Azerkatil
From London Requiem
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As per the current Camarilla Addendum, playing a member of the Azerkatil requires High Approval. The following information was used with permission from Ordo Dracul (ISBN 1-58846-257-9) Pg 145.
= The Azerkatil =
Among certain circles of Kindred � especially amongst the Ordo Dracul of Eastern Europe � the Nosferatu bloodline known as the Azerkatil are infamous and legendary: it is the bloodline bred to destroy Dracula.
According to the Rites of the Dragon, when the Impaler returned to Castle Dracula around the year 1475, he found Turkish vampires � which he called ghuls � residing there in the darkness. Those Kindred were Invictus from Adrianople, the Ottoman capitol of the Impaler�s time. They defeated Dracula in battle that night, but in so doing stirred him to seek out more of their kind in Adrianople.
Between 1475 and 1480 A.D., Dracula tracked, observed and studied the Turkish ghuls of Adrianople�s bazaars and palaces. Tonight, little is known of what precisely Dracula learned of the Turkish Damned, but it seems clear that, from the end of the 15th Century onward, some Kindred of the Ottoman Empire knew about him and later, the Ordo Dracul. Tales of the vampire-dragon, Embraced by God, circulated throughout the Kindred courts of the Empire. Like dragons themselves, these stories grew longer and more fearsome over the years. They coiled together and slithered into tangled tales of venomous hate and bloody wrath.
To protect the Kindred of the Ottoman Empire and confront the old enemy of the mortal Sultan, a handful of dedicated warriors and assassins gave their Requiems to the service of their undead caliph and succumbed to the mystic experiments of Turkish blood sorcerers. They became the first �Dragonslayers� � ghuls dedicated to the pursuit and elimination of the Wallachian demon known as Dracula.
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[edit] The Court of the Red Sultan
In the nights of the 16th Century, a powerful society of ghuls concerned with protecting Ottoman Kindred from outside threats, from occult menaces and from the hungry jaws of other vampires was operating in Constantinople. Not much remains of that society tonight � not much that is easy to find, at any rate. Modern knowledge of that ghul faction exists primarily in the form of confused legends, badly weathered rumours and the hazy memories of the most ancient Azerkatil.
In its night, however, it was known as the Court of the Red Sultan (sometimes called the Blood Sultan), who may or may not have once been a Prince of Adrianople (tonight called Edime). It seems likely that the Red Sultan was himself Invictus, but that his followers included sorcerers of an Islamic creed of the Lancea Sanctum and Acolytes of the Crone. The Red Sultan�s court, it seems, was a kind of mystic guard for the Princes of Turkey � they practiced blood rituals and created ghoulish soldiers for the defence of the Damned of the Ottoman Empire.
The Red Sultan himself was a paranoid occultist and brilliant thinker. In his time, he was renowned by his Court as a master of mathematics and science. He may even have been a sorcerer in his own right, and might have been the equivalent of Bishop of Constantinople into the 17th century.
The Sultan vanishes from Kindred lore in the late 1600�s, possibly falling into torpor as a result of his presumably considerable age. Without his leadership, his Court seems to have dissolved into smaller, competing coteries of self-serving mystics.
[edit] Legends of the Dragon
It�s unclear tonight exactly when the Red Sultan first became aware of Dracula the Damned, but is easy to see that the Court had little first-hand contact with the Impaler. Rather, they were reacting to overblown tales of �the damned dragon, the Impaler returned from beyond death.� It seems the Court believed Dracula to be a bloodthirsty monster more fearsome than common Kindred. One account written a Turkish Kindred of the 16th Century and discovered by the Ordo Dracul in Istanbul in 1924 describes Dracula as a �demon escaped from the Pit to drink the souls of the Damned in death as he did the blood of the living in life� he is as much vampire as devil.� They called him, simply, �the Dragon.�
Some tales of the time claimed the Dragon could consume blood through his fingers, transform himself into a great serpent and breathe fire. Other stories depicted him as a skinless figure with two mouths that flew screaming through the night. His fingers, it was said, were like knives and his tongue was a venomous snake. His scream was thought to drive mortals and Kindred insane.
