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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 4727952" data-attributes="member: 18832"><a href="http://mhacdebhandia.livejournal.com/76849.html" target="_blank">The Shrine of the Five Stars</a>The Shrine of the Five Stars would be an almost wholly unremarkable place of worship, were it not for a secret dating back to Solano's founding. The shrine follows the pattern of such buildings in towns all across the lands of the Spring Empire: a small, rectangular structure of whitewashed wood greying in the sun, oriented south with the altar parallel to the equator according to the best imperial calculations. The gallery containing the icons of the Five Stars looks down upon the altar, with the cone of the shrine's tall spire above pointing to the Heavens.Priestess Zhao lives in an austere one-room home near the shrine. The only concession she has made to her lifestyle after becoming magistrate is the simple canvas awning erected at the front of her home to provide shelter from the sun and rain to those who wait outside on petition days.Few in Solano - even those of your grandmother's and grandfather's generation - recall what lies bound and sealed beneath the altar of the shrine. When the first shaft of the mine was driven into the walls of the canyon, evil spirits were released from the earth; this was expected, and the usual imperial priests were on hand to deal with them. What no-one foresaw was the much greater terror that would emerge from the depths more than a month later, a terror that was only defeated after the loss of eleven lives.Plans to build the town shrine on the rim of the gulch were quickly abandoned, and the new location chosen so the altar would sit atop the terror's prison. Priestess Zhao and a few descendants of the men and women who put the terror down in the earth are the only people who know what lies beneath the shrine now; even as obedience to the Virtuous Way falters in this uncertain time, they remain the core of the faithful, renewing with their observances the power that keeps the terror locked away below.</blockquote>

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