Ensel Rhe Alon is a man with two identities separated by the singular event of his forced exile from his home of Panthora. Before his exile, Ensel Rhe was a man of commerce, running his family business upon his father’s death some years before. But strange happenings perpetrated by his brother-in-law, Balrabbek, whom Ensel Rhe suspects of hatching some dark, secretive plan, prompt him to investigate. His probing into Balrabbek’s suspected elicit doings results in a confrontation that ultimately results in Ensel Rhe’s exile from everything he held dear, including his wife, daughter, and son. Beaten and broken, he is left with a simple warning: return, and your family’s lives are forfeit.
Thinking his life is over, Ensel Rhe wanders into the Merrow Woods, expecting to die at the hands of a roving band of krill warriors. Instead, a weapons master named Yuma takes him in. Ensel Rhe soon learns that Yuma is more than a weapons master. He is a member of a group of elite krill warriors called sinjee. Yuma, a master amongst them, gives Ensel Rhe a new purpose when he offers to train him as a sinjee.
Years pass. Years Ensel Rhe spends honing his skills as a warrior. His determination and natural ability propel him through the rites of initiation and beyond until, upon completing the final ritual, Ensel Rhe becomes a true master of the sinjee arts, a sinjee-ka.
First, stark white eyes appeared from the gloom. Then, a sleek, blue-black skinned face crowned by a shock of rust-red hair emerged. The rest followed until a man stood revealed. No, not a man. An eslar. Master Ensel Rhe Alon. Tall and lean, he was dressed for nocturnal events: black brigandine armor and dark leather elsewhere. A long coat stained dark with dampness from the road reached nearly to the floor. Without a word, the eslar came forward, the starkness of his eyes never leaving Aaron’s. He lifted the satchel from the chair with one hand. He extended his other toward Aaron. “My sword,” he said, his words a near whisper.
- ENGINES OF ALCHEMANCY
With his training complete, Ensel Rhe thinks he has the tools he needs to return home to confront Balrabbek. He finds out he is wrong in the worst way possible. Distraught and realizing now that he can never go home, he wanders Uhl, traveling the Freelands, the Four Fiefdoms, and even into the dusky Southern Reaches, searching for something unknown until Ensel Rhe realizes the only path remaining to him is one of revenge. He carries out this quest while performing duties for others, always searching and waiting for an opportunity to strike back at his enemies and avenge those who have fallen.
Ensel Rhe left behind his wife, Awen Ren, his daughter, Jakinda Rhe, and Hannu Rhe, his son.
WEAPONS AND ARMOR
As a sinjee-ka, Ensel Rhe is trained to wield a multitude of close combat and throwing weapons, including swords, maces, daggers, knives, stars, and others. His primary weapon is his khatesh, a sword of eslar origin passed from father to son for generations. The weapon has a bone hilt engraved with mysterious eslar glyphs and a straight, steel blade that extends two and a half feet before curving at the tip. Ensel Rhe also keeps a small number of throwing knives on his person, along with a small sword and dagger, though the exact composition of these varies as the situation suits him.
While not a weapon he uses in combat, Ensel Rhe also carries a special knife given to him by his father when he was a boy. The knife’s sheath is polished bone wrapped in leather, and the blade, double-edged and razor-sharp. The knife belongs to Ensel Rhe’s son now, though Ensel Rhe yet carries it for him.
THE SKILLS OF THE SINJEE
A sinjee warrior’s skills include the mastery of all forms and types of weaponry and hand-to-hand fighting techniques. While many of their fighting styles were developed over generations by krill masters, the sinjee are not above borrowing and adapting the methods and techniques of other peoples into their own, something they have done over the years to great effect. From the eslar, they have borrowed the offensive forms of Gin-dar, the slashing motions of Serren, and the elusions of Pendrogin-lar. From the Southern Reaches, the mysteries of curved weapons like scimitars and falchions. From the Freelands, the art of siege warfare.
More than this, though, sinjee are spiritual warriors who are taught to channel their ka, or inner spirit, to enhance their natural abilities, making them faster and stronger than the average combatant. Ensel Rhe channels his ka to allow him to leap great distances, put extraordinary force behind a kick, or increase the speed in which he strikes with his sword. Already formidable combatants, their ability to focus their ka makes them doubly so.
FIRST APPEARANCE
Ensel Rhe first appears in Engines of Alchemancy (The Alchemancer Book One).
