The Asnâm
Don’t take someone lightly when he refers to her followers as her “priests.” Either she’s delusional and thinks she’s a goddess . . . or she’s not delusional.
The founder of the Asnâm bloodline was an exceptionally bold and cruel Arab vampire named Atiqua Azad. In life he was renowned for his depraved indifference to human suffering, an asset that made him extremely rich as an Arab slave trader in the late 1400s. The Embrace only perfected a nature that was already so predatory and arrogant that its actions seemed beyond sanity to ordinary people.
As a vampire, Azad continued to pursue the slave trade despite the perils of the Middle Passage. Never safe for anyone, the seafaring dangers of shipwreck or storm were doubled for one of the Kindred race. Whatever his personality, it’s a testament to Azad’s skill and courage that he succeeded as a slaver for more than 300 years.
In fact, Azad not only sold slaves to François Lelande but gouged him severely on the price. It was the fi rst time Lelande was exposed to Majesty.
By the dawn of the 19th century, Azad stopped crossing the Atlantic. He’d fi nally overplayed his luck and survived a storm only by the slenderest of margins. When he made it back to North Africa he swore to never set foot in the Americas again. But without the excitement of his perilous journeys, Azad became restless. At that time, he was initiated into The Circle of the Crone.
The name of Azad’s Mentor is a secret held tight by his bloodline (or perhaps the secret is that they themselves do not know). Clearly, Azad was taught by someone who believed Kindred were nothing less than agents of an inhuman hierarchy, existing at on a rarefi ed plane above and beyond the confi nes of mere mortal experience. The idea that he was a demon given fl esh, who could rise in time to the rank of a fallen god, was appealing to Azad’s ego and certainly explained a lot about his experience in the Requiem. With his wanderlust fired by his a philosophy, Azad set off to the East, eventually arriving in Tibet.
To understand what happened to Atiqua Azad in Tibet, and how he came to found a bloodline known as the Asnâm, it’s important to understand the complex history of Tibetan religion. Specifi cally, one needs to understand Palden Lhamo.
(“Asnâm” is the plural form of the Arabic word “Sanam.” It means “idol,” and its connotations of worship are well suited to the children of Atiqua Azad.)
Palden Lhamo was at one time a pagan goddess of the native, animist religion of Tibet. A fearsome three-eyed fi gure of wrath, her story says she resisted the encroachment of Buddhist thought from India until the eighth-century reign of King Trisong Detsen. King Detsen’s guru, Shantarakshita, called upon a great tantrika named Padmasambhava. Known as “the Lotus Born,” Padmasambhava came to Tibet, persuaded the native deities to submit themselves to the Buddha and founded a great monastery that stands to this day. Palden Lhamo rejected her old ways so thoroughly that her former husband, the Cannibal King of Sri Lanka, attempted to kill her but only hit her mount in the hindquarters with an arrow.
From a Kindred perspective, there are interesting elements to this story even before a prideful interloper arrives all the way from far Araby. First off, the great Lotus Born teacher started his career in a decidedly inauspicious fashion: he was exiled for murder. Fleeing to the charnel fi elds where corpses were burned, he becameenlightened by the visceral evidence that the things of life were meaningless. Educated by the demons there, he returned as a Buddhist emissary. As one might expect, the Acolytes have a different viewpoint of a murderer who was sent to a realm of the dead, returning with a supernatural education.
As for Palden Lhamo, her husband consumed the living, and most illustrations of the goddess show her doing the same thing. (Some Gangrel insist that because she was depicted riding a type of wild mule known to be untrainable, Palden Lhamo must have known the secrets of Animalism.) Despite her role as protectress of the pacifi st Dalai Lama, paintings of Palden Lhamo show her covered with blood, ashes and corpse fat, gnawing dead bodies and wearing a wreath of severed heads and an apron of bones.
It may indeed have been her gruesome images that caught Atiqua Azad’s attention. Certainly, by the time of his disappearance in 1904, he had a huge collection of tapestries and statues of her. But at the time of his journey (in 1822), he just wanted to find out what possible incentives could have led a radiant blood goddess to meekly confine herself to what he called “the water-hearted cowardice of Buddhism.”
It is certain that Atiqua Azad entered a Tibetan mountain Temple in 1822, and that when he emerged he went on to found the Asnâm bloodline. It’s less clear exactly what he did in there.
Atiqua himself claimed that he confronted the monks, debated them for a few hours and, as the night wore on, got bored and started killing them. Then the goddess possessed the head nun there and fought him for a while. The fight degenerated into a theological discussion (which he claimed to have copied down word for word, but if he did, no one in his bloodline knows where that text is now). After that stalemated, they fought again. This time he killed her and devoured her purified, immortal, inhuman soul, giving him the power to create his own bloodline.
