Temple

Lore & Background

In the lore of the Tribes universe, the Temple complex predates the warring factions that now clash across the landscape. Its origins are lost to time—carved from local stone, its halls and colonnades suggest a civilization that valued geometry and symmetry. Over the centuries the structure has partially collapsed, leaving broken archways, half-buried floors, and open courtyards where the sky is visible through gaps in the roof. The surrounding terrain is a mix of gentle hills and flat plains, typical of the region, with no natural verticality beyond the temple's own raised platforms and stairways.

The factions that fight on this ground have no particular reverence for the ruins. The temple is simply the most defensible structure in the area, and its capture points make it a magnet for skirmishes. Players slide up the temple's flanks, pop through broken windows, and contest the central plaza while teammates hold the outer points. The map's architecture rewards players who understand sightlines through colonnades and the speed advantage of sliding down sloped stone floors.

Like most Tribes maps, Temple is designed around horizontal movement. There is no jumping; instead, players accelerate on downslopes and brake on upslopes. The temple's interior offers flat, fast ground ideal for rapid repositioning, while the surrounding hills create natural chokepoints where a well-placed player can cover multiple approach routes simultaneously.

In Their Own Story

The dust hangs thick in the late afternoon light, settling on the broken lintel of the north colonnade. You slide up the gentle slope toward the temple's eastern face, your boots carving a fresh line in the packed earth. Inside, the air is cooler. A shadow shifts behind a column—two paces to your left, breathing easy. You don't turn. You slide the remaining distance in a long, silent rush, boots whispering over worn stone, and the capture point blinks green under your feet. Somewhere behind you, the sound of a slide accelerating down a hill tells you the next fight is already coming.

Reader's Guide

Temple is built around a central ruin complex with capture points distributed across the interior plaza, the flanking corridors, and the open ground just outside the walls. The key tactical axis runs through the temple's main hall: it is flat, fast, and offers the shortest path between the central point and either side, but it is also the most exposed. Players who commit to the interior corridor trade speed for vulnerability to crossfire from the elevated side platforms.

The surrounding terrain is a series of low, rolling hills that create soft cover. Because Tribes movement is slide-based, the angle of these hills matters more than their height. A player sliding down a gentle slope into the temple entrance gains a speed burst that is hard to react to, while a player trying to slide up the same slope loses momentum and becomes a sitting target. This asymmetry is the map's core tactical engine.

The outer capture points sit in open plains with minimal cover, making them contested by players who can reposition quickly using the hill slopes. Holding an outer point requires covering two approach vectors simultaneously. The temple's broken walls and half-collapsed floors create short, tight corridors that favor close-range engagements and punish players who overcommit to a single angle.

Community players tend to refer to the central hall as the "kill box" because of the density of sightlines converging there, and the flanking slopes as the "sliders" for the speed advantage they grant. The map rewards teams that split: one group contests the interior while the other holds the outer points, using the hills to reposition without being seen.

Did You Know?

• Tribes' movement system means there is no jump; all vertical repositioning is achieved by sliding up and down terrain slopes, which makes the temple's interior floors and stairways function as the map's only true vertica
• Volition, Inc. developed the Tribes series, and the franchise's distinctive low-poly, hilly terrain aesthetic is visible on Temple's surrounding landscape.
• Because players accelerate on downslopes, the angle of the hills surrounding the temple determines approach speed, making the same path a fast lane in one direction and a slow climb in the other.
• The Tribes franchise was known for its team-based capture-point gameplay, and Temple's layout—central structure with distributed outer points—is a common spatial pattern across the series' map roster.