Precursor box

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A Precursor box, also known as an Isu Data Cache, is a type of device created by the Isu capable of interacting with other Pieces of Eden to accomplish a variety of functions, though it principally stores vast contents of knowledge on any single given subject.

Normally powered by the Piece of Eden it is paired with, in the absence of such a device, electricity can be used in its place. However, the amount of electricity required is on the magnitude of a lightning strike and can damage the box. One such box was indeed powered in this way, and when activated, it was able to decipher the Isu script written in the Voynich manuscript and display a holographic map marking the locations of several Seismic Temple. Using the Koh-i-Noor to power the same box, the Templars used the artifact to translate the writings in the Tosha Khana vault beneath Amritsar and locate other Isu Temples.

When reacting to a fragmented Piece of Eden, the boxes were also shown to have the ability to imprint the genetic memories of someone into another individual, like in 1918 when Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna ended up with the Chinese Assassin Shao Jun's memories.

Owners

• Ezio Auditore da Firenze (until 1524)
• Shao Jun (1524 – 1526)
• Gao Feng (1526)
• Gu Dayong (1526)
• Shao Jun (1526)
• Wang Yangming (1526 – January 1529)
• Zhang Yong (January 1529 – c. 1532)
• Templars (c. 1532 – 1552)
  • Francis Xavier (until 1552)
  • João Machado (1552)
• Chinese Assassins (1552 – 17th century)
• Templar Admiral (1735)
• Adéwalé (1735 – July 1737)
• Bastienne Josèphe (July 1737 – ?)
• François Mackandal (until November 1751)
• Lawrence Washington (November 1751 – July 1752)
• Samuel Smith (July 1752 – May 1754)
• Shay Cormac (May 1754 – July 1754)
• Benjamin Franklin (July 1754)
• Colonial Assassins (July 1754 – 1760)
  • Hope Jensen (October 1759)
  • Liam O'Brien (October 1759)
  • Louis-Joseph Gaultier, Chevalier de la Vérendrye (October 1759 – 1760)
• French Assassins (until 1776)
  • Charles Dorian (27 December 1776)
• Shay Cormac (27 December 1776 – ?)
• Francis Cotton (until 1839)
• William Sleeman (1839 – 1841)
• Alexander Burnes (1841)
• Arbaaz Mir (1841)
• William Sleeman (1841 – ?)
• American Templars (until 1868)
• Ulysses S. Grant (1868 – 1872)
• Horace Greeley (until November 1872)
• Alice (1872)
• American Templars (1872 – ?)
• Nicholas II of Russia (until 17 July 1918)
• Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (17 July 1918)
• Nikolai Orelov (17 July 1918 – September 1918)
• Sergei (September 1918)
• Russian Assassins (September 1918 – ?)
• Abstergo Industries (until February 2014)
• Harlan Cunningham (February 2014)
• Sigma Team (February 2014)
• Juhani Otso Berg (2015)
• Álvaro Gramática (2015 – August 2018)

History

Move to China

Ezio handing the box to Shao Jun

By November 1524, one Precursor box was owned by the Italian Assassins' retired Mentor Ezio Auditore in his villa in Tuscany, Italy. When the Chinese Assassin Shao Jun arrived there seeking Ezio's advice on resolving problems back in China, he gave her the box and told that it would aid her, stating that she should only open it if she were to lose her way.

Upon returning to China, Shao Jun used the box as bait to get closer to Gao Feng, a Chinese Templar and one of the Eight Tigers responsible for conducting a near-complete purge of the Chinese Assassins. She assassinated him, but the box itself was taken by Gu Dayong. Eventually, Shao Jun assassinated Dayong and reclaimed the box. She subsequently entrusted it to her Mentor Wang Yangming, who took it to have a contact help them study the box.

However, the Eight Tigers' leader Zhang Yong traced Yangming's location and joined an ambush to the Assassin's meeting. Promptly murdering the contact, he attacked the outnumbered Mentor until Yangming was fatally wounded. Zhang Yong then took the box and later had it sent out of China to other Templars.

The box resurfaced in China in 1552, when the Jesuit and Templar Francis Xavier arrived with the artifact on Shangchuan Island. There, Xavier was ambushed and killed by his fellow Templar João Machado on the orders of Gaspar Vilela, who wanted to retrieve the Precursor box for himself. As Machado and the Templars boarded one of their Black Ships, a team of Assassins led by Shao Jun intercepted them and recovered the box. The box would subsequently remain with the Chinese Assassins for a century after Shao Jun's passing, until it was secreted out of China via the Manila galleons bound for Acapulco.

