Karsh

Much as they might wish it otherwise, the Camarilla has its monsters. The first and only postulant to hold the title of warlord rarely speaks of his past.

From what little can be pieced together, he is believed to be the Seljuk Hassan al-Samhir, conqueror of Manzikert, greatest of generals, who served two sultans of the fledgling Ottoman Empire, he whom the Turks exalted in the verse “Samhir, great Samhir, inexorable Samhir, mightiest of warriors beneath the ancient blue sky.

” Although undefeated and unswervingly faithful, Hassan’s pride was his single, unforgivable shortcoming. His heroic standing among the people, coupled with his lust for battle, earned him the mistrust of Murad, his second lord, who was not half the man his predecessor had been.

This friction, fueled by the general’s incessant protests against the corruption for which the sultan’s reign became known, ultimately exploded into enmity — Hassan was branded a traitor, sentenced to death, and forced to stand before the empire he once protected for confession and eventual execution. But the warrior did not die easily.

Calling upon Allah to defend his innocence, Hassan met the sultan’s torturous trials. Stoned, subjected to single combat, even pitted against the fangs and talons of animals — all these tests and more he endured in the name of Murad’s “justice.

” At length the ruler, who could no longer continue his persecution against a hero of the Turkish nation, condemned his once-enforcer as “no man, but a savage creature wearing flesh as does a man, lean and hungry as are the beasts of the wild for the blood of children and innocents.

” With this final curse, Hassan alSamhir was exiled, left without shelter or sustenance in the great erg, there to find his death. CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 68 Death found him first. Virtually nothing is known of the fledgling’s whereabouts or activities in those early nights.

Some believe he simply wandered for a time, grappling with the uncertainties of his new existence and brethren; others point to Eastern accounts of a semi-mythical figure called the Khayyim, a warborn creature roaming the desert sands in search of the adversary who could end its unnatural existence.

Still other sources maintain it was none other than Hassan, riding westward by night with the Tatar hordes, whose hand rose to crush his once-beloved homeland decades later. Speculation aside, Cainite historians tell tales of an auspicious meeting immediately preceding the close of the 15th century between undead hand and unbroken will.

It was there that Hassan al-Samhir pledged eternal fealty to an immortal calling himself Hardestadt of Ventrue, leader of men and monsters, a being whose words swayed nations — and bearer of an uncanny intellect, who knew words would not always be enough. Thus was the Warlord of the Camarilla born.

Tonight, Karsh presides over a dedicated body of rapidresponse teams from a decommissioned military fortress in a North American mountain range as guardian of Raphael de Corazon’s dream.

Although dismissed by allies and enemies alike as a dangerous, mindless juggernaut, he is cognizant of the fact that war must be fought on many fronts and strives to keep abreast of the tactics and technologies of this century.

Unbeknownst to all but a select few, the Warlord has retaken more than one Sabbat-held city through covert political and paramilitary methods, rather than the brute force for which he is typically known; he is possessed of and equally proficient with a wide variety of weapons, ranging from traditional counter-guerilla warfare to contained “industrial accidents,” inner-city police death squads, and quarantines fronted by the Fort Collins Center for Disease Control.