Awl (people)

The Awl were a nomadic people native to the continent of Lether. Their homeland was known as the Awl'dan, which was located on the eastern border of the Kingdom of Lether. The Letherii encroached on their territory in an effort to conquer them. As a result, the Awl were a people in decline. The populations of their camps and domestic herds grew smaller and their grazing lands were shrinking. Those clans remaining clashed over resources.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 1, US HC p.38/40
==Clans==
Their society was organised into clans, listed below.
* Aendinar
* Ganetok
* Niritha
* Renfayar
* Sevond
==Culture==
The Awl made seasonal rounds through their lands with huge herds of domesticated Myrid and Rodara.Reaper's Gale, Prologue, US HC p.25Reaper's Gale, Chapter 1, US HC p.37-38 The Awl bred small and compact herder dogs to manage their animals.
They lived in dome-shaped sewn-hide huts, tipis, and yurts,The Crippled God, Chapter 2, from Torrent's memories which they transported by enormous six-wheeled carts or wagons in summer and sleds in winter--both pulled by the Awl's large, and mottled-skinned dray dogs.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.332 These fierce animals were also bred to kill wolves and were more than a match for Letherii war dogs. Former camps displayed evidence of tipi rings--arrays of stones used to hold down the bottom edges of their shelters. They identified sites of importance with cairn markers and totem stones. Rodara dung fueled their campfires.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.304/307
The Awl despised their neighbours, the Akrynnai and the rival D'rhasilhani, and likely had little contact with the Bolkando or the Saphinand Kingdom.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 1, US HC p.39-40Reaper's Gale, Prologue, US HC p.27
As with other tribal peoples of the plains, banishment was a near death sentence when imposed. Apart from losing the communal effort to survive on the plains, those punished faced the psychological devastation of losing the social structure that gave life meaning.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4, US HC p.93-94
Awl warriors seemed to be exclusively male. The transition from Awl child to young warrior was marked by the undertaking of the Death Night ritual. The rite involved the youth being buried, for the duration of a night, in a hollowed-out log.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4, US HC p.115
Awl women appeared to be literate where the men were not. Torrent disparagingly described writing as "paint[ing] many words, like a woman".Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22, US HC p.706 Women had their own place known as a blood-hut during their time of menstruation where blood and urine trickled into a latrine trough.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 6, US HC p.151
The Awl engaged in wordless song in many areas of their lives: the coming of the dawn; the fleeing of the sun; the sight of storm clouds, wolf tracks, or antlers shed in the grass. Children sang songs when threading beads used to tell particular stories. Each story had its own song with its own pattern setting the order of the beads, their types, and their colours. Songs were used instead of words to ensure the integrity of the stories, because words could be corrupted.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 8, US HC p.209
Awl saddles were a strange boxy shape to Malazan eyes.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 16, US HC p.453
==Clothing, Jewelry, and Tattoos==
The Awl made clothing from the wool of their rodara.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.65 They wore mostly gold jewelry, which they bound deep in the braids of their hair. Their tattoos were richly coloured and often outlined in stitched gold thread. 
==Religion==
The Awl creation myth was known as the Night of Life when all that was living came into being. But life was born of deceit and betrayal and so doomed to an eternity of struggle.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4, US HC p.110 They worshiped spirit gods who possessed the foibles of mortals and engaged in constant battles among themselves.
==Funerary customs==
The Awl placed their dead on lashed platforms, which freed their souls to dance with the carrion birds.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.70 They raised their voices in ritual mourning.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4, US HC p.94
==Warfare==
Awl warfare consisted of ambushes, raids, and skirmishes. They were not skilled in fighting as disciplined units in set-piece battles--a weakness their Letherii enemies took advantage of.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 6, US HC p.149 The Letherii reported that when forced to stand and fight, the Awl put on drunken pre-battle performative displays. These involved pounding their shields or sending their shamans to the frontlines to expose their backsides to the enemy, defecate, curse, and summon dread spirits with dance.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.326
==Weaponry==
The Awl'dan cadaran whip and the rygtha crescent axe were archaic Awl weapons whose mastery had been virtually unknown for at least a century before the Tiste Edur invasion of Lether. They were designed to deal with an unknown non-human race in the Awl's original homeland.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.66/69
==Language==
Samples of words from the Awl language:
*Masthebe - knifegrass Reaper's Gale, Chapter 16, US HC p.450
*Pradegar - Old SaltReaper's Gale, Chapter 16, US HC p.454
== Notable Awl ==
* Hadralt, warleader of Ganetok clan
* Kraysos, a warrior of the Renfayar clan
* Masarch, a warrior of the Renfayar clan
* Natarkas, a Copperface warrior of the Ganetok clan
* Pride
* Redmask, warleader of the Awl
* Theven, a warrior of the Renfayar clan
* Torrent
== In Reaper's Gale==
