Great Catastrophe

"The earth shook for days. The fires burned for weeks. And when the ash had settled, less than ten thousand of your kind still lived... and far fewer of ours. But we carried on, together. To rebuild. To renew."

―Jupiter to Desmond Miles, 2012.

The Great Catastrophe, also known as the First Catastrophe, the Toba Catastrophe or Toba Disaster, or the First Disaster, ^{[citation needed]} was a cataclysmic event during human prehistory dated to around 75,000 BCE, or 2306 of the Isu Era. The global devastation caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun saw the near-total extinction of both humanity and the Isu, both of whom were preoccupied with the latter's slave uprising at the time.

While the few surviving humans would attempt to understand and remember the events and the Isu by passing them down in filtered oral tales like the Ragnarök cycle of Norse mythology, by modern times, the disaster was often misconceived to have been the eruption of a super-volcano that occurred at the same time. A second, equally-powerful, but ultimately less-destructive coronal mass ejection took place in 2012.

History

Pre-catastrophe

The enclosed content covers events or items that, while canonically experienced, may or may not have been altered in some manner and cannot be taken at face value.

Through their advanced technology, the Isu knew of brewing cosmological events for several centuries, though petty internal politics between different factions ultimately prevented them from acting. In Cycle 40.238, astronomers at the Solar Dynamics Observatory in Atlantis detected "unusual electromagnetic activity" on the sun's photosphere, its surface. By Cycle 41.267, the sun had developed sunspots, which had increased in size and were gravitating towards each other by Cycle 42.149, and were projected to be the start of "imminent cluster formations" by Cycle 43.331. With more sunspots forming in larger groups, this indicated that the sun's magnetic activity surpassed the minimum threshold for solar phenomena like coronal loops, magnetic reconnections, and other plasma releases that would affect the stellar atmosphere and beyond. The Observatory recognized the danger these events posed by Cycle 44.160 and projected they would occur imminently, within 300–500 cycles. A delegation of scientists quickly called for a summit to present their findings before Persephone, Hades, and Poseidon, the three monarchs who ruled the respective Sister Realms of Elysium, the Underworld, and Atlantis, but the meeting was a disaster. Poseidon did not show, preferring to remorsefully lock himself away in his palace; Persephone instead sent her High Scientist Hermes Trismegistus, who stormed off when the news would conflict with Persephone's imposed perfection in Elysium; and Hades seemed almost gleeful at the prospect of global annihilation.

Circa 75,000 BCE, the Isu-human hybrid slaves Adam and Eve escaped the Isu city of Eden with an Apple of Eden. This prompted humanity, whom the Isu had made in Project Anthropos as their subservient work force, to rise up in rebellion against their creators. The war lasted a decade and sufficiently distracted both parties long enough that they did not see the coming apocalypse until it was too late.

Despite this, a few scientifically-minded individuals—most notably, the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno, as well as Rah Cel'eze with Odin's Valkyrie Hildr as his aide—still worked to find a means of either suppressing it or at least protecting future generations from predicted recurrences by researching ways of combatting the cataclysm from within underground vaults. They tested six different methods that showed the most potential, but none of them succeeded due to a variety of factors such as time constraints, the amount of resources required, or lack of coordinating efforts for any initiative.

At first, the Isu planned to build four Towers to siphon the solar flare into the Grand Temple and dispel it. While the Isu had the means and resources to accomplish it, the projected time was more than Earth could afford. The first tower, Maekinn, was never completed and the researchers turned elsewhere, but even after the project was abandoned, a few Isu like Surtr returned to automate the construction before the solar flare hit the Earth. Although the sole tower would never have been able to protect Earth, it and the other three towers' assembly by drones over many thousands of years afterwards ensured they would be complete to provide the power necessary for the global aurora borealis device, which would save the world by the time of the Second Disaster at the cost of some comparatively minor global damage from short-lived seismic and volcanic activity, electrical storms, and power blackouts.

