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Description
Here's a side project I thought would be pretty interesting. Though I want to focus away from fan art, that doesn't mean I'm not still a huge nerd for Assassin's Creed. I'm absolutely psyched for Mirage. I've wanted a game set in the Islamic Golden Age for sooooo long and now my dream is coming true. Like a lot of us total nerds, these games were my gateway into the serious study of history and anthropology. Honestly though, it's been a while since I actually sat down and played the older titles. I recently amended this, though, and it made me realize how much more I appreciate the worldbuilding as a more experienced historian. It also made me realize that I'm not all that familiar with a lot of the historical figures featured in the games beyond their appearances in said games. So, as an excuse to expand my portfolio, explore the clothing of different time periods, and get to know our favorite historical characters better as they really were, I want to try to draw every historical figure that appears in the major titles in some significant capacity. I've been collecting a list, and it's almost certainly not complete, but that just gives me an excuse to explore more, eh? It'll also help me experiment with ideas for Drake Hero, as these will be intended as how these people would appear in said universe. What better way to start, then, than with the titular brotherhood itself, the Assassins?

To get to the heart of the historical Assassins (or "Hashashin" as they were originally called. Maybe, more on that in a bit), we first have to understand the major schisms in the religion of Islam which led to their foundation. This is… an extremely complicated topic which can fill an entire semester in itself (trust me I know, I took Islamicate studies in my brief stint at college), and I'll be skipping over many, many details for our purposes today. To start, I feel it's important to clarify that it's generally easier to think of Islamic branches as more of a series of succession crises than it is a matter of belief like in Christian denominations. There are certainly differing theologies which have become attached more to certain branches of Islam than others, but typically, it's not the belief itself which defines any given sect. It's more the approach than the belief. This is best exemplified in the most fundamental schism in the entire faith: Sunni vs. Shia. Again, vast oversimplification here, but this split is usually explained as a debate over who the true successor to the Prophet Muhammad should've been upon his death in 632 CE. Sunnis believe that the first Caliph (literally "successor") was the Prophet's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, who was elected by a council of the Prophet's followers. Shias, meanwhile, argue that the Prophet had actually chosen his son-in-law Ali to be his successor, which would make sense given traditional Arabic tribal law. The earliest rivalries between these two factions are an entire story for another time, so for our purposes today, we'll follow the history of the Shias, specifically their imams.

While for the Sunnis, the title of "imam" (literally "leader") typically just refers to any learned spiritual leader (sort of akin to a Jewish rabbi), Shias follow a specific lineage of imams. These imams are required to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad himself, and are considered to be infallible, the top authority on how the Quran should be analyzed. Think of him like the Pope. That's not a perfect comparison, but it helps get across the unique problems of succession in Shia philosophy. See, since imams are supposed to be infallible, that means they can't go back on their decisions. This becomes pretty damn awkward if, say, the kid you declared to be your successor dies before you do. This is what happened in 765 CE, as imam Ja'far al-Sadiq had appointed his son Isma'il to be his rightful heir, but then outlived him. His other son, Musa al-Kazim, thus had all of his dad's stuff passed to him instead. But wait, Isma'il's followers said, the imam can't be wrong, so when he declared Isma'il his successor, that meant that he still held the title even in death, so the title should instead go to Isma'il's descendents. The ones who stood by Musa became the sect known today as the Twelvers (because they believe in only twelve true imams, story for another time), while the ones who supported Isma'il became known as the much less creatively named Isma'ilis. Can't win em all.

The Isma'il's believe that the descendents of Isma'il retained the imamate, but went into hiding to avoid persecution from the largely Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. This lineage largely operated through a sort of missionary secret society whose preachers were called the da'i, basically responsible for secretly recruiting powerful allies to the Isma'ili cause. This culminated in 909 CE, when imam Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah had enough influence to come out of the closet and found the Fatimid Caliphate, a massive empire which came to rule over much of North Africa, and even the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem themselves. That is (again) a story for another time, though. For now, let's fast forward to the death of Fatimid Caliph/imam al-Mustansir Billah in 1094 CE. By this time, his eldest son Nizar was an old man who had been prepared since childhood to assume his father's position. It seemed like a pretty straightforward matter, but there was one problem: a scheming vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah had grown pretty cozy with his rich and powerful lifestyle, and Nizar didn't seem like the kind of fool who would keep him around. The solution of course was to give Nizar the finger, usurp the government, and install Nizar's brother al-Musta'li on the throne instead. This utterly dick move forced Nizar to flee to Alexandria, where he rallied the support of the people to begin an insurrection. Unfortunately, al-Musta'li had the support of the army proper, and brought Nizar to heel. Nizar was executed in 1095, but his followers, the Nizari, would continue to build support for his house from deep within the shadows of every corner of the Muslim world.