The Letherii encroachment on Awl lands transformed into an outright extermination campaign under the leadership of Factor Letur Anict of Drene. He sent Atri-Preda Bivatt with the Bluerose Lancers to exterminate Awl camps to the last man, woman, and child and confiscate their herd animals. The Factor saw the Awl as trespassers on their own lands and profited heavily from the spoils. Once the Awl were driven from an area of the Awl'dan, the Letherii constructed outposts, forts, and raised roads to encourage settlers to occupy the land. As their justification for the Awl Campaign, the Letherii Empire invented rumours of a warmongering alliance between the Awl, the Bolkando, the Akrynnai, the D'rhasilhani, and the Saphinand Kingdom. The belligerent Horde of the Bolkando Conspiracy was said to be readying to march on the empire's eastern territories and so the Awl needed to be dealt with.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 1, US HC p.37-40
Of the Awl clans, only the Ganetok remained strong, as they were the furthest east (and as such the safest from Letherii expansion) and had hired the mercenary Grey Swords. The Aendinar were destroyed; Sevond and Niritha were decimated and subsequently joined the Ganetok.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4 When the Ganetok and Grey Swords finally met the Letherii army on the field of battle, the Awl fled, leaving the Grey swords to perish.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4
Soon thereafter, Redmask, the legendary Awl war leader, returned from exile to lead the clans against the Letherii. Accompanied by two K'Chain Che'Malle, Sag'Churok and Gunth Mach, he confronted Hadralt, the Ganetok war leader. It soon became clear that Hadralt was in league with the Letherii, selling out his people for wealth and a Letherii estate. He had also sold out the Grey Swords so he could keep their wages. Hadralt's own Copperfaces slew him when the depth of his betrayal was revealed. Redmask assumed leadership of the Awl and declared war on the Letherii.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 6 When he discovered one of the Grey Sword commanders, Toc Anaster, being held prisoner in the Awl camp he named the Malazan an advisor.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 8
Factor Letur Anict sent Bivatt and the Eastern Army on the Awl Campaign with the goal of destroying or enslaving them. Bivatt was also accompanied by Overseer Brohl Handar, who preferred a negotiated settlement, and his Tiste Edur warriors. Redmask's forces faced them at the Battle of Bast Fulmar where they used innovative tactics to deliver an unexpected victory.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12 At the Battle of Pradegar, an impatient Redmask launched disastrous night attack on the prepared Letherii positions.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 16 The final engagement occurred at the Battle of Q'uson Tapi where Redmask lured the Letherii into attacking him on a muddy plain. By then, he considered himself undefeatable. But the Letherii numbers and discipline won the day. As the Awl were being overwhelmed, the K'Chain Che'Malle turned on Redmask and killed him for failing them. The Awl were essentially annihilated. The Letherii fared little better as Onos T'oolan took to the field with seventy thousand White Face Barghast intending to avenge the Grey Swords by slaying their Awl betrayers and their Letherii killers. Only a handful of Awl children who had been protected by Toc Anaster before his death in the battle were allowed to live and join the Barghast. Factor Anict was himself assassinated in Drene, ending his personal crusade against the Awl.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22
==Creation Myth==
Every Awl was familiar with the stories told by tribal elders about when the world was young. At that time, the land had been much higher and closer to the sky. The plains were only a thin hide over a thick flesh of frozen wood and leaves of dead, ancient forests. The heat of the summer sun caused the ice to melt, draining the vast buried forest and lowering the plains from the sky. Eventually the forest turned to dust, which was carried off in all directions by the melted waters, and the land came to rest on the stone of the world's bones. All this caused the land to echo the cursed sorceries of the worshippers of stone--the Shamans of Antlers.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.319
==History==
According to Awl legends, their people had once lived in the wildlands far to the east of the Awl'dan. Then they had been defeated in a war with non-human enemies known as the Kechra and driven west.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.69 The Kechra had come from the west countless centuries ago, fleeing a desperate battle of their own and their battles with the Awl left corpses of warriors scattered across the land. The Awl faced annihilation, but eventually learned how to fight with new weapons and eventually turned the tide against the invaders. One such battle was said to have taken place three hundred years before at Bast Fulmar. Despite accounts of an Awl victory, the valley was afterwards seen as cursed.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 10, US HC p.272Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.320 According to Redmask, the Kechra were the K'Chain Che'Malle and they had merely been passing through Awl lands. The Awl were just an obstacle in their flight further east.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 4, US HC p.109-110
==Speculations==
Factor Breneda Anict recorded an encounter with a wounded and dying K'ell Hunter in the wildlands east of Lether. Factor Anict described the Hunter's wounds as "elongated, curving slashes, perhaps from some form of tentacle, but a tentacle bearing sharp teeth, whilst other wounds were shorter but deeper in nature, invariably delivered to a region vital to locomotion or other similar dispensation of limbs, severing tendons and so forth."Reaper's Gale, Chapter 3, Epigraph The description of the "tentacle" sounds similar to the type of wounds expected from a bladed whip and the other wounds could have been produced by an axe.
== Notes and references ==
Category:Awl
Category:Lether natives
it:Awl (popolo)