The Covenant of Obodas
Avdat was a famous Nabatean city that arose in the 1st century BCE, serving as a waypoint on the Incense Road between Petra and Gaza. Erected on a natural plateau in the desert, and using their agricultural methods, the Nabateans managed to sustain agriculture in the desert.
History
In the 4th Century BC, arab tribes from the Arabian deserts started immigrating to the southern part of Palestine. They were shrewd merchants, and transported goods across the desert, in large camel caravans. They transported spices, perfumes, salt, silks, and such. But their success was mostly because they knew how to survive, and how to locate water in the desert. They set up trading posts every 30-40 kms, and brought their goods to sell in Gaza, and from there to Europe.
While their centers were in Petra and Al Hajar, they eventually created other cities, like Avdat, Mamashit, Haluza, and Shivta, in the southern part of Palestine. Until the 7th century, they were pagans, who worshiped their pantheon of gods, and in the 7th century they converted to Christianity, under the Byzantine Empire.
When the First Crusade arrived in Palestine, and formed the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it freed, amongst other places, some of the lands of the ancient Nabateans, though their cities laid in ruins.
But following the Crusade, a wave of Hermetic Magi arrived to the Holy Land, and began to form covenants, and created the Levant Tribunal. Some of those Magi, led by Florence du Merinita, have stumbled across the Nabatean ruins of Avdat, and found, in the ancient temple to Obodas, an entrance to a Faerie Regio, where the city remains intact, though it was, mostly, uninhabited. The only resident was Obodas, the faerie god that resides there.
They created a covenant within the Regio, and named it Obodas, after the Faerie god that resides in the Regio