Which, at last, brings us to the first Assassins. It all began with a man named Hassan-i Sabbah, originally a Twelver scholar from Qom who had been converted by an Isma'ili da'i in Rey at the age of 17. Seeking to prove his allegiance to the Fatimids, Hasan traveled to Cairo in 1078. It's here that he first earned the ire of the vizier for his support of Nizar, leading to his banishment back to Iran in 1081. Hasan was a man of great conviction, though, which of course made him several enemies. He managed to seriously piss off the Seljuk Turks, whose empire was quickly subsuming the whole of Iran, forcing him to keep his activities secret and quiet. He wandered as a da'i for several years, before finally coming upon a fortress in the mountains called Alamut in 1088. This looming castle had been built around 865, and was supposedly named by a king who witnessed the good omen of an eagle roosting on the mountain's peak (Alamut meaning "eagle's nest"). Hassan took to heart the methods of the da'i before him, spending the next two years moving through the city under the radar as an undercover missionary. One by one, he converted the populace and prominent men to his cause, and by 1090, support for this mysterious gentleman was so unanimous that the leader of the fortress was forced to abandon his post, surrendering the fort without a single drop of blood being spilt. As you can imagine, the Seljuks were not happy about this turn of events, and sent in their troops under vizier Nizam al-Mulk to try and smother the new Isma'ili state in its crib. Alamut held out, though, and while Nizam al-Mulk was on route back to Baghdad, he was stabbed to death by a disguised agent of Hassan's in 1092. Nizam, therefore, was the first victim to fall to an Assassin's blade. He would not be the last, as with his death, and the death of the Seljuk king just a month later, Seljuk territory was transformed into a tapestry of bickering lords. They were disunified, aside from the shared goal of making life absolutely miserable for the Isma'ili population. There was no king to dethrone or face in battle anymore, just a patchwork of corrupt noblemen hiding away in their castles on top of piles of looted gold. There was only one solution, then, and that was to go all in on Hassan's art of infiltration, and craft it into the perfect system for assassination.

On that note, it's from Hassan's organization that we get our modern English word "assassin", but its exact etymology is a bit finicky. The most common explanation you'll see thrown about is that the word derives from the word "Hashashin", a derogatory term literally meaning "hashish smoker". This is a reference to the myth recorded by Marco Polo which claims that the Hashashins were driven to become such proficient killers because their leader, the "Old Man of the Mountain", got them so high they might as well have been in Heaven, manipulating them to believe this would be their reward if they did as they were told. This story is almost certainly made up by Christian Crusaders who looked at the self-sacrificial practices of the Assassins and viewed it through their already malicious lense of how they saw Muslims. It's possible this word was used by Muslim critics of the Assassins, as smoking hashish was considered taboo, but we don't see this word appear in records until the late 12th century. The other common explanation is that "Assassin" derives from "asasiyun", meaning "followers of principle" (mayhaps even "followers of the creed", hmmmm?). The internet sure does love to assert that this is what Hassan preferred to call his disciples, but their only citation for this is "papers from Alamut" with no further elaboration. The fact that this fact is repeated verbatim on every single website I came across, I'm a little sus that this might be one of those things that one guy heard from a friend of a friend of a friend and it just got copy pasted across the web. If anyone has the actual citation to prove me wrong, please do slide it my way.