The Red Sultan and his sorcerers believed Dracula was creating an undead army in preparation for a blood return to Turkey and a conquest of the Ottoman Empire. They were terrified that the Impaler, who was mad in life, would be uncontrollable in Undeath. They feared that Dracula � who might not be a vampire at all, but the recipient of some other unholy curse � would destroy the secrecy that kept the Kindred safe and plunge the Empire into a supernatural war.
To save the Empire, and all Kindred, they created the Azerkatil.
[edit] Fathers of the Dragonslayers
The Red Sultan, unwilling to wait for the Dragon to come and threaten the Empire, demanded his sorcerers conceive a force of assassins to locate and destroy Dracula. In response, the Court experimented with many changes of the Blood, mystically altering the Vitae of newly Embraced ghuls to create a breed of the Damned capable of facing off against the Dragon�s considerable powers. It�s impossible to know how many Kindred gave themselves up to the Court�s experiments and changed their blood at the order of the Sultan�s sorcerers.
No Azerkatil knows the whole truth of the bloodline�s creation. It�s said that Kindred of every clan were subjected to arcane rituals to influence the properties of their blood. As desirable mystic traits emerged, the subjects were consumed � diablerised � by other vampires of the court. In time, the Sultan thought, the right collection of mystic qualities could be absorbed into the Vitae of a single vampire, and that vampire would become the progenitor of a new lineage of deathless assassins.
In time, it seems, the Sultan was proved right. The blood of the Azerkatil contains mystic power drawn from the Vitae of an untold number of clans and short-lived bloodlines populated by lone vampires. The Azerkatil�s unique Discipline contains grains of power sifted from the diablerised souls of countless extinct bloodlines. The weakness of its blood comes, in part, from the last of the Court�s subjects, from the vampire that first manifested the change of Vitae that pleased the Sultan.
The true founder of the Azerkatil bloodline is lost to history, however. All that is known of that mysterious ghul is that he or she was a Nosferatu, as the Red Sultan is believed to have been. Some Dragon historians speculate that the Red Sultan himself was the Kindred who consumed the earlier subjects and became the father of the Dragonslayers. The secret sect of the first Dragonslayers was made up of mortal mercenaries, soldiers and assassins chosen by the Red Sultan and Embraced into the bloodline by two or three followers of the first Azerkatil Avus.
Those first sires were not dispatched to Europe by the Sultan, and all the vampires who once knew the first Azerkatil are either asleep, destroyed or keeping quiet. The so-called First Dragonslayers are therefore not actually the first of the line at all. Rather, they are the original force of assassins assembled and dispatched by the Sultan in the 16th century.
[edit] The Name
The name �Azerkatil� is something of a mystery itself. Half of the name seems to be the Turkish word katil, meaning �killer� or �murderer,� but the other half is unclear. The word azer meaning �fire� might be drawn from the Greek spoken throughout portions of western Turkey, but it�s just as likely that the name is some abstruse invention of the Red Sultan. Historically, most Azerkatil refer to themselves simply as Dragonslayers in whatever language they like.
[edit] Mission Against the Dragon
The facts of the Dragonslayers� mission are clouded by dreams of torpor. Every one of the Azerkatil that survived the initial mission against the Dragon had gone into torpor by the 19th century as a result of mystic rituals and efforts of will to increase the potency of their blood. Most of the First Dragonslayers are still thought to be torpid tonight, though the exact number that survived to the modern night is uncertain. The First Dragonslayers were dispatched from Constantinople to Europe over a period of roughly twenty years in the middle of the 16th century. None of the First Dragonslayers, therefore, knew exactly how many of their brethren had undertaken the mission against the Dragon with them. Six Dragonslayers, it�s rumoured, set out on the first night, however, bound for Castle Dracula.
The Dragonslayers� mission was not simply to eliminate the Dragon, however. The Red Sultan needed to know what terrible forces the Dragon was amassing and what other vampires might be conspiring with him. Thus the Azerkatil were meant to scour the land for all information available about Dracula and the rumoured �Order of the Dragon.� If possible, the Azerkatil were to infiltrate the ranks of the Order and get close to its leaders.
�Let the Dragon�s pulse dictate your hour to strike,� the Red Sultan was rumoured to say. �Be patient, but do not hesitate.�
It�s difficult to track the history of the Azerkatil during those early nights. Some modern Dragonslayers speculate that their forebears worked in small groups in the beginning, ambushing Dracula�s early followers and following blood trails back to the Order�s first chapter houses.