That version was the stock version for some time — after all, Azad was awake and aware and a 400-year-old monster. But after he dropped out of the scene (Dead? Torpid? Transcended into Golconda? No one’s sure), another story started making the rounds. In this version, he still fights against and talks with the goddess, but instead of killing her, he convinces her to renounce Buddhism and become pure evil again. His ability to sire the Asnâm is his reward for being her first servant.
That’s the story you get from the breakaway branch of the Sanam family, who worship their reconstituted cannibal queen version of the goddess. There’s a third version of the story wherein she whips him like dog, drives him out of the Temple and remains the Dalai Lama’s unsullied protectress. That story has no explanation for how he came to found his bloodline, but most Asnâm who’ve gone to Tibet Haven’t come back. The two who did make it out wouldn’t talk about what chased them away, except to say that whatever it was, it worshipped the Buddhist Palden Lhamo, knew all about the bloodline and was mad as fucking hell.
As a vampire, Azad continued to pursue the slave trade despite the perils of the Middle Passage. Never safe for anyone, the seafaring dangers of shipwreck or storm were doubled for one of the Kindred race. Whatever his personality, it’s a testament to Azad’s skill and courage that he succeeded as a slaver for more than 300 years.
In fact, Azad not only sold slaves to François Lelande but gouged him severely on the price. It was the fi rst time Lelande was exposed to Majesty.
By the dawn of the 19th century, Azad stopped crossing the Atlantic. He’d fi nally overplayed his luck and survived a storm only by the slenderest of margins. When he made it back to North Africa he swore to never set foot in the Americas again. But without the excitement of his perilous journeys, Azad became restless. At that time, he was initiated into The Circle of the Crone.
The name of Azad’s Mentor is a secret held tight by his bloodline (or perhaps the secret is that they themselves do not know). Clearly, Azad was taught by someone who believed Kindred were nothing less than agents of an inhuman hierarchy, existing at on a rarefi ed plane above and beyond the confi nes of mere mortal experience. The idea that he was a demon given fl esh, who could rise in time to the rank of a fallen god, was appealing to Azad’s ego and certainly explained a lot about his experience in the Requiem. With his wanderlust fired by his a philosophy, Azad set off to the East, eventually arriving in Tibet.
To understand what happened to Atiqua Azad in Tibet, and how he came to found a bloodline known as the Asnâm, it’s important to understand the complex history of Tibetan religion. Specifi cally, one needs to understand Palden Lhamo.
(“Asnâm” is the plural form of the Arabic word “Sanam.” It means “idol,” and its connotations of worship are well suited to the children of Atiqua Azad.)
Palden Lhamo was at one time a pagan goddess of the native, animist religion of Tibet. A fearsome three-eyed fi gure of wrath, her story says she resisted the encroachment of Buddhist thought from India until the eighth-century reign of King Trisong Detsen. King Detsen’s guru, Shantarakshita, called upon a great tantrika named Padmasambhava. Known as “the Lotus Born,” Padmasambhava came to Tibet, persuaded the native deities to submit themselves to the Buddha and founded a great monastery that stands to this day. Palden Lhamo rejected her old ways so thoroughly that her former husband, the Cannibal King of Sri Lanka, attempted to kill her but only hit her mount in the hindquarters with an arrow.
From a Kindred perspective, there are interesting elements to this story even before a prideful interloper arrives all the way from far Araby. First off, the great Lotus Born teacher started his career in a decidedly inauspicious fashion: he was exiled for murder. Fleeing to the charnel fi elds where corpses were burned, he becameenlightened by the visceral evidence that the things of life were meaningless. Educated by the demons there, he returned as a Buddhist emissary. As one might expect, the Acolytes have a different viewpoint of a murderer who was sent to a realm of the dead, returning with a supernatural education.
As for Palden Lhamo, her husband consumed the living, and most illustrations of the goddess show her doing the same thing. (Some Gangrel insist that because she was depicted riding a type of wild mule known to be untrainable, Palden Lhamo must have known the secrets of Animalism.) Despite her role as protectress of the pacifi st Dalai Lama, paintings of Palden Lhamo show her covered with blood, ashes and corpse fat, gnawing dead bodies and wearing a wreath of severed heads and an apron of bones.
It may indeed have been her gruesome images that caught Atiqua Azad’s attention. Certainly, by the time of his disappearance in 1904, he had a huge collection of tapestries and statues of her. But at the time of his journey (in 1822), he just wanted to find out what possible incentives could have led a radiant blood goddess to meekly confine herself to what he called “the water-hearted cowardice of Buddhism.”
It is certain that Atiqua Azad entered a Tibetan mountain Temple in 1822, and that when he emerged he went on to found the Asnâm bloodline. It’s less clear exactly what he did in there.
