Church of St Olovald

"Nobody uses it now except beggars and drunks. They crawl in there to get out of the weather. That could be warehouses, and a good stretch of docks, hut will those temple fools listen to a reasonable offer? No. They think that a run-downdump is still a temple!"

- Frustrated speculator

At the far western end of the channel on the edge of Noormanswijk stands an ancient and crumbling temple to Manann. It's built of old stone around a central nave, with wings on either side of the apse that curve outwards and around like the hooks of an anchor. The area around the temple has become a squalid maze of slums and tenements, and very few worshippers come there nowadays.

The whole temple is filled with the kind of damp chill that sinks into your bones and stays there; moss grows thickly on many of the walls, the old frescoes are peeling and are black with mildew, and in some places the floor is carpeted with lichen, making the footing slippery and treacherous. Yet despite this the temple has an air of life and vitality which belies its derelict appearance.

Once the look of the place matched this vitality. Long ago, this was the spot where Marius first made sacrifice to Olovald, the god that had called his people to the Wasteland. For over a thousand years this church was the spiritual heart of Marienburg, until the Great Cathedral of Manaan was built. Even after the cult of Olovald declined after the Imperial annexation, this church was important to the city, as the place where the Barons were crowned.

By the 11th century, the cult of Manaan had grown so strong that it was able to declare in the council of 1010 that Olovald was not a god, merely a misremembered saint. His churches were taken over, his priests absorbed, the Barons went elsewhere to be crowned, and only this one rundown temple was all that was left to honour the god's name. The temple has only one attendant, a Cleric of Manann named Hilaria om Klimt, or Sister Hilli. Her congregation is made up largely of local tramps, 10-20 at any time, many of them seamen who can no longer find work due to age, injury or drink. They use the west wing of the temple as a makeshift hostel, even though parts of its roof have recently collapsed.

There is an air of mystery to the temple. Rumours persist among the city's lower classes that a great treasure lies concealed somewhere in its crumbling stonework, and it's even whispered that Sister Hilli knows of it, and uses her 'mission' to disguise her searches for it. Stranger still, from time to time someone will die in Marienburg, leaving a large amount of money - often far more than their relatives suspected they owned - to the Church, "for services rendered". What those services might be is never stated. And occasionally a ship docks in Marienburg and pilgrims speaking foreign tongues, or not speaking at all, disembark, come to the church, spend hours or days in prayer and then leave the city, their business seemingly finished. Perhaps the cult of Olovald is not as dead as it seems; or perhaps these visits have a more sinister origin and purpose.

Source

 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st ED -- Marienburg: Sold Down the River
 * pg. 64

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