The distant viziers of the Assamite clan survey the fresh carnage wrought by their juniors with intoxicated detachment. They have withdrawn to Mount Alamut to pursue the mystical revelations provoked by their exposure to kalif. Kali/derives from the leaves and resins of a plant grown through sorcerous means; its consciousness-altering properties make its mundane cousin, the cannabis plant, seem tame by comparison. Because vampire blood doesn't circulate, the viziers must go to unusual lengths to enjoy the effects of their favored drug. They ply mortal minions with the smoke of the drug, and then drink their blood, flooding their circulatory systems with the desired intoxicants. Viziers find no shortage of willing minions eager to spend the rest of their lives puffing the all-powerful weed. The users don't care that prolonged use shortens their lives by decades. In fact, some Assamites have hinted that a few pre-Embrace apprenticeships to the clan involve serving as vessels for the kalif-sorcerers.

Roots

Assamite sorcerers regard themselves as above petty concerns of cultural loyalty or purity of tradition. As human creations, magical traditions warrant no more respect than any other potentially useful invention. They should and must be adapted to suit the viziers' goals. Still, their experience and scholarship remains largely limited to the ancient traditions of the Middle East. Their efforts to expand their syncretic approach to incorporate useful techniques from cultures further afield has mired itself in the usual slowness of thought that afflicts vampires when they attempt to innovate. Only three traditions truly feed Assamite practice in the modern nights.

High and Low Magics of Mesopotamia

The high magic of Mesopotamia, wielded by Babylonian priests and priest-kings, concerned itself with the maintenance of agricultural fertility and a hierarchical social order. These two things were interconnected; the specialized roles of many members of Babylonian society wouldn't have been possible without abundant crops. In the primal Mesopotamian myth, the god-king Marduk faces Tiamat, Dragon of Chaos, and is slain, but then achieves resurrection and defeats the dragon, returning order and fertility to the land. Mortal kings performed ceremonies to recount the deeds of Marduk and share his power. Each year, the holy king would accept a blow in the face from a priest; if the blow brought tears, fertility was assured. Further fertility rites followed, including an annual wedding to a sacred priestess representing the goddess of female potency. Assamites now repeat the forms of these rituals to their own ends. The fearsome ritual of diablerie, Rite of Marduk Slain and Risen, parodies these ancient forms here, the tears shed by the stricken high priest are tears of blood, and they signal doom for the victim. Lesser Mesopotamian magics included divination, which determined auspicious and inauspicious days for action using a lunar calendar and an astrological ephem-eris predicting the cyclic fortunes of the subsequent 473,000 years. Magicians interpreted dreams, and performed haruspications, auguries read in the spilled entrails of slaughtered sheep. The common people suffered from the ever-present fear of ghosts and demons; wizard-priests warded off such malign influence by consulting exorcists and donning protective amulets and talismans. Amulets were ready-made magical objects designed to fend off common curses, whereas magicians constructed talismans as one-time aids in the performance of specific magical feats. Actions that upset the social order attracted not only bad luck, but the attention of malign supernatural creatures who dwelt in the desert, in graveyards and in corners. Black magicians harmed their victims through curses, which could be performed from a distance. Spittle, a bodily substance considered more potent than blood, powered their curses. They also laid curses by fashioning an image of the victim and then destroying it.

Persia: Rites of Mithra

In ancient Persia, early followers of the sun-god, Mithra, communed with their deity through rites of ritual intoxication. Priests called magi promulgated his worship, giving us the root for the word "magic." Persian religion underwent a revolution in the seventh century B.C., when the prophet Zoroaster (sometimes referred to as Zarathrustra) revealed, in the sacred text Zend' Avesta, that the world's many conflicts were but a manifestation of a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. The supreme deity Ahura Mazda headed the armies of good; the destructive god Ahriman led the minions of evil. Zoroaster revealed that Mithra was Ahura Mazda's son, and incorporated him into ceremonies in which ritualists achieved ecstatic communion with the divine by drinking the fermented juice of the haoma plant. As Mithras, the sun god continued to attract the worship of the magically minded, and in late Roman times enjoyed a resurgence of worship as a pagan alternative to Christ. Roman cultists, including many soldiers and the Emperor Julian, added bull sacrifice to the ecstatic ceremonies; the intended beneficiary of Mithras' favor sat in a trench and allowed the blood of the slaughtered bull to run down over his head and shoulders. Several factions of vampires among the Roman ruling class promoted his worship Mithras' hunger for blood made him one sun god they could enthusiastically support. They also favored Mithras in the hope that his popularity might stem the growth of the troubling thing called faith; his worship was conducted through experience, not belief. They lost the gamble, and Mithras was forgotten except by the Assamites, who found elements worth copying in his rites.

