User:Alientraveller/Sandbox

• Cannons
• Bribery (merge Heralds and Town criers?)
• Smuggling?

Ships

Ships are large watercraft used for transport or war. Medieval Assassins hired ships to sail across the Mediterranean Sea, but by the Golden Age of Piracy, they were sailing their own ships for naval combat. The Aquila was launched from France in 1749 as the flagship of the Assassin Navy.

The Assassin Gavin manned a ship, the Altair II, in 2012.

Types

In order of smallest to largest:

• 
  Gunboats were small, inexpensive and easy to assemble ships armed with a single large cannon. They would grouped together to fire in numbers, but could easily be destroyed with grapeshot.
• 
  Schooners were small light craft built for speed, and were the preferred ships for privateers during the American Revolution.
• 
  Brigs were larger than a schooner and equipped with a bow ram. Brigs and schooners had two sailing masts.
• 
  Frigates were long, relatively light warships loaded with more than 28 cannons. Due to their size and speed, they were often used for reconnaisance, or to escort merchant ships.
• 
  Man-of-war was a catch-all term for the largest and most powerful warships, many of which were Ships of the Line, designed with multiple gun decks. Men-of-War and frigates had three sailing masts.

Ammunition

Ships were equipped with numerous forms of cannon fire:

• 
  Round shot is the term for a normal cannonball.
• 
  Chain-shots consisted of two linked cannonballs designed to disable a ship's sails, allowing her to be boarded.
• 
  Swivel guns were designed to fire beyond the normal range of a cannon. A single shot could blow up a ship after barrage had exposed its gunpowder supply, or detonate naval mines.
• 
  Grapeshot were group of small balls or slugs fired through the gun muzzle from a bag.
• 
  Heated shots were designed to set a ship on fire. Men-of-War were armed with these.
• 
  Mortars were commonly used in forts, but could also be installed on ships like the Man-of-War the Aquila faced during the Battle of the Chesapeake.
• 
  Fire barrels filled with gunpowder could be dumped from a ship to explode on impact with an enemy ship.

Unidentified ship types

• 
  A Crusader ship in Acre harbor
• 
  Renaissance merchant vessel/ferry
• 
  16th century trading ship
• 
  16th century warship
• 
  Ottoman variant
• 
  Ottoman ferry
• 
  The Jackdaw, a pirate ship captained by Edward Kenway, resembled a cross between a brig and a frigate
• 
  The Aquila, Connor's ship, similarly appeared to be a cross between the two types
• 
  The Providence, an unusually large and heavily armed merchant vessel

Swimming

Swimming is the skill of staying afloat, moving and diving in water. The Assassins could swim to sneak past guards or escape them.

History

Desmond Miles' ancestors Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Connor were capable swimmers, able to dive from great heights and hold their breath for several seconds. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad was capable of swimming, but a glitch in the Animus 1.28 would cause him to drown on contact with water, which was corrected in the Animus 2.0 when Desmond began to relive Ezio's memories. Desmond himself had learned to swim as a boy on the Farm, washing in the creek after morning exercise.

Connor's grandfather Edward Kenway was a pirate and could dive to the seabed to find treasure. His ship the Jackdaw was equipped with a diving bell which allowed him to dive for extended periods of time as he could place his head in the diving bell whenever he needed to take a breath.

Aveline de Grandpré, a member of the French Colonial Assassins from New Orleans, was a capable diver. She swam through the flooded caverns beneath Chichen Itza to find the Prophecy Disk, and could hold her breath for under a minute.

Trivia

• Civilians, guards and other nonplayable characters cannot swim and will instantly drown in water. Apprentices will disappear but will not be killed.

Calculations

The First Civilization's mathematical studies made them proficient in the studies of alternate timelines.

• The Apple of Eden showed Ratonhnhaké:ton that if his mother Kaniehtí:io had never died, then he would not have been around to confiscate it from George Washington and prevent him from being corrupted by its power.
• Juno showed Desmond Miles what would happen if Lucy Stillman had lived: Abstergo would have arrived to claim Ezio's Apple of Eden, and then failed to prevent the cataclysm after placing it in the Eye-Abstergo satellite.
• She later showed Desmond that if he did not release her from the Grand Temple, then the cataclysm would have destroyed humanity, and he would have led the survivors in a restart of civilization. Long after his death, history would have repeated itself, as Desmond would have been worshipped as a god, and his teachings used to justify mass murder.

Moral ambiguity

"What follows are the three great ironies of the Assassin Order: (1) Here we seek to promote peace, but murder is our means. (2) Here we seek to open the minds of men, but require obedience to a master and set of rules. (3) Here we seek to reveal the danger of blind faith, yet we are practitioners ourselves."

―Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's Codex

Despite their relative benevolence to the majority of Templar activities, many Assassins expressed discomfort with their Order. When Desmond Miles was rescued by the Assassins, he assumed they were the "good guys", but Shaun Hastings advised him to "not get carried away", reminding him their function was to kill people. Rebecca Crane acknowledged "it's not ideal. And taking a life is never easy. But sometimes there's no other way. Sometimes, Desmond, people have to die for things to change." Desmond's ancestor Connor tried to avoid killing William Johnson, and when he had to, he told his Mentor Achilles that "I thought it might bring clarity. Or instill a sense of accomplishment. But all I feel is regret." Achilles comforted him, explaining to "hold fast to that. Such sacrifices must never come lightly."

Both Desmond and Lucy Stillman fell out with their leader William Miles: his cold demeanour and the harsh training he put them through since childhood led Desmond to regard his father as a "[prison] warden" rather than a father. Lucy defected to the Templars after being sent to infiltrate them, telling Clay Kaczmarek that William was "using" them and claimed "he doesn't think about the lives he's hurting. We aren't people to him."

Nikolai Orelov served the Order to please his father, with whom he had a negative relationship. When he left, he felt "I began as a crusader for change and now I am no better than a common grave-robber." When the Assassins in the FBI began holding his family hostage to make him give up his secrets, he opined to his son Innokenti "These are not honourable men, Kenya. They are killers. They live by old laws which apply only to them and then call themselves heroes." However, Orelov was also brutal towards his son when training him to fight the Assassins. Viewing these events via his genetic memory, Orelov's great-grandson Daniel Cross deemed the Assassins "a family of wolves, opportunistic, savage. They'll turn on each other at a moment's notice: they're anarchists. And anarchy can never lead to a unified world."

Connor expressed disdain for the Assassins' secrecy, an opinion shared centuries earlier by some Assassins under Altaïr's leadership, who disagreed with him taking the Order back underground. Altaïr wrote "They grow angry, insisting it is a mistake to shroud ourselves. They say it slows our work. But they do not understand the risks. To expose ourselves now would be too dangerous. I fear we would be branded madmen and attacked."

The Assassins also allied with dubious figures such as members of the House of Medici or Vladimir Lenin, or would spare the likes of Tomas de Torquemada, simply because they were not Templars. Vali cel Tradat left the Assassins before the Templars because they did not try to stop the Ottoman Empire's conquest of his native Wallachia.

Connor's routes

Saint Augustine

• Henderson in Distress
• Paving the Way
• Dread of Night

Louisbourg

• Troubled Waters
• Raiding the Prospector
• One of a Kind

The Bahamas

• Blistering Dawn
• A Call for Help
• Search for the Somerset
• The Ghost War, Act 1
• The Ghost War, Act 2

Virgin Islands

• The Sea Wolves
• A Midnight Engagement
• The Giant and the Storm