The Naustic Temple

The Naustic Temple is a place where people serve Nauticus, the defender of Terengia, study marine life and where young children go for their education. In the school children are taught hunger for knowledge and respect for Nausticus. Most students are willing to find this knowledge but there are always few who don't care about it. These ones often dislike their time there, but in Caheni everyone must go through this schooling.       

ARCHITECTURE

  The Naustic Temple is located in Caheni. Unlike most istitutions in the city, the Naustic Temple lies on the bottom of the sea, so deep that its highest point barely reaches 10 meters below sealevel and the whole temple is made of green and blue stones found on the bottom of the ocean.. I it accesed by a long staricase that goes all the way down. This staircase, called the Nautic Stairs, start on the beach and are only accesible during low tide. If someone would need to leave they can, instead of climbing all the way back up the Nautisc Stairs, get themselves to the Glong, a long chute filled with water on the centrer of the central room on every floor. Next to the chute is a small room that, when entered, wraps the entered person in a large bubble and pushes it into the water. This magical bubble the floats to the top of the chute and out of the central well in the town square.     

PURPOSE

The main purpose of this temple is to serve an honour the great sea serpent Nausticus, who is the protector of Terengia. It does also teach every young boy or girl in Caheni about their religion, history, literature, philosophy, politics and mathematics. This education starts first low tide of the year they turn 5 and continues until they become adulthood at the age of 20. At this age they are sent back to the surface to start their adult life. Only during the holidays and weekends are parents allowed to come visit their sons and daughters. Children live in the two upper most floors (out of ten) and their classes are on 3rd and 4th floors counting down (floor 10 is the deepest).    

POCKETS

The Greatest Servant, who is the leader of the temple, acts also as the principal in the school. He or she lives on the lowest floor in order to be as close to Nausticus as possible. As principal their job is to appoint priests as teachers according to their individual knowledge and skills. The principal must also divide new students into groups and appoint one teacher as a Guide for each new group. These groups, also called Pockets, each have their own chambers but groups are mingled together for lessons. The job of a Guide is to introduce students to the school, make sure children behave properly, inform them on any and all important events and to see to their needs. Each Pocket consist of 20 - 30 students of the same age and gender and there are 6 Pockets. Where 1 pocket refers to a specific year of students, all pockets named the same are called a Pocket Family. Pockets are named by historic priests. The female pockets are: Hellien, Vestria and Glare, and the male Pockets are: Craeseno, Denker and Pholois. When referring to specific Pocket one would say for example: "Everybody from 1st years of Denkers Pocket must return to their chambers at once!".     

PRINCIPAL

As told previously, the Greatest Servant is the principal in the school and appoints teachers, divides new students into Pockets and chooses a guide for each new pocket. Currently the Greatest Servant is called the Cleanser. It is not his real name, but no priest is allowed to use their birth name in order to emphasize equality amongst their ranks. He is a short man with long hair dyed as blue as the sea. He is very wise in the ways of sealife and had spent dozens of years teaching his knowledge to students. When chosen as the Greatest Servant he had to resign from his duties as a teacher and take up the daunting task of leading the entirety of the temple. After his rise to be the Greatest Servant, he invested hours upon hours to study marinelife in as much detail as possible, hoping to fins a clue to Nausticuses location.     

TEACHERS

In the Naustic Temple, there are a total of 381 priests and 974 acolytes. Of these 381 priests are only 146 active teachers and 90 Guides. Each teacher is specialized in a certain area, be it history or philosophy or languages, and teaches it to students. Usually the more experienced a teacher gets, the more experieced students he or she teach. New teachers thus only teach new students.