Thursday 29 July 2010

Enos the Maul

Enos the Maul has the distinction of being given his name by Amerasu herself rather than one of the Marshals as is more common for a warrior.


In 957, during a ceremony of rebirth at a ruined temple on the edges of the Indus forest, his actions undoubtedly saved the lives of several priestesses of Ashan and allowed the prayers to be completed without interruption.

The temple, abandoned during the Usurper Wars and desecrated by generations of Sudhod’ya since then, was to be re-sanctified in Ashan’s name. Mid way through the great hymn though the foul magics practiced by the local Sudhod’ya tribe disturbed the Sithi ritual and the stone guardians of the temple who stood in niches either side of the door, were animated for the first time in millennia and descended from their plinths and marched up the temple nave to attack the priestesses. Struggling to contain the backlash and complete the ritual the priestesses remained kneeling in front of the alter as the stone warriors slowly advanced upon them wreathed in flames from the Sudhod’ya magics.
Most of the warriors who had accompanied the priestesses were outside fending off occasional attacks from the local so it fell to the few within the temple to hold back the attack. Seeing his sword made no mark upon the stone skin of his opponent, Enos Aditu took up a great flint-headed war hammer that had been taken as a trophy from a Sudhod’ya chieftain who had opposed the Sithi advance on the temple. Leaping into the midst of the half dozen flaming statues, Enos swung the brutal weapon in great swings and brought it crashing onto his enemies shattering limbs and heads with each swing. The magic animating the statues was of the time of Aquila Te Lunashed, powerful and raw, and the stone men moved with disturbing speed and struck with great strength. However Enos was quicker and his violence more deadly.

So quick was his execution of the wardens that the warriors outside never knew that a battle had occurred, the priestesses were never aware of their danger and Enos’s fellow defenders in the temple stuck the attackers many times but none were brought down by any other weapon than the hammer swung by the Aditu warrior. It is said that Hiska Aditu, Comitati and bodyguard to Amerasu, standing at First Grandmother’s side at the alter, did not even feel it necessary to draw her weapon such was her confidence in Enos’s abilities. Though First Grandmother's back was to the fight, and though she led the prayers to cleanse the temple, Amerasu knew what had occurred and once the ceremony was over and the priestesses and other warriors were exclaiming at the ruins of the old wardens that lay scattered across the temple floor, she named the Aditu warrior Enos the Maul and sang his praises to the other Sithi and to Ashan above.


The weapon now sits in the great halls of Aquila, the head nearly split from the haft after Enos brought it down on the head of an orc warboss attacking the Great Wood in 1014. The maul, and the warrior who carried it, are blessed by Ashan and many Sithi warriors touch the polished hide of the handle for luck whenever they enter the Hall of Artefacts in the palace. Enos himself now serves as a warrior in the warband of Amren the Fair.

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