Welvér

Welvér [WELL-vair], also called the Well of Truth, is an oracle and religious site in the southeastern hills of Besoa, important to the traditional animist religion of the island.

The site has been used by successive civilisations for many thousands of years, and is littered with ruins and ancient artefacts. The oracle itself is an underground chamber accessed by a stone shaft, believed to have been constructed by the ancient Godmen.

Parts of the aboveground shrine were considerably damaged by Hartheran forces during their occupation of the island.

Welvér lies in the dry rolling hills south of Famul Bay, a landscape of tumbled rocks and grasses. In former times it lay on the border between the Kingdom of Heronbar and the Kingdom of Alsan. It was visited regularly by kings seeking advice and guidance from the oracle, as well as being a safe meeting place for negotiations and treaties.

The site has a number of simple stone buildings occupied by the priests, with storehouses and evidence of many ruined walls, tombs and houses.

The oracle is home to an informal community of sages, mostly men and women in middle age or older who lived a full life elsewhere and felt the call to serve at the oracle. Numbers vary between ten and up to fifty people living there at any one time. The priests live on donations from visitors, or do work in local communities in exchange for food and other essentials.

The most senior in the community are the ten deacons who directly tend and care for the underground shrine.

At the centre of the complex is the well itself; a low circular wall surrounding a stone-lined shaft. The oracle shrine is about ten metres below current ground level, accessed by lowering a ladder down the well. The well mouth was once set in a ceremonial well-house or temple, the shaft covered by an elaborate roof and winching mechanism. In later ages this collapsed leaving only a simple circular wall. Despite being called a “well”, the shaft is entirely dry except after heavy rain.

The oracle is deceptively simple: a series of small underground chambers constructed from very smooth white stone, with no sign of joints or tool marks. It is entered via a small antechamber leading from the bottom of the well shaft, followed by a short connecting corridor with a numerous alcoves and niches of varying sizes. Offerings are placed in these niches.

The oracle chamber is a rectangle with cut off corners, about 8 metres wide. The chambers are all entirely empty, except for the oracle chamber itself which holds a single stone table or altar rising seamlessly from the centre of the floor, made of the same white material.

On the table are four artefacts: a black seashell, a shallow silver dish, an obsidian blade and a golden flask. The four are of heavy material with little obvious ornamentation, though some writers have suggested faint markings are obscure sigils or symbols.

The artefacts have important ceremonial use within the oracle. The flask contains water which is poured into the silver bowl which shows images in its reflected surface. Accounts tell the water is flat and tasteless. The shell sounds the voice of the oracle when held to the ear, though only one person can ever hear the voice. The blade is used for pointing or drawing.

There are many tales of unwise kings or warriors attempting to remove, desecrate or destroy the sacred artefacts from the chamber. According to legend, this always ends in the disappearance or grisly death of the perpetrators and everyone in the chambers at the time. As such the artefacts are only ever touched by the priests and those questioning the oracle.

The oracle has many curious features. The most obvious is that despite being deep underground, it is well lit, exactly matching the daylight above, so that on a sunny day it is bright, while at night it is dim. There are no obvious points of illumination, no lanterns, sconces or light wells of any kind. The second thing to strike visitors is that, even on bright days, no shadows are cast; the light seems to come from all around. As the sun sets the chamber gets dark, though with a pale glow of starlight.

Pilgrims to the shrine bring offerings of food, costly items and, in particular, offerings of flowers, wreathes of greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind. leaves, pure water from scared things, polished stones and other natural products sacred to Besoan Animism. No matter how high the chamber is piled with offerings, every few days, in the morning the chamber is found completely empty with no trace of what was there. This is considered to be the spirits accepting the gifts, though many believe it is simply cleaned by the priests. Even people sometimes disappear if they stay overnight, so the priests customarily vacate the oracle at sunset. Historically, people who felt a great weight of misdeeds would perform an overnight vigil in the oracle chamber: if they emerged in the morning they considered themselves absolved, and if not, they simply vanished. Vigils have long since been discouraged by priests who consider this a violation of the temple.