Ensigerum Village

From The Heretic Knowledge Vault

Latest revision as of 00:27, 14 March 2010

The village where the Ensigerum hang out, presided over by the formidable Imperatrix Anita. We don't know exactly where it is, except that it's "somewhere in North Eastern Veracia" in rather hilly terrain, occupying a valley that gives it a nice view. It is fairly substantial, maybe not a surprise given that the Ensigerum seems to be doing pretty well lately.

History

We don't know much about the history of the village, but Anita has mentioned to Ian, in the course of cooling him down from divine-wrath mode, that it's only been in its current setting for "almost a thousand years now." That seems like a long time, but in the Poe-verse, it's really not, and it's interesting because the Ensigerum order itself seems to have been around for a very long time, to hear Sarine tell it (to the late Warrel). Where were the Ensigerum before the village was founded? Unknown. One historical trivium that we do know: at one time the village had a small problem with trolls in the nearby mountains, but the monks of the olden days took care of that. The more recent troll encounters were with trolls from "settlements to the south," which is consistent with the village being in the northeastern part of the country (although it poses interesting questions as to just where all the trolls are).

Social structure

The village is self-contained as far as governance goes, probably because the Veracian Church has figured out that the less it has to do with the Ensigerum, the better. Anita is the head of the Ensigerum order, as shown by her behavior and confirmed by Sara Amraphel (here). She also acts like she governs the village itself.

Otherwise, we don't know much about the social structure of the village either, but it does have a nursery for children whose parents are Ensigerum. Sara is baby-sitting there (as a punishment, we don't know for what) when she's chatted up by Chris and devastates him with the truth as to why he's being treated so roughly in his training. We also know, from Sara's flashback sequence, that it has a temple. However, we don't know who or what is worshiped there.

An open question is whether all members of the village have the Time-ninja powers that make the Ensigerum monks so scary to enemies beyond, like the trolls and Gewehr. Most of the village inhabitants that we've seen certainly have those powers and function as Ensigerum monk/novice/initiates. However, village resident Nessie, in her brief time on stage, comes across as rather unprepossessing (or, if you prefer, simply dim), with no time-ninja powers in evidence. Well, every society needs its caretakers.