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The Pickle Jar
- Thread starter Dark Pickle
- Start date
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
Pharmacy and attitudes
Written by Nigel Brunsdon
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 13:52
I’ve had a couple of conversations this week about the way some people feel they are treated in pharmacies when they collect needles. This is something that comes up from time to time, both when I’m talking to injectors and also when I’m talking to pharmacy staff.
It’s even something I cover when I’m training pharmacy staff, and I think it comes from a lack of understanding by some people on both sides.
Pharmacies are an incredibly important aspect of needle distribution in the UK. And they have been ever since needle programmes started back in the 80’s. One of the first was Boots the Chemist in Sheffield which started distributing free needles in 1986.
There are now around 2000 pharmacy programmes, they outnumber formal NSPs by about 3 to 1, and without them we wouldn’t have even a fraction of the coverage we need to get clean equipment out there.
Attitudes
So what is the whole issue with attitudes? Well, from conversations I’d had with injectors they often complain that they are treated with suspicion, mistrust, fear or even disgust by some pharmacy staff. But on the flip side I’ve also spoken to pharmacy staff who say they are treated with aggression and anger by injectors.
As I’ve said, this is something I talk about when training pharmacy staff and when talking to injectors in NSP. Both sides have the following expectations and attitudes:
Pharmacy staff Injectors
Fear (of aggression)
Mistrust (shoplifting, lying)
Lack of confidence in their own knowledge
Fear (of aggression)
Mistrust (who will they tell)
Expecting to be questioned
Lack of confidence in staff knowledge
As you can see the expectations on both sides are mostly the same and these expectations colour the way people react to each other. If you go into a situation expecting a fight then you are going to be hyper defensive. As we already know, heroin users are more likely to be able to identify signs of disgust and anger in others (Study 1, Study 2), so is it any surprise that they are defensive when they enter a pharmacy? Of course there may be many reasons for the reaction they are getting; the worker may just be having a bad day, be tired, be busy, or they could be reacting because of a bad experience they have had in the past. What both sides actually want from the situation is the following: Pharmacy staff Injectors
Respect/polite
Positive/friendly
Open
Confident (in their own knowledge)
Respect/polite
Positive/friendly
Open
Confident (in the workers ability)
Again it’s clear that both groups want the same thing. So, how can we achieve it?
I think when it comes to the confidence issues that this is a training need for pharmacy staff. Pharmacies tend to have a quite high turnover of staff and it’s usual for some of the bigger chains to have locum pharmacists who will only spend a short time in each branch, so training needs to be regularly repeated. It’s also important for all training to have a strong focus on attitudes as well as knowledge.
But most of it can be changed by people in both groups taking time to think what it is like for the other person and to realise that even if someone appears to be in a mood with them then it’s even more important to be polite, friendly and open.
Everyone is different
Of course in the same way that it’s not every heroin injector that shoplifts and gets aggressive in a pharmacy, not every pharmacy worker treats injectors with mistrust and suspicion. If anything the bulk of them are doing their best in a busy job, and in some cases they are fantastically supportive. Those pharmacies that are the most supportive also seem to be the ones who have very few problems with shoplifting and aggression – cause and effect?
Related links
For any pharmacy staff who feel they need more support running a needle programme can join the pharmacy discussion list, which is part of the National Needle Exchange Forum.
The recent NICE NSP guidance which talks about the need to move focus away from strict one to one exchange, which was historically one of the biggest causes of conflict in pharmacy provision.
Written by Nigel Brunsdon
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 13:52
I’ve had a couple of conversations this week about the way some people feel they are treated in pharmacies when they collect needles. This is something that comes up from time to time, both when I’m talking to injectors and also when I’m talking to pharmacy staff.
It’s even something I cover when I’m training pharmacy staff, and I think it comes from a lack of understanding by some people on both sides.
Pharmacies are an incredibly important aspect of needle distribution in the UK. And they have been ever since needle programmes started back in the 80’s. One of the first was Boots the Chemist in Sheffield which started distributing free needles in 1986.
There are now around 2000 pharmacy programmes, they outnumber formal NSPs by about 3 to 1, and without them we wouldn’t have even a fraction of the coverage we need to get clean equipment out there.
Attitudes
So what is the whole issue with attitudes? Well, from conversations I’d had with injectors they often complain that they are treated with suspicion, mistrust, fear or even disgust by some pharmacy staff. But on the flip side I’ve also spoken to pharmacy staff who say they are treated with aggression and anger by injectors.
As I’ve said, this is something I talk about when training pharmacy staff and when talking to injectors in NSP. Both sides have the following expectations and attitudes:
Pharmacy staff Injectors
Fear (of aggression)
Mistrust (shoplifting, lying)
Lack of confidence in their own knowledge
Fear (of aggression)
Mistrust (who will they tell)
Expecting to be questioned
Lack of confidence in staff knowledge
As you can see the expectations on both sides are mostly the same and these expectations colour the way people react to each other. If you go into a situation expecting a fight then you are going to be hyper defensive. As we already know, heroin users are more likely to be able to identify signs of disgust and anger in others (Study 1, Study 2), so is it any surprise that they are defensive when they enter a pharmacy? Of course there may be many reasons for the reaction they are getting; the worker may just be having a bad day, be tired, be busy, or they could be reacting because of a bad experience they have had in the past. What both sides actually want from the situation is the following: Pharmacy staff Injectors
Respect/polite
Positive/friendly
Open
Confident (in their own knowledge)
Respect/polite
Positive/friendly
Open
Confident (in the workers ability)
Again it’s clear that both groups want the same thing. So, how can we achieve it?
I think when it comes to the confidence issues that this is a training need for pharmacy staff. Pharmacies tend to have a quite high turnover of staff and it’s usual for some of the bigger chains to have locum pharmacists who will only spend a short time in each branch, so training needs to be regularly repeated. It’s also important for all training to have a strong focus on attitudes as well as knowledge.
But most of it can be changed by people in both groups taking time to think what it is like for the other person and to realise that even if someone appears to be in a mood with them then it’s even more important to be polite, friendly and open.
Everyone is different
Of course in the same way that it’s not every heroin injector that shoplifts and gets aggressive in a pharmacy, not every pharmacy worker treats injectors with mistrust and suspicion. If anything the bulk of them are doing their best in a busy job, and in some cases they are fantastically supportive. Those pharmacies that are the most supportive also seem to be the ones who have very few problems with shoplifting and aggression – cause and effect?
Related links
For any pharmacy staff who feel they need more support running a needle programme can join the pharmacy discussion list, which is part of the National Needle Exchange Forum.
The recent NICE NSP guidance which talks about the need to move focus away from strict one to one exchange, which was historically one of the biggest causes of conflict in pharmacy provision.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
What to do about faulty needles?
Written by Nigel Brunsdon
Tuesday, 02 February 2010 22:33
Every needle programme worker and every injector comes across them at some point, a needle that is either blunt or barbed before it’s even used.
But what should you do about it?
Last week MSNBC reported the recall of two million faulty syringes. This happens from time to time. When it does, needle providers are sent recall documents explaining which needles are faulty, how they’re faulty and how to send them back. (You can see an example recall notice from July 08 here.)