Fusion of Traditions

The Assamite viziers took the ecstatic Persian rites of haoma as the basis of their magic, replacing its fermented beverage with the stronger smoke of the kalif. They spend months at a time in drug-assisted trance; if they went out hunting themselves, their entire program of inquiry could be stopped or even reversed. The viziers rely on their juniors to bring them the blood they still need to survive, and they understand that they must offer something of great value in return for a service they so thoroughly depend on. Accordingly, they've stolen precious time from their pure mystical inquiries to develop magical means of aiding their clanmates without leaving the confines of their mountain retreat. The viziers combine the Mesopotamian 473,000-year calendar of augury and practice of entrails-reading with Arabic kinanah to pick ideally auspicious moments for the staging of attacks. They use shir to cloak those who feed them with the concealment abilities of mighty djinn. With blood-spittle, with broken effigies, and with the names of ghosts and demons, they curse the targets of a hunt. They draw on alchemy to invest their incantations in potions and amulets, so that they can be triggered when needed. In a parody of the highest rites of Mithras, they strengthen favored hunters through blood baptism. The viziers twist the fertility rites of old Babylon to infuse the entire clan with luck and power, a use of Mesopotamia's high magic which carries with it a useful side effect: it binds all who benefit from it into a social order, cementing the loyalty of other Assamites to their viziers. For example, in a recent attempt to reestablish their influence over increasingly errant lessers, the viziers invited a cadre of the clan's most feared assassins to Mount Alamut to participate in the largely social ritual. While the long-term effects of the rite remain to be seen, it has enhanced cooperation between top assassins and viziers.
Although their rites may make reference to Marduk or Mithra and may draw upon the narratives of their myths as inspiration for the ritual actions, Assamites do not worship these entities; they do not revere gods they seek to become them.

