History of the Assassins
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The history of the Assassins spans thousands of years, from the dawn of humanity until the modern era. Though the Assassins in their modern capacity were only founded during the Middle Ages, their predecessors were notably active during the end of the reigns of Xerxes I, Qin Shi Huang, Alexander the Great, and into Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman Empire. After their rebirth as the Assassins in the 11th century, they operated throughout the rest of history. Throughout their existence, the Assassins and their precursors were continuously entangled in a conflict with the Order of the Ancients and their reorganized form as the Templars.
History[edit | edit source]
Ancient world[edit | edit source]
Prehistory[edit | edit source]
The first traces of the Assassin ideology can be traced back to the dawn of humanity, which had been created by the Isu as a slave race. Adam and Eve, two human-Isu hybrids who were immune to the effects of the Pieces of Eden, led the humans in a fight for free will and liberty from oppression, for which they would later be considered by some as the first proto-Assassins.[1]
Adam and Eve's Apple of Eden would later be passed on to their son Abel. Abel would in turn be killed by his jealous brother Cain, who took the Apple for himself. Cain would later be regarded as the first follower of the Templar philosophy, and the Mark of Cain became the Templar insignia.[2]
Early history[edit | edit source]
- Amorges: "The Order aren't just a group of people—they're an idea. And idea cannot be beaten. And idea cannot be destroyed."
- Darius: "Not by blades, but through knowledge, through wisdom... Through ideas of our own. Nothing is absolute, Amorges. You taught me that a long time ago."
- —Amorges and Darius discussing the Order of the Ancients and the group they formed in opposition, 420s BCE.[src]-[m]
Prior to the Brotherhood's official founding, several individuals embodied the ideology and shared the goals of the future Assassins. In ancient China, this included five individuals who would later come to be known as the Five Great Assassins in Sima Qian's Record of the Grand Historian. Some of their weapons and armor would later be kept safe in an underground vault by the Chinese Hidden Ones.[3]
Like Adam and Eve, other people descended from the Isu dedicated their lives to protecting the freedom of mankind.[2] This responsibility was passed down these bloodlines through the generations. One notable example was the bloodline of King Leonidas of Sparta, who fought to keep Greece free from the control of the Persian King Xerxes I and his supporters, the Cult of Kosmos, at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE.[4]
By 465 BCE, a secret group consisting of Darius, Amorges, Pactyas, and others opposed both Xerxes' rule and the Order of the Ancients, the latter of whom would eventually develop into the Templar Order. In August 465 BCE, they ambushed Xerxes' entourage, resulting in Xerxes' death at Darius' hands;[5] this became the first documented usage of the Hidden Blade.[2]
After Xerxes' death, Darius feared the king's son and successor Artaxerxes would fall under the Ancients' sway as well and planned to kill the young king. He was thwarted by Amorges, who had defected to the Order of the Ancients along with the rest of their group, hoping to use their resources to bring about change to Persia.[5]
Darius was later framed for another assassination attempt on Artaxerxes, conducted by the Order,[5] which caused Artaxerxes to turn blind.[4] The Ancients subsequently pursued Darius and his family for the next decades, as well as other descendants of Isu bloodlines that they referred to as "Tainted Ones".[5]
Peloponnesian War[edit | edit source]
- "In destroying the cult, you have done what I could not. But this imbalance comes with a price, my child. For without chaos, there is supreme order. A loss of progression and freedom. But there is still hope—hope in you, hope in the future you will bring."