Going back to that self-sacrifice thing I just mentioned, let's go into the actual strategy utilized by the historical Assassins. Your average Assassin agent was known as a "fida'i", which means "sacrifice". This is because Assassins were trained with the understanding that once they killed a target out in the open, realistically they were going to be caught on the spot and executed. This wasn't a kamikaze situation, it's just the reality of the job, and the fida'i were expected to take this to heart, believing their sacrifice was for the greater good as long as the target died. Indeed, one of the more famous legends, which inspired the Leap of Faith mechanic in the AC games, involved Hassan ordering one of his fida'i to hurl themselves over the castle barracks to prove to an invading army's envoy that they did not fear death. As this was another yarn spun by Marco Polo, it is dubious as to whether or not this ever actually happened. None of this is to say that the Assassins weren't masters of stealth. In 1118, Seljuk ruler Ahmad Sanjar attempted to invade Alamut, but when he woke up one morning in the middle of his highly guarded military camp to find a dagger with a note warning him to back off pinned just inches from his pillow, he noped the fuck out of there. Smart man. In fact, the Assassins' preference for stealthy assassinations won them great favor with the civilian populace. After all, an invading army both destroys public and private property and coerces civilians in all sorts of horrible ways. An Assassin meanwhile just stabs one, often very corrupt, greedy, and powerful asshole, at the cost of just their own lives, and that's that. I wouldn't go so far as to say they were intentionally champions of the common man like they are in AC, but they certainly converged on the same "don't ask, don't tell" relationship with the civilians that the Assassins in the games developed.

Hassan-i Sabbah fell ill and died in 1124, reportedly never having left his study in Alamut for the entire 34 years he lived there. He had spent the last years of his life studying philosophy and organizing new castle takeovers for the Assassins to operate out of. The Isma'ili state was never really much of a "state" so much as a series of hideouts which the surrounding Seljuks were unable to reclaim. Bureaus, if you will. One such bureau was centered on the fortress of Masyaf in what is today Syria. An Assassin named Rashid ad-Din Sinan was placed in charge of this region in 1162, putting him in close contact with the neighboring Crusader states, and thus putting him at the forefront of the West's perception of the Assassins. It's in this context that one of the most infamous assassinations took place. In April 1192, the Crusader king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, approached two Christian monks with whom he had become fondly acquainted. Letting his guard down while walking home from dinner was the last mistake he would make, as these friends of his were actually undercover Nizaris who gained his trust to get close enough to stab him in the streets. One attacker was cut down on the spot, the other was captured and tortured for information, and Conrad succumbed to his wounds. No one is quite sure why the Assassins put a target on Conrad's head. Some say they were just dissatisfied with his rule and treatment of Muslim citizens, while others point to an entire wacky conspiracy involving King Richard the Lionheart hiring the Assassins to open the way for him to install his puppets in the Middle East. It's one of the great murder mysteries of the medieval era, and sadly is yet another story for another day.

This was pretty much the status quo for the Assassins up until the mid 13th century, when they were steamrolled over by a force which no one on this planet was prepared to face: the Mongol Khanate. The Mongols famously used indigenous officials to govern the lands they conquered, and unfortunately for the Assassins, this meant the Mongols first gave privilege to the Sunni majority in Seljuk Iran. In 1256, the Mongols breached the walls of Alamut, captured the Nizari imam, and had him executed in the mountains like a petty criminal. Masyaf fell to Hulagu Khan in 1260, and the final Nizari fortress, Gerdkuh, fell in 1270. The Order of Assassins was thus functionally extinct, scattered without any central authority, though the Nizaris did still hire their services out to men who wanted someone to have an "unfortunate accident". The last high-profile assassination attempt was against the future King Edward I of England during his crusade in Acre in 1272. Disguised as a Christian spy, the Nizari stabbed Edward in his bedchamber using a poisoned blade, though the wound was not fatal, and Edward cut the Assassin down where he stood. Though the Assassins were effectively snuffed out by this point, they lived on in Western imaginations as the ultimate stealth killers, lending their name to the very practice itself. Then ninjas came along and kinda usurped their whole thing, leaving the Assassins as this Crusader-era footnote. Dick move, ninjas.

