Initiates

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Shaun Hastings: "If you lot were tracking our movements all this time, couldn't you have stepped in?"

Stephanie Chiu: "Our only goal was gathering knowledge. We made vows to stay neutral."

—Shaun asking about the Initiates' purpose, 30 May 2014.

The Initiates' satellite network

The Initiates are a group of individuals, aiming to discover and reveal clandestine information about both the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar-led Abstergo Industries. Instead of the Internet, which is controlled by corporations and governments that intend to keep the populace unaware of the Assassin-Templar War, they post information on a separate network, dubbed the "Outernet" by Rebecca Crane, transmitted by a series of small supposedly obsolete satellites.

They are led by four anonymous individuals, and are funded by a number of interested private citizens, and count among their supporters billionaires, those with military connections, and members of both Harvard University and MIT.

In 2012, a member of the Initiates leaked sensitive information from Abstergo's database. Since May of 2013, two of their operatives, Eric Cooper and Stephanie Chiu, have recorded updates on the Assassins, having infiltrated the crew of the Altair II. They were discovered the following year, but the Assassin leaders William Miles and Gavin Banks chose to spare them, seeing the group as potential allies. Shaun Hastings soon managed to hack into the Initiates Database, leaving a message aimed at encouraging the Initiates to join the Assassins, rather than simply stand back and watch from afar.