Temple of the Guardians

The Temple of the Guardians was a dwarven religious and civic institution built in the Farseas region under the aegis of Moradin, the dwarven All-Father, by his clerics. It is believed to be the origin point of the Swamp Gods — the voodoo-inspired pantheon that has governed Farseas spiritual life for centuries. The temple has since been gutted by the Irungarten family.

Purpose and Creation

The Temple of the Guardians was established at Moradin's own instruction — or so the legends would say, if anyone who remembered the origin was still alive. The temple's clerics were tasked with creating the Swamp Gods: divine constructs designed to protect the Farseas' interests and its peoples "in spite of themselves." The gods were not intended to be worshipped in the manner of the greater Faerûnian pantheon; they were intended to be guardians, embedded in the spiritual infrastructure of the swamp, watching over the ecosystem and the peoples within it.

The knowledge of this origin is entirely lost. No living being in the Farseas knows that the Swamp Gods were created by Moradin's clerics. The gods themselves — if they retain any memory of their creation — have not shared it. The Siv, who guard the Spirit Road where the gods reside, may know fragments of the truth, but the full account has been lost to time.

The Temple's Location

The temple was built in the Farseas' northern reaches, connected to the ancient dwarven infrastructure of the region — the same cliff-cut roads, sealed vaults, and underground galleries that appear throughout the Storm Horns and the Farseas' deeper places. The Farseas contains pre-elven ruins described as "buildings of ornate glass as strong as steel," and the Temple of the Guardians predates even these, drawing on a dwarven religious tradition that is older than the swamp's current shape.

Irungarten Desecration

The Irungarten family gutted the Temple of the Guardians as part of their industrial expansion. The temple's position within the same underground network as the Farfetcher pump infrastructure made it a target for their extraction operations: the Irungartens, who recently developed the ability to pump and refine raw magic essence from the swamp, found the temple's divine infrastructure too valuable to leave intact.

The gutting of the Temple of the Guardians is essentially the industrialisation of Moradin's divine infrastructure — the Irungartens pumping the elemental and spiritual substance of the temple's construction through their battery brine systems to produce Hydracephelate and raw magical essence. They typically use elementals for this process, but the temple's residual divine energies provided an unusually rich source.

Warwick Osrin, who regards the Irungarten family's actions as a personal desecration, counts the gutting of the temple among the specific grievances driving his fury.

Current State

The Temple of the Guardians is a ruin. Its original purpose and contents are gone, extracted or destroyed by the Irungartens. The physical structure may partially survive — dwarven stonework is not easily demolished — but as a functioning temple it no longer exists.

Whether Moradin's original investment in the Farseas has any residual effect, or whether the destruction of the temple has permanently altered the Swamp Gods' connection to their source, is an open theological question.