What are the risks
Faults are never a good thing in a product, but in the case of injecting equipment faults can cause real damage to people. It may be that the fault is just something that affects the way a plunger moves, but it can often be a fault with the needle itself.
As I’m sure you know, barbed needles increase the damage done to a vein - causing it to be torn rather than punctured. After all we have leaflets warning of the effect of reusing a needle because of the bluntening and barbing it causes.
What to do
So you’re an injector about to have a shot and you notice, hopefully before you inject, that the needle is barbed. What should you do?
dispose of the needle without using it
check another needle from the batch you’ve picked up from the needle programme, if that one is also faulty use the ‘emergency needles’ that you've hopefully got
KEEP the packaging from all faulty needles, this has a ‘batch number’ that allows it to be traced back to when/where it was made
Return the packaging to the needle programme to report the fault
Check that new equipment you collect has a different batch number and check one before you leave the building
If they don’t have different batches they should be able to give you an alternative option (eg nevershares instead of a standard 1ml)
What should the staff at the needle programme do?
They should listen to your concerns
Take a note of the batch numbers from the packaging
Record on any records they have for you that you’ve reported this issue
Fill in an incident report (they should ask your permission to include your name)
Check other equipment with the same batch number, and if it’s faulty remove it
Report the fault and batch numbers to the supplier
If they are on social lists like UKHRA they can also warn other services
Remember
If you’re checking the sharpness of a needle you intend to inject with just use your eyes, DON’T check it by running it over your finger or clothing; this just adds bacteria and so increases your risks of getting an abscess.
Always check equipment for broken seals, if the packaging is torn/damaged then the equipment inside it is no longer sterile. You can take extra steps to prevent this happening, think about the way to transport equipment home. Are you someone who puts needles in a bag, or do you tightly bundle them and ram them into a pocket?
Faulty equipment shouldn’t just be ignored, and if it’s more than just a single item it should always be reported and taken seriously. And this doesn’t just mean needles but all equipment.
If it’s faulty report it.
Written by Nigel Brunsdon
Tuesday, 02 February 2010 22:33
Every needle programme worker and every injector comes across them at some point, a needle that is either blunt or barbed before it’s even used.
But what should you do about it?
Last week MSNBC reported the recall of two million faulty syringes. This happens from time to time. When it does, needle providers are sent recall documents explaining which needles are faulty, how they’re faulty and how to send them back. (You can see an example recall notice from July 08 here.)
What are the risks
Faults are never a good thing in a product, but in the case of injecting equipment faults can cause real damage to people. It may be that the fault is just something that affects the way a plunger moves, but it can often be a fault with the needle itself.
As I’m sure you know, barbed needles increase the damage done to a vein - causing it to be torn rather than punctured. After all we have leaflets warning of the effect of reusing a needle because of the bluntening and barbing it causes.
What to do
So you’re an injector about to have a shot and you notice, hopefully before you inject, that the needle is barbed. What should you do?
dispose of the needle without using it
check another needle from the batch you’ve picked up from the needle programme, if that one is also faulty use the ‘emergency needles’ that you've hopefully got
KEEP the packaging from all faulty needles, this has a ‘batch number’ that allows it to be traced back to when/where it was made
Return the packaging to the needle programme to report the fault
Check that new equipment you collect has a different batch number and check one before you leave the building
If they don’t have different batches they should be able to give you an alternative option (eg nevershares instead of a standard 1ml)
What should the staff at the needle programme do?
They should listen to your concerns
Take a note of the batch numbers from the packaging
Record on any records they have for you that you’ve reported this issue
Fill in an incident report (they should ask your permission to include your name)
Check other equipment with the same batch number, and if it’s faulty remove it
Report the fault and batch numbers to the supplier
If they are on social lists like UKHRA they can also warn other services
Remember
If you’re checking the sharpness of a needle you intend to inject with just use your eyes, DON’T check it by running it over your finger or clothing; this just adds bacteria and so increases your risks of getting an abscess.
Always check equipment for broken seals, if the packaging is torn/damaged then the equipment inside it is no longer sterile. You can take extra steps to prevent this happening, think about the way to transport equipment home. Are you someone who puts needles in a bag, or do you tightly bundle them and ram them into a pocket?
Faulty equipment shouldn’t just be ignored, and if it’s more than just a single item it should always be reported and taken seriously. And this doesn’t just mean needles but all equipment.
If it’s faulty report it.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
The origin of St. Valentine, and how many St. Valentines there were, remains a mystery. One opinion is that he was a Roman martyred for refusing to give up his Christian faith. Other historians hold that St. Valentine was a temple priest jailed for defiance during the reign of Claudius. Whoever he was, Valentine really existed because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine. In 496 AD Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom.
The first representation of Saint Valentine appeared in a The Nuremberg Chronicle, a great illustrated book printed in 1493. [Additional evidence that Valentine was a real person: archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine.] Alongside a woodcut portrait of him, text states that Valentinus was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius the Goth [Claudius II]. Since he was caught marrying Christian couples and aiding any Christians who were being persecuted under Emperor Claudius in Rome [when helping them was considered a crime], Valentinus was arrested and imprisoned. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner -- until Valentinus made a strategic error: he tried to convert the Emperor -- whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn't do it, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate.
Saints are not supposed to rest in peace; they're expected to keep busy: to perform miracles, to intercede. Being in jail or dead is no excuse for non-performance of the supernatural. One legend says, while awaiting his execution, Valentinus restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter. Another legend says, on the eve of his death, he penned a farewell note to the jailer's daughter, signing it, "From your Valentine."
St. Valentine was a Priest, martyred in 269 at Rome and was buried on the Flaminian Way. He is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travellers, young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
Invariably, whenever most people talk about the military prowess of the Polish cavalry, some joker busts out with some intelligent, well-constructed argument that vaguely resembles something along the order of "YA RITE HOW BOUT CHARGIN NAZI TANKS W HORSIES FTW LOLOLOL OMG I”M HILARIOUS SOMEBODY LOVE ME PLS". Well not only are the wild claims of that infamous engagement dubious at best, but it’s time that the Polish cavalry – and particularly the Winged Hussars – get appropriately recognized as one of the most eye-skeweringly hardcore associations of asskickers ever assembled. These daring, brave, unabashedly-feathered badasses crushed throats up and down Europe for two centuries, annihilating battle-tested armies three times their size with nothing more than a huge-ass lance, an awesome set of ultra-cool wings, and a gym bag full of iron-plated armor ballsacks.
The hussars as we know them first show up on the scene in the early 16th century as part of a hammer-smashing army of stone-cold motherfuckers under the Hungarian King Stefan Bathory. Bathory (who fought the Turks alongside Vlad the Impaler and was an ancestor of the infamous virgin-cidal blood countess and psychopath Elizabeth Bathory), basically levied the cavalry force by conscripting one out of every twenty Polish and Lithuanian peasants to strap on a pair of wings and a suit of heavy armor and start piercing the faces of anyone stupid enough to step to Eastern Europe. Over the next two hundred years, these ordinary dudes morphed into a ten-ton anvil of pointy justice that would go up against some of the toughest armies the world had to offer and completely fuck them inside out.
