Instruments of the First Will

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"May she guide us into the Grey!"

―The Instruments' pledge to Juno, 2013.

The Instruments of the First Will, also known pejoratively as the "Juno cult", was a secretive polytheistic religious organization who worshipped the Isu as their deities. A Sage, a reincarnation of Juno's Isu husband Aita in human form, often held a prominent position within the Instruments of the First Will.

A collective secret society that drew membership and resources from within both the Templars and the Assassins, their primary mission was to revive their Isu deities, most notably Juno, and allow them to rule Earth in deference to humanity's origins as an Isu slave race.

The Instruments became a common enemy to the Assassins and the Templars, whose brief alliance in August 2018 to counter the Instrument threat dismantled the cult when Juno's "Resurrection Day" plot was undone and the Isu was assassinated. Though the cult was effectively neutralized by their upheaval, their impact continued years afterwards, as the Assassin historian Shaun Hastings later referenced them in 2020 when musing over the Templars' precursors, the Order of the Ancients.

History

Origins

"Could it be the modern Instruments of the First Will represent some sort of return to the distant past? A revival of a dead order? Did they never truly vanish?"

―Shaun Hastings, on the similarities between the Instruments and the Order of the Ancients, 2020.

The exact origins of the Instruments of the First Will remain unclear. Project Anthropos was initiated during the Isu Era with directions that humanity should be considered instruments of the Isu, not their offspring. Juno herself had begun amassing followers among her own people before the Great Catastrophe. The former Abstergo Industries employee Sebastian Monroe spoke of the cult in 2016 and pointed out that rumors held that the Instruments were a secret faction within the Templar Order.

In 2020, the Assassin Shaun Hastings theorized that there may be a connection between the Instruments and the Order of the Ancients, the Isu-worshipping precursors of the Templar Order, due to their common reverence of the Isu as well as sharing much of the same theology and philosophies. Shaun even went as far as to point out that the Instruments were far more likely to be a proper reincarnation or successor of the Ancients than the Templars.

World War I

"Currently, there's a new group, unlike anything I've seen before. Theirs is a fanatical, almost religious, fervor."

―Winston Churchill to Lydia Frye, about the Master Spy's network, 1916.

During World War I, a London nurse who was an Instruments member was caught alongside her associate collecting soldiers' blood samples in "odd-looking cubes" for an unknown purpose. In 1916, after catching wind of their activities, Winston Churchill tasked the British Assassin Lydia Frye to eliminate the nurse and her ally.

Another Instrument, a spy, was detained by the British military in the Tower of London. He started making fanatical claims about the Assassins, so Churchill suggested it would be in Lydia's best interests to silence him. The spy eventually broke out and tried to escape, but Lydia infiltrated the Tower and tricked the guards into murdering him.

Lydia Frye confronting the Master Spy

Ridding much of the spies' strongholds and weapons, Lydia eventually located their main hideout. After she killed the German Templar spies, their leader, the Master Spy, appeared and fought Lydia while calling out to his "beloved." After a short fight, he was forced to escape using a flash grenade and fled to the cult's main stronghold. There, the Master Spy had his followers set up a bonfire to destroy all of their items related to Juno and the Isu. However, Lydia had tailed the Master Spy, and killed the Templar and his remaining followers.

While this ended their operations in London, the group continued their activity elsewhere in the British Empire. In 1917, the Assassins temporarily worked with the Templar agent Jeremiah Davies to restrict the Instruments to British-occupied Egypt.

Spanish Civil War

"Behold: the human animal, unbound. Behold: the overture of this, a godless dawn. This is what happens when tribes stop worshiping the Sun. This is why our Age of Reason needs a return to their guiding hand."

―Rufus Grosvenor to Ignacio Cardona and Albert Bolden, 1937.

In 1928, Rufus Grosvenor, a Templar and former follower of the Master Spy, found the ex-Black Cross Albert Bolden in a Chinese opium den and tried to blackmail him into surrendering the Koh-i-Noor by threatening to inform the Order of his survival. However, Bolden refused and managed to flee while Grosvenor had his back turned. Undeterred, the Instrument pursued Bolden across the world for nine years, until he eventually learned the location of Bolden's family and killed them to lure the Black Cross into a trap.

After successfully stealing the Koh-i-Noor from Bolden, Grosvenor decided to locate a person with a high enough concentration of Isu DNA to activate the Piece of Eden. In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, he encountered the British Assassin Norbert Clarke, who had been sent to assist a Spanish Assassin cell fighting alongside the Republicans. After tricking Clarke into committing suicide, Grosvenor stole his identity and met the Assassin cell in Barcelona, whereupon he began manipulating its leader, Ignacio Cardona.

