Apsarini Rajawali

Name: Apsarini Rajawali
Born: April 10, 1867; Batavia, Java
Died: August 26, 1950; Jakarta, Indonesia (age 83)
Allegiance: Assassins

Bio: Apsarini was born in the middle of a dirty Batavia slum to two Assassin parents who were descended from Arab immigrants.  She never got a chance to know these parents, however, as they were brutally murdered by Templars when she was barely a year old.  She was left to be raised by her older brother, Jaga, who grew quite overprotective after the loss of their parents.  Apsarini grew up watching the politics of her homeland get bent and warped with Dutch intervention, and always swore to free the islands from their colonial regime.  Her fellow Assassins were not as eager as she was however, because they were still desperately trying to recover from the purge led by the Templars after the VOC was dissolved in 1800 and the Dutch East Indies was formed in 1816.  Many of the Indonesian Assassins were paranoid of stepping out of the shadows, including Apsarini’s brother, and it often led to some serious arguments between her and the Brotherhood.

In 1873, war had broken out between the Dutch colonists and the Aceh people, of whom the Assassin Mentor, Teuku Ibrahim Lamnga, was a member.  The Mentor saw this war as a chance to fight back against the Templars at last, his army gaining support from Italy and the United Kingdom.  He was killed in action on June 29, 1878, leaving the Assassins in a scramble and their influence on the war ripped away.  Lamnga’s wife, an Acehnese noble named Cut Nyak Dhien, took on the role of Mentor in his place.  She was never fond of Apsarini and her antsy attitude, and it only got worse when the grief over her husband drove Cut into the same secluded paranoia as the rest of her Brotherhood by the time of the war's ceasefire on October 13, 1880.  The Mentor tolerated Apsarini for Jaga’s sake, however.

Apsarini spent her teenage and adult years trying to eliminate as much Dutch influence on in Indonesia as possible.  Her journey included fighting the Aceh War when it began again in 1883, and it even took her to the Netherlands itself on one occasion.  However, her fight included many hardships that led her to losing friends and acquiring a taste for alcohol.  Her life never got easy, and it led to her getting chronic depression throughout her life.  She never held down a family (her only child was given up for adoption because she knew she wouldn't be able to raise it well) but she did form a loving relationship with an Japanese Assassin named Hayami Yamamoto in the late 1890s.

In her old age, she had learned to find her inner calm a bit more.  She had to, given the traumatic political atmosphere that sprung up in the 1940s.  She led the Assassin cause during the Japanese occupation of the islands during World War II, and did her best to keep the country safe during the following War for Independence.  She died soon after the Revolution ended in success, hoping that her country would be left to something better than what she left behind, hoping the Templars that she so vehemently opposed would not step right back in and ruin her islands once again.