Early Childhood
Enasha was born into the nomadic Arshi tribe in modern-day Amata. Her father was a priest, her mother was a warrior, and her older brother was torn between mercenary work and priestly training. She was largely passed over for her more promising brother by the tribe, though her parents doted on her and taught her all they could. Her younger sister was the baby of the family, though; Enasha resented both of her siblings, who she felt ganged up on her. As she acted out, she was ostracized by her peers, and she responded by lashing out against those she felt had wronged her. She got into bitter fights, played up her own "feral" energies to ward off potential threats, and became known as the Little Badger: short of temper and all fangs when provoked. Her parents and older brother tried to help her channel her growing rage, and they taught her to divert her rage and unhappiness into hunting, sparring, and sports wrestling. She was still a little young for these things, but she excelled in them - and would seek attention by trying to kill dangerous animals that would shock her parents and impress her peers. She learned social skills and acquired friends, though she still treated them with lingering distrust and confusion. None of this is that strange for late childhood and early teenagerdom, and she could well have become a functional adult if things had kept this way.
Mere days after her thirteenth birthday the Arshi tribe entered a dispute with the larger Hemarem tribe, which had been gathering supporters in the hopes of becoming the next local plains confederacy. The Arshi tribe resisted the Hemarem despite the odds being against them, and were quickly defeated and absorbed. In the conflict, Enasha's older brother was injured and taken captive by a Hemarem warrior, and was kept as a slave. Enasha's father was killed. Enasha, her sister, and her mother all remained free, but were part of an inferior social group - the subjugated Arshi - that were not quite integrated into the Hemarem. While some Arshi adjusted and made peace, Enasha's family struggled to move on while their oldest child (and most promising priestly candidate) was enslaved within the social group. Enasha's mother patiently appealed to the elders to see him released (which failed quickly, but she kept trying) ; Enasha wanted to continue the war that had claimed her father. Enasha went from unpopular to respected within the ex-Arshi child population, as she got into fights with Hemarem children and preached grudge-keeping to her peers. Enasha frequently checked in on her brother, whose condition was deteriorating; his owner was considering selling him to outsiders, he was undermining those trade deals, and he was being punished for it. One night, her brother confided to her that he had stolen sacred incense and performed the Divine Contact to bring peace to their father (who had not been given a proper funeral what the God had told him was that their father was in Hell, a Hell they would also face if they did not follow a Lunar patron. Her brother was broken emotionally. She was just angry. She stole a smith's hammer, found her brother's owner, waited for when they were vulnerable after a night of heavy drinking, and beat them to death while they were relieving themselves in the woods. She hid the hammer and told her brother to run. Her mother found out quickly and prepared to evacuate the family before Enasha could be accused. Under the guise of taking a new mercenary contract, she took her daughters and rode North to fight for the Rose Company.
The Violence of Growing Up
Enasha never saw her brother again. They thought he might run the same way, but if he did he never made it. Enasha still considered it a victory. She did regret what happened to her younger sister, though - the sister had been sick with the flu when they had to leave, and the rapid retreat across the steppes turned it into pneumonia. The child passed away not long after reaching the mercenaries. The Rose Company was less friendly than Enasha's mother had expected - they denied food, shelter, or medicine at first, and seemed eager to haggle with their desperation. The original deal was that Enasha would be an auxiliary squire who would do support work far away from any fighting, but the mercenary captain quickly recognized the young girl's growing skill and paid Enasha a few extra gold if she would fight instead. For the next five years Enasha fought as a mercenary. Her mother died before her, while they were fighting for the Empire of Miuta against the Kingdom of Namut. It was not a lack of skill that took her, but a canister of poison gas that corroded her lungs and left her slowly dying for a week. Enasha had no blood family left, but the mercenaries took her in. They cheered her on as she took vengeance against those who killed her mother - when the town fell, she pillaged as brutally as she could, and when she thought she found those responsible (she was wrong), she made sure to mutilate their children before cutting them down in their homes. The satisfaction of vengeance mixed with the approving cheers of her new family. She learned to be proud of her work.
Enasha's sentimentality for a good pillaging as team-building and vengeance-taking proved to be her downfall. After five years killing with the Rose Company, Enasha found herself under the Miutan flag yet again - but this time there were Miutan officers (aristocrats and zealots, she thought) micromanaging them. When it came time to plunder, the officers screamed and protested. Enasha was okay with a little impassioned disagreement, but the officers had the nerve to take the new kid in her group and flog her for taking some cutlery (not even a revenge killing! Spoon theft!). Enasha told them to stop; they didn't; Enasha stopped them. Since these pricks could bring hell down on her and her whole squad (they threatened as much when she tackled them) she did the reasonable thing and killed them. Her squad promised to cover for her, but they couldn't delay the investigation forever, so Enasha gathered her money and fled.