- ―Pythagoras talking to Kassandra in a vision created by the Pyramid, c. 422 BCE.[src]-[m]
In 451 BCE, the Cult of Kosmos orchestrated a plan to abduct one of King Leonidas of Sparta's grandchildren, Alexios. The Cult forced the Oracle of Delphi to declare a prophecy that Alexios would cause the fall of Sparta. After Alexios' sister Kassandra disrupted the ritual to sacrifice the boy, he was presumed dead and taken by the Cult, intending to use his unique bloodline to unlock the power of the Pieces of Eden. Kassandra was similarly presumed dead after being thrown off the mountain's cliffside by her stepfather Nikolaos, growing up to become a mercenary on Kephallonia.[4]
In 431 BCE, the Cult orchestrated the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens to secretly gain control of Greece. Kassandra was hired by Elpenor, a member of the Cult of Kosmos, who tasked her with killing Nikolaos, but she ended up sparing his life. Through Elpenor, Kassandra learned of the existence of the Cult, their interest in finding her mother Myrrine, and that her brother had become a feared member of the Cult. She subsequently travelled around Greece, allying herself with people such as Herodotos, Sokrates, Hippokrates, Aspasia, and Perikles to help find clues to her mother's whereabouts, all the while disrupting the Cult's plans by taking out its members.[4]
After failing to save Perikles from her brother and seeing Athens fall into the control of the Cultist Kleon, Kassandra reunited with her mother and through her, located her biological father Pythagoras inside the remnants of the ancient Isu city of Atlantis, on the island of Thera. Through her parents, she discovered the importance of her lineage and her role in keeping Atlantis safe from those who sought to harness its power for their own gain.[4]
In 426 BCE, Kassandra freed Sparta from Cultist rule by killing one of its kings, Pausanias. Two years later, she formed a resistance group with her closest allies to free Athens from the Cult and Kleon's rule, eventually killing the Athenian ruler during the Battle of Amphipolis. Not long after, Myrrine and Kassandra reunited with Alexios on Mount Taygetos,[4] where Kassandra was forced to slay her brother.[6]
After destroying the Cult of Kosmos, Kassandra experienced a vision of future Assassins from the Cult's artifact, the Pyramid, before destroying it and sparing the Cult's former leader Aspasia. She also helped Pythagoras seal Atlantis from the world, and inherited the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus from him, allowing her to live indefinitely until the time came to pass it on.[4]
Around the same time, Darius and his son Natakas sought refuge in Makedonia in their attempts to evade the Order of the Ancients, eventually crossing paths with Kassandra, who attempted to stop the Order's attacks on the villages in the region. Joining forces, they eliminated the Ancient Pactyas and his subordinates, who were pursuing Darius and the Tainted Ones, before going their separate ways. They later reunited in Achaia, where they worked together to take down the Ancient Phila, who blocked Makedonian refugees from escaping. After doing so, Kassandra started a relationship with Natakas and settled down in Dyme, Achaia with him, Darius and her newborn son Elpidios.[5]
Eventually, the Ancients' leader Amorges managed to locate Darius and Kassandra in Dyme, laying siege to the village, killing Natakas and abducting Elpidios. Despite Natakas' death causing a rift in their relationship, Kassandra and Darius worked together to take down the remaining Ancients and ultimately confronted and killed Amorges. Fearing that the Order would continue to hunt her, Kassandra told Darius to take Elpidios away from Greece. The two eventually settled in Egypt,[5] where Elpidios' descendant Aya would lay the groundwork for the Brotherhood generations later.[7]
Other activities[edit | edit source]
- "Ironically, Alexander will die by the poison of those whom he had vanquished in battle. But not here, as he is gone already. Soon, I will complete my mission. For my brothers to come, if I die before I can pass on my secrets, here is the recipe for the poison, may it serve the Order."
