:Yeah:

:Huh. Neat. It's a good symbol: 

The senior priest from before is sitting inside on the rug again; he rises and waves cheerful to Azabel. "Welcome back! Did you enjoy the books?" 

"I did, yeah! Some of the stuff reminded me a little of what Mindhealers do with patients in places."

"How fascinating! What about it was similar?" 

"Helping people, like, come to terms with things? And learn more sustainable approaches to relationships and stuff."

He smiles. "That makes sense! Anyway - I see you brought a friend today! Young man, what is your name?" 

"Ma'ar. It's, uh, nice to meet you." 

"Can he look at the old books with me?"

"Yes, of course! Would you like to do that now?" 

"Yes please!"

"Well, have a seat!" He gestured at one of the cushioned rug areas. "If you give me the books you're done with, I can put them back in our library and get you the records we requisitioned." 

She hands back the borrowed ones.

One of the younger priests offers them tea while they wait. 

The senior priest is back a couple of minutes later, carrying a wooden box. It holds a couple of books, beautifully bound in ancient-looking but carefully preserved leather, wrapped lovingly in velvet. 

"Here you go," he says. "Do be careful with them, please." 

"Did you want us to do the book-preservation spells for these too...?" Ma'ar peers at the aged tomes. "It looks like it was done not that long ago, but we could renew it anyway." 

"Yeah, we - well, maybe you should since I Gated -"

"All right." Ma'ar waits for a confirmatory nod from the priest and then gets to work on the first book; the second is available for Azabel's perusal. 

She lifts it out of the box very gently and turns the pages with great care.

The text is handwritten, in beautiful skillfully-inked calligraphy, with fancy illuminated capital letters at the start of each section and borders drawn around the pages. It's in Tantaran, but old Tantaran, a number of spellings are different and there are a few entirely unfamiliar words. 

It tells the story of the founders, seven different men and women from all over Tantara and the region south of it, who one summer about six hundred years ago, all received dream-visions of a particular valley, and of meeting the others there. It took almost a year, but eventually all of them followed the visions and made their way there. At which point, since they had clearly been entrusted with a sacred mission to carry out together, they tried to pull together the contents of their various visions and dreams, and they built the first temple to the Eternal Flame in that exact valley, and put together its doctrine. 

Huh. Was the Eternal Flame not worshipped before that? They're supposed to be very old, right -

It sounds like they had been worshipped in various forms before, for a long long time? The founders all recognized Them as a god they had heard of, even one worshipped locally by some people. But this was the start of the formal, organized religion of the current temple, and its mission and practices. 

Huh. What did they get out of the visions?

Most of the order's current doctrine! ...Though it sounds like there was quite a lot of human interpretation involved; the visions described are things like 'I saw a hanged man wake up, cut himself down from the tree, and get up and walk', or 'I carried a crippled man on my back to the top of a mountain' – not exactly clear instructions. 

They really are not. More evidence for the "gods can't talk, just tell if something gets the result they want" hypothesis. She says as much to Ma'ar.

Ma'ar glances up from his book, which he started reading after finishing the book-preservation magic on it. :...That makes sense. This one is about the first hundred years of the temple and its leadership - I'm pretty impressed with them, actually, but it doesn't seem as though they got a lot of useful advice from the Eternal Flame: