Arbaaz Mir

Patience, brothers. Soon we will reveal the secrets of Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India. This article has been identified as being out of date. Please update the article to reflect recent releases and then remove this template once done.

"Trust is a dangerous trait, Hamid."

―Arbaaz Mir to his Mentor, 1839.

Arbaaz Mir was a Kashmiri member of the Indian Brotherhood of Assassins based in Amritsar during the 19th century. After being rescued by the Brotherhood's Mentor, Hamid, during a meeting gone wrong, Arbaaz joined the Assassins to repay his debt and put his skills as a thief to good use, eventually rising to the rank of Master Assassin.

In 1839, Arbaaz became entangled in a conflict with the British Templars over the Koh-i-Noor, a Piece of Eden of immense power. After the Templars eliminated Maharaja Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh Empire, Arbaaz brought the artifact into Assassin possession. In 1841, the artifact was stolen by the Templars, who used it in conjunction with a Precursor box to reveal the locations of several Temples. Arbaaz again battled the Templars for possession of the Koh-i-Noor and managed to secure the artifact, although he lost the box to the Templars. He later gave the Koh-i-Noor to his friend, the British Assassin Ethan Frye, in order to hide it.

He was married to Princess Pyara Kaur, daughter of Maharaja Kharak Singh, with whom he had a son, Jayadeep Mir. Arbaaz entrusted Ethan with his son's training, although their relationship later became strained when Jayadeep was exiled to London. He is an ancestor of the Indian actress Monima Das.

Biography

Early life

"Your people in Kashmir suffered a great tragedy, my friend. But those days have long passed and Singh's strength is all that stands between India and the growing British power."

―Hamid to Arbaaz, about Singh's actions, 1839.

Arbaaz Mir was born in Kashmir in northwestern India during the early 19th century to a Muslim family. His home region was conquered by Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire in 1819, leading to the death of numerous Muslims in Kashmir, including Arbaaz's family. This led Arbaaz to grow up with a resentment towards Singh, considering him a cold-blooded killer.

By this time Arbaaz had become a thief. At some point, hewas involved in a meeting gone wrong, and was rescued by Hamid, the Mentor of the Indian Assassin Brotherhood. Indebted to the man, Arbaaz became an Assassin.

Search for the Koh-i-Noor

Hamid: "Arbaaz. Take care. The diamond... The transcription reads: 'He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity."

Arbaaz: "I don't believe in curses."

—Hamid and Arbaaz, before the latter's departure, 1839.

Arbaaz and Hamid with the map

In 1839, Hamid tasked Arbaaz with the recovery of a map detailing Isu artifacts, most notably the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a powerful Piece of Eden. Upon his safe return to the Assassin headquarters in Amritsar, Hamid informed Arbaaz of the legend surrounding the Koh-i-Noor, and that the British Templars were attempting to obtain the artifact. The Koh-i-Noor had been in the possession of Ranjit Singh since 1830, who kept it safe from the hands of his enemies, but was nearing the end of his life.

As Singh's heirs were not as interested in the diamond as their father, the British Templars aimed to take Singh's life. Hamid tasked Arbaaz with ensuring the Maharaja's protection, an objective he reluctantly agreed to, but only for the sake of the Brotherhood. Before leaving, Arbaaz bought Hamid's slave Raza Soora from him, noticing the abuse the boy was subjected to under Hamid.

Arbaaz instead intended to find the Koh-i-Noor himself ahead of the Templars. Taking up the disguise of an emissary from Kashmir and his servant, Arbaaz and Raza entered Ranjit Singh's summer palace, where the Maharaja held a feast. Believing the Koh-i-Noor to be kept in a hidden chamber underneath the palace, Arbaaz told Raza to look out for Singh's treasure keeper, Bustee Ram.

Arbaaz meeting Macnaghten and Cotton

After being allowed to join the feast, Arbaaz was greeted by William Hay Macnaghten, assistant to the British Governor-General of India Lord Auckland, and General Francis Cotton. Arbaaz recognized the Templar insignia on Cotton's chest, though Cotton also identified Arbaaz as an Assassin by his movements. After Macnaghten left, Arbaaz assured Cotton that they were not enemies this time, telling the Templar that he had his own reasons for Singh's death, though "it wouldn't be the first time [he had] to clean up after [their] kind".

Soon after, Arbaaz's attention was caught by Princess Pyara Kaur, Ranjit Singh's granddaughter. Upon noticing Singh handing Bustee a diamond, Arbaaz told Raza to follow him and that he would find him later, deciding instead to follow Pyara. Arbaaz then tracked her to the palace courtyard, handing her a oleander blossom that he had swiped from the palace's dining room. As a result of the conversation that stemmed from the gesture, the two later shared a moment of intimacy.

