Enda Moonbeam

The Duke of Moonlight is a grandee of the Fae Court, a powerful player within the incomprehensible realm of Fae politics, and an active meddler in the more worldly affairs of the Sylvan Court. He takes many forms and has many servants, most of whom hold their allegiance a secret but some of whom are infamous projections of his power – such as the ferocious Mezomel Luperfang, and the enigmatic monstrosity known as the Mooncalf. Enda Moonbeam was one such ducal representative, serving as the duke’s emissary to the Sylvan Court. The Moonbeam of his epithet was his blade, a glimmering intangible projection of silvery moonlight, weightless and ever-keen. Alongside Enda’s helm, with its full moon disc pierced by holes shaped to represent the lunar cycle, the Moonbeam was a symbol of the duke’s mystical majesty. The more Enda wielded his sword, the more it obsessed him. Sharper than steel and light as a feather, it as the ultimate weapon as far as the Elf was concerned. He was ruthlessly critical of himself and forever striving to become worthy of the Moonbeam’s ineffable perfection. Though he had earned the right to bear the Moonbeam through years of sterling loyalty to the Duke of Moonlight, once he had it, he cared more about his next battle with it than about the duke’s inscrutable reasons for why the battle must be fought. The duke exploited Enda’s growing thirst for combat, and sent him against the blighted Fae of the darkest Mistwood depths, where the original corrupted Heart Tree festers. The Duke of Moonlight had long been a fervent foe of this evil, and at his behest Enda plunged over and over into the unnatural groves of bloated mutant trees and sinister vines, where Darkness thrives beneath an overgrown canopy too thick for sun or moon to penetrate. With his softly glowing blade, Enda slashed through thorny tangles and carved his way to the lairs of the vilest Fae monstrosities: great spider-like aberrations; beings of living sludge and muck; swarms of carrion flies united in one malevolent mind; shambling fusions of skeletal remains with invasive fungal threads puppeteering the corpse – too numerous to count and too horrible to relate are the legions of foul beings Enda slew. After each extermination, he emerged from the dark heart of the forest bathed in ichor and ever-more steeped in violence and monomania. The duke was not blind to Enda’s increasing derangement. Nevertheless, he took no steps to avert it. When Enda disappeared on an assignment in the blighted wood and was gone far longer than expected, the Duke of Moonlight seemed almost pleased, and when Enda was discovered he was miles off course after cutting a swath through the overgrowth and killing dozens of monsters and menaces unrelated to his mission. He struggled to recall what had happened and why he was so adrift, mumbling that the Moonbeam shone unclouded and could not be denied. After that, Enda was seen less often, and eventually his presence in the Sylvan Court, already much diminished by his monster-slaying duties, ceased completely. Some say the Arbiter snatched Enda from the duke’s clutches before he sank further into madness, purifying and preserving him with the power of a Shard. Others say the Duke of Moonlight had been experimenting on Enda, and quietly ended his tests once he had learned what he wished to know. Given the duke’s cunning, few believe that he simply made a mistake by allowing Enda to be gripped by the Moonbeam and become soaked in the taint of the dark forest – his true motive remains another of the countless secrets of the Fae.