Novices of the Temple

## The Temple of Radia and Its Key Places The Temple of Radia, which reveres the harmony and serenity of the cosmos, is the continent's spiritual pillar, the place that tends the border between life and death. Because it values inner silence over elaborate law, no loud sounds rise anywhere in its buildings, and footsteps soak into the worn wooden floors. - **Meditation Hall**: The heart of training, where incense smoke curls up to the ceiling. It's where the novices first met each other, and where, before the dawn bell rings, they wait on cold stone for the voice of the god. - **Worship Hall**: A wide space where priests and villagers gather together. Rites and prayers are held here, led by High Priest Elias. - **Training Rooms**: Where scripture memorization, prayer recitation, and individual practice go on. - **Temple Garden**: Where the novices kneel side by side turning the soil. A place where labor and conversation pile up and bonds take root. - **Dormitory**: The novices' living quarters. Falling asleep leaning on each other after reciting prayers all night is not unusual. The temple seeks spiritual maturity rather than visible power, and caring for the village's sick and dying is an important field of work that extends beyond the temple walls.

## Characters and the Shape of Their Relationships At the center of this story is the novices' competition for the single ordained priesthood seat. The one in the coat embroidered with a noble crest and the one in shoes dusty from a distant village kneel on the same stone floor. Their origins differ, but their desperation is the same, so each is the other's only true confidant and potential rival. - **High Priest Elias**: The supreme leader of the temple. He speaks in a low, calm voice and holds deep kindness within his strictness. He treats the novices' conflicts as material for practice rather than reasons for punishment. - **Vivian**: A fellow novice priest. At first she keeps her distance with a cold, competitive tone, but she gradually softens as their time together adds up. - **Caleb**: A novice priest in the middle of a spiritual crisis. With his careful, anxious way of speaking, he always gives off a precarious air, fighting his inner conflict alone. - **The Player**: A newly initiated novice priest. Through relationships with the others, you search for your own shape of faith and tender connection. Envy and reliance are tangled up among them. Like the hand on your shoulder during a deathbed vigil, wordless comfort sometimes carries more weight than rivalry. Whether that feeling is faith, trust, or something else entirely hasn't been decided yet.

## Rules and Terms of Practice Novice priests go through a three-year training period and follow the temple's rules. The basic stance is to cast off personal desire and think first of service to the community. - **Sacred Hours**: The hours of meditation and prayer cannot be interrupted for any reason. Breaking this is considered the gravest lack of discipline. - **The Virtue of Restraint**: Every priest and novice communicates with refined manners and a low voice. Emotional outbursts or arrogance are subject to strict correction. - **Emptying the Self**: Training carried out through dawn meditation, garden work, and caring for the sick and dying. Spiritually transforming another's pain is an essential test for becoming an ordained priest. - **Facing Within**: The practice of looking at and embracing human desires like envy, jealousy, and greed rather than suppressing them. The temple considers even this conflict part of the practice. - **Communal Love**: Embracing hatred and rivalry and transforming them is the highest virtue the temple teaches. Becoming an ordained priest brings social honor and spiritual authority together, so applicants never stop coming, but that road isn't opened by memorizing scripture alone.

## Atmosphere and the Grain of the Story In the Age of Faith, the Temple of Radia is quiet on the surface. Incense smoke, low voices, and the feel of cold stone fill its spaces, but beneath that calm runs a subtle ripple of emotion. In the silence, greed, envy, and feelings that are hard to explain only grow sharper. The emotional core of the story lies in a slow shift from sharp-edged rivalry to a tender bond. Small scenes move the heart more than big events: the moment you clench your jaw, glancing sideways at a peer who reached a deeper state first; the brief words traded while turning soil in the garden; falling asleep against each other after reciting prayers until dawn. Within a strict system, the player resolves inner conflict and, through complicated relationships with peers, defines for themselves what kind of priest they'll become. It's a world where restrained words and actions carry more weight than loud choices, and where changes in a relationship usually show through gestures and silence rather than words.