- ―Iltani's transcription of Alexander's assassination, 323 BCE.[src]-[m]
Some hundred years later, in the 4th century BCE, an ancient Order that served as a precursor to the Assassin Brotherhood operated against the Order of the Ancients in the Macedonian Empire.[8] In 323 BCE, Iltani, one of these proto-Assassins, halted the advance of Alexander the Great,[9] an ally of the Ancients.[10] She managed to fatally poison the Greek conqueror and attempted to retrieve his Staff of Eden,[2] but failed and Alexander was ultimately entombed with the Staff in Alexandria, the city he had founded in Egypt.[7]
In 227 BCE, one of the Five Great Assassins, Jing Ke, unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate[3] an affiliate of the Order of the Ancients, King Zheng of the Qin state of China, who would later become known as the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.[9] 17 years later, Qin Shi Huang was killed by Wei Yu with a spear named after Jing Ke, an act which caused Wei Yu to be revered by later Assassins.[2]
Around 70 BCE, the ancient protectors of Egypt known as the Medjay, who would later give rise to the Assassin Brotherhood, were hunted by the Order of the Ancients. A former soldier named Bion, employed by the Ancient Raia, managed to kill several Medjay, including Sabu in 56 BCE. Bion was eventually killed by Sabu's son Bayek and his future wife Aya, before Bayek proceeded to track down and eliminate Raia as well.[11]
Formation of the Hidden Ones[edit | edit source]
- 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]-[m]
In 49 BCE, members of the Order of the Ancients 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 Bayek and his young son Khemu to push the Medjay for information. The altercation resulted in the death of Khemu, sending Bayek and 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.[7]
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 and women 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 attention shifted to helping Cleopatra secure an alliance with Pompey the Great against Ptolemy to get support from the Roman Republic.[7]
When the Ancients had Pompey murdered, Bayek and Aya enabled Cleopatra to meet with Pompey's rival, general Julius Caesar, in Alexandria, resulting a successful alliance between the two. The couple later aided Cleopatra by unlocking the door to the tomb of Alexander the Great, which the queen sought to use to impress Caesar. Meanwhile, the Order began secretly manipulating Caesar and, by extension, Cleopatra.[7]
The Ancients' influence over Cleopatra allowed them to retrieve Alexander's Staff of Eden from his tomb and to kill Cleopatra's follower Apollodorus the Sicilian, who held the Apple of Eden taken by Bayek. Faced with stronger opposition than before, Bayek and Aya met with their allies who opposed Cleopatra and Caesar, laying the groundworks for a new Brotherhood.[7]
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 his son's death and reacquiring the Apple, which he later hid away.[7]
Meanwhile, Aya 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, respectively.[7]
In 46 BCE, the priest Menkhtu impersonated Medunamun as the "Ibis Reborn" and allied with the remnants of the Order of the Ancients in Egypt to form the Sect of the Ibis Reborn in an attempt to retake control of the nation. As they entered the Isu complex under the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hidden Ones killed Menkhtu and his followers, putting an end to their plans.[12]
In Memphis, the Ancient Habibah possessed one half of an Isu dagger once wielded by the Isu Vejovis. She was killed by the Hidden One Khepri, who was secretly a Sage of Vejovis. After recovering the dagger, Khepri was sent to Mesopotamia to establish a bureau and protect the artifact.[13]
Early assassinations[edit | edit source]
By 44 BCE, Julius Caesar had become the new figurehead of the Order of the Ancients, with Lucius Septimius as his right-hand. With Aya as their leader,[7] Brutus and Cassius spearheaded a conspiracy with thirty-eight other Roman Senators who opposed Caesar's imperialist ideals after he was appointed dictator for life.[14]
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, resulting in Caesar's assured death. Shortly after, Aya adopted the new name Amunet.[7]
As they were subsequently pursued by Caesar's ally Marcus Antonius,[15] Brutus and Cassius eventually fled from Rome, and a civil war ensued. The armies of Cassius and Brutus were confronted by the army of Marcus Antonius and Octavian at Philippi, and Cassius was killed in the ensuing battle. Faced with inevitable defeat, Brutus committed suicide; his Brothers attempted to revive him using one of the Shrouds of Eden, but were only briefly successful;[16] nonetheless, some reports spread that Brutus survived.[15]
After Caesar's death, the Hidden Ones continued to be at odds with the Order of the Ancients, now under the leadership of Octavian. In 38 BCE, the Hidden Ones in the Sinai faced trouble from one of Caesar's former generals, Gaius Julius Rufio. The conflict saw Bayek reunite with Tahira, the local bureau leader, and Amunet as they attempted to keep the region safe from the Ancients' influence. Tahira was killed, and Bayek assassinated Rufio in retaliation. The Hidden Ones subsequently aimed to spread their influence to Petra and the Herodian kingdom, where the newly-inducted Kawab intended to help resist the client king Herod I's tyrannical rule.[17]
