"Erected to honor the Tantas
Special Shelters
Pilgrim's Refuge
While ballow trees were long seen as sacred by Athians, making it a crime to cut them down or otherwise harm them."
...
I managed to get a good screenshot of the refuge book to translate, so let's talk about the Pilgrim's Refuge! Because I think they're nifty :3
Long before the Break reduced Athia to the zombie-infested wasteland we know and love today, people traveled from all over Athia to worship the Tantas. These people were known as pilgrims, and they built refuges to house them in their travels—a fact I'm sure Frey and Cuff are very grateful for today!
But what's interesting about these buildings is, well, many things, really. First, they're made from ballow wood. The ballow tree is sacred to Athians, and as stated on that pamphlet above, it's illegal to "cut them down or harm them." They seem to be very fragile trees, considering that simply harvesting their sap will kill them. But ballow wood has special protective properties, specifically the ability to keep "evil" at bay. Doesn't seem to work on Cuff, but that's a different post for a different time.
So the refuges were built to house people who traveled across Athia to worship the Tantas, and keep them safe from not just the elements, but from the wildlife as well. That pamphlet also states that the refuges were built for the purpose of honoring the Tantas. These pilgrims were all about their Tantas! And you can see on the refuges themselves that the people who built them put a lot of love and effort into not only making a sound structure, but a beautiful one as well. There's not a single inch of the outside walls that is not painted with murals of four women and depictions of the ballow tree that gave the wood for the refuge.
Here's the thing though: those aren't our Tantas. And the mural in the center seems to depict a fifth Tanta, or at the very least conspicuously leaves room for a fifth person.
Who are these four women? They appear to be representative of the Tantas we're familiar with, but they're not the Tantas we know. Or they're not exactly the Tantas we know. None of them are wearing their signature, iconic regalia. At least Sila's counterpart (bottom right) has a sword and appears to be wearing armor. And I can figure out Prav's (top right) because she's blindfolded, and as the saying goes: justice is blind. Olas (top left) and Cinta (bottom left), though? Olas's wears green and has darker skin than the others, and Cinta's might be petting a cat? Maybe? And those are my only clues for who these murals are supposed to depict.
So, considering that the pilgrim's refuges were built centuries ago to honor the Tantas and house the pilgrims traveling across Athia to worship said Tantas, it's reasonable to assume that the four women depicted on the refuge murals are our Tantas: Olas, Prav, Cinta, and Sila. However, no one knows how long ago the refuges were built, nor how long ago the pilgrims began their pilgrimages. It's entirely possible that these four women are the predecessors to our modern-day Tantas. In addition, that conspicuous empty space in the center mural could have been left open for the First Tanta—who knows how long ago she'd passed her mantle of Tanta onto her successors? The space may have been left to honor the Tanta who started it all, who saved Athia and brought it into prosperity so, so long ago that no one even knows when it all happened.
But that empty space also serves as an interesting look forward. It leaves room for a fifth to join the ranks as well.