12. Innovative Medieval Recruitment Tactics
Amid the breathtaking surroundings of Assassin pleasure gardens were breathtakingly beautiful women, there to seduce the recruit, cater to his physical desires, and satisfy his… lusty whims. They plied the youth with wine, kept him high on hash, and fed him delicacies that most recruits never knew existed let alone tasted. The temptresses would convince the besotted young man that he was in paradise, and that his seductresses were the houris promised those who made it into heaven. Then, after days in which he wallowed in delights and indulged in heavenly pleasures, the young man would be drugged senseless once more, and removed from the gardens.
He would awake to find himself back in his bare cell and austere surroundings, and informed that he had been in paradise, sent there by the grace of the Old Man of the Mountain, who held the keys to heaven. The recruit would then be told that he could return to paradise, provided that he died while killing the Sheikh’s enemies. It proved highly effective: suicide squads of horny young fanatics, high on hash and desperate to die while killing the cult’s enemies, descended from the Assassins’ mountain holdfasts to terrorize the Middle East.