Rather than flee to another mercenary company, Enasha fled to heart of the beast - to Miuta, where there would be so many people that no one would ever find her. In the metropolis of Kalturi, Enasha began taking on work as private security. Her eyes were finally fully opened to what life could be like, as the underbelly of the city welcomed her like a lost child. She was cunning enough, charming enough, dangerous enough to succeed and people knew it. But she was also a child in her late teens, and the city was full of people who saw her as easily manipulated. She was desperate for a family, and people could see it beneath her prickly façade. She learned carousing, fine wines, hard drugs, and politics; she also fell from one disastrous exploitative relationship to another. After a year and a half of this, she entered the orbit of Itabin Sanaton: a playboy merchant involved in clerical politics, who savored the ways he could break all the religious taboos while facing no consequences. Itabin's mother,
Rassia Sanaton, was a particularly powerful scholar and power player in the city, and Itabin was her hedonistic disaster child who handled her under-the-table dealings. Enasha loved his power, his (illusory) courage, his disillusionment with the world, his spite for the Gods. She didn't mind his jobs - political, violent, challenging jobs mentally and physically that paid well. But she hated his controlling attitude, his chauvanism, and his violations of her privacy and agency. She tried to leave; he proposed to her, and said that if she carried his child the family would have to let her in. Intoxicated, isolated, and desperate, she agreed. She had her first child at age 20, and named him
Basri (her father's name, meaning "Strength"). Itabin had no intention of legitimizing this bastard barbarian, and his idea that this would make her more loyal and desperate for him was miscalculated. She reached out to her closest friend in the city, a merchant by the name of
Uchel, and Uchel promised to help care for the little Basri - or to find people who would. She tried extorting Itabin for money and threatening him; Itabin ran to his mother for help. Rassia was able to do a little digging for her son, and found enough evidence to potentially connect Enasha to her murder of the Miutan officers with the Rose Company. Enasha responded very poorly to this blackmail. She murdered Itabin, burned down his mansion, and mailed Rassia her son's severed lips. Uchel was able to get Basri adopted by a local paladin of Orchid, and helped get Enasha out of the city before the law came after her.
A Little Villainy as a Treat
Enasha continued to send packages of money to Uchel, to support her son, as she adventured Eastward. She bounced from job to job, fleeing Miuta and seeking out a place of true strength - somewhere that would protect her from everything. She was drawn towards the dystopian
Empire of Runeva, a totalitarian state led by the Immortal being known as
Suwota . She heard that this empire respected strength and violence above all. What better, then, for her?
For seven years she worked for Runeva, and despite the empire's violently xenophobic racial caste system she prospered in their endless wars. This was because she quickly attracted the watchful eyes of the priesthood and the Thorn (avatar of Suwota, with only partial free will), Purifying Sharpness. She went from mercenary to Church enforcer - she was welcomed into the body of Suwota to another loving family that treasured her terrifying capacity of violence. After five years of proving herself, Enasha was thrilled to find Suwota (the goddess herself!) paying personal attention to her. She was blessed, magically augmented, and armed with the greatest weapons Suwota could find. She was pushed to her extremes, trained in both combat and strategy as a potential general. As if she was a Thorn. There had never been a human Thorn before (it typically required generations of selectively bred mutations shaped by the Hands of the Goddess), but it was slowly becoming clear that Suwota was testing the waters. She was testing Enasha's body for how many changes it could bear, to see if it could be done. If she remained, she would be the Goddess' cherished possession. She almost accepted that fate, until Suwota began to isolate her from her friends in the secret police and military. Enasha planned her escape carefully and waited for the right opportunity. In 1818, Enasha escaped Suwota's clutches during (yet another) assassination attempt on the Goddess' main body.
She raced back Westward, terrified of Suwota's spies (which stretch around the world in a nightmarish embrace). She understood personally how vulnerable the world was from Runeva's attacks: that there was a grand army planning the next century of rapid expansion, that would destroy any and all outside cultures. She knew that she wouldn’t have a place in that order that didn't end in slavery or mind control, so she would just have to fight it instead. She returned to her friend Uchem with her group of Runevan escapees and her hoard of stolen magical weaponry. If Suwota wanted the conquer the world, than Enasha would just have to conquer it first to deny her that pleasure.
Taking Over the World
So much had changed while Enasha was away. The tribes in the South, including her own people, had joined a large invasion of the lands of Amizar and Ozikita. The invasion had won, but crumbled into infighting. Miuta, meanwhile, was now in a frightful civil war. The Lianas, Suwota's spies, were doubtlessly encouraging this chaos to prepare for their own invasion, but Enasha would happily steal that plan (thank you very much). Rather than build a nomad army or take over Miuta, Enasha decided to work on both sides of the channel to build support. It was easier with the nomads, who Enasha could appeal to as one of their own using sports wrestling, tests of combat, and prestige raids. Miuta's politics were much more exclusive to outsiders and a tough nut to crack, but she had experience now as a political operator.