Arbaaz and Raza in the hidden chambers

Afterwards, Arbaaz found Raza and followed him into the Tosha Khana, a series of secret chambers beneath the palace that were hidden by water-based door mechanism. Exploring the caverns filled with statues of Hindu gods, Arbaaz found a chest containing the diamond, but quickly dismissed it as a worthless replica. Upon further exploration, they stumbled upon illusionary walls and other unique statues of Hindu Gods.

There, Raza found the real Koh-i-Noor in a pool of water contained within the hands of the statue of Durga; unbeknownst to them, their progress had been tracked by Cotton. Upon their return to ground level, Arbaaz was arrested by Singh's men, who had been alerted by Cotton and Macnaghten. It was at this point that Arbaaz hid the real Koh-i-Noor under Raza's turban, enabling the latter to escape with the artifact, while Singh's men took the replica.

Conflict with Cotton

Singh's men placed Arbaaz in a cell, though some time later, Pyara Kaur and Raza Soora came to see him. It was during this meeting that Pyara released him from his imprisonment, after Arbaaz told her his task of ensuring her grandfather's safety. To Arbaaz's surprise and disapproval, Raza had given the Koh-i-Noor to Pyara, thwarting his plan to escape with the artifact and leave the Maharaja to fend for himself. After Pyara informed Arbaaz that Singh was drinking tea with the British, Arbaaz and Raza hurried to the imperial palace, the former begrudgingly so.

Arbaaz and Singh facing Cotton

Scaling the structure, Arbaaz eliminated the patrolling guards as Raza stayed close behind, at one point turning back to prevent Raza from falling to his death. The two then separated, with Arbaaz infiltrating the palace's interior by leaping into the main hall from above, knocking Macnaghten over upon his landing and attacking Cotton with a chakram.

Following this, Arbaaz roughly slapped the tea cup from Singh's hands, perceiving that it was poisoned; despite this, Cotton informed Arbaaz that he was too late to prevent the Maharaja's demise. Responding in his weakened state, Singh took out his sword to attack Cotton, calling the Templar a "coward" and "deceiver", while further going on to state that India would not fall to his Order. Cotton instead called the guards, yelling that the Maharaja was under attack by an assassin—Arbaaz.

Arbaaz fled the hall, followed by Cotton and Singh's men as he made his way to the courtyard. There, while Arbaaz was fighting imperial guards, Cotton tried to kill Pyara and take the Koh-i-Noor, but was halted by Raza, who dug his fingernails into the Templar's forehead. As Cotton turned on Raza, Pyara activated the Koh-i-Noor, which took up the appearance of Durga.

Arbaaz and Raza emerging from the water

Cotton instead attacked the entity, firing at it with his pistol and accidentally destroyed the Koh-i-Noor. Seeing the entity become enraged, Arbaaz took Raza and dove into a water pond before the entity released a burst of energy across the area, killing Cotton and all the remaining guards. After the explosion, the Koh-i-Noor miraculously reconstructed itself and Arbaaz finally managed to hand it to Hamid.

Pursuing William Sleeman

In 1841, while returning to duty after visiting Pyara at the summer palace, Arbaaz noticed that the Master Templar William Sleeman lead the East India Company after Cotton's death, and under his command, the Company had brutally kidnapped Hamid and stolen the Koh-i-Noor. Arbaaz followed Hamid's blood trail to a high ranking member of the Company, and after fiercely interrogating him, he discovered that Hamid was at the Templars' headquarters outside Amritsar. Arbaaz also managed to retrieve some information about the Templars' plans while following the blood trail.

Arbaaz with a rescued Hamid

Arbaaz infiltrated the Templars' headquarters, where he eliminated some high-ranking Templar guards and rescued Hamid by disguising himself as a civilian. Once safe, Hamid told Arbaaz that Sleeman and his right hand, Alexander Burnes, planned to unravel the Koh-i-Noor's secrets with the help of a Precursor box. With this information, Hamid assigned Arbaaz the task of retrieving both the Koh-i-Noor and the box from the Templars, and sent him to the Templars' outpost: a palace which Hamid suspected housed a Precursor site underneath.

Arbaaz followed Sleeman to the palace, where the latter ordered his men to guard the entrance, knowing the Assassins could not be too far behind. After retrieving the handle to the palace's doors from the guards, Arbaaz made his way inside just as the Templars became aware of his presence and opened fire using Puckle guns.

