Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-32713779-20170729065610/@comment-2112031-20170803083640

Sol Pacificus wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote: I'm not sure whether the War Letters can really be used to argue that there is only one box. John Harrison's letter was clearly talking about a box that, as far as he knew, had been in the Chinese Brotherhood's possession for a up to a century after Shao Jun's death and may have been secretly sent by them to Acapulco.

This description doesn't really match Shay's box, which had been stolen from the Templars by Adéwalé in 1735, seven years before Harrison wrote the letter. Harrison was clearly talking about a box that hadn't been in the Templar's possession and whose potential whereabouts in the West Indies were uncertain at best.

It's possible that Ezio's box was retrieved by the Chinese Brotherhood sometime shortly after the death of Zhang Yong and eventually ended up in Francis Cotton's possession by 1839.

Harrison's letter present a challenge to the interpretation that there is only one box. Because, if that was the case, Harrison would certainly have mentioned how the Templars had the box in their possession and then lost it to the Assassins only seven years before he wrote his letter.

Wow thanks for pointing out this crucial detail that I had somehow missed. I forgot that Adéwalé had seized the box from the Templars in 1735. However, do you think it's possible that the Templars had just found the box and taken it when they were intercepted by Adéwalé? If so, it may mean that this Templar crew simply never managed to report finding the box to the other Templars, including the British Rite.

It reminds me of how a lot of fans assume that the Assassins should have known that Vendredi triggered an earthquake when because of Vendredi's death, they never even knew if he had found the site or not before the earthquake hit. There's always the possibility of an agent of either faction dying before he could report the findings or results of his mission to his superiors.

From what little we're told of Shay's box, it had been in the possession of the Parisian Rite, no mention is made of how long they had it, and they sent it to Saint-Dominigue in 1735, to be delivered to Bastienne Joséphe. Although Adéwalé intercepted the box, he did eventually give it to Bastienne in 1737. We're not told how long she had it, but it eventualy ended up in the hands of François Mackandal.

I suppose it's possible that the Parisian Rite never told the British Rite about the box and it's location.