Asav

"You see, to rule a people you must first sow chaos. I will incite my civil war, stamp out the weak bloodline of the young king - starting with you!"

- Asav to Chloe Frazer "You think you've won? More will rise up! Like the young king, you have achieved nothing!"

- Asav's final words, before his death.

"Progress demands sacrifice."

- Asav's catchphrase

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.

Early Life
Asav's early life is unknown other than that he was a talented and successful man who was studying to becoming a doctor, which is mentioned multiple times by Chloe. However, being well read in the old kings of India, he decided that their way of ruling was better than the current one. He manipulated poor outcasts into joining him and thinking that the current government is weak and corrupt, and his agenda was started. He has formerly had a dealing with Nadine Ross, but it ended on bad terms, which is a reason to why she doesn't underestimate Asav since she knows what he is capable off.

Strangely enough, one of Asav's soldiers mention that Asav has a wife, but Asav himself is never shown having one. He doesn't even wear a ring.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
After many years of being unsuccessful with his goals of changing the "weak" Indian government, Asav decided to try getting the Tusk of Ganesh on his hands and later selling it in order to gain alot of money and buy a bomb, this bomb he would use to blow up a small village and start a civil war. He kidnaps Sam Drake who he forces to help him find it.

Chloe and Nadine have made a deal where they will meet in India in order to stop Asav from his plans. Chloe sneaks her way into where they are supposed to meet, silently killing Asav's men by attacking them from behind while they are unaware. At the time Chloe didn't know that Nadine was the one she was teaming with, so she was rather shocked seeing her again after the events of Uncharted 4. They are looking for an ancient artifact (disc) that is apparently able to locate the Tusk of Ganesh. They manage to get into his high-rise, where they see Asav's artifacts in which they observe before stealing the disc. Unfortunately, they aren't able to get away with it, and Asav finds them. To make things even worse, Asav has alot of his men with him, all of which are heavily armed and ready to kill Chloe and Nadine in a second. Asav is surprisingly polite to them until he learns that Nadine, someone who he has formerly worked with, is working with a thief. He is seemingly normal to Chloe at first, until he asks what she works with. When she says that she is a thief, he is utterly disgusted by her. He gets even angrier when he realizes that they are planning on stealing the disc. Chloe and Nadine try bargaining, but it doesn't work for Asav. He orders his men to kill them, not taking any sort of bargains. However, being highly experienced, both of them manage to escape from him pretty much untouched.

Asav is now obviously hunting Chloe and Nadine, wanting the disc back. While they are making their way to the aqueducts, Asav destroys the wall Chloe is climbing on, making both Nadine and Chloe fall down which they take advantage of. One of Asav's men beats Nadine down, while Asav gives a motive explanation to Chloe. Chloe laughs and sarcastically asks if that is what he tells his henchmen. He reloads his gun while explaining that during war, aqueducts would "run red" through the capital and that the people who wouldn't participate in the war were used to inspire those who did participate. Asav unexpectedly points the gun against Chloe, prepared to execute her. He needs to check first that Nadine isn't able to stop him, which gives Chloe time to knock the gun out of his hand and get the upper hand. Nadine was escaping as well, which distracted him. Chloe starts a fight with Asav, not expecting him to be very strong because of his age. This isn't the case, and Asav manages to nearly kill both of them. After knocking Nadine out, he grabs Chloe and starts strangling her sadistically. He also explains how he will succeed in his goals. Nadine wakes up and hits him from behind, which leads into Asav getting distracted once again. In order to be sure that they won't stop him, he quickly throws them through a brick wall into the aqueducts. Chloe falls down and faints for one hour and thirty minutes because of this.

Chloe and Nadine fall into a river, where Asav and his crew find them once again. They see that Asav has kidnapped Sam. Asav takes them to a puzzle room, where he forces Chloe into completing a puzzle depicting Ganesh being struck by Parashurama and losing his tusk. If she won't complete the puzzle, he'll kill both Nadine and Sam slowly, or as he puts it, "inch by inch" while she has to watch them die. Sam says that she shouldn't do it, since he'll just kill her anyway. She does it despite this. After completing the puzzle, the Parashurama statue lowers its axe at Chloe, but she manages to dodge it. Asav gets confused over this, wanting to kill Chloe. She explains that Ganesh let himself get killed by Parashurama, though he could have easily defended himself. Asav, instead of letting them die a quick death, handcuffs all of them while blowing up the chamber and letting them slowly drown and die. Chloe was apparently prepared and uses a key to escape. She does this on both Nadine and Sam, coming out alive once again.

