Karsh
Appearance: A towing mass of strength and sinew -- a lion-maned colossus, broad-featured, dusky-skinned, crisscrossed from head to toe with the scars of a thousand battles.
Behavior: Karsh is brooding and silent, due either to the ennui of immortality or the sheer self-assurance cultivated through centuries of solitude. Its suits Karsh's purposes to be perceived as simple, when he speaks, however, his words are curt and carefully chosen. The stoic silences into which he retreats are interrupted only by the killing machine he looses whenever he takes the field. This bloodthirsty side of Karsh, unconquered and uncontrolled, leads many to whisper that he is becoming that which he most despises.
History: Much as they might wish it otherwise, the Camarilla has its monsters.
The first and only postulant to hold to hold the title of warlord rarely speaks of his past. From what little can be pieced together, his believed to be the Seljuk Hassan al-Samhir, conqueror of Manzikert, greatest of generals, who served tow sultans of the fledgeling 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 al-Samhir was exiled, left without shelter or sustenance in the great erg, there to find his death.
Death however, 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 war-born 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 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 sayed 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 rapid-response 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 the latest 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-guerrilla warfare to contained "industrial accidents," inner-city police death squads, and quarantines fronted by the Fort Collins Center for Disease Control.
Recent Events: In late June of 2022, Karsh and his army of soldier ghouls were seen in Montreal during the disastrous events following that city's largest Sabbat gathering. The weak and heavily divided Camarilla of New France had long feared the growing influence of Montreal, the Sabbat's spiritual capital; upon the death of that city's previous archbishop, the collective heads of the local Camarilla invited two Justicars: Jaroslav Pascek and Anastasz Di Zagreb, along with Karsh to plan a full scale invasion of Montreal. With advent of the 8.3 earthquake in heart of Montreal, the conspirators saw their opportunity and launched their forces before the final after-shocks abated. The invasion has proceeded under the cover of rapid response support services for the survivors of the disaster.
