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Enuncia

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Enuncia is an ancient language, but instead of communication, the language was used as a tool or a weapon: when spoken aloud or written, Enuncia is capable of manipulating the very fabric of reality, a power beyond even the most potent psykers. It is incredibly dangerous, especially since it required no natural psyker ability, and could potentially be used by anyone[1].

History and emergence

Enuncia is very obscure, with only a few fragmentary references appearing anywhere in Imperial records. Even fewer of these references include any information on the use of Enuncia[1]. One theory states that Enuncia accounts for ancient human legends concerning the use of "magic"; another says that it was one of the tools of creation itself[1]. In Terra's ancient past the Cognitae attempted to build a tower etched in Enuncia, but were foiled by the forces of the Emperor and Ollanius Persson.[5]

The few effects of Enuncia observed can include the control of daemons (without the usual bargaining), or as a potent weapon against enemies, causing physical damage to the target ranging from uncontrollable vomiting to cranial rupturing. However, the reality-warping effects can also damage the speaker, many of whom suffer wounds to their mouths and throats when speaking the words. Uniquely, neverborn are as suseptible to the effects of Enuncia as their counterparts in the materium. Likewise, machines attempting to process written forms of the language can suffer spontaneous breakdowns.[1]

Two known cases could be extracted from the archives concerning the Horus Heresy. In the first, use of a single Enuncia "word" is attributed to the Space Wolves Skjald Kasper Hawser. He successfully employed the word during the Battle of Prospero, to fight against a Tzeentchian Daemon which revealed itself to be the entity Russ thought used Hawser's body to spy on the Space Wolves. Hawser, although mangling the daemon, suffered injuries to his throat and teeth after employing such a word of power.[2]

In the second case, Enuncia was used to introduce corrupted machine-code into the defense network of Calth during the Word Bearers' attack on Ultramar.[3]

In the 400s M41, Zygmunt Molotch, a product of the heretical Cognitae institution, was attempting to reconstruct Enuncia by examining several ancient archaeological sites on varying planets. Molotch was presumed killed by an air strike summoned by Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, while examining his latest site[4].

However, Molotch survived, and, after allying with a fellow Cognitae "graduate," Jader Trice, approached the problem from a different angle. He attempted to reconstruct Enuncia from scratch, using an enormous array of logic engines and cogitators to combine letters and phonemes in all possible combinations. To do this, he set himself up as Lord Governor Subsector on Eustis Majoris, using the resources of the Administratum, and several warp-tainted data engines recovered from the lost Mergent Worlds, which had been embroiled in a warp storm for centuries. The project, controlled by a group called the Secretists, gradually extracted fragments of Enuncia from seemingly random data[1].

Molotch and Trice were close to assembling a complete Codex of the language, when they had another breakthrough: the capital of Eustis Majoris, the Hive City of Petropolis, was in fact designed as a massive "spiritual resonator" by the infamous heretical architect Theodor Cadizky with precisely nine hundred and ninety-nine temples, the central one of which, called the Old Sacristy, being in the exact centre of the hive. All the others, the axial temples, formed lines from the Old Sacristy that give the entire hive an overall mathematical symmetry, creating a focal point for psychic energy that, when combined with the completed Codex, would make Molotch into a virtual god[1].

The ritual was interrupted at the crucial moment by Ravenor and his team, though not before Molotch had absorbed a tremendous amount of psychic energy and healed his body of the disfiguring wounds suffered during the air strike years ago. Molotch was able to escape the planet[1].

Sources