Quest for Godhead

Drawing on traditions even further afield than the Middle Eastern ones to which they owe their magic, Assamite viziers believe they can one night transform themselves into entities of vast power, capable of remaking the world in their image. The secret of this transformative power can be found in a higher reality separated from the physical world by a barrier they call the veil. The viziers use kalif to pierce that veil. The kalif plant must be watered in blood to reach its full hallucinatory potential; naturally, the blood of other vampires grows plants that achieve the greatest potency. The viziers therefore need quantities of blood to sustain their greenhouses in addition to the stocks they themselves feed on.
Each vizier's experience of the quest to pierce the veil differs. They share their visions in hopes of agreeing on a base reality behind these varying perceptions. As they achieve consensus, their visions grow more similar. Many viziers now experience a vision as described below. Those who do not try to force their minds to perceive a vision that conforms to the accepted model.
The experience begins after ingesting large quantities of kalif blood in the midst of Mithraic mystery rites. The individual first sees the false world's details the tiles and columns of ritual chamber, the water pipes, the carpets and wall hangings separate and dissolve into tiny pinpricks that eventually grow so small that nothing is left to be seen. The celebrant sees nothing for a while. Then everything goes red. Finally a series of geometric forms, whirling spirals and bottomless cones that seem ready to swallow the visionary whole appears. The celebrant must walk into a spiral or fall into a cone. Then he finds himself at the bottom of a staircase, leading upstairs to an archway. As he tries to ascend the stairway, he faces fierce opposition. Visions of his life assail him. First come negative visions: memories of secret shames, past wrongdoings and traumatic failures. He must dismiss these visions and focus only on the stairway. If he succeeds, he can move up a step, then another, and another. The task requires fierce concentration. At some point, positive visions come: sensual experiences, recollections of love and comfort, feelings of power and mastery.
For centuries, the viziers treated this condition of blissful hallucination as the whole point of the experience. They lingered in a palace of pleasure, cooled by soft breezes, breathing ambrosial air, able to indulge any whim without consequence. They tasted vitae so sublime that it made them tremble with pleasure. With the stunningly beautiful, perpetually willing servants of this paradisiacal realm, they experienced dimensions of erotic pleasure far removed from the gruntings and pantings and biological imperatives of mortal sexuality. These couplings seemed to bring the participants into direct contact with the divine.
As they spent more and more time in the exploration of this realm, the viziers' grip on Assamite affairs slipped. Their indifference to nightly business trans-formed them from iron-willed, attentive advisors to withdrawn and distant figures of little relevance to the average clan member.
Finally the viziers concluded that in the state of bliss lay a spiritual trap. Constant pleasure, no matter how intense, could only serve as a dead end on the quest for true understanding. It drained the soul of energy, stole one's individual sense of purpose, and dulled the sharpness of the mind. There had to be more to their magic than this. That's when the viziers realized that the Station of Ultimate Rapture, as they dubbed it, hid something even more desirable: the way to become blood-gods.
The Station of Ultimate Rapture continues to interpose itself enticingly in the vizier's path each time he tries to ascend the stairs toward the ultimate truth. Each vizier must struggle to resist its blandishments every time he enters into the ritual. These temptations present themselves more tenaciously than the negative visions experienced earlier in the vision; no vizier can put them aside consistently. If the mystic succeeds in pushing them away, he again faces an arduous journey up the stairs, as the number of steps seems to increase infinitely. If he does reach the top of the stairs, he parts the veil and looks beyond it....

Reading What the Sky is Thinking

Manipulation of distance stands as the hallmark of Assamite sorcery; the sorcerer grants benefits to hunters he may never have met face-to-face. He seeks out targets from thousands of miles away, providing information on their weaknesses. The viziers see the 20th century, the era in which global communications shrunk the world into a single confused and fractious community, as the long-prophesied golden era of their kind. To their surprise and initial dismay, they've discovered a puzzling link between their long-sought state of transcendental consciousness and the ultra-modern miasma of radio waves, satellite transmissions and television broadcasts that now wreathes the world. As they traverse upward through the many stairways to ecstatic, kalif-fuelled bliss, they can tune their minds into CNN or tap
into data from the Global Positioning Satellite system. They call this process "reading what the sky is thinking." When the sorcerer sends curses to plague clan enemies on other continents, he now bounces his malign magic off the upper atmosphere, or piggybacks it on radio waves. At least, this is how their drug-altered minds now visualize the working of their magic. The sorcerer can listen in on a victim's cellular phone call, substitute the words of his interlocutor with a misleading message of his own, open a permanent window into the target's soul, or dispatch a dj inn to ride those signals to their source and vex the enemy. One vizier recently tracked an elusive Setite with a price on his head by following his purchases of Egyptian antiquities on an Internet auction site.
Although most of the viziers now enthusiastically explore their newfound connection between heightened consciousness and the global communications grid, a few fear that their colleagues may be throwing away centuries of inquiry on a seductive distraction. Others see distraction as the least of their worries. They fear the implications of a growing sensation that the communications grid they're so blithely involving themselves with possesses a transcendent consciousness of its own, one that is coalescing, with their unwitting help, into something much mightier than themselves. One vizier now lies restrained and gibbering in an Assamite private hospice in Beirut, after monitoring satellite transmissions while in a trance state. He concluded from them that the satellites were talking to one another, and that it was the global communications system that started and stopped the recent war in Kosovo.
Are they unwittingly giving it the powers of godhead they mean to seize for themselves? Unfortunately for them, recent events within their clan leave them little choice but to step further along this dangerous path. Apprentice Assamites no longer tithe blood to their sires as a matter of course; out in the world, it's every hashishayin for himself. Viziers must now offer good value for the blood they receive on every transaction. Their increasingly demanding lessers insist on guarantees, and aren't shy about dictating terms. Once they show that they can do something useful, the viziers must keep doing it, or starve.