Four years later, Bayek heard reports from Amunet of a curse that had struck Thebes and the nearby Valley of the Kings. During his investigation, Bayek discovered that an ancient artifact was being used to create illusions of dead pharaohs that attacked the populace. After exploring several projections of the Afterlife brought forth by the artifact, Bayek discovered that it was another Apple of Eden used by the priestess Isidora in retaliation for the murder of her mother Nitokris at the hands of grave robbers. Bayek killed Isidora and handed the Apple to his ally Sutekh, who went to hide the Apple but mysteriously died in the Waset Desert.[18]
In 30 BCE, fourteen years after Aya had decided to spare Cleopatra's life,[7] the Egyptian Pharaoh was caught in a civil war between Octavian and her lover, Marcus Antonius. After Marcus Antonius was defeated and committed suicide, Octavian's forces closed in on Alexandria, throwing Egypt's people into the crossfires of war.[15]
On 12 August, Amunet infiltrated Cleopatra's palace to implore her to end the war, persuading the Pharaoh to take her own life using Amunet's poison;[15] legend would later say Amunet killed her with a poisonous asp.[2] As a final gesture to her former friend, Amunet took her son Caesarion in to be trained as a Hidden One.[15]
Activities in the Roman Empire[edit | edit source]
- "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 was transformed into the Roman Empire by Octavian. The third Emperor who reigned over this new empire, Caligula, was a tyrant whose reign was supported by the Order of the Ancients. This turned him into a target for the Hidden One Leonius, who fatally stabbed him in 41 CE.[2]
The Hidden Ones also expanded their reach throughout the territories of the Roman Empire and beyond. By the end of the 1st century CE, the Brotherhood had established bureaus as far north as Britannia, and as far east as modern-day India.[19] By the middle of the 3rd century CE, a group of Hidden Ones started operating throughout the territories of the empire as the Liberalis Circulum.[20]
By 259 CE, the Liberalis Circulum had a headquarters in the city of Lugdunum. The Roman Hidden One Lucius tasked the Aleman Accipiter with obtaining an Isu artifact known as the Ankh. Lucius' son Aquilus travelled to meet Accipiter,[21] but was left unconscious when his assassination of General Gracchus failed.[22] Accipiter rescued him and gave him the Ankh, which Aquilus took to his father.[21]
Lucius's friend Caïus Fulvus Vultur, who was ssecretly an Order of the Ancients member, murdered him and stole the Ankh.[21] Aquilus exacted revenge on Vultur, but was arrested by Roman guards on his return to Lugdunum. After Accipiter negotiated a truce with the Prefect of Lugdunum on behalf of the Alemanni, he tried to rescue Aquilus, who was killed by the Romans during Accipiter's ambush. Accipiter left the Ankh in the care of Aquilus' wife Valeria.[23]
In 330 CE, during the reign of Constantine the Great, one Hidden One became acquainted with the Emperor.[24]
Collapse of the Roman Empire[edit | edit source]
- "For years we have scratched at the pillars of empire, toppling one or two when the foundation seemed too strong, and the weight of one Caesar's ambitions seemed too pressing. But there is a limit to how many supports a building may lose before it topples to the ground. We might have been more careful. We might have been more selective, more cautious in our approach to liberty."
- ―Magister Vitus, describing the Hidden Ones' activities in a letter left in a bureau in London.[src]-[m]
By the 5th century CE, the Roman Empire's power began to wane. In 410, Emperor Honorius withdrew Roman troops from Britannia to aid in the fight against Germanic tribes in Gaul. After Honorius' death in 423, Magister Vitus deemed the opposition they faced in Britannia from local tribes to be too severe and ordered the Brotherhood to evacuate to mainlaind Europe, deeming it preferable to abandon the island than to see the Hidden Ones eradicated. The remaining members were recommended to join the bureau in Cologne.[19]
Brotherhoods in other outlying territories of the Roman Empire faced similar issues, causing them to retreat to other areas in similar fashion to the Hidden Ones in Britannia. Consequently, the Hidden Ones eventually established their strongest presence among the kingdoms and caliphates in the eastern Mediterranean. This would eventually result in a major foothold among the territories of the Abbasid Caliphate.[19]
Middle Ages[edit | edit source]
An Lushan rebellion[edit | edit source]
In 751, the army of the Abbasid Caliphate clashed with the army of the Tang dynasty of China, resulting in the Battle of Talas. A group of Hidden Ones centered in the Great Desert led by Éléna hunted the Abbasid caliph al-Saffah's troops when they rescued a Tang soldier called Li E. They recruited the man into the Brotherhood, and Éléna would train him in their ways to become a Hidden One. By 754, this group of Hidden Ones had been killed after being attacked by al-Saffah's men at their headquarters. Li E was left the sole survivor and fled back to Tang territory.[3]
Struggle in the Abbasid Caliphate[edit | edit source]
- Aban: "The Caliph wishes to nullify the rebels and if you persist in giving them support... we cannot assure you protection from any... Caliphate response."
