Protectors of Persia

I wanted to ask you something. Which is... what's your name? This article title is conjecture. Although the article subject is canon, no official name for it has been given.

"We were protectors, Amorges. We were champions of Persia. Of the people!"

―Darius to Amorges, 420s BCE.

A secret group whose express goal was to protect Persia and its people from tyranny waged a covert war against the Order of the Ancients over their puppetry of the Achaemenid Empire. Led by Artabanus, who would later come to be known as "Darius", its most notable feat was the 465 BCE assassination of King Xerxes I of Persia, one of the Order's puppets.

Despite its initial success, the group disbanded not long after Xerxes' assassination due to an ideological split between its members. This conflict was caused by Darius' insistence on preemptively killing Xerxes' successor Artaxerxes I, a decision opposed by Darius' closest comrade Amorges and other members of the group. These members ultimately defected to the Order and protected Artaxerxes before conducting a decades-long extermination campaign against Darius' family and associates.

Due to its opposition against the Order and similar belief in fighting for peace and freedom, the group is considered one of the early precursors to the Assassin Brotherhood, with Darius retroactively honored by members of the Brotherhood as one of their own.

History

Assassination of Xerxes

Amorges: "...There will always be more tyrants."

Darius: "And there will always be us to stop them."

—Amorges and Darius, at Xerxes' assassination, 465 BCE.

In August 465 BCE, the group's members, including Artabanus, Amorges, and Pactyas, ambushed King Xerxes I and his entourage as they were travelling. While the others distracted and eliminated the king's guards, Artabanus, disguised as one of the guards, assassinated the king using a weapon of his own creation: the Hidden Blade. This would become the first recorded use of the Hidden Blade, centuries before the blade became the Assassins' signature weapon.

Collapse

Darius: "They got to you."

Amorges: "No. I went to them."

—Amorges revealing to Darius that he joined the Order, c. 465 BCE.

After Xerxes' death, Artabanus sought to prevent the Order of the Ancients from exerting their influence on the king's son and successor, the young Artaxerxes I, and planned to kill the new king before he could be manipulated. However, he faced opposition from Amorges, who instead persuaded the rest of the group to join forces with the Order and use their combined resources to create a better future for Persia. The group completely disbanded when Amorges turned on Artabanus during the latter's attempt on Artaxerxes' life, which forced Artabanus and his family into exile.

Amorges and the Order subsequently spent the next few decades hunting down Artabanus and his family, though Artabanus, who had taken up the alias "Darius", and his son Natakas constantly managed to avoid them. During this time, just like Darius had anticipated, the Order attempted to sway the young king Artaxerxes like they had done with his father. After they were unsuccessful, they made a failed attempt on his life using poison that left the king blind and on the run, and framed Darius for the plot.

Legacy

The Hidden Ones, still remembering Darius' deeds hundreds of years later, posthumously honored him as one of their predecessors. By the 9th century CE, the members of the Brotherhood had learned about the circumstances surrounding the collapse of Darius' group. In a letter to Roshan, the Greek Hidden One Itamos pondered whether Darius had ever returned to Persia following the betrayal of his allies.

By the time of the Renaissance, the Hidden Ones, since rechristened as the Assassins, regarded Darius not just as their predecessor, but as an early member of their organization. Alongside six other prominent figures, he was memorialized with a statue at the Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni, and a secret tomb was erected for him within the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy.

Behind the scenes

"It's time I told you the truth about Artabanus, Protector of Persia."

―Darius explaining his past to Kassandra, c. 429 BCE.

Darius' organization was originally referred to as the Persian Brotherhood, a branch of the Assassin Brotherhood, in the first edition of Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide. Following the retroactive continuity introduced in the 2017 video game Assassin's Creed: Origins that shifted the Assassins' founding from prehistory to 47 BCE, all references to Darius and his group were expunged from The Essential Guide's second edition.

Darius features as a major supporting character in the 2018 game Assassin's Creed: Odyssey's three-part downloadable expansion Legacy of the First Blade, with his group's story and conflict with the Order of the Ancients being told via flashbacks. Although this conflict parallels the one between the Assassins and Templars, Darius' group is never referred to as the Persian Brotherhood in-game nor does it have any connections to the Assassins beyond Darius' teachings being passed down to his descendants—one of whom, Aya, is a co-founder of the Hidden Ones, the earliest incarnation of the Assassins.

The organization is furthermore never expressly identified by a name at all. When recounting his assassination of Xerxes, Darius refers to himself as "Protector of Persia" although it is unclear if this is an epithet uniquely held by him or if it was commonly held by members of his group. Nonetheless, he goes on to repeatedly describe his organization as having been "protectors" throughout the rest of the story. For this reason, the name Protectors of Persia has been chosen as the placeholder title for this article on the group.

Known members

• Artabanus (founder)
• Amorges
• Pactyas

Gallery

• 
  The group attacking Xerxes' convoy
• 
  One of the group's members
• 
  Artabanus assassinating Xerxes
• 
  Amorges confronting Artabanus
• 
  Amorges stopping Artabanus from killing Artaxerxes

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Initiates (first mentioned) (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Rebellion (mentioned in Database entry only) (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – Legacy of the First Blade: Hunted (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood of Venice (indirect mention only)