The combat record of the Winged Hussars stands for itself. In 1577 a massive charge of this ultra-heavy cavalry unit smashed a German army from Danzig, blitzing into the teeth of a 12,000 man force and crushing them until all that remained was a well-trampled patch of red where the enemy army once used to be. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth losses in the battle totaled about 88 men, and most of those clowns weren't even Hussars. In 1601, a thousand Hussars defeated a Swedish cavalry force four times that size. At the Battle of Kircholm four years later, the Hussars (whose commanders’ completely badass motto was "Kill First, Calculate Later"), sent 1,000 lancers in a charge against 11,000 Swedish infantrymen and cannons for some reason, and incredibly, despite the ridiculous idiocy of sending your elite troops on such an impossible mission, the friggin' Hussars jammed their poles (OMG AWESOME PUN FTW) into anything they could find and not only emerged victorious, but utterly slaughtered their opponents army, hacking the broken infantry units into giblets as they fled the field. Amaazingly, that wasn’t even the most impressive shit this mobile last stand accomplshed in its proud heritage as the Commonwealth's premier exporter of busted-up faces. At the Battle of Klushino in 1610, the Hussars were outnumbered ten to one, and still somehow came out on top, utterly annihilating an army of 40,000 Swedes and Russiand with just 4,000 lancers.
What might be even more awesome then the Winged Hussars’ much-deserved reputation as seemingly-invincible shit-wreckers is their completely over-the-top awesome battle gear. These guys went with the heaviest armor they could find, decking themselves out in fully-articulated plate mail at a time when most European armies were switching away from breastplates and over to firearms, but these ferocious warriors didn’t even give a crap about rushing at state-of-the-art muskets with hand-to-hand combat weapons. Their primary implement of facial demolition was a lightweight (yet still completely insane) 19-foot lance capable of outreaching even the most well-endowed infantry spear hedges, and after they splintered that up the asses of their foes, the Hussars could fall back on pistols, a dagger, and one of two different types of swords. Why they needed two different swords is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but I’m pretty sure that I support it.
While the badass weaponry and armor was unquestionably utilitarian, the Winged Hussars also went that extra mile to ensure that they were armor-crappingly terrifying while charging ahead in perfect formation. Their armor was burnished and well-polished so that it gleamed in the sunlight (most Renaissance-era knights preferred black armor because it was more resistant to rust), they wore brightly-colored heraldry, and OH YEAH they also had giant-ass fucking wings strapped onto their backs. These wings, which were made of ostrich or eagle feathers glued onto wooden frames that arched up and over the back, made an insane whistling noise while the Hussars were charging, completely unsettling, terrifying, and overawing the enemy in the brief moments between when they said, "holy shit WTF" and when they had a kebab skewer jammed into their eye sockets at about a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Some of the Hussars also used to up the "wow factor" by stuffing severed heads down the tips of their weapons and charging into battle with a lance-full of heads, which sounds pretty gnarly.
The hussars were also super-well-trained, capable of changing directions and altering their formations in mid-charge, and then plowing through their enemy, circling around, and hitting them again from the rear. In case you’ve never seen footage of a well-executed cavalry charge before, this is kind of like the equine equivalent of the Blue Angels doing all of their trademark death-defying stunts while in the middle of a dogfight. I don't care who you are, this has to kind of fuck with your head a little.
While they have a long and illustrious string of asskickings under their heavyweight championship belts, the Winged Hussars’ finest hour came during the epic Battle of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Turkish armies were busting nuts across Eastern Europe looking to conquer all of Christendom. With the main body of the Holy Roman Imperial army completely surrounded and besieged by over 200,000 Turkish warriors, the badass Polish King Jan Sobieski led the single hugest and most balls-out cavalry charge in history. Their wings fluttering and zipping like creepy, spear-flinging birds of prey, three thousand Winged Hussars plowed into the Turkish force, driving them back, plundering their supply train, and driving the Turks from the field. It would be the furthest West the Ottoman Empire would ever advance, and it was the Poles who had finally stuffed them like Shaq blocking a layup attempt by Verne Troyer. Honorable mention during the Battle of Vienna has to go to the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, who personally charged out to try and help his men, fought in hand-to-hand combat even after his entire bodyguard was annihilated, and only escaped after saving the Holy Banner that once belonged to the Prophet Muhammad from falling into Christian hands. Mustafa was rewarded for his heroism by having his head chopped off and delivered to the Sultan in a velvet bag, but what can you do - there’s just no pleasing Sultans sometimes, especially when you’ve just let three thousand Polish Hussars completely rout a force roughly a hundred times larger than them.
They just didn't realize that this is how the Winged Hussars rolled. These guys were nuts – they never backed down from a fight, always went completely balls-out all of the time, and looked at ten-to-one as an exciting challenge rather than a suicide charge. Total insantiy.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar wasn't known by the warm-and-cuddly nickname "Ranavalona the Cruel" for nothing. In fact, according to most of the (admittedly somewhat-unreliable) sources we have on this powerful African ruler, she generally tends to fall somewhere in the "Vlad the Impaler" quadrant of the spectrum between "benevolent dictator" and "bloodthirsty oppressive tyrant who would be more likely to jam a sharpened toothpick in your eye than grant you one sentence's worth of freedom of speech". Ruling a country that's nowadays more known for delicious vanilla beans and delightfully-wacky dancing CGI Disney characters than it is for vicious public executions and coastlines adorned with severed heads mounted on spiked poles, this exceedingly-violent Queen carved out a gruesome, badass reputation that would have many people today referring to her as the "Female Caligula".
Ranavalona's birth name was Rabodoandrianampoinimerina, which is a ludicrously-long name that literally translates into roughly a paragraph of English text. She was daughter of a poor peasant, and illiterate for her entire life, but that last part is understandable considering that Madagascar didn't actually have a written language until a few years before she ascended to the throne so let's cut the lady a break. With little more than a life of poverty and hard, back-breaking labor ahead of her, Ranavalona caught kind of a sweet break when her father somehow managed to uncover a murder conspiracy aimed at assassinating King Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka (!!) and managed to warn the regent before his impending doom. The King was so happy that he wasn't going to die a bloody, premature death that he adopted Ranvalona into the royal family, marrying her off to the incredibly-boringly-named Prince Radama (only three syllables -- what a loser!). She was to be the first of his twelve wives, which I guess is the sort of honor that made a girl feel really good about herself back then.
Radama took over as King after his dad retired, but he didn't last too long. Theories on Radama's untimely death range from syphilis to cirrhosis, but the safe money here is on Queen Ranavalona slipping him a few too many cyanide-laced sugar cubes in his morning tea. After Radama's sudden, untimely, and excruciatingly-painful demise in 1828 (he is said to have been in such head-searingly devastating agony that he cut his own throat to end his suffering), the power-hungry Queen sprung into action like a rocket-powered pogo stick of totalitarian authority. The rightful heir to the throne – Radama's brother – got all pissed and decided to take the crown and have Ranavalona executed, but she had spent her entire career in the royal palace making friends with powerful ministers, self-proclaimed sorcerers, and super-fundamental traditionalists, and the 46-year old tyrant was so firmly entrenched in her position that you couldn't dig her out with the Bagger 288. She seized the palace, garrisoned it with a powerful contingent of loyal warriors from her village, and had them kill the shit out of anyone who tried to enter the gates.
