Imperial Sceptre

This Imperial Sceptre of the Russian royal family was a piece of ancient and technologically advanced equipment known as a Piece of Eden, specifically a Staff of Eden, created by the Isu to exert their dominion over their slave workforce of humans. It was wielded by multiple generations of Russian tsars, all of whom were allied with or influenced by the Templars, until its destruction during the Tunguska event in 1908.

Owners

• Isu (? – ?)
• Alexander III of Russia (c. 1880s – 1894)
• Nicholas II of Russia (1894 – 1908)
• Grigori Rasputin (1908)
• Templars (1908)

Powers

The Staff was designed to control men's minds and bodies. When Nikolai Orelov approached the Staff in 1908, he heard several voices of the past emanating from it, saying "Always the fighter," "Adam, I have it," "Just like your father," and "Eve."

History

The first known human possessor of the Staff was Tsar Alexander III, who used it to maintain the monarchy's power over the Russian Empire. On 29 October 1888, the Russian Assassin Nikolai Orelov attacked the Tsar while he and his family were returning home to Saint Petersburg by train. After the Russian Imperial Train was derailed, Alexander threw the Staff to Nikolai, challenging his assailant to attack him with it. The Tsar subsequently repelled the assassination attempt, leaving with the Piece of Eden still in his possession.

After Alexander's death in 1894, the Staff was passed down to his eldest son and successor, Tsarevich Nicholas II. However, the Templar agent Grigori Rasputin had by this point infiltrated the Russian royal house and used his clearance to secretly steal the Staff, replace it with a replica, and bring the original to a Templar research station in Tunguska.

The Tunguska explosion

In the summer of 1908, the Assassins contacted the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla and offered him a chance to exact retribution on the Templars, after his Templar competitor Thomas Edison had discredited him. Using his mastery of electricity and the Wardenclyffe Tower, Tesla used the Teleforce to destroy the Tunguska facility, creating one of the largest explosions in history, which was estimated to have a force of more than 30 megatons of TNT, and flattened more than 2,000 kilometers of forest. The explosion completely obliterated the research facility and the Staff itself.

The event was a decisive Assassin victory, though Nikolai Orelov was the only one to survive it. Nikolai later returned to his wife Anna, bloodied and barely alive, muttering that the Staff had finally been destroyed. However, Nikolai's statement proved to be incorrect, as there was at least one shard of the artifact that survived the explosion. It was eventually found by Rasputin, who used its powers to both manipulate Nicholas II's wife Alexandra Feodorovna and to psychologically scar his disciple Khioniya Guseva after her failed attempt to kill him.

In 1916, Rasputin was assassinated, and took the shard with him to his grave. In 1917, Nikolai exhumed Rasputin's body and retrieved the shard from his corpse, having learned of its existence from Nicholas II and concluding that even a fragment of the Staff could be a threat. He carried it for a few years as a necklace before passing it down to his daughter Nadya, who retained it as late as October 2002.

Gallery

• 
  The Staff, as wielded by Tsar Alexander III
• 
  Alexander throwing the Staff to Nikolai
• 
  Alexander defeating Nikolai
• 
  Nicholas II with the Staff
• 
  The shard from the Staff as Rasputin's necklace

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed II (Glyphs only)
• Assassin's Creed: The Fall (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: The Chain (Shard only)
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia (Shard only)
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (indirect mention only)