West Indies

Adéwalé handing the box to Bastienne

By 1735, the Precursor box had wound up in the possession of the French Templars, who were transporting it aboard a galleon to Port-au-Prince to be given to Bastienne Josèphe. However, the Caribbean Assassin Adéwalé attacked the fleet transporting the artifact and retrieved the parcel that contained the box from the Templar admiral. In July 1737, after two years of working alongside her, Adéwalé eventually handed the artifact to Bastienne.

By November 1751, the Saint-Domingue Assassins' Mentor François Mackandal owned both the Precursor box and the Voynich manuscript. Using the artifacts, he discovered the existence of an Isu Temple near Port-au-Prince and sent his subordinate Vendredi to investigate it. Unbeknownst to Mackandal, the Temple was part of a system that held the Earth together.

Vendredi activated the Temple's machinery, triggering an earthquake which destroyed Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region. After the disaster, the Master Templar Lawrence Washington stole the Precursor box and manuscript from Mackandal's camp and brought them to Virginia, where the Templars studied the artifacts in an attempt to learn how to use them.

Struggle in the colonies

Shay holding the Precursor box

In 1752, the Colonial Assassin Shay Cormac killed Washington in an attempt to recover the box. However, the artifact was already in the possession of Washington's Templar brother Samuel Smith, while the manuscript had been entrusted to James Wardrop. In 1754, Shay managed to track down Smith and assassinated him, with the help of fellow Assassin Chevalier de la Vérendrye. Shay then recovered the box from Smith's body and delivered it to the scientist Benjamin Franklin, who was confident that conducting electricity through the box would activate it.

With Shay and Hope Jensen's assistance, Franklin succeeded in powering the box, which projected a map of the Earth and displayed the locations of several Isu sites, one of them in Lisbon, Portugal. The box was subsequently given to the Colonial Assassins' Mentor Achilles Davenport, who kept it secure at the Davenport Homestead, the Assassins' primary base of operations in the British colonies.

In October 1759, Hope managed to replicate Franklin's experiment and discovered another Isu Temple hidden in the Arctic. After the ordeal, Liam O'Brian took the box and gave it to Chevalier de la Vérendrye, who was tasked with shipping it away from the colonies.

Exchanging hands

Shay stealing the box from Charles Dorian

By December 1776, the French Assassins owned the box. Having defected to the Templars twenty years before, Shay learned of this and traveled to Paris. Rescuing Franklin from a group of criminals, Shay enlisted his aid in entering the Palace of Versailles, claiming to have a business meeting there. After a meeting in the palace, the Assassins entrusted the box to Charles Dorian. Having made his way inside, Shay assassinated Charles and took the box from him, reclaiming it for the Templars.

Eventually, the box ended up in the hands of the British Templar Francis Cotton. After Cotton's death in 1839, his appointed successor William Sleeman took possession of it, and in 1841 launched a campaign to find Isu Temples in Asia by using the artifact. In order to power it, he stole the Koh-i-Noor from the Assassins. However, the Indian Assassin Arbaaz Mir and the Sikh Empire princess Pyara Kaur countered his efforts and recovered the stolen artifact. Despite discovering a new Temple in Herat, Arbaaz could not prevent William from fleeing with the box.

After Ulysses S. Grant's election as President of the United States in 1868, the American Templars infiltrated his inner circle and subsequently corrupted his administration. During the American Civil War, the Assassins gave Grant the Trident of Eden's Faith Prong and helped him master its powers, which gave him access to the Precursor box and pages of the Voynich manuscript. The former presidential candidate Horace Greeley discovered this and tasked one of his associates in Grant's office to steal the box from the Templars. His associate managed to bring him the box and inform him of several manuscript pages which were housed at the British Museum before being murdered.

In 1872, the Templars learned Greeley kept the Precursor box in his home and sent their agent Alice to recover it and eliminate Greeley. Although the Pinkerton agent Tommy Greyling thwarted Alice's attempt on Greeley's life, the Templar succeeded in recovering the box and brought it back to her superiors.

