After her Embrace, Shabah was abandoned by her sire in the North African mountains, testing if she had the potential he had seen in her. After failing to contact her family (who believed her to be an evil ghost), she eventually pursued him and was brought to Alamut for formal recognition. By that time, her knowledge of the West and the disguise provided by her gender (others believing all Assamites to be male), have made her quite a proficient assassin, to an extent she even killed Emperor John II Komnenus in 1143, oblivious to the fact that he was one of Belisarius' protegés.