Battle-fan

The eplek (Doroun), called a battle-fan or war fan, is a shield weapon once used by elite members of the EnSanni army in the later Imperial period.

Epleks are composed of numerous strips of watered steel folded onto a central stem, which can unfurl to form a shield. The shield is mainly used to deflect blows or to protect the user from arrows. The best fans are all steel, with stops so each fan blade remains interlocked with no gaps. Inferior fans were bound with strips of thin cloth or leather, which made them lighter but less effective.

When furled, its secondary use was as a bludgeon, since the solid mental shaft is heavy and can deal crushing blows. Many battle fans have sharp angled tips which can be used to slash opponents either when open or closed.

Fans are usually carried on the back or in a holster, making them much more convenient than carrying a traditional shield. However they offered only light protection from glancing blows, and not much protection from heavy weapons or crossbow bolts.

Fans were costly and required great skill to produce, so were prestige implements owned by elite guards in the old empire. Most were elaborately designed with barbed points, and either painted or etched with patterns relating to the owner's battalion or family. These patterns were only seen during combat, so unfurling an eplek was considered a sign of threat. Hence the bright colours were a warning to potential enemies.

A stylised form of combat using war fans was called eplekayd, meaning “the war-fan-dance”. Like many Doroun words this had a double meaning (plek meaning to split, kaydo meaning copulate with), used to much humorous effect in lyric poetry as well as soldier's chants.

At the Battle of Meldaoun, when EnSanni forces were desperately defending the imperial heartlands from the Mother Army, the Doroun General Ollilontan ordered his soldiers to scour their fans to a mirror finish, so that angled to the sun they blinded the enemy soldiers proceeding uphill towards them. As such they won the battle, delaying the conquest of Gaalkedch by several years.

After the consolidation of Ororrplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigOrorr

Ororr [o-ROARR, ɒ̝rɔ'ɾ], also called the Holy Motherland of Ororr, is a theocratic nation in Anásthias, one of the world's great powers. It the largest nation in the world, perhaps the largest empire in history, occupying the entire northwest of the continent between the mountains and the sea. Ororrlanguagelanguagelanguage, epleks were carried by guerilla bands of the old regime, and thence by bandits since they were light and easily concealed. Carrying a battle-fan was banned by the new church-state as symbolising the old regime, but this further reinforced a doomed romanticism which was associated with noble outlaws.

The Enseperann Empire had no tradition of carrying or using battle-fans, but the empire adopted the symbolism of the fan as a means of linking the new empire with the old, and of its opposition to Ororr. Since they lacked the metalworking skills to create light steel, Enseperann fans were made of wood and silk. They were mainly decorative, carried as war banners denoting the rank and affiliation of the bearer. Imperial fans were purple, stained with the peupra dye which symbolised the royal regime. In later times fans were more commonly carried by women.