Ranavalona already kind of hated her in-laws, but after she was in control she decided to go out of her way to make sure that no one - especially them - messed with her. First, she killed every member of the royal family that she could get her hands on, starting with the rightful heir to the throne and ending with some guy who knew a guy that used to be Facebook friends with the King's second cousin. It bears mentioning that it was considered bad form to spill royal blood, so these poor saps were usually either strangled to death or locked into a prison cell until they died of starvation. Both of these are equally shitty ways to go, but Ranavalona couldn't have given two craps about it as long as she eliminated any threat to her rule. In 1828, the 46-year old peasant girl was anointed with the blood of a freshly-slaughtered bull and coronated Queen and Supreme Ruler of Madagascar.
Now during this time in history, European Colonialism was in the early stages of getting its 4X on with Madagascar. Ranavalona's power base was with traditionalists who hated this foreign expansion, and as soon as she took over she told every country in Europe that they could get fucked with a tetanus-encrusted pipe wrench. She expelled or destroyed all foreigners in her country, stripped all colonials of their titles, nullified all of Madagascar's treaties with Britain and France, and banned Christianity in favor of the traditional tribal religion. She also did away with the bullshit legal system, and brought back "Trial by Ordeal", where a person's guilt was judged not by logic and reason, but rather whether or not they threw up after drinking the super-poisonous juice of a particular indigenous plant. I think everyone will agree that this is crazy and/or awesome.
The French of course got all pissed off about this, and launched an amphibious attack on the port city of Tamataye within a few months of Ranavalona seizing power. They made marginal gains against the Madagascarian defenders, and actually took control of the city at one point, but they were eventually turned back when most of their assault team was killed by a combination of gunshot wounds and malaria-infected mosquitoes. Both the French and the British would devote quite a bit of effort to ripping Ranavalona's face off, but nothing really proved successful. In 1835 a combined army landed at Tamataye once again, but they fared even worse against the entrenched defenders than the initial invaders. Ranavalona, being the good propaganda mistress that she was, cut off the heads of the slain Europeans, impaled them on pikes, and lined them up along the beach facing the ocean as a warning to anybody dumbshit enough to screw with her. After this little display of generosity, the Europeans decided they'd just leave well enough alone and worry about conquest and colonial exploitation of resources until such time as there wasn't an insane, dominant shit-wrecker presiding over the armies of Madagascar.
Having effectively (and gruesomely), elected for sovereignty and self-rule over European power, wealth, and territorial dominance, Ranavalona's next task was to make her people self-reliant. She brought in a handful of prominent foreign mercenaries to set up an infrastructure and train people in industrial development (making sure to keep them close enough that they wouldn't get into any trouble), and before long Madagascar had built factories for producing all of the most important shit they needed to sustain themselves – namely guns, bullets, sugar, clothing, and booze. For severing ties and dependence on foreign aid, Ranavalona was something of a hero to those people who opposed colonialism and foreign control. It was really only after she got older and crazier that Ranavalona started to put the "mad" in "Madagascar" (and perhaps both "mad"s in the phrase, "The Mad Queen of Madagascar") with the ridiculous tortures and killings for which she is now famous.
In addition to suppressing a couple revolts (her preferred method for dealing with dissent in her ranks way by sending her enemies on endless force-marches through malaria-infested swamps) on her own turf, Ranavalona made every effort to crush European influence in her country. She was so opposed to these colonials and their beliefs that she then made it her personal mission to wipe out Christianity on the island – first by banning it, and then by executing Christians and missionaries by throwing them off of high places, setting them on fire, and/or torturing them to death with something called "progressive amputation", which doesn't sound like much of a picnic. Through this sort-of inverse Spanish Inquisition, she attempted to torture people to renounce their faith, and then popped their heads off when they didn't. She was never really able to wipe the Christians off of Madagascar (they are a tenacious bunch, from what I understand), but she did force it underground during her reign, effectively eliminating Christianity as a threat to her pro-traditionalist rule. Slaughtering tens of thousands of your own citizens has that effect on people from time to time. I suppose it's important to point out that I'm certainly not saying it's "awesome" or "totally awesome" to go around tossing people head-first off of cliffs just because they don't share your particular religious convictions, but you kind of have to appreciate the fact that she was really willing to go that extra mile for the sake of being a brutal despot.
From her palace, which was dominated by a Sauron-esque 100-foot tower, Ranavalona the Cruel reined for 33 years of semi-oppressive, Vlad the Impaler-style tyranny. She founded cities, built structures, and was one of the few African rulers to successfully hold off colonial rule (a fact that makes her something of a hero among African traditionalists), and even though she was somewhat of a bastard, she overcame her enemies and died peacefully in her bed of old age at the age of 80. Two other queens of Madagascar would go on to take her name, and her island wouldn't fall under colonial control for another 30 years after her death.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
A couple years before Cortez showed up on the shores of Mexico and almost single-handedly conquered the most powerful and ferocious warrior civilization in North America (that's a tale for a different day), the Aztecs were pretty much in the business of beating the holy living snot out of every other tribe in the land, annexing their territory, and leaving behind a gruesome trail of blood, destruction, and eviscerated enemy combatants. Anyone who defied them could look forward to one of two inevitable consequences – they would either be bodyslammed to death on the battlefield, or forcibly sacrificed to the sun god Huitzilopochtli by having their hearts cut out through their abdomens by some crazy blood-thirsty priest. Both options were equally crappy.
The Aztecs were tough, hardcore ball-busters whose penchant for violence and righteous unrelenting groin-kicking didn't leave much to the imagination, but in the late fifteenth century there was one badass warrior who dared to defy their ever-expanding empire of blood – Chief Tlahuicole of the Tlaxcalan tribe. Tlahuicole (whose name is occasionally spelled Tlalhuicole by people who are big fans of putting random consonants in weird places) was a pretty insane face-smashing nutcracker in his own right, and he wasn't just going to roll over and expose his soft underbelly to the sacrificial pointiness without at least taking some motherfuckers along for the ride. Tasked with leading his warriors against the aggression of the unstoppable Aztec Empire, Tlahuicole was determined to protect his peoples' way of life and avoid having his brave warriors ritualistically disemboweled by jerkface holy men.
The war between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcans lasted for twenty long days, as Tlahuicole held out against all odds in a brutal struggle for survival. He made quite a name for himself as a head-splitting asskicker, fighting with a pair of massive tomahawks so heavy that many men could not even lift them, and even as the Tlaxcan numbers began to dwindle, many Aztec warriors were so awed by Tlahuicole's physical powers of face-crushing that they refused to engage him in single combat. The Tlaxcan hero struck fear in the hearts of his enemies, cleaving through hordes of terrified warriors, but eventually, after all of his men were killed or mortally wounded, the mighty chieftain was overpowered by superior numbers and captured.