Grosvenor greeting Cardona and Bolden in a run-down church

After internal fighting broke out between the anarchists and communists and the Assassins were unsure of who to join, Grosvenor convinced Cardona to use the Koh-i-Noor to "calm" them. Cardona tried using the artifact but passed out moments later and was subsequently carried to safety by Bolden, who had been following Grosvenor's trail. Meanwhile, Grosvenor, still under the guise of Clarke, convinced the rest of Cardona's cell, including his lover Glaucia Acosta, to join his cause and they headed to a run-down church in the countryside.

There, Grosvenor and the Assassins were confronted by Cardona and Bolden, who had joined forces to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor. In a last-ditch attempt to activate the Piece of Eden, Grosvenor gave it to Cardona, who managed to resist its control and unleashed a series of animal-like apparitions and energy that destroyed the church. Grosvenor and Acosta survived the confrontation and subsequently fled to the United States, believing the Koh-i-Noor to have been destroyed.

Modern times

Infiltrating Abstergo

"They created your kind. Did you know that? Your people were tools to them. That's all you have ever been. That's all you should ever be! One day soon, I hope. For the world is nearly ready for her return! Wired. Prepared for a second coming!"

―John Standish to the research analyst, 2013.

By 2013, the Instruments had managed to infiltrate the Templar company Abstergo Industries through one of their agents, John Standish, a Sage. During his time as head of IT at the Abstergo Entertainment offices in Montreal, John distributed the Instruments' manifesto throughout the building via QR codes on sticky labels. He also provided the Assassins with intel through a research analyst, and later got the analyst to hack into confidential folders containing data about the Isu and the Templars.

John Standish attempting to poison the analyst

However, Abstergo caught wind of the hackings and detained the research team. John, not wanting to expose himself, reassured Melanie Lemay, the acting head of the Sample 17 Project, that he would find the hacker within a week's time. Meanwhile, he freed the research analyst from their cell and ordered them to go to the main servers to erase evidence of the hackings. His true plan, however, was to provide Juno, now a digital being, with the analyst's body as a host for her essence.

Weakened by being in the servers, Juno was not strong enough to transfer her essence into the analyst's body, foiling John's plans and enraging him. He went insane, exposed himself as a Sage, and injected a non-lethal amount of poison into the analyst before being gunned down by Abstergo security. The analyst eventually recovered from the poisoning and was cleared of all the accusations against them, as evidence found on John's computer implicated him as the hacker.

Retrieving the Shroud of Eden

Violet: "I'm not scared of you, I'm scared for you. If anyone finds out what you've been doing..."

Juno: "You have played your part, my instrument. I will save you. I will save you all."

—Violet da Costa and Juno, following the Shroud of Eden's recovery, 2015.

By 2014, Abstergo had become aware of the Instruments' existence and sought to paint the organization as a crazed cult in order to keep their knowledge of the Isu away from the public conscience. At the same time, the Templars hoped to use the Instruments to acquire various Pieces of Eden and other Isu artifacts, though the Master Templar Juhani Otso Berg suspected that the reverse was also true and that the Instruments were using Abstergo to further their own goals. Suspicious about what these motives were, Berg assigned Violet da Costa to investigate the cult, unaware that she was an Instruments member herself.

Violet delivering the Shroud to Gramática

In 2015, the Templar Álvaro Gramática sought a Shroud of Eden in order to accelerate the progress of Abstergo's Phoenix Project. Berg and Violet recovered the Shroud from Buckingham Palace's vault, after Sigma Team repelled a group of Assassins also seeking the artifact. After handing the Shroud to Gramática, Violet reported to Juno that the Shroud was in Abstergo's possession. Though Violet expressed fear of the danger that might befall Juno should anyone discover her plans, the Isu stated that Violet had played her part well and that she would save the world.

Search for the Koh-i-Noor

"We need Dre to find the stone. And killing him would only make Otso suspicious."

―Violet to Freddy, 2016.

The following year, the Instruments tried to locate the Koh-i-Noor, which was crucial to Juno's plans. With the Templars also seeking the Piece of Eden and using André Bolden as an Animus test subject to search for leads, Violet installed a trojan horse to syphon all the data from Abstergo's servers to the Instruments. Another Instrument, Freddy, helped Violet and Berg oversee André's Animus sessions, but became worried that the Templars may acquire the Koh-i-Noor first.