The Nizaris as a religious movement, however, still survived to the modern day. In 1818, the shah of Iran's Qajar dynasty, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, wedded his daughter to the Isma'ili imam, Hasan Ali Shah. With this honor came the title of "Aga Khan", a Turkic phrase roughly meaning "chief ruler". Despite this, relations with the Qajar dynasty fell apart upon the Shah's death in 1834. When the shah's successors shunned Aga Khan, and the Nizaris failed to lead an open revolt against the Qajar, Aga Khan ultimately fled to Afghanistan in 1841. His good relations with the British allowed him to be taken in and set up shop in Bombay in 1846. This is why the majority of Isma'ilis today descend from an immigrant population that moved with their imam to India. Today, the Nizari imam is His Highness Aga Khan IV, who has been in that position since 1957, and is largely known for using his vast fortune to sponsor educational institutions and charities around the world. As far as I'm aware, none of that money is going into high-profile assassinations or uncovering ancient Precursor technology, but maybe that's just what Abstergo wants me to think-

Design notes, it was really, really hard to disassociate my mental image of an Assassin with the classic Assassin's Creed silhouette XD To a point where it almost kinda hindered me, like I was almost too concerned with making them not look like they do in AC. It certainly doesn't help that there isn't a lot of historical artworks depicting the Assassins either, at least none that depict them as looking any different from your average 12th century Middle Easterner. I mean fair, that's kind of the whole point of the stealthy master of disguise shtick, but it makes it a major pain in the ass to design something unique for them. Most modern art trying to depict a non-AC Assassin just sort of shrugs and goes "herp derp what if ninja, but Middle Eastern?" Ultimately, I decided that the best way to give my Assassins a bit of flavor was to take inspiration from the ceremonial robes of Aga Khan University, fittingly enough. These are beautiful green gowns, which the University themselves state were inspired by the colors of the Fatimids, while the highest ranking regalia is a white robe laced with those absolutely gorgeous geometric patterns which Islamic art is so famous for. I'm also not gonna lie, I kinda cheated with the agile. Cases like this are always a bit of a challenge, since really all Assassins should be agiles, but I gotta find a way to fill up all four slots of my format. I settled on a simplistic exploration of how I envision the Assassins of the Drake Hero Universe. Historical Assassins made their kills in broad daylight, and I think it would be cool to really embrace that. In this context, the Assassins rely more on embodying death itself, making all the guards around the target quake in their boots as some sort of specter slipped through their ranks and ripped the life from their commanding officer. Lots of smoke and mirrors scare the shit out of the guards just long enough for the Assassin to make their badass escape. Think more Ghost of Tsushima than Assassin's Creed. Overall, I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with this experiment, but I'm not 100% certain what precisely is nagging me about it. Something to think on, consider advice about, and maybe return to this concept in the future.

Description
Here's a side project I thought would be pretty interesting. Though I want to focus away from fan art, that doesn't mean I'm not still a huge nerd for Assassin's Creed. I'm absolutely psyched for Mirage. I've wanted a game set in the Islamic Golden Age for sooooo long and now my dream is coming true. Like a lot of us total nerds, these games were my gateway into the serious study of history and anthropology. Honestly though, it's been a while since I actually sat down and played the older titles. I recently amended this, though, and it made me realize how much more I appreciate the worldbuilding as a more experienced historian. It also made me realize that I'm not all that familiar with a lot of the historical figures featured in the games beyond their appearances in said games. So, as an excuse to expand my portfolio, explore the clothing of different time periods, and get to know our favorite historical characters better as they really were, I want to try to draw every historical figure that appears in the major titles in some significant capacity. I've been collecting a list, and it's almost certainly not complete, but that just gives me an excuse to explore more, eh? It'll also help me experiment with ideas for Drake Hero, as these will be intended as how these people would appear in said universe. What better way to start, then, than with the titular brotherhood itself, the Assassins?

To get to the heart of the historical Assassins (or "Hashashin" as they were originally called. Maybe, more on that in a bit), we first have to understand the major schisms in the religion of Islam which led to their foundation. This is… an extremely complicated topic which can fill an entire semester in itself (trust me I know, I took Islamicate studies in my brief stint at college), and I'll be skipping over many, many details for our purposes today. To start, I feel it's important to clarify that it's generally easier to think of Islamic branches as more of a series of succession crises than it is a matter of belief like in Christian denominations. There are certainly differing theologies which have become attached more to certain branches of Islam than others, but typically, it's not the belief itself which defines any given sect. It's more the approach than the belief. This is best exemplified in the most fundamental schism in the entire faith: Sunni vs. Shia. Again, vast oversimplification here, but this split is usually explained as a debate over who the true successor to the Prophet Muhammad should've been upon his death in 632 CE. Sunnis believe that the first Caliph (literally "successor") was the Prophet's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, who was elected by a council of the Prophet's followers. Shias, meanwhile, argue that the Prophet had actually chosen his son-in-law Ali to be his successor, which would make sense given traditional Arabic tribal law. The earliest rivalries between these two factions are an entire story for another time, so for our purposes today, we'll follow the history of the Shias, specifically their imams.