Tlahuicole was bound in chains and dragged before the Aztec Emperor Montezuma. Montezuma, quite the badass in his own right (and an appreciator of all things badassery-related), had heard rumors of this unstoppable tomahawk-hucking warrior who had inflicted so much carnage on the battlefield, and decided to spare this brave soldier's life. Montezuma offered Tlahuicole his freedom, treasure, women, and a safe passage home.
To everyone's surprise, Tlahuicole refused. He knew that it was Aztec custom to sacrifice prisoners of war to the sun god, and for the disgrace of losing the battle and allowing himself to be captured, the Tlaxcan's sense of honor demanded that he suffer the appropriate consequences.
Montezuma obviously thought this was completely fucking insane, so instead of sacrificing Tlahuicole, he co-opted his skills into the Aztec army, ordering this man to serve as a war-chief in an already-ongoing struggle against a rival tribe known as the Tarascans. Tlahuicole, being a dutiful soldier, obeyed the order and assumed command of a large contingent of Aztec warriors on the battlefield.
Well, Tlahuicole was pretty much awesome, and he of course pummeled the fail out of the Tarascans in combat, defeating them out of hand and sending their warriors running back home to their mommas with their entrails hanging out all willy-nilly. Tlahuicole's divisions returned to Tenochtitlan in triumph, bearing large amounts of wealth, slaves, and human sacrifices. Montezuma was so pumped up that he offered to make Tlahuicole an official member of the Aztec nobility, but the Tlaxcan vehemently refused, saying that by becoming an Aztec citizen he would be betraying his people. He once again turned down an opportunity for freedom, and begged Montezuma to allow him to die and end his miserable life of suffering and dishonor.
Montezuma pretty much figured that there was nothing he could do to change this crazy war-mongering psycho's mind, so he offered Tlahuicole the opportunity to die the sort of badass warrior's death that would have made Odin Himself weep a single tear. Rather than sacrifice Tlahuicole at the Temple of Huitzilopochtli, Montezuma chained the warrior-chieftain to the Stone of Combat, stripped him of his armor, gave him an ordinary obsidian-studded war club, and pitted him against an endless onslaught of the greatest warriors of the Aztec Empire.
(If it helps you to understand Tlahuicole's motivation for wishing for death before dishonor, you can think of this like the end of Half-Life, where the G-Man gives you the opportunity to either join him or fight a battle that you have no chance of winning. Tlahuicole chose the latter as a way of telling his captors to get fucked. Oh, um... spoiler alert, I guess)
According to Aztec culture, this Trial of Sacrificial Combat was a way for captured soldiers to earn their freedom by displaying their worth as warriors. Men would be chained to the stone, and be set upon by a large group of seven powerful enemies. If the prisoner killed or wounded all of his assailants and survived the combat, he was set free. Well, obviously Tlahuicole wasn't going to take the easy way out – in his mind, he had failed, and wasn't going to be satisfied until he had died a warrior's death, covered in the blood of his enemies, and going out in a pretty badass one-man blaze of glory. This battle was to the death.
Surrounded by hardcore warriors wailing on him from every direction, Tlahuicole stood his ground like the neck-ripping shit-kicker that he was. Over the course of nearly an hour of non-stop hand-to-hand horde mode combat, Tlahuicole fought his epic last stand, killing eight of the Aztec Empire's most powerful and skilled Jaguar Knights and wounding over twenty more. He finally fell to his knees, fighting like a madman, before succumbing to a ridiculous number of seriously gnarly mortal wounds. As he lay there dying a painful death, an Aztec priest approached, exalted the name of this brave warrior, and ritualistically sacrificed him on the spot.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born in a dank bog in rural Siberia - a lush, magical, unicorn-breeding ground of an inhabitable wasteland (I mentioned it briefly when talking about Vasily Zaitsev), where the temperature never gets above freezing and the people are made out of a combination of battle-hardened asbestos and malfunctioning robot parts – and his crazy adventures fornicating with Russian nobility, frightening children, and absorbing dozens of large-caliber gunshot wounds would go on to make him pretty much the most infamous monk this side of the Spanish Fucking Inquisition. From his crazy, out-of-control beard to his wild hypnotic maniac eyes, this mystical and mysterious holy man was notorious for his physical and mental strength, his political stranglehold on the Russian Imperial Family, and his incredible ability to read peoples' weaknesses and manipulate them to carrying out his evil will.
When he entered the gates of Saint Petersburg in 1903, Rasputin was an illiterate peasant nobody who had spent his entire life randomly wandering around the Russian countryside searching for God one horny, sex-crazed maiden at a time (or sometimes two or three at a time, depending on how energetic he was feeling). Carrying only a Bible and a backpack and wearing little more than beat-up, tar-covered boots and a cheap gray overcoat, this impoverished, half-insane priest decided to settle down in the capital city of Imperial Russia and enter the country's most prominent monastery. It wasn't long before his powerful, commanding personality and creepy-weird magical powers asserted themselves among Rasputin's holy brothers – even the fucking Archbishop of Imperial Russia was convinced that this crazy mysterious monk had the power to control the weather and call down thunderstorms at his whim. Rasputin grew in power, was introduced to a Countess in the imperial court, and immediately started humping every hot aristocratic babe in sight.
While Rasputin quickly developed a reputation for his heavy drinking, all-night carousing, and unabashed womanizing (one of his best pickup lines was to tell women that they would be purified of all their sins if they had crazy monkey sex with him), it was his powers as a mystic that caught the attention of Empress Alexandra of Russia. Her son, thanks to centuries of rampant disgusting inbreeding on behalf of the European nobility, was born with hemophilia and was pretty much constantly in danger of bleeding to death at any given moment. Seriously, this punk kid almost fucking died of a fatal case of fucking road rash every time he beefed it off his skateboard. Alexandra brought Rasputin in to cure the Tsarovitch's lingering ailment, and, somewhat amazingly, it turned out that the "mad monk" was really fucking awesome at kicking the ass of hemophilia. His ability to save the child's life every couple of weeks catapulted Rasputin into the position of Chief Awesome Bastard of Imperial Russia, and the Tsar's family eventually asked the unwashed, sex-crazed priest to move into their home.
Seeing as how he alone controlled whether the heir to the throne of Russia lived or died, Rasputin quickly became the most powerful motherfucker in Russia. He used his position close to the Tsar's family to exert his will over the government, ensure that men loyal to him were installed in the highest cabinet positions, and quickly quash any formal attempts to investigate his background, his private life, or his ridiculously-sketchy past. His somewhat-incredulous powers of chick magnetism apparently also held sway over the Empress herself, and it wasn't long before Rasputin held Tsarina Alexandra in the palm of his hand - both literally and figuratively.
His near-limitless influence and power and ability to bang the Empress whenever he felt like it led to quite a bit of prestige for Rasputin. Foppish courtiers hung on his every word, desperate nymphomaniac babes flung themselves at him every time he stepped foot outside his house, and pretty much everybody wanted to invite him to all their totally sweet house parties. Rasputin, for his part, didn't give a shit about anything – he did his own thing, and didn't cater to the prissy bullshit of the aristocracy. He wore his regular old clothes, talked to nobles the same way he spoke to peasants, and generally did whatever the fuck he wanted all the time and anybody who didn't like it could lick his balls.
