Created by Cesare Borgia as a faction of counter-Assassin specialists, the company known as the Crows was meant to eradicate the Order's presence in Italy. Their uncanny disguise skills made them invisible to all except for those among the Assassins who possessed the gift of Eagle Vision.
Their behavior was vicious, deadly, and a travesty in relation to the way of the Assassins. As rumors went, it was said they were even trained in the way of the Order by a member of the Spanish Brotherhood. Their uniform was a jet black leatherarmor, adorned with crowfeathers and a small cloak. They fought using exotic swords and their own deadly Hidden Blade offshoot they called "Corvix Blades."
Their hierarchy was simple. Initiates donned plain black clothes over their armor, but only the ones called "Crow Leaders" were entitled to uniforms and Corvix Blades.
The whole faction supposedly had a single Master, sometimes referred to as "Il Corvo."
The Crows were a group of mercenaries who were mostly employed by house Borgia and the Templars to hunt down Assassins. Their infamous master was called "Il Corvo", a man whose life was ruined when his wife was allegedly murdered by an Assassin. Many believe that Il Corvo never truly recovered after the incident, and he assembled The Crows to take revenge on the Assassins.
There were several mercenary groups in Italy, but none of those were as infamous as The Crows. Nobody knows their exact numbers, where they came from and who they really are. They were portrayed as agile people who hid themselves under black, talon-coated cloaks and were masters of small-arms. Some people claimed they were the secret weapon of Cesare Borgia, but there was no evidence of such connection.
They were armed with the Corvix Blades, a custom made variant of the Hidden Blades used by the Assassins Order, and had a special taste for blood, as their victims were found gutted most of the times.
The group was first sighted in Roma, around 1511. They appeared only after nightfall, lurking above ground, passing rooftop after rooftop, blending in shadows, striking at their targets as if they were mere street rats. Around that time, several abandoned bodies were found out in the fields, exposed to the sun and to hungry crows.