While for the Sunnis, the title of "imam" (literally "leader") typically just refers to any learned spiritual leader (sort of akin to a Jewish rabbi), Shias follow a specific lineage of imams. These imams are required to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad himself, and are considered to be infallible, the top authority on how the Quran should be analyzed. Think of him like the Pope. That's not a perfect comparison, but it helps get across the unique problems of succession in Shia philosophy. See, since imams are supposed to be infallible, that means they can't go back on their decisions. This becomes pretty damn awkward if, say, the kid you declared to be your successor dies before you do. This is what happened in 765 CE, as imam Ja'far al-Sadiq had appointed his son Isma'il to be his rightful heir, but then outlived him. His other son, Musa al-Kazim, thus had all of his dad's stuff passed to him instead. But wait, Isma'il's followers said, the imam can't be wrong, so when he declared Isma'il his successor, that meant that he still held the title even in death, so the title should instead go to Isma'il's descendents. The ones who stood by Musa became the sect known today as the Twelvers (because they believe in only twelve true imams, story for another time), while the ones who supported Isma'il became known as the much less creatively named Isma'ilis. Can't win em all.

The Isma'il's believe that the descendents of Isma'il retained the imamate, but went into hiding to avoid persecution from the largely Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. This lineage largely operated through a sort of missionary secret society whose preachers were called the da'i, basically responsible for secretly recruiting powerful allies to the Isma'ili cause. This culminated in 909 CE, when imam Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah had enough influence to come out of the closet and found the Fatimid Caliphate, a massive empire which came to rule over much of North Africa, and even the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem themselves. That is (again) a story for another time, though. For now, let's fast forward to the death of Fatimid Caliph/imam al-Mustansir Billah in 1094 CE. By this time, his eldest son Nizar was an old man who had been prepared since childhood to assume his father's position. It seemed like a pretty straightforward matter, but there was one problem: a scheming vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah had grown pretty cozy with his rich and powerful lifestyle, and Nizar didn't seem like the kind of fool who would keep him around. The solution of course was to give Nizar the finger, usurp the government, and install Nizar's brother al-Musta'li on the throne instead. This utterly dick move forced Nizar to flee to Alexandria, where he rallied the support of the people to begin an insurrection. Unfortunately, al-Musta'li had the support of the army proper, and brought Nizar to heel. Nizar was executed in 1095, but his followers, the Nizari, would continue to build support for his house from deep within the shadows of every corner of the Muslim world.

Which, at last, brings us to the first Assassins. It all began with a man named Hassan-i Sabbah, originally a Twelver scholar from Qom who had been converted by an Isma'ili da'i in Rey at the age of 17. Seeking to prove his allegiance to the Fatimids, Hasan traveled to Cairo in 1078. It's here that he first earned the ire of the vizier for his support of Nizar, leading to his banishment back to Iran in 1081. Hasan was a man of great conviction, though, which of course made him several enemies. He managed to seriously piss off the Seljuk Turks, whose empire was quickly subsuming the whole of Iran, forcing him to keep his activities secret and quiet. He wandered as a da'i for several years, before finally coming upon a fortress in the mountains called Alamut in 1088. This looming castle had been built around 865, and was supposedly named by a king who witnessed the good omen of an eagle roosting on the mountain's peak (Alamut meaning "eagle's nest"). Hassan took to heart the methods of the da'i before him, spending the next two years moving through the city under the radar as an undercover missionary. One by one, he converted the populace and prominent men to his cause, and by 1090, support for this mysterious gentleman was so unanimous that the leader of the fortress was forced to abandon his post, surrendering the fort without a single drop of blood being spilt. As you can imagine, the Seljuks were not happy about this turn of events, and sent in their troops under vizier Nizam al-Mulk to try and smother the new Isma'ili state in its crib. Alamut held out, though, and while Nizam al-Mulk was on route back to Baghdad, he was stabbed to death by a disguised agent of Hassan's in 1092. Nizam, therefore, was the first victim to fall to an Assassin's blade. He would not be the last, as with his death, and the death of the Seljuk king just a month later, Seljuk territory was transformed into a tapestry of bickering lords. They were disunified, aside from the shared goal of making life absolutely miserable for the Isma'ili population. There was no king to dethrone or face in battle anymore, just a patchwork of corrupt noblemen hiding away in their castles on top of piles of looted gold. There was only one solution, then, and that was to go all in on Hassan's art of infiltration, and craft it into the perfect system for assassination.