Atiqua himself claimed that he confronted the monks, debated them for a few hours and, as the night wore on, got bored and started killing them. Then the goddess possessed the head nun there and fought him for a while. The fight degenerated into a theological discussion (which he claimed to have copied down word for word, but if he did, no one in his bloodline knows where that text is now). After that stalemated, they fought again. This time he killed her and devoured her purified, immortal, inhuman soul, giving him the power to create his own bloodline.
That version was the stock version for some time — after all, Azad was awake and aware and a 400-year-old monster. But after he dropped out of the scene (Dead? Torpid? Transcended into Golconda? No one’s sure), another story started making the rounds. In this version, he still fights against and talks with the goddess, but instead of killing her, he convinces her to renounce Buddhism and become pure evil again. His ability to sire the Asnâm is his reward for being her first servant.
That’s the story you get from the breakaway branch of the Sanam family, who worship their reconstituted cannibal queen version of the goddess. There’s a third version of the story wherein she whips him like dog, drives him out of the Temple and remains the Dalai Lama’s unsullied protectress. That story has no explanation for how he came to found his bloodline, but most Asnâm who’ve gone to Tibet Haven’t come back. The two who did make it out wouldn’t talk about what chased them away, except to say that whatever it was, it worshipped the Buddhist Palden Lhamo, knew all about the bloodline and was mad as fucking hell.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
Background: Asnâm almost always Embrace a worshipper who has a complete Vinculum. Childer are chosen for discretion, beauty, cunning and their ability to lure mortals. Where older Asnâm were Embraced as traveling merchants, confidence tricksters, sailors or explorers, the modern Sanam is likelier to leave a life as a performer, a journalist or an insurance investigator.
Common Dress code
Appearance: About half the Asnâm are of Middle Eastern descent, with the remainder being spread evenly across racial types. Most Asnâm are good-looking, and those who aren’t often possess such self-confidence that they seem gorgeous even if they aren’t. When dealing with non-Acolytes and mortals outside their cults, Asnâm dress with exquisite (and expensive) taste. When they’re directing the services that praise them, they traditionally array themselves as Palden Lhamo did. They smear their bodies with blood and the ash of corpses, they wear snake and tiger skins. A sun tattoo or drawing on the navel often accompanies a moon headdress, and a third eye painted (or, again, tattooed) on the forehead is not uncommon. They ride a mule into services, on a saddle made of human skin, and drink their Vitae from the skull of an infant born of an incestuous union.
Art & Architecture
Haven: There are stationary Asnâm and mobile ones, and the havens of each type are distinct. A stationary Sanam typically lives in some sort of Temple dedicated to herself, complete with pews, Altar and sacred art depicting the triumphs of her Requiem. (Often these triumphs are exaggerated to mythic levels, or depicted in highly symbolic form. If she overcame a wealthy Invictus rival who had connections to the drug trade, her home might feature a tapestry showing her trampling the head of a vampire who’s bleeding and vomiting dollar bills, while drug traffickers flee in terror, shoot at her and miss, are devoured or are consumed by the flames of her wrath. If the tapestry were typical of Asnâm art styles, the defeated rival would be about two-thirds as tall as the Sanam, while the fleeing or dying drug thugs would be at 1/10th scale.)
Mobile Asnâm have to forego any ritual trappings they can’t transport themselves (though some travel in semis in order to put on religious ceremonies that rival rock shows, complete with smoke machines, pyrotechnics, mood lighting and platforms that rise up from under the altar). The typical Haven of a traveling Sanam is the home of a worshipper. Asnâm who make their expectations clear often get exceptional comfort and defenses from their followers, especially those who bear the triple yoke of Vinculum, Blood Addiction and Ralab.
Mobile Asnâm have to forego any ritual trappings they can’t transport themselves (though some travel in semis in order to put on religious ceremonies that rival rock shows, complete with smoke machines, pyrotechnics, mood lighting and platforms that rise up from under the altar). The typical Haven of a traveling Sanam is the home of a worshipper. Asnâm who make their expectations clear often get exceptional comfort and defenses from their followers, especially those who bear the triple yoke of Vinculum, Blood Addiction and Ralab.
Major organizations
Covenant: The Circle of the Crone holds about 60% of the Asnâm, since they explicitly believe themselves to be gods and the Circle is the covenant in which that belief fits most smoothly. Another 10% are Invictus, typically because the Asnâm are in domains where The Invictus is dominant and where the usual Invictus/ Lancea Sanctum bond is weak. (The Lancea Sanctum despises the Asnâm on principle.) The Carthians have about as many as The Invictus, since the Movement is often religiously tolerant and provides easy access to mortals for the Asnâm to enslave. Twenty percent or so are unbound, for those Asnâm who cannot abide any authority beyond their own. The Ordo Dracul has yet to recruit a Sanam for two reasons. First, few Asnâm see any need to escape or improve upon their situation. Second, no Asnâm can tolerate being anyone’s slave.
