Hidden Ones
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The Hidden Ones was the name of an organization created by the Egyptian Bayek and his wife, Aya, that was dedicated to fighting for humanity's free will. They operated within Ptolemaic Egypt, the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire. In 1050, under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, they founded a sovereign state in their own right, becoming a public organization that eventually became known as the Assassin Brotherhood.
History
Foundation
- Aya: "When we assassinate, we assassinate only those who deserve it. The few sick souls who try to control us... but they will never know who we are. Cold, calculated poets of the kill."
- Bayek: "I am fine with this. I am not a father anymore. I am not a husband. I am not a Medjay. I am a Hidden One."
- —Bayek and Aya during the inception of their brotherhood, 47 BCE.[src]
In 49 BCE, members of the Order of the Ancients, a group that would later develop into the Templar Order, travelled to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to discover more about an Isu vault hidden beneath the Temple of Amun. In doing so, they kidnapped the local protector, the Medjay Bayek, and his young son Khemu to push the Medjay for information. The altercation led to the death of his son, sending Bayek and his wife Aya on a quest for vengeance against the Ancients. After killing his first target Rudjek, Bayek returned to Siwa to kill the priest Medunamun, from whom he obtained an Apple of Eden.[2]
Aya was bound to her duties as protector to Queen Cleopatra, who was engaged in a civil war with her brother Ptolemy XIII, supported by the Ancients. During her absence, Bayek hunted the men responsible, forming a network of people opposing the Ancients and supporting Cleopatra. As Bayek took down most of the Order's network, his and Aya's attentions shifted to helping Cleopatra secure an alliance with Pompey the Great against Ptolemy to get support from the Roman Republic. When the Ancients had Pompey murdered, they helped her meet with Pompey's rival, general Julius Caesar, in Alexandria, which formed a successful alliance. The two later aided Cleopatra by unlocking the door to the tomb of Alexander the Great.[2]
However, this allowed the Ancients – who were manipulating Caesar and Cleopatra as well – to obtain Alexander's Staff of Eden, having taken the Apple of Eden from Cleopatra's follower Apollodorus the Sicilian. In 47 BCE, after Caesar and Cleopatra betrayed Bayek and Aya under the Ancients' influence, the two returned to Siwa to stop the Order's leader Flavius Metellus, finding only an opened vault. Bayek tracked Flavius down, exacting revenge for their son and reacquiring the Apple.[2]
Meanwhile, Aya had recruited the Roman Senators Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, enemies of Caesar, to their cause, determined to leave for Rome to combat the Ancients there. Before leaving, Bayek and Aya named their new brotherhood the Hidden Ones, laying out the foundation of the Creed and their customs. They each established bureaus in Memphis and Rome.[2]
Aya founded the Roman branch of the Hidden Ones alongside a man named Lugos,[3] and aside from Brutus and Cassius, also recruited several other Roman Senators, as well as the Roman philosopher Publius Volumnius.[2][4] The Roman branch of the Hidden Ones referred to themselves as Liberatores.[5]
Later on, Lugos traveled to Egypt to recover two Pieces of Eden, the Ankh and the Scepter of Aset, which had been found in a pyramid by Roman plunderers. However, while carrying the two artefacts aboard his ship back to Rome across the Mediterranean Sea, a terrible storm opened an enormous waterway within the ship, causing it to sink. Before his demise, Lugos recorded a message with the Ankh, detailing the ongoing events and lamenting the failure of his mission.[3]
Early activities
Assassination of Julius Caesar
- "[Caesar] has created his own private senate, filled with deceivers, manipulators, people who have no business in Roman affairs. My brothers are eager for blood, but I am not certain I can spill it."
- ―Marcus Junius Brutus on Julius Caesar, c. 44 BCE.[src]
By 44 BCE, Julius Caesar had become the new head of the Order of the Ancients, with Lucius Septimius as his right hand. With Aya as their leader,[2] Brutus and Cassius spearheaded a conspiracy with thirty-eight other Roman Senators, who were also all secretly Hidden Ones and opposed Caesar's imperialist ideals after he was appointed dictator for life. After being assigned by Cassius as the one to come up with the plan of assassinating Caesar, Brutus designated a temple preceding a sealed First Civilization vault hidden beneath what would eventually become the Santa Maria Aracoeli as a meeting place for his co-conspirators.[6][5] Having received visions of Caesar's future assassination within the vault, Brutus was further motivated and scheduled their attack for the Ides of March.[6]
On 15 March 44 BCE, Aya, Brutus and Cassius went to the Theatre of Pompey where the Roman Senate was to convene. While Brutus and Cassius went to the curia, Aya fought and killed Septimius, before joining her brothers in the Senate. Aya was the first one to strike at Caesar, followed by the Roman Senators. Caesar resisted at first, but resigned himself to his fate upon recognizing Brutus.[2][6] Shortly after, Aya adopted the name Amunet.[2]
Driven to severe guilt from his actions, Brutus later returned to the Colosseum, and abandoned the dagger he had used to strike down Caesar within the vault, along with his heirloom armor and the scrolls describing his dreams and discovery of the vault, as well as include drawings of the chamber and its pedestal.[6]
Attempted resurrection of Brutus
- "Whatever power lies within this artifact, it has not returned our Brother to us."