- Rayhan: "The rebels supply us with information in Baghdad. Without them, we are blind."
- —Rayhan and the Tahirid emissary Aban about the Hidden Ones' support of the Zanj rebels, 862.[src]-[m]
In 824, the Hidden One Fuladh Al Haami hired a group of mercenaries to steal a case from the Martyrs of Agaunum, a cult allied with the Order of the Ancients. However, one of the mercenaries, Francis, secretly served the Martyrs and sabotaged the group's mission, resulting in most members' deaths. Eventually, the last surviving mercenaries—Azadeh, Dias, and Roshan—ambushed the Martyrs while they were meeting with an Order member in Baghdad and killed them with Fuladh's help, securing the case. Fuladh then recruited Roshan into the Hidden Ones.[25]
By the mid-9th century, the Hidden Ones had established a strong presence in the Abbasid Caliphate, operating primarily out of their headquarters at Alamut. Under the leadership of a council headed by Mentor Rayhan, the Alamut Hidden Ones supported the Zanj Rebellion led by Ali ibn Muhammad and fought against the Order of the Ancients based in Baghdad.[26]
In 861, Roshan, by now a Master Assassin, recruited the young thief Basim ibn Ishaq in Anbar and brought him to Alamut for training. Roshan had deduced Basim was secretly the reborn form of an Isu following his theft of a Memory Seal from the Winter Palace, during which he inadvertently killed the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil and activated the artifact. However, Roshan kept this information hidden from the rest of the Brotherhood, including Basim himself, fearing the consequences of such a discovery.[26]
After Basim completed his training, he was sent to Baghdad alongside Roshan, Fuladh, and other Hidden Ones to combat the Order's influence in the city. As Basim assassinated various Order members, who were searching for Isu relics in and around Baghdad, he rose in the Brotherhood's ranks and eventually became a Master Assassin. However, during a confrontation with the Order's leader Qabiha, Basim was made aware of his nature as a reborn Isu and was informed of a temple underneath Alamut.[26]
Although Roshan assassinated Qabiha and tried to dissuade her apprentice from seeking out the Alamut Temple, Basim, having grown distrustful of the Hidden Ones, disobeyed her and returned to Alamut. He arrived in the midst of an attack by Tahirid forces, who had previously been allied with the Hidden Ones but had betrayed them due to a deal made by governor Muhammad ibn Tahir with the Order. After helping the surviving Hidden Ones to repel the attack, Basim entered the Alamut Temple and regained the memories of his past life as the Isu Loki, while Roshan elected to leave the Hidden Ones.[26]
In 867, Basim and his apprentice Hytham were sent to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople to foil an assassination plot by Emperor Basil I and the Order of the Ancients against the prince Leo. Allying with the Varangian guard and Eagle Clan leader Thyra, the Hidden Ones saved the prince and killed the leader of the Ancients, Isaac.[27]
Return to the British Isles[edit | edit source]
- "You do yourself a great credit in accepting Master Basim's invitation to scour Northern Europe and cleanse it of our enemy. He has long talked of traveling north for just such a purpose. That he feels now is the right time and you are the right companion is a judgment the council does not second guess."