Arbaaz escaping from the collapsing Precursor temple

Arbaaz found himself back in the Tosha Khana amid its many Precursor structures and followed Sleeman and his men closely behind as they made their way to the temple's centre. He discovered the temple contained many ancient defense mechanisms, with several of Sleeman's guards falling victim to them, but the Assassin was able to navigate through them and confronted Sleeman, just as the latter used the Koh-i-Noor to activate a map highlighting various locations across the globe. Arbaaz demanded that Sleeman hand over the artifact, lying that he was accompanied by hundreds of Assassins awaiting to strike, but the Templar responded by firing his gun at Arbaaz, who dodged the shot and let it hit a Precursor structure instead. However, this triggered a chain reaction that caused the entire temple to collapse, but Arbaaz managed to escape to safety and was reunited with Hamid.

After Arbaaz told his Mentor about the map and that one of the locations shown was in Afghanistan, Hamid revealed that he had followed Burnes and discovered the Templars were organizing an expedition there. Deducing the Templars were after a Precursor temple in Afghanistan, Arbaaz traveled there to stop them.

War in Afghanistan

Arbaaz being captured by the Templars

Arbaaz arrived in Herat, Afghanistan, where he infiltrated the citadel in the centre of the city. The fortress was being besieged by Afghan forces, trying to reclaim the citadel after it had been occupied by British soldiers, and Arbaaz took advantage of the ongoing battle to make his way through the fortress undetected, finding five hidden messages along the way which had been written by the ancient Babylonian Assassin Iltani. Reaching the entrance of the fortress, Arbaaz opened the gates to facilitate the Afghans' assault and create a distraction whilst he followed Sleeman and his guards into the Precursor temple underneath the citadel. The Assassin managed to beat the Templars to the centre of the temple, finding a pedestal, but was forced to surrender when Sleeman's men surrounded him and held him at gunpoint.

Knocked out and taken captive by the Templars, Arbaaz was left in the care of Burnes, along with the Koh-i-Noor and the Precursor box, in Punjab, Pakistan, as Sleeman had been called to deal with the Afghan uprising. Awakening near the Katasraj Temple, Arbaaz was greeted by Burnes, who revealed that the Templars knew everything about the Assassin, including his relationship with Pyara, and that Sleeman would deal with him upon his return. After Burnes left, Arbaaz escaped his binds using a knife he had stolen from him and sneaked past the guards to reach his equipment, freeing some captive pilgrims along the way. Upon retrieving his weapons and tools, Arbaaz used a rifle to eliminate several guards from a distance and facilitate his escape, although this alerted the Templars to his presence.

Arbaaz standing over a defeated Burnes

The Assassin managed to avoid the Templars' efforts to kill him, including several rampant elephants, and reached a courtyard where Burnes and several of his men stood. Burnes challenged Arbaaz to a duel which the latter proceeded to win, although he spared his opponent's life. This earned him Burnes' respect and he ordered his men to stand down and allow the Assassin to leave with the artifacts he had come to retrieve.

Saving Pyara

Arbaaz returned to Amritsar and met with Hamid to inform him of his mission's success. However, the latter revealed that Sleeman and the Templars had taken over the Maharaja's summer palace and were holding Pyara hostage to exchange her for the lost artifacts. Despite knowing it to be a trap, Arbaaz made his way to the palace while avoiding the Templar guards ordered to kill him.

Arbaaz and Pyara escaping from Sleeman

Confronting Sleeman in the palace's main chamber, he demanded that the Assassin hand over the Koh-i-Noor and the Precursor box while threatening Pyara's life. After Arbaaz made his way across the room discreetly to avoid endangering Pyara, Sleeman summoned his last remaining guards to deal with the Assassin, who quickly dispatched them. The Templar then held Pyara at knifepoint in a desperate last effort to obtain the artifacts. As Arbaaz did as he was told and tossed the Koh-i-Noor and the box into the air, Pyara used her own concealed blade to stab Sleeman in his side, forcing him to let her go. Arbaaz and Pyara then escaped to safety, where the former revealed that he had managed to retreive the Koh-i-Noor in the confusion, but the box was in Templar hands once again.

Arbaaz giving the Koh-i-Noor to Ethan

Not long after, Arbaaz, aware of the danger the Koh-i-Noor posed if it fell into the wrong hands again, met with his friend Ethan Frye of the British Brotherhood and gave him the artifact for safekeeping. Ethan proceeded to hide it somewhere in India, where it would remain until the end of the century.

