Hassan of the Cursed Arm

ID40
Rarity★★
ClassAssassin
True NameHassan-i-Sabbah
GenderMale
SourceMiddle East · Old Man of the Mountain
RegionMiddle East
AlignmentLawful Evil
Height215cm
Weight62kg
StrengthB
EnduranceC
AgilityA
MagicC
LuckE
Noble PhantasmC
Character SettingNasu Kinoko
IllustratorTask Ohna
Original Character DesignTakeuchi Takashi
Character VoiceInada Tetsu
Major AppearancesFate/stay night

Class Skills #

Presence Concealment: A+

Suppresses one’s presence as a Servant. Suitable for covert action.
By perfectly suppressing his presence, detection is next to impossible.
However, as he moves in preparations to attack, the rank of this skill drops considerably.

Personal Skills #

Throwing (Dirk): B

The ability to fire dirks as bullets. These daggers are not for close combat use, and instead utilized for speculation.

Self-Modification: C

The aptitude to attach and fuse completely different flesh to one’s own body. The higher the ranking of this Skill, the further away one is from being a proper hero.
This Hassan is able to obtain his “Zabaniya” as a result of Self-Modification.

Protection from Winds: A

A charm1 that wards off wind, handed down to the people of the mountain.
An indispensable article for when travelling through the desert.

Translator’s Notes
  1. ^ While the kanji is 呪い, which usually means curse, looking at CM3, the intended reading is まじない, which specifically means spell/charm/incantation/magic formula

Noble Phantasms #

Zabaniya: Delusional Heartbeat

RankC
TypeAnti-Unit Noble Phantasm
Range3~9
Maximum Number of Targets1 person

Zabaniya.
The cursed arm. The arm of the demonic spirit1 Shaytan, it excels in killing humans through curse.
By making use of ether clumps, it fabricates from the reflection of the mirrored assassination target a double existence which interacts with the original. By crushing the fabrication, which resonated with the original, it curses to death the assassination target without even laying a single finger on the original.
It is an assassination technique which invalidates powerful physical defenses and crushes the heart. No matter how powerful an armor it is, it holds no meaning against the Delusional Heartbeat.
Opposing the Delusional Heartbeat requires not high level of CON but instead MGI and the ability to prevent the double existence from being created.

Translator’s Notes
  1. ^ 精霊. Same kanji used for elementals.

Character #

First-person pronounwatashi
Second-person pronounanata / kisama / 〇〇 (without honorifics)
Third-person pronounanatagata / kisamara / 〇〇 (without honorifics)

Personality

The assassin of white skull clad in black robe.
His face under the skull mask have been shaved off; from the beginning, there’s nothing there that one could call a face.
He succeeded the name of “Hassan-i Sabbah”, and everything of his personal until that point was thrown away.
For him, assassination is at the core of it a duty and a job; there is no grief or pleasure in it, and it is by no mean a heresy.
Due to that, if one’s interest coincides with that of Hassan, who operates while separating his free will from the duty of assassination, then it is possible to establish a cooperative relationship with him.
For instances, within a labyrinth created by a magus, Hassan who is in possession of high physical ability, proficiency in handling traps, and slipping in shadows while concealing himself with no sound behind the prey would most likely be an exceedingly heartening ally.
To add, his cylindrical, atypical appearance of his arm is due to obtaining the “cursed arm” of Middle Eastern magic which specializes in cursing human, acquired as the result of Self-Modification.
The arm of Shaytan which is a thing of no human is spiritually assimilated with his own arm, a physical act of incarnation. It is not easy to imagine how much pain and tenacity exist in such an act.

Motivation · Attitude towards Master

Although speaking in human terms he cannot be said to be a virtuous person, he is devoted to the command of his lord.
He would not betray those he had approved of as a lord, no matter how low said lord falls; his personality is that of a professional who would stay silent even in the face of a considerably unreasonable order.
He had lost both his face and his true name, and regretted reducing himself to an individual known as “Hassan-i Sabbah”; his wish upon the Holy Grail is to regain his face and to be remembered in history as his own person.
Due to that, there is a high probability of him being summoned by a magus who holds a longing towards the eternity of “perpetual youth and longevity”.

