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Vampire: The Masquerade Clanbooks
Clanbook: Assamite Revised
A Cult of Killers
The clans of Caine have only recently seen the true face of Clan Assamite. Once assumed to be mere assassins, the Assamites have thrown off the Camarillas debilitating curse and their mantle of silence. A diverse clan of noble warriors, erudite scholars, learned sorcerers and murderous diablerists, the Assamites have stepped forth to claim their legacy in the Final Nights.
The High Price of Undeath
As part of the revised lineup of clanbooks, Assamite takes one of the classic sourcebooks for the game and brings it into a modern context. All-new information accompanies a re-examination of earlier concepts, allowing you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each 32 pages longer than the first-edition series) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
The clans of Caine have only recently seen the true face of Clan Assamite. Once assumed to be mere assassins, the Assamites have thrown off the Camarillas debilitating curse and their mantle of silence. A diverse clan of noble warriors, erudite scholars, learned sorcerers and murderous diablerists, the Assamites have stepped forth to claim their legacy in the Final Nights.
The High Price of Undeath
As part of the revised lineup of clanbooks, Assamite takes one of the classic sourcebooks for the game and brings it into a modern context. All-new information accompanies a re-examination of earlier concepts, allowing you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each 32 pages longer than the first-edition series) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
104 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 2000
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March 19, 2017
This is when the Clans started to get a bit less broadly archetypical. The main Camarilla Clans embody broad, simple ideas about vampires. The consummate predator, the manipulator from behind the scenes, the aesthete dedicated to the beauty of the night, and so on. The remaining six Clans are...well. Some people would say weirder. Some people would say more stereotypical. Some people would say racist. All of them are right.
The purpose of Clanbook: Assamite Revised is to take the Assamites and rescue them from their portrayal as a bunch of Arabic murderers who are howling for the blood of other vampires and somehow manage to be an entire Clan of contract killers, and it does an excellent job. It takes the mention of "viziers" who know blood magic from the main rulebook and expands it out in a tripartite caste system. The Viziers were first, scholars and diplomats created by Haqim, a warrior who was already sick of war by the time he was Embraced. The judges--later Warriors--were next, created when the Antediluvians came to Haqim and asked him to stand in judgement over their broods, a privilege the Warriors claim remains until the modern nights. And the Sorcerers, created to fight the Baali despite Saulot's protests that the Salubri warrior caste did not need any assistance. Add in a reminder that the Clan has a large Arabic and Muslim membership due to the location of their stronghold Alamut, but that this is by no means exclusive and there are plenty of Christians, Jews, and Clan members born in South Asia, Africa, and Europe, and it more than redeems their initial portrayal.
The metaplot changes also help. I know a lot of people dislike metaplot with good reason--there's nothing like learning that future books will be useless to one's one game, or that a beloved character is destined for tragedy in the canon game--but here it serves the purpose of expanding the range of playable Assamites. The Methuselah Ur-Shulgi, first detailed in Children of the Night, awakens and shatters the Tremere ritual binding the Clan from drinking vampire vitae. Its next act was to demand the end of all worship save that of Haqim and kill Jamal, the Eldest of Alamut and Caliph of the Warrior caste for five centuries, when he refused. This caused a massive exodus--many Assamites went to the Sabbat, including the Sabbat's first Viziers and Sorcerers. A sizable contingent under al-Ashrad, Amr of the Sorcerer caste and also in Children of the Night, defected to Camarilla territory with the aim of eventual Camarilla membership.
This is great. The Assamites are probably my favorite of the main thirteen Clans (though sometimes the Tzimisce beat them), and they mostly became so after reading this book. I had no desire to play insultingly stereotypical Arabic terrorist murder vampires, but after reading Clanbook: Assamite Revised I immediately wanted to play an Assamite Sorcerer. I still haven't gotten the chance, but maybe someday...
The part of the book that's not dedicated to the expanded Clan background and history is dedicated to new powers and a brief explanation on Assamite Sorcery, though much less than was in Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy. A lot of it is Quietus, which finally provides a good theme for the Discipline that isn't just "assassin stuff"-- control over blood. There are powers to affect the descendants of a particular target, infuse emotions into the blood, cause a guilty target to sweat blood, and...change the location of the silence from level one Quietus. Well, that power never made sense anyway. And finally, rather than ending with an example coterie of vampires, it ends with significant figures from the three castes, including the Vizier Mata Hari. I want to say that this is more useful than the example coterie, but honestly it's not. Most of the NPCs here are centuries if not millennia old and are great for people who are reading all the Vampire books with the intention of learning more about the secrets, but less so for STs who want ideas for their games.
