contrast to outside the snake wall where the buildings of Atzacualco, Cuepopan, Moyotlan and Zoquiapan are far less multicoloured. And even more so by the surrounding purple homes made of a poor man's salt.
Geography
Black Salt Islands
A confined collection of islands that made this region of the Lake so worthwhile in the past. Sangs of the past settled nearby to mine the valuable mineral that burst from the ground, as part of their obligation to Ocumtit. When they broke away from their former masters, they started to pave over the islands and connecting them via floating platforms that, over time, turned a collection of islands and islets into a single ground.
Alternative Name(s)
The Precinct
Type
District
Population
5,000
Location under
Included Locations
Owning Organization
Related Tradition (Primary)
Characters in Location
Related Professions
Related Plots
Love the writing here and how it reads like a travel guide. Nicely done!