Violet meeting with Freddy

While meeting with Violet in an underground parking lot to discuss his concerns, Freddy claimed that he intended to eliminate André to prevent Abstergo from finding the Koh-i-Noor. However, Violet pointed out that André was also the Instruments' only lead to the Piece of Eden, and told Freddy not to do anything reckless, as it risked putting both of them on Berg's radar. Despite this, when the Abstergo technician Caitlin Gift later discovered Violet's trojan horse by accident, Freddy promptly had her killed.

Berg launched an investigation into Caitlin's mysterious murder, though he was unable to find any leads as Freddy was silenced by the Instruments for being a liability. Meanwhile, the data from André's genetic memories did not reveal the Koh-i-Noor's whereabouts, forcing both the Templars and the Instruments to postpone their search.

Isaiah's defection

By 2016, Isaiah, a high-ranking Templar and director of the Abstergo facility known as the Aerie, had secretly joined the Instruments. However, he eventually became disillusioned with the organization's goals and, believing that the prevention of the Second Disaster had been an attempt to circumvent the Ragnarök cycle, he sought to bring about the apocalypse by his own hand and rule over humanity's remnants afterwards. To this end, he searched for the pieces of the Trident of Eden, betraying both the Templars and the Instruments in the process and prompting the former to form an uneasy truce with the Assassins to stop him.

During their search for the Trident pieces, the Assassin Griffin and the Templar Victoria Bibeau briefly talked about the Instruments after learning about Isaiah's former allegiance to the group from a document left in his office. Griffin pointed out the similarities between the Templars' and Instruments' goals, as both groups sought to conquer the world using Pieces of Eden, and suggested that the Instruments could be the "true", untainted form of the Templar Order. However, Victoria was appalled by such a notion and dismissed the idea that the Instruments represented the Templars' ideals in any way.

Pursuing the Assassins

"All these bodies... It's a statement. Templars don't make statements. Why would they drag this war into daylight? The cell we lost in Hong Kong... now this in Germany. We haven't seen anything like this since the Great Purge. This is something new."

―Kiyoshi Takakura, about the Assassins' new enemy, 2017.

Sometime prior to 2017, the Assassin Jasdip Dhami, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood's tactics, in particular their reliance on civilians such as the Initiates, defected to the Instruments after coming into contact with Juno while on an assignment in Australia. In February 2017, Jasdip led an Instruments strike team to ambush an Assassin cell in Hong Kong, while the Assassins were attempting to break into an abandoned Abstergo building to find information about the Phoenix Project.

Jasdip attacking Charlotte in Hong Kong

The Instruments murdered all of the Assassins present, except for Charlotte de la Cruz, who managed to leap from the building, though Jasdip chased her, resulting in a fight atop Guernica Moneo's van. During the fight, an Instrument managed to injure Moneo with a shuriken and the van crashed. Charlotte tried to interrogate Jasdip to learn who he was serving, but both of them had to flee before the authorities arrived on the scene.

Jasdip later ambushed the Assassins Kiyoshi Takakura and Arend Schut-Cunningham at the Abstergo Entertainment campus in Montreal, where the Assassins hoped to find Felix Oladele, an Animus specialist. The Instrument decapitated Oladele and engaged Kiyoshi and Arend in a fight that led to both Assassins being heavily wounded. Before Jasdip could deliver the killing blow to Arend, Kiyoshi shot him in the back, causing the Instrument to fall off the cleaner's mobile he was standing on.

Encountering the Black Cross

"You people. You're not even insects to her. You're more like kelp. You really think order – true order – can emerge from our genetic ash heap? Order doesn't emerge; it's imposed... from above."

―Jasdip Dhami to Juhani Otso Berg, 2017.

After Berg began to suspect the existence of a splinter cell within the Templar Order, he took up the mantle of the Black Cross in an attempt to discover them. His search led him to Berlin, Germany, where he caught up to Heinrich Hart, a man he believed to be an Assassin spy. After a brief struggle, he deduced that Hart was not an Assassin. Hart then proclaimed that he was not a Templar either but rather "her" instrument, before setting off an explosion which killed 170 people, including himself.

Berg confronting Heinrich Hart

Berg survived the explosion and fled back to his safe house. Later, he ran into the Assassin My'shell Lemair in Geneva, Switzerland, and the two reluctantly worked together to investigate the financial and investment irregularities within their respective Orders. The Instruments ambushed Berg and My'shell during their investigation, but the Templar was able to single-handedly kill five Instruments before collapsing.