- ―Rayhan in a letter to Hytham, about the latter's mission in Northern Europe, c. 873.[src]-[m]
By 870, a team of Hidden Ones led by Basim was stationed in Constantinople. From there, Ammon was sent to Bulgar on a mission to recover a Shroud of Eden. Ammon faced opposition from the Order of the Ancients, as well as from a Viking named Sigurd Styrbjornsson, who took Ammon's life before he could finish his mission. Through another Hidden One's report, Basim discovered that the Viking had a mark on his neck and came to realize that Sigurd was an incarnation of the Isu Týr,[28] which inspired Basim to seek out the other reborn Isu like himself.[19]
Sometime later, Basim and Hytham met and befriended Sigurd when the Viking came to Constantinople. As the Order of the Ancients retained a powerful presence in northern Europe, Basim and Hytham decided to accompany Sigurd back to Norway in 872 and combat the Order's influence there. Upon arrival in Fornburg, the home of Sigurd's Raven Clan, Basim met Sigurd's adopted sister Eivor Varinsdottir who was, unbeknownst to both Basim and Eivor herself at the time, the incarnation of Loki's nemesis Odin.[19]
During their time in Norway, Basim and Hytham became involved in the Raven Clan's conflict with Kjotve the Cruel, the leader of the rival Wolf Clan and a secret member of the Order. During a duel between Kjotve and Eivor, Hytham attempted to interfere and assassinate Kjotve, only to be gravely wounded. After Kjotve's death at Eivor's hands, Basim and Hytham agreed to follow Sigurd and Eivor to England, as the Vikings did not wish to live under the rule of the new King of Norway, Harald Fairhair.[19]
In England, the Raven Clan established a settlement named Ravensthorpe, where the Hidden Ones set up a bureau. Hytham, unable to fight in the same capacity following the conflict with Kjotve, headed the bureau, and frequently employed the aid of Eivor to kill the Order's members active in England.[19]
Meanwhile, Basim followed his own ambitions, hoping to revive Týr's memories in Sigurd. Their travels together led them to the discovery of the Saga Stone, an ancient tablet taken from the Isu temple housing Yggdrasil to England by Ragnar Lothbrok. Basim, Sigurd, and a reluctant Eivor subsequently formed an alliance with the scholar Fulke to acquire the Saga Stone, only for Fulke to later betray them and have Sigurd imprisoned by King Alfred of Wessex.[19]
Realizing Fulke was a member of the Order, Basim and Eivor worked together to hunt her down and rescue Sigurd. With the help of Eivor's various allies in England, they besieged the castle of Portcestre in Sussex, killing Fulke and freeing Sigurd, who had been tortured and had his right arm cut off during his imprisonment. This inadvertently benefited Basim's goals, as the torture had awakened Týr's memories inside Sigurd and he started to believe himself a god.[19]
In 877, Sigurd decided to seek out "Valhalla" and convinced Eivor to accompany him back to Norway, where the siblings found the Yggdrasil Chamber and connected themselves to the device. Basim, having deduced Eivor to be Odin's incarnation, secretly followed them and waited for the siblings to be disconnected from Yggdrasil, whereupon he ambushed them. Seeking revenge on Odin, Basim attempted to kill Eivor, but the Viking ultimately defeated and trapped him in Yggdrasil's simulation with Sigurd's help. This caused Basim to be presumed dead by all his fellow Hidden Ones.[19]
After returning to England, Eivor hunted down the last remaining members of the Order and discovered King Alfred to be their Grand Maegester. Meeting with the king following his defeat in the Battle of Chippenham and subsequent exile, Eivor learned that Alfred had secretly helped her and Hytham to eliminate the Order by sending them information under the pseudonym "Poor-Fellow Soldier of Christ". Alfred had done so because he was against the Order's veneration of the Isu and hoped to reform it as a Christian organization. Believing Alfred no longer posed a threat, Eivor and Hytham decided to spare him and let him carry out his plan to rebuild the Order as the Knights Templar.[19]
Despite Eivor, Hytham and Alfred's actions, several remnants of the Order in England remained and they allied themselves with the Descendants of the Round Table to recover Excalibur, a Sword of Eden possessed by Eivor. At the same time, the Women of the Mist sent Niamh of Argyll to infiltrate the Hidden Ones in Lunden to take the Sword back to Avalon. After Niamh stole the artifact, Hytham helped her by burning a replica of the Sword at Hwithors. As the Ancients and the Descendants believed that Excalibur had been destroyed, Niamh brought the Sword to Avalon while the Hidden Ones and the Women of the Mist formed an alliance.[29]
