Orithena

First Appearance and Context

Orithena is recalled during the daily winding of the clock at Provener inside the Mynster. It is cited as a primordial gathering place of the theors and the setting of a midday ceremony beneath a great dome.

Geography and Setting

Orithena lies on Ecba, a volcanic island. The south slope of the volcano exploded and collapsed in antiquity, burying the Temple and obliterating a harbor on the island’s southeastern coast that early physiologers once visited by galley. The ash and rubble form a fan that runs straight from summit to sea.

Structure and Features

The Halls of Orithena are described as marble columns rising from the black rock of Ecba and supporting a vast dome with an oculus. At midday, a shaft of light from the oculus passed over an analemma marked on the floor, forming the climax of the ceremony beneath the dome. The description suggests a monumental complex designed for celestial alignment and communal assembly.

Legacy and Functions

In very ancient times, theors gathered there to sing the Hylaean Anathem; leadership is attributed first to Adrakhones and later to Diax or one of his fids. After Orithena’s destruction, surviving theors undertook the Peregrination. Much later, elements of the old rite were adapted for mathic worship, and after the Reconstitution the aut was revived in a new form centered on winding the Clock. The modern liturgy at Provener preserves the memory of Orithena’s ceremony inside the maths.

Music and Computation

Accounts from a recent visitor indicate that Orithena’s community maintains a tradition of computational chanting (rule‑based melodic permutations used for calculation), descended from Edhar practice, with notably musical results; the specific problem pursued is not stated in those accounts.

Present Day

The site is enclosed by two wall systems: a twenty-foot inner enclosure that includes the cloister and the main dig, and a lower outer wall that runs upslope toward the volcano’s caldera. The inner wall is built from uniform blocks of fused volcanic ash (cast "concrete") and fitted with large steel gates flanked by cylindrical bastions. Within the inner wall live roughly a hundred residents who identify as a Lineage (pre‑Cartasian tradition). They conduct a long-running excavation while maintaining orchards, vines, and grain in terraced plots, aided by waterworks and shade trees. Hot water from volcanic springs is routed through a bath house.

Outwardly, the community adopts familiar mathic forms—robes, cloister routines, and gate ceremony—and so appears to be a Math (walled monastery). Residents, however, explicitly state that Orithena is not a formal math; instead it is a lineage cloister that uses mathic forms as a practical cover when dealing with outsiders.

Access and Customs

Visitors approach via a small souvenir shop below the gate. At the postern, gatekeepers address outsiders with the standard formula that one may not enter without swearing the Vow (oath of seclusion), first in the local vernacular and then in Orth (formal mathic language). Statements by residents indicate that entry can be granted without the Vow and that the community’s duty is to its work rather than to the Cartasian Discipline (mathic rule set). Access to the dig is limited by heat and safety; daytime visits are brief, while digging proceeds at night.

Guests may be invited to lodge in a separate guest house set apart from the cloister, where they are permitted to keep jeejahs (handsets) and other lay goods. Invited visitors have joined the communal dinner; welcomes and toasts are led by resident hosts such as Fraa Landasher.

Architecture and Layout

• Inner enclosure: uniform ash-cast blocks and steel gates, with bastions overlooking the gate; a clock-tower stands in the cloister.
• Outer works: a lower boundary wall reaches toward the caldera; mine-like installations high on the slope appear designed to draw useful heat.
• Grounds: shaded paths, orchards, and small fields create a cool corridor upslope; a central fountain supplies mineralized water with a sulfur taste.
• Guest lodge: a small, separated guest house for temporary visitors; devices such as jeejahs (handsets) are allowed there.

Excavation and Finds

Excavation descends by a spiraling ramp into a large pit exposing foundations, floors, stairs, and plazas of the ancient complex. Within a decagonal plaza known as The Decagon, residents lay out reproduction tiles using molds found on site to demonstrate The Teglon (aperiodic tiling puzzle). A museum-like store of artifacts is maintained intramuros, including a full-body cast traditionally attributed to Metekoranes. The community’s work emphasizes careful documentation and gridding, with activity timed to the island’s heat.

Ownership and Access

Public records indicate that Ecba is a single parcel owned by a private foundation that acquired it roughly nine centuries ago. According to research shared by a visiting investigator, the island was purchased just after the Third Sack (a historical upheaval) by a wealthy burger who endowed a perpetual foundation to administer it. Governance is described as a mixed Sæcular/Mathic (lay and monastic) board of governors operating under extensive bylaws meant to last. On-site leadership presents itself as answerable to the owning dowment (endowment fund), rather than to the Cartasian Discipline.

Recent Events: Probe Landing and Evacuation

During a night excavation interval, a probe associated with the Geometers (aliens in orbit) descended by parachute and executed a controlled rocket landing within The Decagon. Residents and visiting avout (monastic scholars) gathered at the pit’s rim and then on the plaza to observe and assist. On-site reports describe the probe as a saucer-bottomed capsule with deployable legs and stenciled operating instructions around a trapezoidal door.

With improvised ladders, locals opened the hatch and recovered a near-human passenger who was severely wounded and was pronounced dead within minutes by the site physician. A parachute canopy was then raised over the Teglon plaza to provide shelter and to manage access around the lander.

Forces of the Sæcular Power (worldly authority) arrived shortly afterward, entering the inner enclosure in protective suits, collaring residents for identification, and establishing control of the landing zone. Witnesses report that local Reticulum (planetary network) traffic was jammed, while privately coordinated channels remained active among the soldiers.

A short time later, observers saw a white streak cross the sky and strike in the island’s summit caldera, immediately followed by seismic shock and an eruption that produced a fast-moving pyroclastic flow. Soldiers began loading evacuees onto aerocraft, discarding gear to make room. Many residents and visitors were lifted off the slope; the site below was then overtaken by the glowing ash cloud.

In the immediate aftermath, evacuees and Orithenans were moved to a cordoned beach camp on a nearby island, informally called "New Orithena," where a temporary canvas cloister was raised and daily rites such as Provener resumed under quarantine supervision.

Current Status

Eyewitness accounts indicate that the inner cloister, walls, and exposed structures at the dig were destroyed or buried by the eruption’s pressure wave and flow. Surviving residents and guests were evacuated by air. The extent of damage within the pit and to standing features is unknown pending any later survey. In public addresses at a Convox (all‑math convocation), the incident has been styled the “Visitation of Orithena.”

Notes

• A remark attributed to a visiting fraa just before the eruption (“They must have deciphered my Analemma!”) suggests he believed the visitors had interpreted the Analemma on the temple floor; this is presented as his inference without further explanation in the available accounts.