- ―Publius Volumnius commenting on the failed resurrection of Brutus.[src]
After the assassination, the Senate passed an amnesty on the Hidden Ones, which was proposed by Caesar's friend and co-consul Marcus Antonius. Nonetheless, uproar among the population forced Brutus and Cassius to flee from Rome, and a civil war ensued.[7]
In 42 BCE, armies under the command of Marcus Antonius and Octavian clashed with those of Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi in Macedonia, and Cassius was killed in the ensuing battle. Faced with inevitable defeat, Brutus fled and committed suicide shortly thereafter.[7]
After Brutus' death, his fellow Hidden Ones gathered in Philippi, Macedonia and tried to reanimate him using a Shroud of Eden. Since they had never used it before, the Hidden Ones feared its effects, but nevertheless wrapped Brutus in the cloth. Though the corpse opened its eyes and moved its arms, it neither breathed nor reacted to any touch, and eventually fell still in a seeming "second death".[7]
As some of the Hidden Ones wept, Brutus was wrapped instead in a burial mantle, and the Shroud was returned to its wooden storage box.[7]
Assassination of Cleopatra
On 12 August 30 BCE, seventeen years after the formation of the Hidden Ones, and thirteen years after Aya decided to spare Cleopatra's life after killing Caesar,[2] the Assassin then known as Amunet killed the Egyptian Queen in Alexandria, by using a poisonous asp.[8]
Activities in the Roman Empire
- "The power of this artifact has yet to be uncovered, but the object itself possesses a strong symbolic value for our circle..."
- ―Lucius to his son Aquilus about the Ankh, in a message recorded by the artifact, 259.[src]
In 27 BCE, the Roman Republic had been transformed into the Roman Empire by Octavian. The third Emperor who reigned over this new empire, Caligula, was influenced by the Ancients. This turned him into a target for the Hidden One Leonius, who stabbed him in 41 AD.[8]
By 259 AD, a group of Hidden Ones operated as the Liberalis Circulum (Circle of Liberals) from the city of Lugdunum. The Roman proto-Assassin Lucius tasked the Aleman Accipiter with obtaining a Precursor artifact known as the Ankh. Lucius' son Aquilus, who was also a cousin of Accipiter, was tasked with assassinating two Generals and a Senator, and then ordered to retrieve the artifact in Accipiter's possession.[9] However, as Aquilus reached his third target, the General Gracchus, his intent was discovered and he was stabbed by his own target.[10] Fortunately for the Hidden One, Aquilus was saved by his cousin, who gave him the Ankh, which had been finally recovered, centuries after Lugos' death. The Gaul took back the artifact to his father in Lugdunum, but it was then stolen by the Hidden Ones' ancestral enemies, with Caïus Fulvus Vultur killing Aquilus' father, Lucius.[9]
Aquilus tracked Vultur to Rome, where he eliminated him and his fellow conspirators, and retrieved the artifact. Later, the arrest and execution of Aquilus was ordered by the prefect of his home city, but even after Aquilus' death, the artifact was successfully hidden. It was this same Prefect with whom Cuervo, an Iberian Hidden One sent to preserve the Circle's interests in Lugdunum from the Germanic armies raiding the Empire, and Accipiter were negotiating the spare of the Roman city in exchange for a significant tribute to the Alemanni.[11]
After Accipiter negotiated a truce with the Prefect of Lugdunum on behalf of the Alemanni, he attempted to rescue Aquilus, who was killed by Roman guards during Accipiter's ambush. Accipiter left the Ankh in the care of Aquilus' wife Valeria.[11]
In the 4th century, an unidentified Roman Hidden One operated in the Roman Empire during the rise of Constantine I as emperor, witnessing the foundation of Constantinople.[12][13]
Reformation into the Assassin Brotherhood
In 1050, under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, the Levantine branch of the Hidden Ones founded a sovereign state in their own right from their capital of Alamut, openly operating from the impregnable fortress as a public organization which eventually became known as the Assassin Brotherhood. Under Hassan's command, public assassinations occurred much more often and the people were encouraged to stand up to their oppressors, realizing that they were not on their own.[14]
Members
Ptolemaic Egypt / Roman Republic
- Aya (later Amunet)
- Bayek
- Marcus Junius Brutus
- Gaius Cassius Longinus
- Lugos
- Pasherenptah
- Phanos the Younger
- Phoxidas
- Tahira
- Publius Volumnius
- 38 other senators involved in Caesar's assassination
Roman Empire
- Julio-Claudian dynasty
- 3rd century
- Constantinian dynasty
High Middle Ages
References
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Assassin's Creed: Origins
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Assassin's Creed 3: Accipiter
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Database: Reconstructed Data 011
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy - Rome: Chapter 2 - Giovanni Borgia
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy - Holidays: Chapter 1 - Ghosts of Christmas Past
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Assassin's Creed II
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Assassin's Creed 2: Aquilus
- ↑ Assassin's Creed 1: Desmond
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Assassin's Creed 3: Accipiter
- ↑ Darby McDevitt's Twitter
- ↑ Assassin's Creed Unity: Abstergo Entertainment - Employee Handbook
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Encyclopedia