This 90-yard square walled compound built atop an outcropping of rock 200 yards from
the lakeshore is a veritable fortress. Its 10-foot thick limestone walls loom 20 feet over
the surrounding moat, and the gatehouse and four big corner towers top the walls by another
10 feet. A wooden drawbridge in the gatehouse connects the compound with the
temple garden.The order’s massive temple is built in the likeness of a giant frog. Its windowless,
green limestone walls soar 130 feet above Ihe temple compound. Between its front legs are a pair of monumental bronze doors whose surfaces are blueish green with verdigris. Here and there, greasy
smokes emanates from vents in its sides or roof to mingle with the mists that cloak the city
The temple’s doors are electronically sealed except during services, and that’s not right now. So they are closed closed.
The courtyard is laid out with rough white marble chips and a wide walk that leads from place to place. He checks out the gatehouse from beyond and…spies “Sunk into the right wall of this tunnel is a smooth red plastic alarm button. Hitting this button causes the computer to sound the alarm throughout the temple.”
There are two towers at each of the two gatehouses on this side of the compound, and each seem to have a soldier on top. Alzar heads over to the Temple Garden.
when the first monks dug a moat around their new temple and a U-shaped canal from Loch Gloomen to carry supplies to their doorstep, the resulting channels drained the water from a 90-yard by 180-yard segment of Frog Swamp. This area became a wooded garden, a stretch of solid ground over which the monks could stroll for exercise and refreshment of the spirit. Since various species of nasties kept wandering in from the nearby swamp and sticking fang and claw into the soft-bodied monks during their constitutionals, the brothers
eventually walled this garden off from the swamp. Like the temple compound, the garden today is protected by a 10-foot thick, 20- foot high limestone wall
