Ragnarök

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"It's a common mythology around the world. First a cataclysmic event occurs. It could be a great flood. It could be fire. But it wipes the slate clean, and, afterward, the survivors are left with a purified new world. That's a part of Ragnarök people sometimes forget. The cycle starts over."

―Sebastian Monroe's observations on the Ragnarök cycle, c. 2016

Ragnarök, also known as the Twilight of the Gods, is a cataclysmic cycle that destroys the world so it can be started anew.

For the Norse, Ragnarök represented an approaching ultimate battle that results in the death of many of their gods, including Odin and Thor, as well as the rebirth of the world through submersion into water.

History

Among the Isu who predicted or were warned of that the Great Catastrophe, a number of them saw it as the culmination of Ragnarök for their species. When Fenrir's birth was seen as a key part of making the cataclysm a certainty, his father Loki smuggled the boy into the Æsir city of Asgard, fearing the jötnar the boy was born into would kill him. However, the Nornir had warned the Æsir leader Odin of Fenrir's role in his own death at the onset of Ragnarök and, while he kept his blood bond with Loki not to harm the child, Loki's inability to trust him and their respective machinations helped ensure that the Great Disaster came to pass.

When Desmond Miles averted the Second Disaster in 2012, former Templar and Instrument of the First Will member Isaiah saw it as an attempt to circumvent the end of the next Ragnarök cycle. Affronted, he tried to use the Trident of Eden to bring about the world's destruction so he could position himself as ruler of what came after. His plot was undone with help from Minerva around 2016 during the Ascendance Event.

Mythology

In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events prophesied in the Völuspá poem from Snorri Sturluson's 13th century text, the Poetic Edda. In it, a völva recites information to Odin, seeing a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major gods—Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki among the casualties—the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors, Líf and Lífþrasir. Ragnarök is an important event in Norse mythology and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory throughout the history of Germanic studies.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods (first mentioned)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
  • The Way of the Berserker (indirect mention only)
  • Wrath of the Druids (indirect mention only)
  • Dawn of Ragnarök (first appearance)
• Discovery Tour: Viking Age (painting only)
• Echoes of History (mentioned only)