Jasdip, who had survived his encounter with the Assassins in Montreal, arrived and grabbed Berg, threatening him to end his investigation into the Instruments' affairs or else he would kill his daughter Elina. Meanwhile, Guernica Moneo, who was secretly a mole for the Instruments, tried to assassinate Charlotte de la Cruz while her mind was briefly trapped inside the Grey, but he was stopped by Galina Voronina and subsequently taken captive by the Assassins for interrogation.

Finding the Koh-i-Noor

Violet: "My Lady Juno... the boy should be in a cage. He is his father's son, prone to betrayal and--"

Juno: "Doubt me not, Violet. The boy has purpose, a cog who is happy as part of the machine. A machine which will carve mountains into idols..."

—Violet and Juno discussing Elijah, 2017.

Back at the Instruments' headquarters, Violet scolded Jasdip over his brutal treatment of Berg, since he was her friend and she also believed that he could be recruited to the Instruments' cause. Jasdip argued back, claiming that Violet had no right to decide who joined the Instruments and would live to see Eden reborn, as that privilege belonged only to their goddess, Juno.

Jasdip introducing Elijah to the Instruments

At that moment, Juno appeared to her lieutenants on a monitor and revealed that she had uncovered the location of the Koh-i-Noor in Spain from Charlotte de la Cruz's genetic memories. Juno then instructed Jasdip to bring forth Elijah, Desmond Miles' son and a Sage, and he proceeded to guide the boy to a crowd of awaiting Instruments, where he informed the ecstatic cultists of their goddess' success. Jasdip would subsequently send three teams of Instruments to scour the Spanish countryside for the Koh-i-Noor, but they were all killed by elderly nomads trained by Ignacio Cardona and Albert Bolden to protect the artifact.

Later, Jasdip found and kidnapped André Bolden, who had been remotely assisting Berg and the Assassins, who had formed an uneasy alliance to stop the Instruments and find the Koh-i-Noor before they did. After interrogating André, Jasdip discovered the location of Álvaro Gramática's secret laboratory in Australia, and the Instruments traveled there alongside Elijah and a captive André. Surprising Gramática, Violet revealed to the dumbfounded scientist that they had come for the Phoenix Project, and the group promptly seized control of the facility.

Not long after, Jasdip led another strike team to Spain to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor. After apprehending two nomads and learning of their role as guardians of the Koh-i-Noor, Jasdip's men found and captured Kiyoshi and Arend. Realizing Charlotte, Galina, and Berg must also be nearby, the Instruments used a drone to track them down, just as the trio unearthed the Koh-i-Noor. The Instruments surrounded the group and a fight broke out, during which Charlotte activated the Piece of Eden, only for Jasdip to seize it. He was then attacked by Miguel, but quickly killed the nomad and escaped with the Koh-i-Noor in a helicopter.

Meanwhile, a different team was sent to silence Guernica Moneo, who had been left alone at the Assassins' London safehouse with My'shell. Working together, the two were able to kill all of their assailants and set fire to the compromised hideout, though Moneo was mortally wounded by the Instruments during the fight, and died shortly after.

Resurrection Day and downfall

"Now I know who I can trust, I am cauterizing this wound. The infection is cut out, the fever broken. And your blasphemy against humanity is over."

―Berg to Violet, declaring the end of the Instruments, 2018.

The Instruments confronting Gramática at his lab

In August 2018, the Instruments initiated their plan to resurrect Juno, forcing Gramática to construct a clone body for the Isu's consciousness to inhabit. Using strands of the Shroud of Eden and somatic cells containing Precursor DNA extracted from Elijah, the procedure was successful and the scientist informed Violet that, due to the Shroud's unique properties, the fetus would reach maturity within 24 hours.

While maturing, Consus appeared to Juno and told her that she would never win. When Juno claimed that she had her body and the Koh-i-Noor and that she had been inside Charlotte's head, Consus stated that Charlotte's will was greater than Juno's and it was the reason she would ultimately lose. Upon reaching maturity, Juno spoke with Gramática and commented on how disgusted she used to be with vocal cords, until she did not have hers for millennia, before ordering to be let out of the vat she was in.

At the same time, Charlotte's team and Berg launched an assault on the Phoenix Project facility, seeking to prevent Juno's resurrection and eliminate the Instruments. Outside the facility, Jasdip greeted Berg and boasted about Juno's inevitable return to power, only for Galina to kill him with a sniper shot to the head. The Assassins and Berg then fought their way through the Instruments' forces while Charlotte attempted to kill Juno, but was incapacitated by the Isu's energetic powers.