That is one of only two complaints I have, though, the other being a lack of pre-Roman Middle Eastern history that the Clan was involved in. But that was also in the ancient past and not as useful for people running a modern-day game of Vampire, and on that score Clanbook: Assamite Revised absolutely delivers. Like Clanbook: Malkavian Revised, it takes a Clan that seems prone to encourage bad play and provides a number of ways to include it in a chronicle without problems, and to this day it's probably my favorite Clanbook.
Plus, you know, Leopards of Zion. Let me in on that.
The purpose of Clanbook: Assamite Revised is to take the Assamites and rescue them from their portrayal as a bunch of Arabic murderers who are howling for the blood of other vampires and somehow manage to be an entire Clan of contract killers, and it does an excellent job. It takes the mention of "viziers" who know blood magic from the main rulebook and expands it out in a tripartite caste system. The Viziers were first, scholars and diplomats created by Haqim, a warrior who was already sick of war by the time he was Embraced. The judges--later Warriors--were next, created when the Antediluvians came to Haqim and asked him to stand in judgement over their broods, a privilege the Warriors claim remains until the modern nights. And the Sorcerers, created to fight the Baali despite Saulot's protests that the Salubri warrior caste did not need any assistance. Add in a reminder that the Clan has a large Arabic and Muslim membership due to the location of their stronghold Alamut, but that this is by no means exclusive and there are plenty of Christians, Jews, and Clan members born in South Asia, Africa, and Europe, and it more than redeems their initial portrayal.
The metaplot changes also help. I know a lot of people dislike metaplot with good reason--there's nothing like learning that future books will be useless to one's one game, or that a beloved character is destined for tragedy in the canon game--but here it serves the purpose of expanding the range of playable Assamites. The Methuselah Ur-Shulgi, first detailed in Children of the Night, awakens and shatters the Tremere ritual binding the Clan from drinking vampire vitae. Its next act was to demand the end of all worship save that of Haqim and kill Jamal, the Eldest of Alamut and Caliph of the Warrior caste for five centuries, when he refused. This caused a massive exodus--many Assamites went to the Sabbat, including the Sabbat's first Viziers and Sorcerers. A sizable contingent under al-Ashrad, Amr of the Sorcerer caste and also in Children of the Night, defected to Camarilla territory with the aim of eventual Camarilla membership.
This is great. The Assamites are probably my favorite of the main thirteen Clans (though sometimes the Tzimisce beat them), and they mostly became so after reading this book. I had no desire to play insultingly stereotypical Arabic terrorist murder vampires, but after reading Clanbook: Assamite Revised I immediately wanted to play an Assamite Sorcerer. I still haven't gotten the chance, but maybe someday...
The part of the book that's not dedicated to the expanded Clan background and history is dedicated to new powers and a brief explanation on Assamite Sorcery, though much less than was in Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy. A lot of it is Quietus, which finally provides a good theme for the Discipline that isn't just "assassin stuff"-- control over blood. There are powers to affect the descendants of a particular target, infuse emotions into the blood, cause a guilty target to sweat blood, and...change the location of the silence from level one Quietus. Well, that power never made sense anyway. And finally, rather than ending with an example coterie of vampires, it ends with significant figures from the three castes, including the Vizier Mata Hari. I want to say that this is more useful than the example coterie, but honestly it's not. Most of the NPCs here are centuries if not millennia old and are great for people who are reading all the Vampire books with the intention of learning more about the secrets, but less so for STs who want ideas for their games.
That is one of only two complaints I have, though, the other being a lack of pre-Roman Middle Eastern history that the Clan was involved in. But that was also in the ancient past and not as useful for people running a modern-day game of Vampire, and on that score Clanbook: Assamite Revised absolutely delivers. Like Clanbook: Malkavian Revised, it takes a Clan that seems prone to encourage bad play and provides a number of ways to include it in a chronicle without problems, and to this day it's probably my favorite Clanbook.
Plus, you know, Leopards of Zion. Let me in on that.
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