Database: The Hidden Ones

The Hidden Ones were an early incarnation of the modern Assassin brotherhood, a clandestine group of self-proclaimed freedom fighters who worked to liberate mankind from oppressions and cruelty.

Formed in Egypt in 47 BCE following the turmoil of the Ptolemaic civil war, the Hidden Ones came together after its founding members, Bayek and Aya, bore firsthand witness to the cruelty and capricious abuses of power of the Order of the Ancients. To combat this vast and shadowy network of autocrats and Isu-supremacists, the Hidden Ones obscured their identities and worked from the shadows to unmask, undermine, and remove the Order at every turn.

With the inception and rapid growth of the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus, so too did the Hidden Ones' Brotherhood expand. By the end of the First Century CE, the Hidden Ones had established bureaus as far west as the British Isles and as far East as modern-day India.

With the subsequent collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Hidden Ones retreated from some of its outlying territories, eventually establishing its strongest foothold in the kingdoms and caliphates of the eastern Mediterranean.

As the Hidden Ones evolved, they adopted a set of three tenets to guide them.

1) Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent.
2) Hide in plain sight.
3) Never compromise the brotherhood.

Early members of the Hidden Ones also adopted a maxim with nihilistic overtones, quite uncharacteristic for the age in which it was first voiced. "Nothing is true; everything is permitted." The meaning of this phrase, and its purpose, has been a subject of considerable debate even among the Hidden Ones and the Assassins.