Revolutionary Russia

The box and the Staff shard interacting

Decades later, the box had come into the possession of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who in 1918 and along with his family was held prisoner by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg. Sent by the Brotherhood to recover the artifact, Nikolai Orelov was confronted by the Templars who had infiltrated the ranks of the Red Army and also coveted the box. Infiltrating the Ipatiev House where the Romanovs were kept, Nikolai witnessed their murder but reached Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was holding the box, in time to secure the artifact.

However, as Nikolai was taking the Precursor box from Anastasia's hands, the box interacted with a shard around his neck from the destroyed Imperial Sceptre, and the girl was imprinted with Shao Jun's genetic memories. Suffering from a kind of Bleeding Effect, Anastasia became overwhelmed by Shao Jun's skills and memories, and the older man decided to take both her and the box to the Brotherhood in Moscow.

Once in Moscow, the pair met the Assassin Sergei, who took the box and promised Nikolai that they would keep Anastasia safe while discovering what the box had done to her. However, Nikolai soon found out through eavesdropping on some Assassins' conversation that they did not care about Anastasia's safety, that Sergei only wanted to uncover the box's secrets, and that the procedure they planned to use on Anastasia would most likely kill her. Nikolai ultimately managed to rescue Anastasia, but left the box behind.

Phoenix Project

By February 2014, Abstergo Industries had come into possession of this Precursor box, keeping it at their facility in Rotterdam. Although the Assassins Harlan Cunningham and Arend Schut stole it during their raid of the facility, they were forced to leave it behind after being pursued by Abstergo's Sigma Team led by the Master Templar Juhani Otso Berg.

Álvaro Gramática holding the box

In late 2015, Laetitia England assigned Berg to deliver the box to Álvaro Gramática's top secret laboratory, so he could use it for the Phoenix Project. Gramática would subsequently experiment on the box, as well as a Shroud of Eden delivered to him by Violet da Costa, until 2018, when his laboratory was forcefully taken over by the Instruments of the First Will. The Instruments sought to give Juno a new body to inhabit, and Gramática reluctantly aided in the procedure, using knowledge from the box, the Shroud's healing properties, and DNA samples from the young Sage Elijah to create an Isu body.

However, the Phoenix Project laboratory was soon after attacked by an Assassin cell led by Galina Voronina and Juhani Otso Berg, who sought to prevent Juno's resurrection. During the subsequent battle, the laboratory was destroyed by a high-caliber explosive planted by Berg, which presumably also destroyed the Precursor box and the Shroud.

Attempts to find other boxes

By 2019, the Japanese Templar Kaori Kagami was attempting to locate Shao Jun's Precursor box. When Kō Risa, a descendant of Shao Jun, began attending therapy sessions at the Abstergo clinic in Yokohama, Kagami placed her in the Animus to relive her ancestor's genetic memories. However, Shao Jun's memories ultimately proved to be a dead end, and Kagami was forced to postpone her search after Risa destroyed her Animus. Shortly after, Risa and her cousin Mari were recruited into the Brotherhood by the Mentor Saeko Mochizuki, who tasked them to find Shao Jun's box.

In August 2020, the Assassin Antony Henry mentioned in his notes to Layla Hassan detailing his efforts translating Isu script that he had tried to translate some of the Voynich manuscript's pages. His attempt was unsuccessful, but he theorized that the text may have required a Precursor box to decode.

Behind the scenes

Because the city of Atlantis in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey's downloadable expansion The Fate of Atlantis: Judgment of Atlantis was a simulation made by Aletheia, it is possible there were multiple Precursor boxes in the real city.

Inconsistencies

There is inconsistency over the identity of the Precursor boxes across the Assassin's Creed series. In Assassin's Creed: Rogue, the Templar John Harrison wrote to Grand Master Reginald Birch that the Chinese Assassins had sent Shao Jun's box to Acapulco, and from there, to the West Indies, about a century after her death. Since the box in Rogue seems to be identical to the one held by the Caribbean Assassin Adéwalé, this heavily suggests a clear continuity from Shao Jun's box in Assassin's Creed: Embers to Adéwalé's box in Freedom Cry and to Shay Cormac's box in Rogue, that they are all the same box.