Enasha had some personal drama to settle as well: she found out that her son, Basri, was being financially and politically supported by his grandmother, Rassia - the same woman who had driven Enasha out of town years ago. Young Basri was only eleven, but he was embedded in court surrounded by tutors and making elite connections. Enasha was furious - it was obvious that this woman was plotting some intricate revenge. Rassia contacted her, assuring her that she had forgiven Enasha and recognized Basri as her own kin. Enasha knew that this was a trap (it wasn't really) and set to work undermining Rassia and taking her resources for her own. It took years, but she did succeed in this - and ended up ambushing Rassia and throwing her body into the sea. But it wasn't all vengeance drama. Enasha also found a new connection, to a court druid by the name of
Chevri Zetref who had agreed to help look after Basri for Rassia. Chevri and Enasha initially wanted to manipulate each other for political advantage, and ended up trying to seduce each other. Both ended up convinced that they had the other under their thumb, and from poisoned ground grew a weirdly functional relationship.
Accumulating powerful allies in Miuta and an army in the South, Enasha slowly built herself a kingdom. In 1822, after three years of building, Enasha was crowned Khagana of the Saranem: supreme Queen of Queens of the steppes and their subjects. She bribed her constituents into loyalty through constant expansion, as she prepared for them to enter the Empire of Miuta as well. In 1824, Chevri seized control of the capital city of Kalturi and invited Enasha's soldiers over the waters to keep his city secure. Enasha picked up Chevri and a member of the royal family, married both of them, and proclaimed herself Empress of Miuta. Her warriors flooded across the straights as she courted various revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. In 1829, all of Miuta belonged to Enasha. And just in time - in the East, Runevan forces were beginning their invasion, as Enasha knew was always the plan. In 1830, Enasha led the united nomadic and imperial forces against Suwota's soldiers, and personally slew the Thorn, Purifying Sharpness, she had once considered a mentor. With inside information, incredible skill, and a dash of luck, Suwota's forces were driven back and denied the foothold they needed for their grand invasion. But the Goddess would be back - and Enasha would need to keep conquering to build up resources for that day. More world to conquer!
Living Mightily
Enasha's campaigns were constant: she conquered North, East, South, and West, wherever opportunity presented itself. Civil wars, stoked by Suwota's spies, were a constant threat. People did not appreciate this Barbarian Empress, who had so little respect for governments or gods. But Enasha's grand streak of military victories helped legitimize her: the girl knew how to win! She even managed to conquer Bataya, the kingdom of the Leviathans, and provided the public with a great view of her clinging to a thrashing sea monster's skull and puncturing its eye. Decades later, she rode against Suwota again with her new grand army, and she managed to ruin the Goddess' entire invasion plan for the West. It was no world conquest, but she did have the joy of smugly humiliating a Goddess in her own domain.
But there was more to her life than war. She had two more children with her gaggle of elite husbands: a son by the name of Kussu, who she had trained to lead the Navanan priesthood, and a daughter by the name of Neffa who she tried to train as a warrior. Kussu worked hard to make his mother happy, and grew to be a respected leader of church and state. Neffa, however, lashed back at the overwhelming expectations and manipulative behavior of her mother and ran off to be an adventurer. When Enasha dragged her back, Neffa spited her again by becoming a warlock of the Deep King - the Elder Leviathan that Enasha had fought. The two of them never got along, and Neffa ended up barred from government.
As with many despotic leaders of great scale, Enasha attracted the attention of
Haru - god of healing and wandering peacemaker. Haru tried to give Enasha what might be called therapy, but Enasha spent years avoiding opening up emotionally. Instead, she twisted them into legitimizing her rule and providing political advisement. When Haru finally got Enasha to open up to her and opened up to her in turn, Enasha interpreted this as weakness: a chance for her to acquire a God for herself, body and soul. Haru did not want this and finally decided to abandon the project after a straw that broke the camels' back: Enasha interpreted Haru's transition from female to male (a regular occurrence for the immortal light being, who flutters between genders) with Haru's new attempt at mutual openness as him submitting to join her harem of kings. Haru continued to advise and help her children, though, and played an active role around Enasha's empire after her death.
Enasha died old and content, but not peacefully: Suwota's assassins finally ambushed her in her bedchambers when she was resting and drinking tea. The barbarian took them down with her, and was smugly aware that the Goddess had accomplished nothing - Enasha had won. Any Hell that waited for her would tremble, as she was the nightmare of Gods - not their play thing.
Orchid of Blue welcomed her into Paradise instead, to keep an eye on this potential threat.
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