SonQo Temples

Beautiful jade cliffs and mountains surrounded by pristine cascades and red leaved trees are scattered around the landscape north of the Kinnog Jungle.

These mountains house many monasteries and temples, called the **SonQo Temples**, built by monks who worship the god Doken, the first monk of these mountains that ascended to divinity through meditation and prayer (according to them, atleast).

In their quest for immortality and godhood, however, the SonQo monks have gone mad, their minds and bodies infested by centipede parasites, which they imported from a mad Elyrian smuggler in Moreelse.

The only sane residents of these temples are dwarves that were brought as manual labourers from Kinnog. They now occupy 3 of the 40-50 temples and monasteries scattered around the land, guarding them from the mad monks, and refusing to leave for their home, as they've now adopted the worship of Doken, although in a different way.

## History

The temples of SonQo date from the days the First Elven Empire was at its peak. At that point in time, the Son’Qo area was the private estate of a great elf lore, who dedicated a great portion of his fortune to bring the most beautiful plants he could think of. The area, full of cascades and cliffs, soon became an exuberant garden from plants from all Scimitarian and Giantstep. Many buildings were constructed to preserve some of the more delicate plants and fungi in the area. However, during the First Azanese-Drow War, the great noble marched to battle to lead his men, and never returned. The land became abandoned, since he had no heirs of his own. However, against all odds, the land did not lose its luster, and the region stayed as beautiful as it had been back in the day, the scenery becoming slowly dominated by red maples and tupelo trees.

The area was left mostly on its own, even while the Elven Empires broke down into the Drow Confederacy and then the Drow City States. The area became a spot of calm during those dark days, attracting those who wanted to leave the chaos and the discord behind. It was around 650 ABE when a young human monk began teaching his knowledge of the world to the rest of the travelers in the area. His original name was lost, but history remembers him as Doken (“the unshaken” in drow tongue). He quickly gained a following, teaching how to commune with nature and leave the human desires behind, among many other things. His early death was interpreted as a sign of ascendance, and was buried in his favorite spot for preaching. Over the years, the human population of southern Scimitarian began praying to him, first as an interceding figure to the gods, and then as a god in his own right. Dokenism spread for over two centuries within the human populations of Scimitarian, but over the years, its weight began loosening. The increasing pressure of the drow and the lack of an organized structure led to fracture and then abandonment of the religion. However, during the decades dokenism was at its peak, it created brilliant temples all over the SonQo region. Most of the original temples still stand today, whereas others have been swallowed by nature and the forest.

The temples began receiving less and less people over the years, and the teachings of dokenism were taught more poorly over the years. The search for harmony with nature with the world became the search for immortality. The tale of the man who becomes “as the tree at the top of the mountain looking upon the valley” was twisted into becoming the mountain itself. This increased the speed of which people were abandoning dokenism, and by the year 900 ABE, only the inhabitants of the SonQo region still remain faithful, as a pale shadow of what once was.

It would be many centuries later when the SonQo monks entered in contact with a mysterious traveler. Nothing is known of him, but he claimed to know a form of achieving enlightenment just as Doken himself had done. He then left a small package in the hands of the monks and left. After this encounter, strange things began happening within the temples. Some individuals began acting in unusual ways: forgetting people they had known all their lives, behaviors contrary to their nature, emotion being drained from them. After this, things got worse. Disappearances became the norm, only to reappear weeks if not months later, in the same strange state as the others. Many tried to solve whatever curse had befallen the community, to no avail. Many tried to fight it, but not knowing what was the origin of this ill or how to counter it, they had no effect. Many more, wiser still, tried to ran away, but were convinced to stay and meditate their fears away, through communion with nature and through abandoning their ties to humanity. It was then when all monks who had fallen to the mysterious curse acted in perfect, inhuman unison. They captured the rest of their brethren and chained them deep into the temples. What transpired there, we only know due to the maddened ramblings of a monk, a single survivor who managed to escape from them. Near death due to exhaustion and his injuries, he told a story where the uncanny monks revealed themselves to be mere puppets, their body orifices opening to show a true evil. Colonies of parasitic centipedes had taken over their bodies, using them as mere vessels, and slowly but surely they started invading the bodies of the remaining monks. The sight of the inhuman process used to infect the unsullied monks was such that the survivor broke though iron chains (breaking his arms in the process) and running away in a mad dash to the highest waterfall in SonQo. Taken for dead, his body was carried to the shore, where the drow found him.

His story was at first ignored and taken as the ramblings of a nearly dead madman. However, this news reached the ears of some of the higher echelons of the Drow City States, which must have confirmed the truth of the story in some unspoken way. They declared the area as forbidden for anyone to enter, being any madmen insane enough to do so at their own peril. They also declared than anyone who came from the region must be killed on sight, and their body cremated as soon as possible. This state of affairs has remained to this day, with now plenty proof of the evil that has taken root in the area. The City States guard the region with zeal, wanting to avoid the spread of the ill that has befallen the temples, but there is little talk of destroying them once and for all, once again for unknown reasons.

## The Temples

The oldest SonQo Temples are a prime example of early Drow architecture, while the newest ones (which, compared to most buildings in Scimitaria, are still considered very old) contain mostly traces of Changrilese and Azan influences, as it was from these places that the majority of Doken's followers hailed from.

More than forty, but less than fifty (their exact number unknown), the majority of these temples now lay in shattered ruins. The monks who once inhabited them have fallen victim to a mysterious parasite. The centipede that infests them is said to possess control over their every action, granting them a twisted form of life eternal. Only should the centipede itself expire, too shall their unnatural existence, otherwise being indestructible.

These monks, lacking any thoughts or logic, wander aimlessly around the ruined halls of the temples. These once-devout monks, who once tended to the sacred halls of the valley's many shrines, now care not for the preservation of the very structures that once housed their spiritual practices. They light strange incense, its pungent aroma announcing their presence and marking the presence of the infestation. Their will is that of the parasitic centipede that controls them, this neglect leading to many of the temples being lost, either being overtaken by forests or tumbling over hills as their foundations crumbled and detoriated over time.

Three temples still stand tall over all the ruins. These temples are kept intact not by the puppeted monks, bereft of will and free thought, but by a hardy and stout folk. Decades before the dark curse of the centipedes descended upon the valley, a company of dwarves arrived to the valley, hired as workers by the pious Dokenist monks. Yet, as the curse swept through the land, the dwarves proved fortunate enough to escape its grasp, fleeing to the most isolated of the temples, where they have remained to this day, tending to the ancient structures and keeping them from falling to ruin like so many others have.

The dwarves, trapped within the remote corners of the valley, they saw no way to escape and so, using their mastery of stone and steel, they fortified their chosen homes, making them impregnable to the attacks of the infected monks. With time, the dwarves delved deeper into the teachings of Doken, discovering the hidden wisdom within the greatest library of the valley, housed within one of their sanctuaries.

Nowadays, as the centuries have passed, the dwarves' descendants now offer aid to any weary travelers and braving the dangers of the vale (as the mad monks can be found wandering even outside their temples) to escort them to safety. The dwarves are mortally afraid of the parasitic centipedes and their puppets, and have refused to reclaim the temples for themselves, even if some of them have been suspected of being completely abandoned for a while now. The dwarves believe that a warrior, blessed by Doken himself, will descent to the Earth, teaching them how to get rid of the parasitic centipedes for good.

Only the most desperate, seeking the secret of immortality in the pages of Doken's writings, dare to brave the valley's dangers. But most, if not all, of these wanderers meet their end in tragedy. The SonQo Valley, with its majestic temples and tales of horror, remains a warning to all of the consequences of seeking immortality at any cost.