Assamite Paths

Assamite sorcery paths, like mainstream Thaumaturgy, require the expenditure of one blood point and a Willpower roll, in which the difficulty equals the power's level + three. Failure indicates that the effect does not come to be, while a botch costs the character a permanent Willpower point.

The Hunter's Winds

The Assamites are known as the assassins of the Kindred world for a reason. Their viziers provide them with ways to avoid detection that go above and beyond the vampiric Discipline of Obfuscate. Assamite magic can do more than merely blind a person to their presence or confuse a target's senses: Those benefiting from the Path of the Hunter's Winds have learned to do many of the things for which the Nosferatu are infamous, but in a more physical sense. Viziers bestow these gifts on "field" Assamites, making contact in person or through the ritual Reach the Earth or through the use of a talismanic stone created through the ritual Pebble From the Mountain. The subject holds the activation of the power in abeyance until he needs to trigger it; at any one time he can maintain a number of dormant effects equal to his current Willpower. The recipient does not learn if the vizier's magic was successful until he tries to activate the effect.

1 - SCENT OF DECEPTION

When this power is employed the recipient can mask or completely alter her scent. The original purpose for this ability was to avoid the hunting dogs of nobles and crusaders, but it proves just as effective at throwing off any Lupines, ghouls or Gangrel who might be following too closely for comfort.

System:
Success indicates the Assamite can change or simply negate her scent, making tracking her far more difficult. Failure means nothing happens, while a botched roll actually amplifies her scent or makes it noticeably offensive.

2 - CHAMELEON'S SKIN

The subject can change the color of his skin and the texture as well. If resting against a tree with rough bark, the skin and clothing alike of the Assamite take on the same coloration — including any variations — and changes to mimic the form.

System:
If successful, this power makes the subject is virtually impossible to see (+4 difficulty on all Perception rolls) so long as he remains stationary. Slight movements might be mistaken for the wind, but any sudden change in position negate the effects. The player must roll Perception + Stealth (difficulty 6, or 9 if anyone is actively looking for him) if the character tries to change his environment, such as moving from the tree-camouflage to that of a brick wall. While the texture of the skin changes, it remains skin: No increases or decreases in the character's Stamina occur as a result of this sorcerous power. This ability lasts for one scene.

3 - UNASSUMING POSE

The subject uses this power to blend into virtually any crowd, no matter what size. Anyone seeking the character simply fails to see her, automatically assuming that the Vampire belongs there.

System:
If successful, people simply do not notice the Assamite, no matter how hard they might be looking. Observers using technological means of surveillance, like video cameras, can still see him, though. This power lasts for one scene.

4 - WHIFF OF KALIF

The Assamite distorts the perceptions of those around him, so that they experience a distractingly powerful feeling of intoxication. They may enjoy a pleasant hallucination, or may just stand there blissing out, not caring what the Assamite is up to.

System:
Any character looking directly at the Assamite as the effect is activated must roll Wits + Alertness (difficulty 7) or face intoxication. Any obvious threat to a character activates his subconscious defense mechanisms and snaps him out of the kalif dream. Otherwise, this power, once activated, lasts for one hour for every success garnered on the activation roll.

5 - GHOST BODY

The Assamite triggering this power can move through solid objects, without being seen or heard. For all intents and purposes, the Assamite becomes intangible. The side effect of this power is that the Assamite cannot affect anything material around her any more than it can affect her.

System:
This power require three blood points instead of the usual one. Once in the Ghost Body the subject cannot be seen, heard or touched. Despite the name, this power does not actually place the character within the realms of the dead, and does not allow interaction with the ghosts from the Underworld. Some Assamites have reported seeing very strange things while in this form, however, and most are very cautious about attaining the Ghost Body. Once the character decides to affect the physical world again, she is once again visible and solid. No other Disciplines work while the Assamite uses this power she may not Dominate anyone, activate Celerity or even use Auspex, if she has it.

