Asav

"A Hoysala poet once wrote of a young king who showed mercy and thus ended our rituals. But the old kings, they understood that progress demands... sacrifice"

- Asav to Chloe Frazer

Asav is the main antagonist of the 2017 action-adventure game, ''Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. ''An insurgent leader, Asav hates the bloodline of the new kings that is rampant in his country, therefore he desires to spark a civil war that will wipe out and return India to the way of the old kings with the Tusk of Ganesh.

He was portrayed by Usman Ally.

Background
Little is known about Asav's background other than that he was training to be a doctor before he became a rebel. He is well read in Hoysala culture and the old kings of India. One of his soldiers says Asav is married but he wears no rings and doesn't mention a wife at all.

Asav had a business dealing with Nadine Ross and though it is never specified, based on his interactions with her in The Lost Legacy it was presumably a romantic one, though it ended badly.

After months of unsuccessfully fighting the Indian government, Asav began hunting for the Tusk of Ganesh to sell on the black market. He kidnapped Sam Drake to help him with this and his partner, Chloe Frazer called Nadine to help locate the Tusk.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Chloe and Nadine enter the active war zone to steal an artifiact that is the secret to locating the Tusk of Ganesh inside Asav's main base.

The two break into his high-rise and observe his stolen artefacts and even ivory trade before breaking into his safe and stealing the disc. However, Asav returns to the top floor with many armed man and is surprised by Nadine but nonetheless warmly greets her, though he slightly mocks her for losing Shorelines and working with a theif like Frazer. Unknown to him, Chloe had stolen the disc and after an unsuccessful attempt to bargain their way out, Asav orders them executed but the two escape using the roofs and river.

Asav litters the Western Ghats with his men and Ross and Frazer notice him entering his convoy.

Whilst making their way to the aqueducts, Asav has his men posted outside and hunts Chloe and Nadine in a machine-gun mounted vehicle. Though it seems they escape it's sight, Asav rams through the wall they were climbing and fazes the two of them which gives him the opportunity to steal the disc back. He explains his goals whilst referencing the old kings and prepares to execute Chloe but Nadine escaping distracts him and a fight ensues. To Frazer's surprise, the older Asav is a fearsome opponent and she cannot gain the upper hand until Ross sneaks up from behind but Asav still throws them through a brick wall and into the aqueducts.

After Chloe and Nadine fall into the river, Asav ambushes and captures them along with Sam. They enter a puzzle room that depicts Ganesh being struck by Parashurama and losing his Tusk. He forces Chloe to solve the puzzle with Sam and Nadine's life on the line and it reveals the Tusk of Ganesh. Smug on his victory, Asav readies the chamber to detonate and drown the three though this gives them the opportunity to escape.

Asav has sold the Tusk to Shoreline in return for a bomb that will be detonated in the heart of an Indian city and spark a civil war to erase the bloodline of the new king. He boards the bomb in a train but Chloe and Nadine have already re-directed it to a broken bridge. By now Asav has lost his mind and violently fights Frazer and Ross unconcerned that they are about to die. With some struggle the two pin down Asav under the same bomb he was planning to destroy the city, the train falls off the bridge causing the bomb to detonate and kills Asav, ending his rebellion.

Personality
""Handsome" "If you're into psychopaths" "Nobody's perfect""

- Chloe Frazer's first reaction to Asav with Nadine Ross

Asav, despite his outward soft-spoken appearance, is a ruthless warlord obsessed with the cleansing of the Indian bloodline which he perceives as weak due to the young king showing mercy to his enemies and ending the rituals of the old king - the bloodline of Asav's people.

Regardless of his own immoral line of work, Asav holds Chloe Frazer with disdain due to her being both a thief and foreigner to India. At the same time, however, Asav showed some form of respect for Chloe due to her courage, knowledge of his people's culture, and her success in locating the Tusk of Ganesh. Ultimately despite his claims of preserving his people's legacy, Asav has almost no care for his culture's artefacts or history. He has robbed artefacts from their homeland, destroyed ancient Indian archeology (that even Chloe or Nadine would not do) and his selling the Tusk of Ganesh for a bomb proves Ross' claim that Asav wanting to preserve his culture' heritage was false and he is only a war profiteer concerned with his own interests.

Asav himself did not fear death because he was a strong believer in the Hindu ideology that nothing truly dies but is purified and reborn. This could encourage his thinking to topple the Indian government as he would make it more beautiful than it is through the deaths of the innocent (or in his mind a "city of peasants") and also why he showed almost no concern that he was about to die with his bomb and instead focused fully on attacking Chloe and Nadine, though by this point Asav had completely lost his mind. He often claims he will meet Chloe in the next life throughout The Lost Legacy and his game-over sequences.

Asav revels in violence while also trying to portray himself as civilized and fair, but he can never strike the perfect balance, which in turn makes him come across as very unpredictable. He's also intimidating in the way he looms over Nadine and Chloe, physically taking up space in an attempt to rattle them.

Abilities
Despite his studious and rather aged appearance, Asav was a fearsome military fighter. Not only was he fast and strong with his attacks, he was cunning as Nadine implied that he did not actually require glasses but simply wore them so people would underestimate his prowess and make himself look smarter. Asav trained most of his men himself and could fight off Nadine Ross one-on-one by himself, a feat Nathan and Sam Drake combined could not do and even an army of his own soldiers.

Asav is well-read in the literature of Hoysala society and Hindu mythology such as the battle in which Ganesh lost his Tusk and locating the lost Hoysala empire relatively by himself. However, he had difficulty solving the disc that would lead to the Tusk of Ganesh and was surprised that Ganesh allowed himself to be struck by Parashurama's axe to preserve his father's legacy. Asav is charismatic and rallies multiple soldiers to his cause, which Nadine claims he "finds men that are weak and gives them purpose" which shows he is manipulative.