Outside the highest circles of the government, Rasputin was looked upon as a creepy evil bastard who was basically a totally jacked-up cross between John Holmes, a grizzly bear and the physical embodiment of the Anti-Christ. He was believed to be so evil that his name wasn't spoken in public – people referred to him as "The Unmentionable" or "The Nameless One", which is some seriously badass shit. Numerous rumors of varying degrees of truthfulness began circling about him – his frightened enemies claimed that he was nailing the Empress' daughters (as well as the Empress, which he probably was), and that he seduced women with black magic and subconsciously forced them to participate in wild sex orgies with him every Thursday afternoon (also possible). They also claimed that he used to go on drive-by shootings around downtown Saint Pete, and when he got bored of capping fools with his gatt he went into local convents, stripped nuns naked, beat them with a cat o' nine tails and had his way with them (this seems somewhat less likely, but not out of the realm of possibility).
The greatest rumor of course was about his hyper-magical mega-penis – a 13" monstrosity of a dong so infamous that it actually has its own goddamned Wikipedia entry. According to legend, after Rasputin's death in 1916 his penis was actually stolen by a local woman and placed in a jar of formaldehyde. Throughout the 1920s, a cult of Russian women in Paris kept the mystical wang as a fucking holy relic, and now it's actually on display in a museum in St. Petersburg. Having your penis currently on public display a hundred years after your death is a claim not many famous people can make. He also once whipped his junk out in a crowded restaurant and angrily waved it at a bunch of police officers Jim Morrison-style, which is also pretty bitchin'.
What Grigory Rasputin is most famous for, however, is his ability to not die despite being surrounded by people actively seeking to kill him in an incredibly fucking violent manner. In 1914 he survived being stabbed in the stomach by a crazy woman, but two years later a group of pissed-off Russian nobles took it upon themselves to finish the job. The Prince of Russia invited Rasputin over for dinner and fed him a bunch of cupcakes and wine laced with cyanide. Rasputin ate all the poisonous goodies, but was completely unaffected, so the Prince decided to off the monk the old-fashioned way and shot him in the fucking back with a pistol at point-blank range. Rasputin simply pulled himself up off the floor, smashed the Prince up against a wall, and started choking the shit out of him with his bare hands. The nobles fought the mad monk off before he could summon some kind of crazy winged asskicking demon to incinerate them all in unholy fire, and chased Rasputin outside, where they shot him three times, beat him down with clubs, tied him up, and threw him in a river. When his body was discovered the next day, they found that Rasputin had broken free of his bonds and was struggling to swim to safety. His official cause of death was hypothermia.
Interestingly, while Rasputin's death was celebrated by the aristocracy, it pissed off the common people of Russia. They saw him as one of them – an oppressed peasant who had clawed his way to power only to be assassinated by a bunch of fucking jackasses with small penis complexes and too much time on their hands. A couple years later everybody had enough and revolted, killed the Tsar, and turned Russia into the Soviet Union. These are the consequences of killing an evil monk with a thirteen-inch cock. You get shot in the face by fucking Communists.
Rasputin was a badass sex god who came from nothing, banged the Empress, held power over all of Russia, and was so ruthlessly evil that the mere mention of his name was considered to bring about ill omens. He fought his way to the top through a combination of bizarre mystic powers and an unquenchable sex drive, was tougher to kill than the T-1000, and broke free from his shitty station in life to stick it to the nobility in every possible meaning of the word. Truly badass.
SuN
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"He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day... this, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy."
Nothing says "Halloween" quite like a huge spooky castle, a dark and stormy night, and a terrifying pale-faced blood-sucking Eastern European nobleman with slicked-back hair puncturing the necks of beautiful women with his gleaming, over-developed canine teeth. Count Dracula, and the hordes of assorted vampires spawned by him, have been terrifying teenagers, duchesses, and college Freshmen for decades with their blood-chugging antics, terrible fake accents, and varying degrees of rampant metrosexuality. These creatures of the night have feasted on thousands of unsuspecting victims over the years, and have been excel in everything from feats of physical strength to technical skill on the electric guitar.
However, for as long as there has been Dracula, there has been Professor Abraham Van Helsing. This Dutch scientist, physician, philosopher, and eccentric occult genius is the Original Gangsta of badass fucking vampire killers - a man so dedicated to his work that he left no stone unturned in his unwavering quest to find and exterminate all forms of the undead, and a badass hero who paved the way for the Dracula-stabbing exploits of everyone from Simon Belmont to Buffy Summers.
First off, Van Helsing is fucking brilliant. He is highly educated in a wide variety of mostly-useless information ranging from classical literature to hypnotism, and has a well-rounded fund of knowledge in philosophy, vampire lore, and obscure diseases. In addition to being a walking intellectual cross between Wikipedia and the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, Van Helsing also realized that he needed to be tough as shit if he was going to go up and try to crack a bunch of undead heads together like over-ripened coconuts. Despite the fact that he was what doctors like to refer to as, "pretty fucking old" (we never know what his actual age is, but it's pretty safe to say that this guy wasn't exactly going to get carded while trying to buy booze at the 7-11 down the street), he still busted his balls all day long to turn himself into an insane vampire-slaughtering motherfucker. He was big, broad-shouldered, tough, and so manly that he could induce puberty in adolescent boys just by slapping them in the face really hard. He also was fearless, dedicated to lacerating the aortas of Nosferatus with everything from railway spikes to Philips-head screwdrivers, and so morally righteous that he could easily resist the scantily-clad legion of hot topless vampire babes Dracula sent to seduce and/or bite his face off. He spent countless hours studying vampire lore and training in the weapons and tactics necessary to combat these monsters, constantly kept in fighting shape, and his strength of will was the only thing that stood between the vile bloodsucker and the rest of the civilized world.
Dr. Van Helsing was called to London by a former student to investigate a mysterious illness plaguing the guy's slutty girlfriend. When Abe first arrived and noticed two giant fang-holes in this chick's neck, he knew she was totally boned in a way she had not yet been boned before. Realizing he couldn't save her, but not wanting to tell the guy what's up and risk sounding like a fucking whack-job, Van Helsing did what he could to treat her symptoms. Of course, she eventually died, and AVH didn't have a problem staking her in the heart and beheading her once she came back as a vampire. Sorry about your girlfriend, dude, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
So Van Helsing, now seeking revenge for the dead girl and more than eager to rid the world of the scourge of vampirism, put together a team of able-bodied average Joes, briefed them on what they were up against, gave them the necessary bloodsucker-killing weapons and equipment, and led a balls-out assault on Dracula's lair. After traveling halfway across the world and gunning down a couple of gypsies who for some dumbshit reason were trying to protect the Prince of Fucking Darkness, Van Helsing and his crew did battle with Count Dracula himself. The undead nobleman didn't stand a chance against this high-level Fighter/Cleric and his posse of slayers, and Drac met a grisly end when he was stabbed in the right ventricle and had his neck slashed off with a machete.