Organization: The Asnâm have a hierarchy, but they prefer the term “pantheon.” Given their habit of Embracing only those who are already fervent (and blood-chained) believers in the mythos of Atiqua Azad, the cult’s beliefs are pretty robust. Atiqua the Goddess Devourer was at the top of the heap, and is still venerated by many Asnâm. Beneath him are his childer (and he sired a remarkable four times at least) and under them the other Asnâm of the line. Subordinate to the Asnâm proper are those Daeva who have Asnâm sires but have not yet placed themselves at the center of cults and developed the powers of Ralab. Those Daeva are considered emissary demons and not charnel deities worthy of veneration. Under the Asnâm’s Daeva agents are various Ghouls, then mortal worshippers, then the vast human shit-heap that is ignorant of the faith and under them animals, insects and plants. (Not very far under, to be sure.)
Almost every Sanam worships his sire and is worshipped by his childer. The Sanam may teach their followers that there is a goddess greater than them and instruct them in their sire’s name, but most don’t. They figure their worshippers have enough to think about figuring out a way to keep one Sanam fed and happy.
Organization: The Asnâm have a hierarchy, but they prefer the term “pantheon.” Given their habit of Embracing only those who are already fervent (and blood-chained) believers in the mythos of Atiqua Azad, the cult’s beliefs are pretty robust. Atiqua the Goddess Devourer was at the top of the heap, and is still venerated by many Asnâm. Beneath him are his childer (and he sired a remarkable four times at least) and under them the other Asnâm of the line. Subordinate to the Asnâm proper are those Daeva who have Asnâm sires but have not yet placed themselves at the center of cults and developed the powers of Ralab. Those Daeva are considered emissary demons and not charnel deities worthy of veneration. Under the Asnâm’s Daeva agents are various Ghouls, then mortal worshippers, then the vast human shit-heap that is ignorant of the faith and under them animals, insects and plants. (Not very far under, to be sure.)
Almost every Sanam worships his sire and is worshipped by his childer. The Sanam may teach their followers that there is a goddess greater than them and instruct them in their sire’s name, but most don’t. They figure their worshippers have enough to think about figuring out a way to keep one Sanam fed and happy.
Nickname: Idols
Bloodline Disciplines: Celerity, Majesty, Ralab, Vigor
Weakness: Once the bloodline manifests, the Sanam becomes a true egomaniac. He believes he is a demon incarnate in flesh, superior to all mere mortals, unsurpassed by any of the human riff-raff. Unlike Megalomania, this is not a front for secret fears of failure. Far from fearing it, Asnâm can barely conceive of it. Twice per session, the Storyteller is permitted to grossly underplay the difficulty of a task, leading a Sanam’s player to think it’s much easier than it is. If your Storyteller routinely tells you the Difficulty of a task, she’s free to understate it before the roll. Asnâm controlled by the Storyteller should simply behave as if they believe themselves to be the most competent Kindred around. After all, they do.
If a Sanam develops Derangements, Narcissism and Megalomania are good picks. A Phobia is most likely to be seen as an “Achilles’ heel” (or, for less educated Asnâm, “like kryptonite to Superman”). Inferiority Complexes or Hysteria are difficult to pull off, but can be managed if the Sanam ruthlessly overcompensates, conceals or denies the problem.
Concepts: Smuggler, traveling revivalist preacher, blues musician, fortune-teller, itinerant beauty-parlor scissors sharpener, consulting psychic, self-esteem coach, New Age feel-good psychobabble merchant, skip chaser, plastic surgeon
Parent ethnicities
Weakness: Once the bloodline manifests, the Sanam becomes a true egomaniac. He believes he is a demon incarnate in flesh, superior to all mere mortals, unsurpassed by any of the human riff-raff. Unlike Megalomania, this is not a front for secret fears of failure. Far from fearing it, Asnâm can barely conceive of it. Twice per session, the Storyteller is permitted to grossly underplay the difficulty of a task, leading a Sanam’s player to think it’s much easier than it is. If your Storyteller routinely tells you the Difficulty of a task, she’s free to understate it before the roll. Asnâm controlled by the Storyteller should simply behave as if they believe themselves to be the most competent Kindred around. After all, they do.
If a Sanam develops Derangements, Narcissism and Megalomania are good picks. A Phobia is most likely to be seen as an “Achilles’ heel” (or, for less educated Asnâm, “like kryptonite to Superman”). Inferiority Complexes or Hysteria are difficult to pull off, but can be managed if the Sanam ruthlessly overcompensates, conceals or denies the problem.
Concepts: Smuggler, traveling revivalist preacher, blues musician, fortune-teller, itinerant beauty-parlor scissors sharpener, consulting psychic, self-esteem coach, New Age feel-good psychobabble merchant, skip chaser, plastic surgeon