Shape of a sept

[Anthony Appleyard]

Advertisements for the videogame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones:_Winter_Is_Coming often intrude into Youtube videos. In them I have seen two ideas of what a sept loks like:

(1) A 7-sided building, presumably with one of the Seven at each corner or in the middle of each side. (One of the GRRM text stories mentions a seven-sided foundation where a sept had been.) That raises the question of where an adequate-sized public entrance is to be. Sometimes I think in terms of 8-sided, for 7 gods, and the eighth position is for the entrance.

(2) Recently, a battle scene in a Youtube advertisement for that videogame shows a big tall sept with a roughly-circular central part with various buildings attached to it including a large parallel-sided nave for the congregation like in a real-world cathedral; the nave presumably ends in the central part in a large apse which presumably contains the images of the Seven arranged in a semicircle.

 

[The hairy bear]

The books establish that all septs are heptagonal, and have seven altars for the seven gods. The Great Sept of Baelor, and presumably other big septs, have also seven towers.

 

 

 

[Back door hodor]

I too have trouble picturing in my head where the entrance would be on a 7 sided building. Like you thought about an octagon being possible. 

Now though I picture a fairly normal vestibule/entryway type structure that leads into a room shaped like a seven pointed star, with the vestibule in between two of the arms of the star.

[Anthony Appleyard]

To keep the building 7-rotational symmetrical, plus allowing adequate public access, it could have 7 doors, each between 2 of the god-images.