On that note, it's from Hassan's organization that we get our modern English word "assassin", but its exact etymology is a bit finicky. The most common explanation you'll see thrown about is that the word derives from the word "Hashashin", a derogatory term literally meaning "hashish smoker". This is a reference to the myth recorded by Marco Polo which claims that the Hashashins were driven to become such proficient killers because their leader, the "Old Man of the Mountain", got them so high they might as well have been in Heaven, manipulating them to believe this would be their reward if they did as they were told. This story is almost certainly made up by Christian Crusaders who looked at the self-sacrificial practices of the Assassins and viewed it through their already malicious lense of how they saw Muslims. It's possible this word was used by Muslim critics of the Assassins, as smoking hashish was considered taboo, but we don't see this word appear in records until the late 12th century. The other common explanation is that "Assassin" derives from "asasiyun", meaning "followers of principle" (mayhaps even "followers of the creed", hmmmm?). The internet sure does love to assert that this is what Hassan preferred to call his disciples, but their only citation for this is "papers from Alamut" with no further elaboration. The fact that this fact is repeated verbatim on every single website I came across, I'm a little sus that this might be one of those things that one guy heard from a friend of a friend of a friend and it just got copy pasted across the web. If anyone has the actual citation to prove me wrong, please do slide it my way.

Going back to that self-sacrifice thing I just mentioned, let's go into the actual strategy utilized by the historical Assassins. Your average Assassin agent was known as a "fida'i", which means "sacrifice". This is because Assassins were trained with the understanding that once they killed a target out in the open, realistically they were going to be caught on the spot and executed. This wasn't a kamikaze situation, it's just the reality of the job, and the fida'i were expected to take this to heart, believing their sacrifice was for the greater good as long as the target died. Indeed, one of the more famous legends, which inspired the Leap of Faith mechanic in the AC games, involved Hassan ordering one of his fida'i to hurl themselves over the castle barracks to prove to an invading army's envoy that they did not fear death. As this was another yarn spun by Marco Polo, it is dubious as to whether or not this ever actually happened. None of this is to say that the Assassins weren't masters of stealth. In 1118, Seljuk ruler Ahmad Sanjar attempted to invade Alamut, but when he woke up one morning in the middle of his highly guarded military camp to find a dagger with a note warning him to back off pinned just inches from his pillow, he noped the fuck out of there. Smart man. In fact, the Assassins' preference for stealthy assassinations won them great favor with the civilian populace. After all, an invading army both destroys public and private property and coerces civilians in all sorts of horrible ways. An Assassin meanwhile just stabs one, often very corrupt, greedy, and powerful asshole, at the cost of just their own lives, and that's that. I wouldn't go so far as to say they were intentionally champions of the common man like they are in AC, but they certainly converged on the same "don't ask, don't tell" relationship with the civilians that the Assassins in the games developed.

Hassan-i Sabbah fell ill and died in 1124, reportedly never having left his study in Alamut for the entire 34 years he lived there. He had spent the last years of his life studying philosophy and organizing new castle takeovers for the Assassins to operate out of. The Isma'ili state was never really much of a "state" so much as a series of hideouts which the surrounding Seljuks were unable to reclaim. Bureaus, if you will. One such bureau was centered on the fortress of Masyaf in what is today Syria. An Assassin named Rashid ad-Din Sinan was placed in charge of this region in 1162, putting him in close contact with the neighboring Crusader states, and thus putting him at the forefront of the West's perception of the Assassins. It's in this context that one of the most infamous assassinations took place. In April 1192, the Crusader king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, approached two Christian monks with whom he had become fondly acquainted. Letting his guard down while walking home from dinner was the last mistake he would make, as these friends of his were actually undercover Nizaris who gained his trust to get close enough to stab him in the streets. One attacker was cut down on the spot, the other was captured and tortured for information, and Conrad succumbed to his wounds. No one is quite sure why the Assassins put a target on Conrad's head. Some say they were just dissatisfied with his rule and treatment of Muslim citizens, while others point to an entire wacky conspiracy involving King Richard the Lionheart hiring the Assassins to open the way for him to install his puppets in the Middle East. It's one of the great murder mysteries of the medieval era, and sadly is yet another story for another day.