Professor Van Helsing was a badass vampire hunter ready to take on Dracula, Blacula, Dr. Acula, Robo-Dracula, and pretty much any other bipedal fanged creature that can be killed by ramming a sharpened wooden spike into its chest (a tactic that is actually highly effective against a wide range of creatures, both living and undead). He was the first man to take on Nosferatu and emerge victorious, setting the precedent and creating the blueprint for the countless hunters and slayers that followed him, and showed the world that not even the most badass undead monster out there could stand up to a good old-fashioned mortal man with a bad attitude and a big pointy fucking stick.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
"They call him Shaykh-al-Hashishim. He is their Elder, and upon his command all of the men of the mountain come out or go in...
they are believers of the word of their elder and everyone everywhere fears them, because they even kill kings."
- Benjamin of Tudela
Sir Conrad of Montferrat confidently strode through the courtyard of the fortress city of Tyre, flanked by a heavily-armed entourage of mailed knights and dressed in the lavish garments and expensive silks indicative of his lofty status. The King of Jerusalem was one of the most powerful men in the world - as commander of all Crusader forces in the Middle East, even the famous king Richard the Lion-Hearted was honor-bound to recognize Conrad's authority. His anointing had been blessed by the Pope Himself, the armies of the Muslim infidel had been shattered by the might of his blade, and at his command the Warriors of Christendom went forth to conquer all that lay before them.
From a small side alley two nondescript monks approached, their heads bowed low as they almost inaudibly chanted traditional Latin hymns, their fingers dexterously working their wooden prayer beads beneath their flowing brown robes. They quietly walked towards the center of the courtyard, seemingly too absorbed in their prayers to notice Sir Conrad and his bodyguards. Then, suddenly, the monks doubled their pace. They closed quickly, sprinting the last few feet towards the Lord of Tyre. There was a flash of steel, the glint of the afternoon sun gently reflecting off of a well-polished dagger blade. Within seconds the King of Jerusalem was silently lying crumpled on the road in a pool of his own blood. The most imposing, merciless, and untouchable man in the Holy Land was dead.
Hassan al-Sabbah was a charismatic leader, a brilliant mathematician, a devoted religious scholar, an awesomely diabolical mastermind, and the founder and first Grand Master of one of history's deadliest and most lethal mystery cults - the Hashashin, the secret Order of Assassins. From the darkest recesses of the thousand year-old impenetrable mountain fortress of Alamut (meaning either "Eagle Peak" or "Death Mountain" - I prefer the latter, but only because it sounds way more fucking badass), The Lord of the Mountain directed a covert brotherhood of fearless insane warriors completely dedicated to his cause, willing to carry out his every order and, if necessary, die for him willingly and without hesitation.
Very little is known about what went on behind the impregnable walls of Death Mountain, but several medieval sources describe the initiation process thusly: Recruits came to Alamut to study the mysterious ways of the Isma'ili, and Hassan housed them in small, modest, windowless apartments deep beneath the mountain. They stayed there for a while, studying shit and learning, until one day a servant arrived with a magical potion for the initiate to drink. The guy would fucking chug this potion (the key ingredients of which were hashish, LSD, and dirty bong water) and pass out. When the initiate awoke he found himself stoned off his ass in the most beautiful garden this side of Babylon – a glorious place full of wine, honey, fountains, palm trees, daiquiris, and super mega hot topless bellydancing virgins fucking gyrating around like crazy all over the place. The guy basked in this Earthly Paradise for several hours, at the end of which Hassan appeared to him and said something to the effect of, "This is what I have to offer you. Follow my teaching and submit to my will and I shall show you the way to Heaven." Then the fucker was drugged again and thrown back into his shitty studio apartment. When he awoke, Hassan appeared to him again, this time asking if the initiate was willing to obey him. They usually agreed, for obvious reasons.
From this point on, Hassan commanded their absolute fucking obedience, as they truly believed that he held the key to Heaven. His acolytes were so fanatically loyal that more than one account exists where Hassan ordered one of his men to take a swan dive off of the parapet of Alamut, and the dude responding by unhesitatingly fucking face-planting the asphalt from thirty stories up. And you pussies think bungee jumping is balls-out.
It would be a mistake to write the Hashashin off as a disorganized association of pothead stoner dropouts, however, and Alamut wasn't exactly a goddamned Cheech & Chong movie with blacklight posters everywhere and a fucking flaming car made out of hemp. These guys were elite warriors trained in all the badass ninja techniques required to wreak havoc on the most powerful men in the Middle East, and they were awesome at it. They studied martial arts, poison, disguise, infiltration, espionage and fucking hardcore knife-fighting, and could speak several languages fluently. When a death writ was issued for some poor bastard, the medieval hitman was given a specialized dagger to complete his mission. In true badass fashion, the Order of Assassins opted to do their dirty work up close and personal, preferably in public places in front of hundreds of people in order to maximize the shock value and intimidation factor.
The Fortress of Alamut
As the bloody, murderous arm of Hassan al-Sabbah, the Assassins went to work destroying the enemies of their Grandmaster, killing pretty much anybody he told them to. Now the Seljuk Turks and the Abbasid Caliphate, the two most powerful Muslim Empires during this time, were Sunni Muslims, and they quickly declared that the Shi'ite Hassan and his radical sect of lethal face-stabbing ninja assassins were heretics and infidels, etc. (you know how super-religious types can be), so Hassan responded by having the Sultan and the Vizier teabagged while they slept and/or stabbed to death in their own palaces. When the European Crusaders rolled into town acting like they fucking owned the place and swinging their nuts around by slaughtering everyone who didn’t believe in Jeebus, the Order of Assassins showed them what it felt like to wind up on the pointy end of a kitchen knife, Fatal Attraction-style. From the citadel at Alamut, the calculating mastermind Hassan al-Sabbah orchestrated a secretive web of lethal executioners fanatically devoted to his will, and eventually established splinter groups in Syria and Persia to continue his mission to kill everyone that ever pissed him off for any reason ever. The Hashashin soon became a major political faction, exerting their dominance over the world through fear and merciless eye-poking badassitude.
Under the direction of Hassan and his successors, the Assassins killed Sultans, Viziers, Caliphs, Patriarchs, and Counts, barely giving their victims enough time to yell, "Holy Shi'ite!" before getting a fucking shiv in the ribcage. The Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller was stabbed to death in a public square in front of dozens of horrified onlookers. The English King Edward Longshanks was wounded within an inch of his life by the blade of an Assassin outside the walls of Jerusalem, and even Saladin, the fucking badass Muslim hero of the Third Crusade and the man responsible for pushing the Europeans out of the Holy Land, had more than one close call with these mysterious killers. Nobody was safe, a point that became painfully obvious to those political leaders unlucky enough to wake up in the morning and find an Assassin’s dagger lying on his pillow with a note attached to it reading, "We fucking rule you, bitch."