However, in a September 2015 interview with the YouTuber Loomer, Rogue's Lead Writer Richard Farrese discounted that Shao Jun's box is identical to that of Shay. With the release of Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India and Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia, Shao Jun's box is implied to have passed from the Chinese Templars to the British Templar William Sleeman operating in India and thence to the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. If this were true, it would be peculiar that Harrison reports that the Chinese Assassins retained Shao Jun's box for more than a century given that the box would be assumed to have remained in Templar hands from the end of Chronicles: China, though it is not impossible that Shao Jun had recaptured the box before it eventually fell back into the Templars' hands.

With the release of material related to the upcoming Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game, the chronology for who possessed the box was addressed further, clarifying that the box ended in the Jesuit Francis Xavier's hands sometime after Zhang Yong sent it to the Templars in Europe. The Chinese Assassins subsequently reacquired it upon Xavier's death in China, allowing the box to be in their possession for a century after Shao Jun's death as per John Harrison's letter in Rogue.

At the same time, the box's presence in Chronicles: India and Chronicles: Russia does not necessarily contradict the war letter in Rogue, as the events of Freedom Cry and Rogue are set in-between those of Chronicles: China and Chronicles: India. This allows for the possibility that the Chinese Brotherhood really did send the box to the West Indies, and after Shay took it back from Charles Dorian, it eventually fell into the hands of William Sleeman. Indeed, at the end of Chronicles: Russia, the fact that Laetitia England refers to the box that Álvaro Gramática receives as being "Shay Cormac's Precursor box" heavily suggests that Shao Jun's box seen throughout the spin-off series is Shay's box. This is because it would be a peculiar narrative choice for the game to end with Gramática receiving a different item of no relevance to the game's story, i.e. Shay's box if it is distinct, rather than Shao Jun's box.

On 21 March 2017, Assassin's Creed's then-Head of Content Aymar Azaïzia answered in an AMA on Reddit that Shao Jun's box and Shay's box were the same in response to a question concerning this matter, thereby clearly contradicting not only Farrese, but seemingly the reference book Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide as well. Aside from consistently describing Precursor boxes in the plural, The Essential Guide states that "Two confirmed Precursor Boxes exist; one is currently in possession of Álvaro Gramática, while the location of the other is unknown". The reference to two Precursor boxes rather than one highly suggests that Shay's box—the one given to Gramática—and Shao Jun's box are distinct. However, it stops short of explicitly describing the second box, meaning that it technically does not contradict Aymar's claim because it could be that Shao Jun's box and Shay's box are the same while the second box is merely one that has never appeared in the series. It would be odd, however, for the book to mention two boxes while intending for one of them to be one that has been absent from the entire series.

Adding to the confusion, while Farrese also clarified that Adéwalé's box in Freedom Cry is the one that ends up in Shay's hands in Rogue, they are distinct in design. While the latter bears a rectangular lid which splits in half and slides open, with even the box's sides sliding aside to expose the mechanisms within, the former has a round lid that seems to open on hinges like a typical box. Ironically, this means that the box in Freedom Cry is actually more similar in design and appearance to the one in Embers.

Another inconsistency appears in the 2019 manga Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun. During its modern-day events, which are presumably set in 2019, both the Japanese Assassins and Templars seek to find Shao Jun's Precursor box. However, if Shao Jun's box is the same as Shay's, then it would have already been destroyed during the events of Assassin's Creed: Uprising, which take place in 2018.

Gallery

• 
  Concept art of the Precursor box
• 
  An inactive Precursor box
• 
  An Isu Data Cache in the simulation of Atlantis
• 
  The box used to lure the Chinese Templars
• 
  Shao Jun retrieving the box from Gu Dayong
• 
  Zhang Yong with the box
• 
  The Precursor box being used
• 
  The box displaying a map of the Seismic Temples
• 
  Sleeman using the box and the Koh-i-Noor to find Isu Temples
• 
  Arbaaz holding the box and the Koh-i-Noor
• 
  Pyara and Sleeman fighting for the two Pieces of Eden
• 
  Anastasia being imprinted with Shao Jun's memories
• 
  Nikolai passing the box to Sergei
• 
  Álvaro Gramática gloating over the Precursor box

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Embers (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Freedom Cry
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue (first identified as Precursor box)
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus
• Assassin's Creed: Uprising
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – The Fate of Atlantis (simulation only; first identified as Isu Data Cache)
• Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun
• Assassin's Creed: The Ming Storm (non-canon)
• Assassin's Creed: Turbulence in the Ming Dynasty (non-canon)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game