Assamite Rituals

Many Assamite rituals revolve around contact between the reclusive viziers and worldly assassins. The latter exchange vitae for magical services. Also, invoking rituals requires one to ingest at least one point of vitae from a vessel under the influence of kalif, or to actively inhale large quantities of the smoke itself and consciously move it through one's body by forcing blood to circulate.

System:
The player rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 3 + level of the ritual, maximum 9). Success brings the desired result; nothing happens in the event of failure.
Some effects last until the next inauspicious night, as set out by the 473,000-year Mesopotamian calendar. The Storyteller rolls a die for each night, as needed. Each time she rolls a 1, the night is inauspicious. Storytellers, keep track of these inauspicious nights on a scratch-paper calendar, to keep them consistent.

Level One Rituals

TOUCH THE EARTH

This ritual allows the vizier to contact another Assamite for the purpose of aiding him with further sorcerous effects.
Long in advance of the ritual, the vizier takes a stylus and writes, in ancient Mesopotamian script, on a small, still-wet, clay tablet, the name of a lesser-generation Assamite. Once hardened, the tablet is placed in an acid to weaken it again.
When he chooses to begin the ritual, the vizier uses chalk or paint to draw on the tiled floor of his ceremonial chamber the stylized image of an eye, with white, pupil and iris. The eye must be big enough so that a cat, dog or rodent can be placed inside it. Using a mortar and pestle, the vizier reduces the tablet to powder. He mixes it into food, which he places in front of the animal. When the animal has ingested the food, the vizier cuts its throat with a knife and waits until the pool of spilled blood has expanded in at least four places past the line denoting the white of the eye.
When the vizier speaks into the animal's ear, the Assamite whose name was written on the tablet hears his voice. When the vizier listens at the animal's mouth, he can hear his target's voice. This works no matter how much distance separates vizier and target. The vizier may proceed to use any Assamite path or other ritual power to benefit the target. The vizier may also pass to the target any object small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

PEBBLE FROM THE MOUNTAIN

The vizier takes a stone from Mount Alamut, places it in his mouth, and meditates for an hour. He soaks the stone in his own blood, then in the blood of another Assamite. He gives the stone to that Assamite while chanting an incantation naming himself and the subject as successors to Tiamat, Ahriman, and all the shaitans of Hell. The ritual takes an hour and a half to perform.
At any subsequent point, by placing the stone in her mouth and repeating the incantation, the other Assamite can initiate a mystical link between herself and the vizier identical to that created by Touch the Earth. She is not performing sorcery; the magic rests in the stone, which always works if the vizier's player made his initial roll.

Level Two Ritual

GIFT OF MITHRA'S BULL

Vizier and subject must be connected by Touch the Earth or Pebble From the Mountain. The vizier places a small, sharp blade inside a wineskin or plasma bag and then withdraws it and passes it to the subject. The subject cuts an incision in her chest. Blood bubbles out of the incision but then vanishes, reappearing inside the vizier's waiting container. Through this method, the target may pay the vizier in vitae for his services.
The ritual takes one turn per blood point donated by the target.

Level Three Ritual

APPROACH THE VEIL

The vizier enters the transcendental state required to experience visions of the veil. He ingests kalif-laden blood, bathes in the blood of a fresh-killed bull and meditates. He must first ward off a distracting cascade of unpleasant memories, then an even more tempting series of sensual pleasures. Then comes the opportunity for revelation.
The ritual takes eight hours. Although the vizier performs it for research purposes, seeking the secrets of apotheosis, a peek past the Veil of Truth does grant direct benefits. Subtract the number of successes on the roll to enact this ritual from the difficulty of the first path or ritual roll the Assamite's player makes after completion of the ritual. The vizier must take advantage of the bonus before he loses his next blood point.