Jayadeep's exile

Arbaaz and Pyara eventually married and, in 1843, had a son, Jayadeep Mir. When Jayadeep was four years old, Arbaaz begain to train him as an Assassin and recognized that his son was exceptionally talented. Envisioning Jayadeep as a great warrior and wanting to ensure that the boy's abilities were not hindered by familial ties, Arbaaz wrote to Ethan Frye to continue the training. However, in the years that Ethan prepared Jayadeep for missions in the field, he realized that for all of his potential for greatness, Jayadeep could never be the warrior Arbaaz wanted him to be. Arbaaz was angry when Ethan informed him that Jayadeep lacked the killer's instinct required for assassination but nevertheless delayed Jayadeep's blooding to mold his son into the warrior that he believed was the making of a great Assassin.

Eventually, the time came for Jayadeep's first assignment: the assassination of an Indian Templar named Tjinder Dani who was planning to establish a Templar outpost in Amritsar. Arbaaz joined his son to provide the horses for their getaway but Ethan's estimation of Jayadeep proved to be correct. Jayadeep hesitated before he could deliver a killing blow to Dani and the subsequent fight between the Templar and the Assassin spilled out onto the street forcing Arbaaz to make the kill himself. Jayadeep's failure risked exposing the Brotherhood itself and for that the Assassins were to have him executed.

Although reluctant, Arbaaz's loyalty to the Creed was such that he was willing to see his son die, much to Pyara's distress. However, Ethan returned to India with a proposition that would save Jayadeep's life as well as Arbaaz's marriage. It was agreed that Jayadeep would be sent into exile in London to work undercover for the British Assassins whose presence in the capital had been severely reduced since the deaths of Edward Kenway and Miko a century earlier. Arbaaz decided that Jayadeep would, for all intents and purposes, become a ghost to best aid him in his secret new role and thanked Ethan Frye with an embrace.

When the Indian Assassins Ajay and Kulpreet, Jayadeep's former jailers, were attacked by Templar agents, Arbaaz wrote to Ethan to warn him that Jayadeep's mission may have been compromised. However, the message was intercepted by the Templars and Arbaaz's request that Ethan look after his son ultimately became further evidence confirming the London-based Templar Cavanagh's growing suspicions that a man in his employ, Bharat Singh, was an undercover Jayadeep.

Jayadeep survived Cavanagh unravelling the truth but fell into a deep depression when it got his friend Maggie and others under his protection killed. Though Arbaaz and Pyara visited him a year later to help him recover, the relationship between father and son was soured as Jayadeep was uncertain of the role that Arbaaz had played in the arrest and death sentence that had led to his banishment.

Legacy

Arbaaz eventually became the ancestor of a popular actress active at the beginning of the 21st century, Monima Das. In 2013, Monima's fiancé Jot Soora became a target of the Templars and the Assassins when they mistakenly believed his DNA was the key to the lost knowledge of the Koh-i-Noor's location. After the Assassin siblings Siobhan and Jasdip Dhami abducted Jot to an abandoned flat, they hooked him up to the Abstergo Industries prototype headset Brahman V.R. to relive Arbaaz's genetic memories and find the diamond.

However, when Jot failed to synchronize with Arbaaz's memories, the Dhamis soon realized Jot's background claim was built off a lie meant to impress Monima and cover his insecurities over being a descendant of Arbaaz's servant Raza. Before they could discuss their next steps, Templar agents stormed the place, having traced the headset's cloud signal. Siobhan was killed in the resulting shootout, though Jasdip managed to eliminate the Templars and escape with Jot into the slums before making his way to a safehouse to report on the mission's failure since the genetic trail was a false lead.

Behind the scenes

Arbaaz Mir is a fictional character first introduced in the 2014 comic Assassin's Creed: Brahman. His first and only on-screen appearance is in the 2016 spin-off video game Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India, where he is voiced by the British actor Johnny Neal.

Arbaaz in Urdu means 'eagle' while Mir is a Kashmiri clan or tribe between present day India and Pakistan. Mir is also a loanword from the Arabic emir, amir, and thus has the meaning of 'leader, commander, prince' in aforementioned places. Indian naming customs vary from region to region in the country. In Kashmir, names often follow the format of a personal name (Arbaaz), an optional middle name, and a family name (Mir).

Arbaaz was the only known Assassin to wield a Hidden Blade which could divide itself into three blades.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Brahman (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Underworld
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Collection

References

An image gallery is available for Arbaaz Mir