Other Azerkatil enjoy the rumour that the great fire of Bucharest in 1595 was the result of a successful �dragon hunt.� At least one Dragonslayer was revealed in 1663 when she eliminated three masters of the Coils in Prague after studying with them for nearly twenty years. Most Dragonslayers, however, did not infiltrate the Order in such ways � most singled out and ambushed victims they hoped would draw out more valuable targets.
[edit] Chasing A Myth
Inevitably, the Dragonslayers discovered the truth about the Ordo Dracul and came to see the hollowness of the Sultan�s fears. Some Dragonslayers realized the truth early on and abandoned their mission.
Most kept their doubts to themselves and continued to stalk the Ordo Dracul for decades, looking for the true threats behind their philosophising and mystic experiments.
By the end of the 16th century, however, with the Red Sultan gone and his Court splintering back in Constantinople, the mission against the Dragon had all but unravelled. The Dragonslayers, scattered throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, drifted away from their directive like boats cut loose from a pier. Eventually, most every Azerkatil had to accept the truth: Dracula was no demon. The Dragonslayers had given their Blood in pursuit of a myth. Their mission would never be complete. A few Azerkatil returned to Turkey in search of vengeance against the paranoid fools of the Court, but most had become too disillusioned with their old masters to make the perilous journey back to Constantinople from Europe.
In fact, more than a few of the Azerkatil turned to the Ordo Dracul for their futures. The assassins had good reason to pursue new changes in their blood, after all. With eternity sprawling darkly before them, many Azerkatil were desperate to find a new reason to go on, a new way to take control of their destinies. Dragonslayers and the Ordo Dracul Looking back, it can seem strange that the Ordo Dracul would accept its enemies into its ranks. In practice, of course, there was never any meeting of the covenant in which it was decided that the Dragonslayers would be welcomed into the ranks of the Dragons. Surely a few Azerkatil continued to be enemies of the Dragons; certainly a few are tonight.
The circumstances of each Dragonslayer�s entry into the covenant were unique, but it is an odd fact of history that more than a few did become Dragons themselves � enough, at least, to inspire the generalization. For the Ordo Dracul, the Azerkatil are an obvious source of fascination. They embody, by chance, both the central philosophy and the central methods of the Order: change and experimentation.
The Azerkatil exist as a result of Dracula�s journey to Adrianople � they are an effect of his Damnation, manifested miles away and years after the change made to his own existence. What�s more, their unique blood is the result of mystic experimentation. In a way, the Dragonslayers are model Dragons. In the centuries since the First Dragonslayers disappeared, the Azerkatil have come close to vanishing altogether. The First Dragonslayers were never intended to sire progeny, and indeed it seems the Red Sultan bred them to be a single generation of assassins, to prevent their prized blood from falling into the service of the Dragon. Still, enough Kindred have taken on the mantle of the Azerkatil to keep the bloodline in existence. The Order itself has facilitated this in some domains, to keep the line from dying out. Thus the Ordo Dracul can be seen to have adopted the Azerkatil, even though several of the world�s Dragonslayers continue to distrust and revile Dracula�s followers to this night.
[edit] Information
Parent Clan: Nosferatu
Covenant: Though the Azerkatil bloodline is most often associated with the Ordo Dracul tonight, Kindred of this lineage cannot truly be said to hold any one loyalty in common. In truth, the Order was little more than the bloodline�s portal for passage into Western history. It�s through a quirk of fate that Dragonslayers are often thought of as members of the covenant they were created to destroy. It�s an oddity of the Dragons� ancestral fascination that the Dragonslayers were accepted into the Order as products of Dracula�s time on earth.
The first Dragonslayers were agents, indirectly of the Invictus of Turkey. Tonight, Azerkatil are likely to pledge their Requiem to the service of some undead ruler, though their master is as like to be Sanctified as Invictus. Indeed, it seems Dragonslayers have an innate hunger for servitude, for a master to protect or an enemy to plot against. In this regard, an Azerkatil might become involved with any covenant by serving one of its leaders or figureheads.
[edit] Requiem Venue Information
For more information on the Bloodline, email list (include your DB #), ties, or for bloodline PC avus please email the Azerkatil Bloodline.
Players list: Azerkatil google group