Hassan's lethal and mysterious Order exerted its power across the Middle East, and continued its fearsome dominance long after the death of its founder and Grand Master. In fact, the fortress of Alamut was never captured by hostile forces – the Mongols surrounded it in 1256, but were unable to launch a successful assault on the mountain stronghold. The Hashashin held out for three fucking years, finally surrendering only once they had completely run out of provisions. The Mongol leader Hulagu Khan had them all executed for causing him so much damn trouble, and that, as they say, was the end of that.
SuN
.:~**~.~**~.~**~:.
"They call him Shaykh-al-Hashishim. He is their Elder, and upon his command all of the men of the mountain come out or go in...
they are believers of the word of their elder and everyone everywhere fears them, because they even kill kings."
- Benjamin of Tudela
Sir Conrad of Montferrat confidently strode through the courtyard of the fortress city of Tyre, flanked by a heavily-armed entourage of mailed knights and dressed in the lavish garments and expensive silks indicative of his lofty status. The King of Jerusalem was one of the most powerful men in the world - as commander of all Crusader forces in the Middle East, even the famous king Richard the Lion-Hearted was honor-bound to recognize Conrad's authority. His anointing had been blessed by the Pope Himself, the armies of the Muslim infidel had been shattered by the might of his blade, and at his command the Warriors of Christendom went forth to conquer all that lay before them.
From a small side alley two nondescript monks approached, their heads bowed low as they almost inaudibly chanted traditional Latin hymns, their fingers dexterously working their wooden prayer beads beneath their flowing brown robes. They quietly walked towards the center of the courtyard, seemingly too absorbed in their prayers to notice Sir Conrad and his bodyguards. Then, suddenly, the monks doubled their pace. They closed quickly, sprinting the last few feet towards the Lord of Tyre. There was a flash of steel, the glint of the afternoon sun gently reflecting off of a well-polished dagger blade. Within seconds the King of Jerusalem was silently lying crumpled on the road in a pool of his own blood. The most imposing, merciless, and untouchable man in the Holy Land was dead.
Hassan al-Sabbah was a charismatic leader, a brilliant mathematician, a devoted religious scholar, an awesomely diabolical mastermind, and the founder and first Grand Master of one of history's deadliest and most lethal mystery cults - the Hashashin, the secret Order of Assassins. From the darkest recesses of the thousand year-old impenetrable mountain fortress of Alamut (meaning either "Eagle Peak" or "Death Mountain" - I prefer the latter, but only because it sounds way more fucking badass), The Lord of the Mountain directed a covert brotherhood of fearless insane warriors completely dedicated to his cause, willing to carry out his every order and, if necessary, die for him willingly and without hesitation.
Very little is known about what went on behind the impregnable walls of Death Mountain, but several medieval sources describe the initiation process thusly: Recruits came to Alamut to study the mysterious ways of the Isma'ili, and Hassan housed them in small, modest, windowless apartments deep beneath the mountain. They stayed there for a while, studying shit and learning, until one day a servant arrived with a magical potion for the initiate to drink. The guy would fucking chug this potion (the key ingredients of which were hashish, LSD, and dirty bong water) and pass out. When the initiate awoke he found himself stoned off his ass in the most beautiful garden this side of Babylon – a glorious place full of wine, honey, fountains, palm trees, daiquiris, and super mega hot topless bellydancing virgins fucking gyrating around like crazy all over the place. The guy basked in this Earthly Paradise for several hours, at the end of which Hassan appeared to him and said something to the effect of, "This is what I have to offer you. Follow my teaching and submit to my will and I shall show you the way to Heaven." Then the fucker was drugged again and thrown back into his shitty studio apartment. When he awoke, Hassan appeared to him again, this time asking if the initiate was willing to obey him. They usually agreed, for obvious reasons.
From this point on, Hassan commanded their absolute fucking obedience, as they truly believed that he held the key to Heaven. His acolytes were so fanatically loyal that more than one account exists where Hassan ordered one of his men to take a swan dive off of the parapet of Alamut, and the dude responding by unhesitatingly fucking face-planting the asphalt from thirty stories up. And you pussies think bungee jumping is balls-out.
It would be a mistake to write the Hashashin off as a disorganized association of pothead stoner dropouts, however, and Alamut wasn't exactly a goddamned Cheech & Chong movie with blacklight posters everywhere and a fucking flaming car made out of hemp. These guys were elite warriors trained in all the badass ninja techniques required to wreak havoc on the most powerful men in the Middle East, and they were awesome at it. They studied martial arts, poison, disguise, infiltration, espionage and fucking hardcore knife-fighting, and could speak several languages fluently. When a death writ was issued for some poor bastard, the medieval hitman was given a specialized dagger to complete his mission. In true badass fashion, the Order of Assassins opted to do their dirty work up close and personal, preferably in public places in front of hundreds of people in order to maximize the shock value and intimidation factor.
The Fortress of Alamut
As the bloody, murderous arm of Hassan al-Sabbah, the Assassins went to work destroying the enemies of their Grandmaster, killing pretty much anybody he told them to. Now the Seljuk Turks and the Abbasid Caliphate, the two most powerful Muslim Empires during this time, were Sunni Muslims, and they quickly declared that the Shi'ite Hassan and his radical sect of lethal face-stabbing ninja assassins were heretics and infidels, etc. (you know how super-religious types can be), so Hassan responded by having the Sultan and the Vizier teabagged while they slept and/or stabbed to death in their own palaces. When the European Crusaders rolled into town acting like they fucking owned the place and swinging their nuts around by slaughtering everyone who didn’t believe in Jeebus, the Order of Assassins showed them what it felt like to wind up on the pointy end of a kitchen knife, Fatal Attraction-style. From the citadel at Alamut, the calculating mastermind Hassan al-Sabbah orchestrated a secretive web of lethal executioners fanatically devoted to his will, and eventually established splinter groups in Syria and Persia to continue his mission to kill everyone that ever pissed him off for any reason ever. The Hashashin soon became a major political faction, exerting their dominance over the world through fear and merciless eye-poking badassitude.
Under the direction of Hassan and his successors, the Assassins killed Sultans, Viziers, Caliphs, Patriarchs, and Counts, barely giving their victims enough time to yell, "Holy Shi'ite!" before getting a fucking shiv in the ribcage. The Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller was stabbed to death in a public square in front of dozens of horrified onlookers. The English King Edward Longshanks was wounded within an inch of his life by the blade of an Assassin outside the walls of Jerusalem, and even Saladin, the fucking badass Muslim hero of the Third Crusade and the man responsible for pushing the Europeans out of the Holy Land, had more than one close call with these mysterious killers. Nobody was safe, a point that became painfully obvious to those political leaders unlucky enough to wake up in the morning and find an Assassin’s dagger lying on his pillow with a note attached to it reading, "We fucking rule you, bitch."
Hassan's lethal and mysterious Order exerted its power across the Middle East, and continued its fearsome dominance long after the death of its founder and Grand Master. In fact, the fortress of Alamut was never captured by hostile forces – the Mongols surrounded it in 1256, but were unable to launch a successful assault on the mountain stronghold. The Hashashin held out for three fucking years, finally surrendering only once they had completely run out of provisions. The Mongol leader Hulagu Khan had them all executed for causing him so much damn trouble, and that, as they say, was the end of that.
Loktar
Internet God
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