This was pretty much the status quo for the Assassins up until the mid 13th century, when they were steamrolled over by a force which no one on this planet was prepared to face: the Mongol Khanate. The Mongols famously used indigenous officials to govern the lands they conquered, and unfortunately for the Assassins, this meant the Mongols first gave privilege to the Sunni majority in Seljuk Iran. In 1256, the Mongols breached the walls of Alamut, captured the Nizari imam, and had him executed in the mountains like a petty criminal. Masyaf fell to Hulagu Khan in 1260, and the final Nizari fortress, Gerdkuh, fell in 1270. The Order of Assassins was thus functionally extinct, scattered without any central authority, though the Nizaris did still hire their services out to men who wanted someone to have an "unfortunate accident". The last high-profile assassination attempt was against the future King Edward I of England during his crusade in Acre in 1272. Disguised as a Christian spy, the Nizari stabbed Edward in his bedchamber using a poisoned blade, though the wound was not fatal, and Edward cut the Assassin down where he stood. Though the Assassins were effectively snuffed out by this point, they lived on in Western imaginations as the ultimate stealth killers, lending their name to the very practice itself. Then ninjas came along and kinda usurped their whole thing, leaving the Assassins as this Crusader-era footnote. Dick move, ninjas.

The Nizaris as a religious movement, however, still survived to the modern day. In 1818, the shah of Iran's Qajar dynasty, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, wedded his daughter to the Isma'ili imam, Hasan Ali Shah. With this honor came the title of "Aga Khan", a Turkic phrase roughly meaning "chief ruler". Despite this, relations with the Qajar dynasty fell apart upon the Shah's death in 1834. When the shah's successors shunned Aga Khan, and the Nizaris failed to lead an open revolt against the Qajar, Aga Khan ultimately fled to Afghanistan in 1841. His good relations with the British allowed him to be taken in and set up shop in Bombay in 1846. This is why the majority of Isma'ilis today descend from an immigrant population that moved with their imam to India. Today, the Nizari imam is His Highness Aga Khan IV, who has been in that position since 1957, and is largely known for using his vast fortune to sponsor educational institutions and charities around the world. As far as I'm aware, none of that money is going into high-profile assassinations or uncovering ancient Precursor technology, but maybe that's just what Abstergo wants me to think-

Design notes, it was really, really hard to disassociate my mental image of an Assassin with the classic Assassin's Creed silhouette XD To a point where it almost kinda hindered me, like I was almost too concerned with making them not look like they do in AC. It certainly doesn't help that there isn't a lot of historical artworks depicting the Assassins either, at least none that depict them as looking any different from your average 12th century Middle Easterner. I mean fair, that's kind of the whole point of the stealthy master of disguise shtick, but it makes it a major pain in the ass to design something unique for them. Most modern art trying to depict a non-AC Assassin just sort of shrugs and goes "herp derp what if ninja, but Middle Eastern?" Ultimately, I decided that the best way to give my Assassins a bit of flavor was to take inspiration from the ceremonial robes of Aga Khan University, fittingly enough. These are beautiful green gowns, which the University themselves state were inspired by the colors of the Fatimids, while the highest ranking regalia is a white robe laced with those absolutely gorgeous geometric patterns which Islamic art is so famous for. I'm also not gonna lie, I kinda cheated with the agile. Cases like this are always a bit of a challenge, since really all Assassins should be agiles, but I gotta find a way to fill up all four slots of my format. I settled on a simplistic exploration of how I envision the Assassins of the Drake Hero Universe. Historical Assassins made their kills in broad daylight, and I think it would be cool to really embrace that. In this context, the Assassins rely more on embodying death itself, making all the guards around the target quake in their boots as some sort of specter slipped through their ranks and ripped the life from their commanding officer. Lots of smoke and mirrors scare the shit out of the guards just long enough for the Assassin to make their badass escape. Think more Ghost of Tsushima than Assassin's Creed. Overall, I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with this experiment, but I'm not 100% certain what precisely is nagging me about it. Something to think on, consider advice about, and maybe return to this concept in the future.