D&D 5E What's in a temple?

[jayoungr]

• Meditation room(s)
• Garden
• Scriptorium
• Perhaps a shop where they might sell charms, religious literature, and/or some product made at the monastery (EDIT: I guess it wouldn't fit this particular temple, since I just saw the bit about how people don't visit, but in case anyone else is reading this thread for inspiration...)

(As for toilets and broom closets, surely those fall under "living quarters"?)

 

[not-so-newguy]

No one ever thinks of a toilet.

Could be a way for the party to infiltrate the temple

 

[Stattick]

A place where one can attempt to speak with dead relatives. Surely, this temple would get far more requests for this service than most temples.

 

[Umbran]

(As for toilets and broom closets, surely those fall under "living quarters"?)

Do you have mops, brooms, buckets, and such sitting around in your bedroom?

 

[steeldragons]

A temple of death & undeath would require a morgue/raising room, for the studies of anatomy, building and/or generating their undead servants.

I would recommend a separate/different room - for the "death" side, for the burial preparations. Do they do embalming? Cleaning & dressing for burial? Fluid draining? Does the area/culture/religion engage in mummification?... Anyway, some room or set of rooms(an entire floor?) for autopsies, storage, and examinations of dead bodies....perhaps before they are sent over to the "raising room" to be turned into undead.

If there are "fiends" running around/in the service of this order [whether or not that is willing], then before a "scrying room" I would make sure there is a "conjuring/binding chamber"...which could double as your scrying room...maybe instead of a "pool of blood" or entrails altar or whatever, you summon a demon/devil/other to tell and/or show you what you want to know.

Living quarters are likely to be minimal: "cells" (probably not more than a broom closet) for the rank and file. Decent individual rooms for the 5 seniors. Full suite, probably on his own floor, multiple chambers, for the high priest.

Also, magic world or no magic world...any communal living sitch' needs adequate bathing and, um, "facilities" facilities.

 

[jayoungr]

Do you have mops, brooms, buckets, and such sitting around in your bedroom?

No, but they are in my house. "Living quarters" means more than just where you sleep, in my definition--it includes kitchen, bathroom, etc.

 

[steeldragons]

Oo! A well or cistern...either somewhere beneath the temple or out in a court yard or something. Need some kinda water supply...also allows for ye good ole water weird to attack anyone who approaches the well/cistern/water supply without the temple's (or specifically, the water retreivers') password.

 

[J-H]

Thanks everyone.

I'm going to flesh this all out, and then they'll probably just Leeeroy Jenkins it.
LOL

 

[tommybahama]

You still need a giant freakin' statue to the deity. Gods need worship. They are vain and jealous. A colossal statue shows devotion.

I recently watched Conan the Barbarian. There was a temple to the snake god where they worshiped and offered sacrifice to a giant snake! Something like that would be cool. Maybe a giant zombie snake that only eats the brains. The rest of the bodies get thrown to the otyugh.

 

[Quickleaf]

Candles/lanterns/torches that were never meant to be lit by man. If a player lights one of these candles/lanterns/torches (hopefully all identifiable by a skull motif), then it triggers a soul-sucking trap as enervating black and purple energy begins siphoning all life within the light emitted by the candle/lantern/torch. Those creatures in the dim light radius have advantage on their saves.