After managing to find the Tusk of Ganesh, Asav does as planned; trading it with Shoreline in return of them detonating a bomb in a poor Indian city and starting a civil war in order to destroy the bloodline of the young king, letting the old king's rules come back. However, this doesn't go as planned. It was originally placed inside of a train, but Chloe and Nadine had redirected it to a broken bridge instead. Asav doesn't really care anymore and has gone completely insane. Instead of any real logical goals, Asav just wants to destroy at this point, with his most prominent goal being to kill Chloe and Nadine. Despite being totally insane at this point, Asav nearly manages to kill both of them. Even though they are two people, Asav quite obviously has the upper hand. Despite this, they together manage to push him under his own bomb, which severely hurts him and makes him unable to move. He falls down with the train, detonating along with him. While it's not shown, there is no chance Asav survived the fall, and he is without a doubt dead.

Personality
"‘’He’s just another warmonger with no war to fight’’ ‘’No you don’t know him like I do. The man’s as unpredictable as they come’’"

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

Asav looks like a respectable and trustful man, which is completely contrary to how his personality is. Asav is a complete sadist and warlord who will not hesitate to execute anyone who happens to be a possible threat to his goals. He would not even think one second over killing Nadine after learning that she was planning on stealing one of his artifacts despite having a former business deal with her, showing that he has no sort of compassion that he maybe used to have.

Asav is also an extreme hypocrite and uses absolutely idiotic logic to justify it. He states that, after making Chloe solve the puzzle and preparing to execute all three, that he doesn't want to shoot them since it would anger the gods. Instead, he blows up the entire temple in order to slowly drown them in the water so that they all die a slow and painful death. He also seems to have a mindset that everyone who isn't Indian is unintelligent garbage that doesn't deserve to live along with being quite the elitist who calls the town he is blowing up a "city of peasants". He is a strong jingoist for India, and sees everything he does as justice for the country, even when he is blowing up entire cities. When he says that he doesn't want to anger the gods before trying to kill Nadine Sam and Chloe, he almost sounds a bit sarcastic for some reason.

A strong believer that everything gets reincarnated after it dies, Asav didn't fear to die even if it risked his life. This raises the question how Asav saw murder as a whole, and if when he kills people he only sees it as a way of being able to get reincarnated and being able to think about the mistakes the person has done in its lifetime rather than just pure malevolence. This is kind of proven wrong during the scene where he prepares to drown Nadine Sam and Chloe and says that they get time to think about what they did in that life that leads them to their fates, but sounds way to sadistic in order to be well-intentioned at that point.

Despite always fighting back if someone starts fighting him, Asav is extremely sophisticated and soft-spoken. He never loses his temper directly and manages to keep a facade that should be able to convince most people. Because of this, Asav doesn't use his mouth to get control but uses his intimidating fighting skills to get power. However, it is shown that most of his men are poor outcasts that were manipulated into following Asav after telling them about the current "corrupt" and "weak" government and that he could help them.

Under this facade though, Asav is extremely arrogant. He constantly insults those who he dislikes, once calling Chloe and Nadine "a special breed of mongrel". Other than using fighting skills to intimidate people, he also uses insults to spread fear at times. Overall, Asav is nothing more than a man who tries to be a gentleman in order to make people into thinking that he is a decent guy that is easy to talk out of the way, but under the rug is an extreme sadist who will do anything to succeed his goals no matter how many people he will have to kill.

Abilities
Asav has alot of minions who are all quite good with guns, most of which he has trained himself, ready to obey Asav by any means whatsoever. While Asav is an older man who looks like he wouldn't be able to do much, he is extremely fit and is possibly one of the strongest characters in the entire franchise, almost being able to kill both Nadine and Chloe at the same time without the help of any minions. This has lead to alot of fans imagining a fight between Nathan Drake and Asav and how it would go since both Nathan and Sam Drake have previously teamed up to try to defeat Nadine and lost the battle.

Asav is not only a brute but is also extremely intelligent. He is easily able to convince and manipulate people into getting what he wants. Everything from manipulating his own men into joining him, to perfectly set up the civil war that was close to occurring, Asav was a dedicated mastermind who nearly succeeded with his goals. Along with this, Asav has vast amounts of wealth that he is able to spend on viable resources in order to make his goals even more likely to be successful. He is also greedy, as shown when he obtains the Tusk of Ganesh only to sell it to Shoreline in exchange for a bomb.

He is well-read in Hindu mythology, knowing the story about how Ganesh lost his tusk when Parashurama knocked it off. However, he doesn't seem to pay attention to the details of the story, since he was surprised when the Parashurama statue didn't fully manage to kill Chloe. He was even more surprised knowing that Ganesh let his tusk get knocked off as a way of honoring his father's legacy rather than Parashurama just defeating Ganesh. He also had a tough time locating the Tusk of Ganesh by using the disc artifact but had an easy time finding the Hoysala Empire.