Dialogue Examples

“************!”
When jumping towards the “Barrier of the Wind King” during the battle against Saber, there was a plan to insert a line where he extols of their God, but it had to be censored because of adult circumstances. In the PS2 version, only the voice is added.

“This is nothing to be admired at, but in a fashion this too is a “Holy Grail War”; surely you will not call it a cowardice, yes?”

“Scary, scary. Now then, I suppose I shall do my best to not drowns in my own scheme. Painful as this is, this, too, is fate. Now then, I shall have you present that head of yours.”

“AH! The young master has been done in!? ...Mm! I suppose the young master, who put his everything to it, is the one at fault; but here, I shall lend him my assistance!”1

Historical Image · Character Image

The leader of an religious assassination group, possessing its origin from the Middle Eastern.
With the pseudonym of “Old Man of the Mountain”, he is one of the legendary chiefs of the religious assassination organization, the Nizari faction, which became the root of the word “assassin” through granting the drugs known as hashish to the extremities of mankind and training assassins.
There are 19 individuals considered to be the successive generations of Old Man of the Mountain, each of them inheriting the name of the founder “Hassan-i Sabbah”.
All of the Hassan-i Sabbah are masters who had cultivated a special technique, and they are also given the alias of “Hassan of XX”2 in accordance to each of their secret technique.
In addition, the founder Hassan-i Sabbah is a figure of 11th~12th century, leading his sect personally while positioning himself in the Fortress of Alamut of Midwest Iran.
In FGO, the origin of the religious organization of Assassins is the same, but their actions afterwards differ from historical fact.

Role within the Game

Until the fifth chapter, he does not actively stand out in the main scenario.
During his interlude, under the Master, who is the very definition of virtuous person, he joyfully hunted down the Roman thieves who had tried to kidnap children and train them as errands. He disparaged them, saying that “rearing anyone as assassins without even measuring whether or not they have the talent for it is beyond foolishness”, and exhibited the pride of a professional assassin.
Incidentally, by means of his continuous, personal effort of self-policing, the crime rate in Rome rapidly decreased afterwards.
Upon hearing that, Dr. Roman commented “Is he…… actually a good guy?”

Role in Past Works

Originally, in the Holy Grail War of Fuyuki, the summoned Assassin class should have been any one of the successive generations of Hassan-i Sabbah.
In Fate/stay night, due to Caster distorting the system of the Holy Grail War, an unrelated different individual was summoned as Assassin instead, but in one route the Hassan of Cursed Arm who should’ve been the one to be summoned made his appearance as Assassin.
In the short novel of Fate/Labyrinth, he was summoned by means of a subspecies Holy Grail established by someone in the depths of Caubac Alcatraz’s seventh labyrinth. However, he offered the proposal of joint struggle to the other Servants who must take control of the state of affair, and contributed in establishing a temporary party consisting of 1 magus and 4 Servants.

Connections with Characters

Hassan of Hundred Faces

“The most skilled yet misfortune Hassan, that one is. It does seem that there is another tremendously talented Hassan candidate on the same period as her, but… now then, I wonder what had happened then?”

Hassan of Serenity

“The purest yet most dangerous Hassan, that one is. A flower that none are able to touch, and thus pure even until the end; I had heard of her as such, but…. That a gentle young woman would know not of the warmth of others even until her death is truly cruel indeed…”

‘Old Man of the Mountain’

“Giving a comment would be beyond what I deserve, truly!”

Gilgamesh

“None should ever serve such a man.”

Translator’s Notes
  1. ^ The young master is referring to Shinji. They dont meet in FSN but in derivative works Hassan calls Shinji that. Also three out of four of this lines are from Tiger Colosseum (I think?), what gives lol.
  2. ^ Two kanji letters.

Comment from Illustrator #

I thought that I shouldn’t be changing him too differently from the hanafuda version, so anyway I have memories of being worried with his facial expression change that uses his mask. His last ascension makes important of the Justice Hassan component within him. I’m glad that despite being only 2 star Servant in the game he is a character you can definitely use. I don’t even know how many he had saved my behind. He’s the main force in mine Chaldea. (Task Ohna)