Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Greatest Name
Part 3: The Ongin [Dynasty] Did This
Part 4: An Encounter in the Wilderness
Part 5: Divine Armaments
Part 6: Hegariit and Ana-Hegariit
Part 7: The Reordering/Conclusion

After years spent in research and contemplation, Mawerhaad concluded that the Naqir Dynasty is largely to blame for the woes of the Ashad-Naram. To boot, Mawerhaad’s First Revelation, having founded a movement with both overt and inadvertent anti-establishment tones, was armed with both the religious fervor of people seeking new answers to their inadequately-addressed existential questions and the dissent of those growing weary of being ruled by foreigners (it was long assumed that Oduwesi the Conqueror was a bastard child, fathered by some Ongin mercenary or bodyguard rather than by the Ashad Sharum Rezadħar, and his progeny preferred to marry into Ongin royal lines for the sake of “securing the old alliance”). Though Mawerhaad did not personally have anything against the Ongin aside from the unenlightened leaders of the Naqir Dynasty, he was hardly concerned with the xenophobic views of his second following as his chief concern was with garnering more support for his movement. The Ashad must know the greatest name of Adad, he thought to himself, and the cult of Qa’anon is powerful enough to suppress it if I do not have aid against them.

Within a year of the First Revelation, Mawerhaad’s movement had gained so much traction within the metropolis of Artum that even its Ba’al was conferring with his advisors behind closed doors, deliberating on whether it might be a more politically savvy move to adopt this revolutionary faith rather than stay on the side of the Cult of Qa’anon. At the same time, though, the Cult’s persecution of the new religious movement was growing in scale, its wealthy priesthood employing strongmen to infiltrate and break up meetings of the “Mawerhaadiis.” As persecution grew steadily worse in scope and nature, some of the new faithful feared that their movement would die within the confines of Artum if not given the opportunity to spread its wings.

Thanks to the rebellious spirit contained within Edut-Nawirqashdii, however, Mawerhaad--once an unassuming if intelligent scholar and bureaucrat--was inspired by his own followers to take a more militant approach to ensuring the survival of his movement and the enlightenment of the Ashad-Naram. Mawerhaad was also fatigued of living in hiding, which he had to do for the past three months in order to evade the brutality of Qa’anon’s enu [priests]; when a noble friend of his, Ḥaiman al-Mesat, proposed a “pilgrimage” to the city of Eshun to the east, Mawerhaad was eager to take him up on this plan.

The “pilgrimage,” more specifically, entailed bringing several of the faithful to Eshun to convert the locals there, using a combination of political connections and populist support to spread the new faith beyond the confines of Artum. Eshun in particular was their target not only for its status as a major city and its proximity to Artum, but also for its history as the first capital of a united Ashad-Ashru. To win the hearts and minds of Eshun’s residents, Mawerhaad thought, was the movement’s primary route to victory, perhaps in the short term through a successful attempt to usurp the authority of the existing Ashad priesthood, or in the long term through conversions of a sizable populace within yet another Ashad metropolis.

Just as the enu of Qa’anon were plotting an assassination attempt against Mawerhaad, believing they had narrowed down his location, Mawerhaad and Ḥaiman departed with a company of ten of their friends¹ under cover of night. Mawerhaad being (previously) a court bureaucrat, and Ḥaiman being of noble birth, these two and their company were able to build a base of support among their more subversive counterparts in Eshun. The Ba’al Eshun was among the more passive Ba’al of the great cities, wholly supplicant to the Naqir Dynasty and even building his court in the Ongin-Ashad fashion, but many of the other gentry there resented their Ba’al’s position and were convicted that the first Ashad capital belonged to “true” and loyal Ashad. Some among these even called themselves Erebu² and were less than happy with even the rulership of Madenu³ and their “strange ways.” Gentry, bureaucrats, and scholars among these dissatisfied and sometimes radical elements built personal shrines to Am-Ishatu in their estates and converted their wardu [slaves] and members of their houses.

In another six months, the Cult of Qa’anon finally caught on to this splinter movement and began to send its agents to Eshun. This time, though, they had the aid of a Ba’al who was unerringly loyal to the Dynasty. Once the Ba’al sent messengers throughout the city calling for those faithful to the Great Tradition to root out any known members of this heretical movement, Mawerhaad and Ḥaiman knew it was time to act.

The first act of the Movement was for its members to use their political connections to slow the advance of the Cult’s persecution, using violence if needed. Using exchanges of favors and bribes, the faithful of the Movement secured the assistance of several city guards and, more importantly, a few guard-captains. Those among their new friends who scheduled the late night and early morning patrols waylaid the Ba’al’s messengers, usually intimidating them rather than using direct violence so as to minimize suspicion from the Ba’al’s court. While the Movement’s new friends pushed back against the Cult and the Court, Mawerhaad and Ḥaiman plotted the first public demonstration of Edut-Nawirqashdii’s legitimacy.