After abandoning the first potential solution, the Isu thought to enhance their Rings of Eden, Pieces of Eden created by Rah Cel'eze that emitted a forcefield around a wearer's body to repel projectiles and energy bursts. The concept was to use the principle behind the technology to create a magnetic forcefield generated from the Eden Ring Station to envelope the Earth. However, the project was plagued by delays, as its large scale also proved it infeasible. Still determined, the Isu tried saving portions in reduced capacities, ranging from half the world down to a tenth of it, but even building a Ring for one city was too costly, forcing the project's termination and the Station was severed from the Isu's global power grid though its generators remained active.

A third potential method was discovered by using the Apples of Eden on the neurotransmitters built into humans. If enough humans were influenced to have one idea, it would take physical form. As such, the idea was to launch an Apple into orbit, aim it at Earth, and forcibly compel humanity to think, "Make us safe". This thought would theoretically take form and protect the Earth, but the critical issue lay in the Apple's lack of coverage to "enthrall the world" as the Isu wanted. After sending a dozen Apples into orbit without any improvement, this endeavor was scrapped.

Some Isu proposed traveling back in time to prevent the disaster beforehand, but as they could not do so, the concept was dropped. Instead, the Isu used the Nexus to look forward in time to see if various methods could succeed, but as every result was the same, prognostication was set aside to redirect focus on new methods. However, Minerva did not leave this study and continued seeing into the future. She discovered through divinations that there was a pattern of numbers and equations to existence that could tame time itself if understood correctly, leading her to create the Eye to aid in calculating them in the hopes of preventing the disaster.

Minerva continued testing the Eye until she received a reply from and appeared before the Italian Assassin Ezio Auditore inside the Vatican Vault in the distant future on 28 December 1499. In their brief conversation, she delivered a message warning him and his descendant Desmond Miles, who was reliving Ezio's genetic memories, about the impeding solar flare and hoped that Desmond would understand, seek the Grand Temple, and prevent a disaster of the same magnitude that was projected to reoccur in 2012.

With no way to save wider parts of their civilization, the now-desperate Isu focused on individual body alterations, starting with enhancing their physical forms to something better able to withstand a hostile environment. Juno's husband Aita volunteered to test the method. Although his body survived, his mind became brittle; within an instant, his mind degenerated and he became increasingly catatonic, made "a prisoner of the machines". With enough will, Aita wished for Juno to euthanize him, and she fulfilled it. The modifications stopped, but the researchers continued on similar matters.

Following this, the Isu began creating new vessels that could safely house a consciousness and withstand the new environment. However, the ability to transfer consciousnesses back out of the vessel could not be developed properly, requiring an unspecified "wrong" element to leave, and so this idea was also rejected, though Juno wondered if it was foolish to give up early.

Seeing that humanity would survive and thrive while the Isu died out, Jupiter and Minerva began clandestinely testing a seventh experiment to have the Isu be incarnated through humanity. Through the use of a catalyst and the powerful supercomputer Yggdrasil, which could take and transfer Isu genetic samples, the procedure would save select Isu from the Catastrophe through brood parasitism. This altered an infant human host's genes by implanting Isu DNA that carried their memories, which the host would gradually awaken to as they aged.

However, Jupiter and Minerva feared that genetic manipulation would change humanity for the worse, especially since the process was later known to drive most Sages mad with the conflicting memories, and so the research was locked away, but not before Juno stole it with Odin's help and modified it further to allow her to make Sages from Aita's genetic sequence. For facilitating the catalyst's theft and taking some for herself, the High Council stripped Juno of her title Mother of Wisdom and ordered her banishment.

Around this time, Hildr learned of Odin's secret plan to save only himself and eight Æsir whom he trusted from death by incarnating themselves. Enraged at Odin's selfishness in letting the world burn, Hildr vented her fury to Rah Cel'eze, then used her position as the Ring Station's Chief Guardian to appeal to the High Council to take action against Odin, having seen what they did to Juno for her transgressions. When they failed to act in a sufficient or timely manner, she organized a Valkyrie revolt, only for her former lover and Odin's wife Freyja to leak word to Odin, who quashed the resistance. Incensed that one of his most loyal servants betrayed him, he stripped away her immortality and chained her in an underground cell to starve to death.