Charlotte killing Juno's host body

Fortunately, Elijah, who had decided to betray the Instruments for killing his mother, came to Charlotte's rescue and handed her the Koh-i-Noor, allowing her to trick Juno with an illusion of Consus and guide her fellow Assassins and Berg to her location. Charlotte then killed Juno with her Hidden Blade just as the Isu became aware of the deception, though not before she angrily fired an energy beam which loosened metal supports that fell on and fatally crushed Gramática.

While Elijah escaped with the Koh-i-Noor, the Assassins—barring Charlotte—and Berg fled the facility and were confronted by the remaining Instruments led by Violet. After informing her of Juno's fate and revealing that he had called a Templar strike team for backup, Berg grabbed Violet's gun and shot her with it. He then detonated a high-caliber Skunkworks explosive to destroy the facility, though this inadvertently killed Charlotte, who failed to escape in time.

After the destruction of the Phoenix Project and the death of their central deity, the Instruments quickly crumbled and disbanded. The few members that survived were hunted down over the following months by Berg and the Templars, ensuring that by October 2018, the Instruments were no more.

Culture

Foundations and membership

"We're deep inside you now, Mr. Berg. Your little Abstergo fiefdom was the perfect growth medium for us: warm, wet, and palsied by clashing egos. Delicious."

―Jasdip Dhami, 2017.

Being a religious organization that held a strict supremacist view of the Isu, the Instruments of the First Will believed that humanity should submit to and worship the Isu. Their primary purpose was the release of Juno's essence from her digital imprisonment and creating a new body for her essence to inhabit. On at least two occasions, the cult's highest-ranking member was a Sage: first the Master Spy during World War I, and then John Standish in 2013.

Throughout their history, the Instruments have drawn membership from both the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order. Notable Templars who became members of the Instruments of the First Will include the Master Spy, Rufus Grosvenor, and Violet da Costa, while Jasdip Dhami and Glaucia Acosta were among the few Assassins known to have defected to the Instruments, after they both became disillusioned with the Brotherhood's cause.

Religious belief system

"We submit ourselves to eternal servitude in service of a grander fulfillment. We submit the world to itself it being a product that feeds life to life and death to death."

―John Standish, 2013.

Unlike the Assassins and Templars, who both view the Isu as nothing more than a technologically advanced precursor race, the Instruments saw them as deities to be worshiped. Their theological beliefs were similar to the zealous views of the Order of the Ancients, who similarly worshiped the Isu as gods.

The Instruments believed that the Isu, particularly Juno, would establish a New World Order by which all of humanity would live progressively and happily under her absolute rule. The members of the cult were often very fanatical in pursuing their goals, with one member, Heinrich Hart, taking his own life in a suicide bombing that killed 170 people in total. The Instruments displayed a general contempt for all human life, believing that humanity was misguided and that Juno would only save those she deemed "worthy" enough to serve her.

While their primary goal was to resurrect Juno in a physical form and help her take over the world, it was speculated by Abstergo Industries that the Instruments also sought to revive other Isu and would do so if presented with the opportunity.

The Pieces of Eden

Juno commissioned her followers to find various Pieces of Eden, so as to use them for her ultimate goal of taking over the world. The Instruments infiltrated both Abstergo Industries and the Assassin Brotherhood in order to get close to their respective Pieces of Eden, as well as use their resources to track down more. Of particular interest to Juno were two Pieces of Eden: the Shroud, which would allow her to be reborn in the physical world, and the Koh-i-Noor, regarded as one of the most powerful Pieces of Eden, which had belonged to Juno back during the Isu Era.

Post-mortem belief system

It was the Instruments' firm belief that after their death, Juno would reward them by allowing their essence to enter the Grey, where their consciousness could live on happily forever.

Members

• Juno (central deity)

20th century

• Master Spy (Sage)
• Glaucia Acosta
• Rufus Grosvenor

21st century

• Violet da Costa
• Jasdip Dhami
• Elijah (Sage; defected)
• Freddy
• Heinrich Hart
• Stephen Heggenes
• Isaiah (defected)
• Guernica Moneo (defected)
• Richmond
• John Standish (Sage)

Gallery

• 
  One of the sticky notes spread around the Montreal office
• 
  All the sticky notes found form the Juno symbol
• 
  The Instruments' emblem in an Abstergo Entertainment restroom
• 
  The Instruments' banner used in 1916 London
• 
  Instruments inside the Abstergo facility in Australia

Behind the scenes

The Instruments' emblem is the symbol of the asteroid 3 Juno, with the symbol itself meant to be a scepter topped with a star. The emblem can also be seen in The Lost Archive memory "The Truth".

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Unity (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
• Assassin's Creed: Templars
• Assassin's Creed: Uprising
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – The Fate of Atlantis (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game