Well, they certainly weren't very helpful. They mostly just inspired false hopes - Sint paid a huge price for sheltering one, and the first temple utterly failed to save Hetland. Of course that's only my character's perspective. They did allow Riombara to survive by protecting Grehk, but the power of the individual Temples was pretty worthless when the invaders could all replace armies far faster than the Temples could be used to destroy them. If they did ultimately cut off the flow of reinforcements to the invaders then perhaps they did serve a valuable purpose, but I saw little evidence of that in-character. Even after all three temples arose, the invaders kept coming, though it wasn't *too* long after that they finally tapered off.