Level Four Rituals

RITE OF MARDUK TRIUMPHANT

This ritual asserts the vizier's authority over a lesser clan member. The vizier ritually enacts the coronation
of Marduk, donning mask and robe. Other participants in the ritual, each of whom must be an Assamite of a higher generation than the vizier, take the role of various Mesopotamian deities; each kneels before the sorcerer and proclaims that his or her divinity is but an aspect of the 50 manifestations of Marduk. Everyone present opens a vein and bleeds into a bronze bowl. After the blood is mixed together, all drink from it.
The vizier may increase the difficulty of any action undertaken by an Assamite by the number of other participants in the ritual. He may apply this penalty only to actions that directly threaten his unlife or position (Storyteller's discretion.) He may not increase difficulties above 9. The effect lasts until the next inauspicious night. The ritual requires one hour to complete, plus 20 minutes for each participant.

DIRECTING AHRIMAN'S LANCE

The vizier takes either an accurate image of a target individual, or a small object she once owned, and swallows it. He waits for an hour, then cuts (or has fellow viziers cut) the object out of his belly. Until the next inauspicious night, any Assamite in possession of the item or image improves her chances of killing the targeted individual.
The possessor of the ritualized item lowers the difficulties of all actions that bring her closer to killing the target individual (Storyteller's discretion) by the number of successes scored by the vizier. The ritual takes 2 hours to perform.

Level Five Rituals

RITE OF MARDUK SLAIN AND RISEN

The vizier makes contact with another Assamite. The beneficiary names a victim she intends to diablerize. The sorcerer then takes part in a group ceremony with at least three other participants who know the ritual. Donning robe and mask, he ritually enacts the myth of Marduk, taking the part of that god. The other participants alternately take the parts of Marduk's mother, Ea; his consort, Sarpanitu, and the chaos dragon, Tiamat. Tiamat "kills" Marduk, but Marduk "resurrects" himself and "slays" her, symbolically making her into the body of the world. Once this has been enacted, the primary ritualist must unflinchingly suffer a hard blow to the face from each of the other participants. The appearance of blood-tears in the ritualist's eyes signals the ritual's success.
If the beneficiary succeeds in diablerizing her specified target before the next sunrise, the victim's sire, all the sire's childer, all of the target's childer, and any vampire in blood bond with the victim share his final sensations as he perishes. Each of them loses one blood point and three Willpower points, which go to the killer (though the character may not exceed her Trait maxi-mums). If the killer's blood pool is full, the remainder goes to the vizier. Furthermore, all of these collateral targets suffer an effect that lasts until the passing of 13 inauspicious nights: they lose one Willpower for every 10 minutes they spend in the presence of the beneficiary or the vizier, as they suffer flashbacks to the original victim's demise.

SEEING WITH THE SKY'S EYES

The vizier enters a trance state and concentrates on a subject individual. He must have on his person an accurate image of the target, or an object she once owned. He then sees a vision of the target, and in so doing learns her precise, current location, no matter where on earth she is. Viziers typically use this ritual at the behest of younger Assamites, locating victims for them in exchange for vitae.

Level Six Ritual

FROM MARDUK'S THROAT

The vizier creates an alchemical substitute for vampiric blood, allowing the drinker of sufficient quantities to decrease her generation. The process converts mercury, molten gold, a range of plant and animal proteins, and other exotic ingredients into vitae.
Each ritual, which takes eight hours, produces one fourth of a blood point. To decrease her generation, an Assamite must consume a number of points of this alchemical blood equal to the maximum blood point value of a vampire of the desired generation. The consumer of the blood need not be the vizier who prepared the concoction. All of the blood for a given change in generation must be made by the same vizier, in the same laboratory. No more than one week may pass between one use of this ritual and the next for a single drop in generation, or all of the existing vitae -elixir spoils.
When the full amount of blood is at hand, the Assamite tries to assimilate the blood into her body. (This is not part of a ritual.) She makes an extended Stamina roll (Difficulty 9), seeking a number of successes equal to the blood points consumed. Failures don't stop the process, but they do deal 6 points of lethal damage apiece. Assimilation is so painful and distracting that any attacks made against her during this time face a difficulty of only 2.

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