Eventually, Minerva and Jupiter learned that Juno had sabotaged the Eye to send Desmond a message for her own ends. Furious at her further dishonesty and for also brewing rebellion, the two Isu attacked and killed Juno and her followers in the Grand Temple. After Jupiter sent Desmond yet a third message, he and Minerva destroyed the divination sphere and sealed the dead in the Grand Temple, though they were unaware that Juno had survived and transferred her consciousness into the Temple's walls, allowing her to exist unharmed when the Catastrophe struck.

Disaster and aftermath

The coronal mass ejection hit Earth just as predicted, flipping Earth's magnetic field polarity and exposing the planet to the Sun's deadly radiation. Even with fatal cataclysm all around them, the Isu still decided to settle old scores between each other. In Yggdrasil's chamber below Scandinavia, Odin and his selected Æsir watched live footage of the disaster in North America before enacting the untested seventh experiment as the lab began collapsing around them. With their DNA samples taken, they armed themselves with weapons and left to face Loki, who had escaped imprisonment in the Middle East for his role in the capture and murder of Odin's son Baldr. Now free, he unbound his captive son Fenrir, rallied his daughter Hel's armies, and joined first Surtr's forces seeking retribution for their warlord whom Odin had just killed, and then Jupiter with his army, who wanted long-awaited revenge for Odin having beaten Jupiter in combat and stolen the catalyst. Those Isu that did not die in battle were killed as the Earth fell apart around them, though Odin and his Æsir were successfully incarnated millennia later in the 9th century CE, as they had planned.

The entire planet burned for weeks afterward, and earthquakes and catastrophic blazes ravaged what remained of Earth. The surface was rendered barren, and less than 10,000 humans and "far fewer" of the Isu survived the catastrophe. In order to recover from the event, the remaining Isu and humans ended their war and began to work together to restore life to the planet. Minerva spent the next few centuries wandering the ravaged Earth with what few Isu remained teaching what they could to the surviving humans to help reignite the spark of civilization, but despite humanity's misconceptions about the Isu, they were not immortal.

Before she died, Minerva looked into the future one last time with a second Eye she had created to see if they had succeeded in preventing the Second Disaster. She saw that Juno had deceived them and lived, and was still manipulating Desmond, this time into freeing her through the same method meant to save the world. Because their numbers were too few, the Isu failed to survive long as an independent species. Humans, meanwhile, who had been built by the Isu with robust constitutions ideal for hard labor, successfully managed to reconstruct their society and flourished. Over time, the reshaping of Earth's landscape and geography eliminated nearly all physical evidence of the Isu.

Gallery

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  Concept art of the Great Catastrophe
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  Concept art of Earth after the disaster
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  The solar flare heading to Earth
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  Earth during the catastrophe
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  An Isu city in the midst of the catastrophe
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  Lightning striking a skyscraper
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  A woman seen during the catastrophe
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  The woman looking towards an explosion
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  A fissure swallowing the local populace
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  Citizens falling into lava
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  Earth in the wake of the catastrophe
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  Earth's surface after the catastrophe
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  The Æsir watching the catastrophe strike North America
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  The destruction of an Isu city

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed II (first mentioned)
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed III (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (mentioned only)
  • The Fate of Atlantis: Judgment of Atlantis (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (referred to as "Ragnarök")
  • Wrath of the Druids (indirect mention only)
  • Dawn of Ragnarök
  • Mastery Challenge (mentioned only)
  • The Last Chapter (mentioned only, as "Ragnarök")
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood of Venice (indirect mention only)
• The World of Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Journey to the North – Logs and Files of a Hidden One (mentioned only, as "Ragnarök")
• Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple
• Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game (mentioned only, as "Toba catastrophe")