At dawn’s first light on the day of an annual Ashad summer festival, hundreds of wardu and dozens of city guards took to the streets, with Mawerhaad and Ḥaiman both leading the procession. Just as the priests of Qa’anon were making final preparations to open the city’s primary temple for the festivities, hundreds of Ashad overpowered the temple’s guards and occupied the sanctuary. The rest of the rebels, coming from all parts of Eshun and its surrounding communities and numbering more than two thousand, marched to the temple from all directions and blockaded the streets around it, making sure to create a spectacle that none of the city’s residents could ignore. When many of the residents arrived at the temple, either to investigate the commotion or for the festivities they expected there, they witnessed Mawerhaad, Ḥaiman, and the rest of the Dozen leading a bull up the steps of the temple. Once the party had ascended, Mawerhaad gave a speech for all to hear, proclaiming the name of Am-Ishatu as the next revelation of Adad and explaining the philosophy of the Great Dichotomy: fire, light, knowledge, and order, he said, are all interrelated with each other and diametrically opposed to cold, darkness, ignorance, and chaos. Citing the ravages of the Mutumashalharbu, the horrific epidemic from decades ago that still occasionally took Ashad lives, he openly asserted that the Pal-Naqir, in its negligent refusal to offer or permit burnt ishu⁴ to the divine, brought the Mutumashalharbu and other woes upon the Ashad--and these woes would only worsen if the Ashad-Naram persisted in their failure to pay due reverence to the Lord of Heaven. He then spoke many praises of Am-Ishatu, making as clear as possible that this Am-Ishatu was to be understood as the greatest and most comprehensive aspect of Adad, as the bull was guided onto a great stone altar. Mawerhaad’s friends had to dust the altar off vigorously, for offerings had not been burnt upon it for more than a full century. Once all of the preparations had been made, Mawerhaad spoke for a little while longer before withdrawing a large bronze knife--one of the last sacrificial knives ever forged, a historical artifact as much as a religious one. He lifted his face toward the sky, asking Am-Ishatu’s blessing upon the faithful and upon all of Ashad-Ashru, and then he struck the bull twice in the throat. To Mawerhaad’s surprise, his ritual act was accompanied by the cheers of many.

Less to his surprise, and more to his peril, Mawerhaad’s act did not even remotely escape the attention of the authorities. The military officers who led the “peacekeeping” force that would put down the civil disorder overtaking Eshun were at first instructed to negotiate with Mawerhaad, offering only an arrest and a swift execution rather than public humiliation and a slow one should he give up this madness and turn himself in. As the officers heard word of the sacrifice and the following burning of the bull, a ritual which defied both the authority of the Cult of Qa’anon and the law of the land, they made the more pragmatic decision to bring hundreds of soldiers to crush the rebellion. These soldiers wore linothoraxes and brandished bronze Ongin-style swords for close combat, erresh-deqtum for menacing multiple rioters from a safe distance, and wicker shields for fending off missiles thrown or shot by rebels. Meanwhile, the officers and nobles among them (those still loyal to the Ba’al) boasted scale cuirasses, bows, and lances, all accompanied by fearsome scythed chariots. The wealthier rebels wielded qepeshum, arguably the most traditional Ashad melee weapons, but most of the rioters had slings, spears, and weapons improvised from agricultural and mining tools.

Ḥaiman made his way to the ground, barking orders and attempting to organize the rioters. He was moderately successful in this effort, as the rioters had already been instructed by their superiors to man the barricades on the streets, but the streets around the temple were wide (intentionally, in order to prevent sewage and waste from coming into contact with its walls or grounds) and difficult to defend from multiple angles. Eshun’s soldiers advanced in a slow but calculated manner, using wicker shields and trained discipline to form a united wall of shields while menacing the rioters with their weapons. The city’s soldiers lost several men to the hordes of rioters, but their wicker shields served their purpose, and their bronze armor and helmets were difficult for the rioters’ weapons to penetrate, though the rebelling force outnumbered the guards five to one. Once the guards fought their way toward the temple with minor losses, giving off the appearance that they were dooming themselves to be surrounded on all sides by the bloodthirsty rioters, the chariots came.

The rioters were hardly ready to face the regular armaments of the Ba’al’s men, never mind the scythed chariots that his wealthier loyalists commanded. Once the infantry had cleared the way, the charioteers took advantage of the layout of the wide streets. What followed was nothing short of a bloodbath as riders mercilessly tore through rioters with their chariot-scythes and felled them with arrows. The lances they wielded far outstripped the rioters’ spears and other weapons in length; between this and the hazard posed by the scythes, the rioters never effectively used their numerical advantage to combat the vehicles that should have been rather vulnerable in this urban area.

The battle in Eshun went on until the sun saw fit to paint the sky with colors that matched the dusty, bloodied earth below. More than a thousand men, mainly wardu and a few of their masters, lay dead all about the once-sacred space around the temple, and many of the remainder were arrested (mostly to be executed later). Ḥaiman, too bold eager to fight for the cause, was among the first to go down, one of the few to attempt to stand against the chariots directly. Indeed, only two chariots and their riders met their demise that day: one vehicle veered off the main road and broke down with a spectacle, while the other crashed as Ḥaiman slew one of the horses that pulled it and threw a spear at the driver. Ḥaiman was subsequently mowed down by the chariot, torn gruesomely by the vehicle’s undercarriage blades as the wayward vehicle drove over him, but his early commands and coordination paved the way for Mawerhaad and about three dozen others, including three of the other Dozen who had originally journeyed to Eshun, to hide within the confines of the city’s more crowded districts. Once night came, a shell-shocked Mawerhaad made use of his connections for the last time, escaping through a gate that was left cracked open by guards who had been bribed to turn a blind eye to this.

Certainly the Riot of Eshun (called the Culling of the Thousand by the faithful) did little to improve the popularity of the reigning regime, except that some Ashad gained confidence in the Dynasty’s ability to control internal crises. Now, however, Mawerhaad would have to oppose the Pal-Naqir and Cult of Qa’anon from the outside or else live in permanent exile far from their reach.

¹ The Ashad, at this time, have an extensive history of belief in numerology, and twelve is widely regarded as one of nature’s most auspicious numbers.
² From Erebite, the singular for “Western Ashad” from the days of the Neħtu-Sharaan (Age of Dual Monarchs).
³ From Madenite, the singular for “Eastern Ashad” from the Neħtu-Sharaan.
⁴ Ishu: offerings given as tribute or otherwise as an act of humbling oneself before another.