At some point in the late 9th century, Hytham recruited the copyist monk Edward,[30] who had been kidnapped by Eivor during a raid on his village,[31] into the Hidden Ones. Following his brother Ecbert's supposed death, Edward investigated it with the help of the Viking Niels Gunnarsson and the Hidden One Adelaïde. The investigation led them to an Isu temple underneath the Loch Ness lake in Scotland, where they discovered a cult led by the monk Columba, who used the Codex of Eden to convert the population. Flooding the temple and destroying the cult, Edward betrayed and killed Adelaïde after she murdered Ecbert, who had faked his death and infiltrated the cult on King Alfred's orders. Edward then brought the Codex to the king and decided to join his reformed Order, while Niels turned down Hytham's invite to join the Hidden Ones.[30]
In Lunden, the Ancient Stowe was in possession of a piece of Vejovis' dagger before sending it to Syria. Three Hidden Ones helped Alva, a Viking warrior of the Raven Clan and a Sage of Vejovis, to kill the Ancient. While exploring the ruins of the Lunden bureau, Alva entered an Isu chamber and communicated with a hologram of Vejovis. The Isu addressed a "spectator", saying that they should locate the blade by finding his Sage. He also tasked Alva to destroy the chamber, which she did.[13]
Several years later, Eivor encountered Roshan when the former Hidden One arrived in England in pursuit of the Ancient Makira. Despite having left the Brotherhood two decades prior, Roshan continued to hunt down remnants of the Order and had learned about Makira's alliance with Edward, Earl of Westerna. As Makira and Edward were launching raids to steal valuables and were framing the Raven Clan for the attacks, Eivor and Roshan joined forces to stop them. Once Makira and Edward had been dealt with, Roshan recovered a document from the former's body and left for Jerusalem.[32]
By 889, the Hidden Ones had successfully established a new Brotherhood in England, with Hytham having several apprentices training under him. Though Hytham attempted to recruit Eivor into the Brotherhood, the Viking politely turned him down and left England for good not long after.[33]
Late Viking Age[edit | edit source]
- King Eric: "Why not leave your work and your Brotherhood in the shadows?"
- Torgny: "Because my Brotherhood has an enemy. We oppose an Order that has gained tremendous power among the Franks, and their influence is spreading. They have had dealings with Harald of Denmark, who sails with Styrbjörn."
- —King Eric of Sweden and Torgny the Lawspeaker about the Brotherhood's purpose, 985.[src]
By the later half of the 10th century, the Hidden Ones had made their way over to Scandinavia, which was then inhabited by the Norsemen. There, they allied themselves with King Eric of Sweden, whom they helped ascend the throne after poisoning his older brother Olof, and the Brotherhood's Mentor Torgny the Lawspeaker served as the king's personal advisor.[34]
As of 985, the Hidden Ones opposed the Scandinavian prince Styrbjörn the Strong, King Eric's nephew. The Brotherhood suspected that Styrbjörn's ally, King Harald Bluetooth, was affiliated with the Templar Order and in possession of one of the Trident of Eden's prongs. To oppose the Order's expansion to Scandinavia, the Brotherhood's members, namely Thorvald Hjaltason, sabotaged Styrbjörn's campaign against King Eric, fighting to remove the Order's agents from their ranks.[34]
While infiltrating Styrbjörn's camp to assassinate the prince, Thorvald managed to recover the Trident's prong, which Styrbjörn had seized from King Harald shortly before the latter betrayed and abandoned him. Following Styrbjörn's defeat and death at the Battle of Fýrisvellir, Thorvald entrusted the prong to the farmer and warrior Östen Jorundsson, who hid it away.[34]
Reformation in the Levant[edit | edit source]
- "You cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of its adherents, destroy all of its writings – these are a reprieve at best. Some one, some day, will rediscover it. Reinvent it. I believe that even we, the Assassins, have simply re-discovered an Order that predates the Old Man himself..."
- ―An excerpt from Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's codex, 1190s.[src]-[m]
By the late 11th century, the Hidden Ones had renamed themselves as "Assassins", a term speculated to have been an adoption of the contemporary pejorative name Hashashin ("hash-smokers") used by the Brotherhood's detractors.[19] As of 1090, the Brotherhood in the Abbasid Caliphate was under the control of Hassan-i Sabbāh. In response to the Templars' reformation as a public knightly order, Sabbāh determined that the Assassins too had to become a public organization. Under his leadership, assassinations were much more often carried out in public, encouraging the people to stand up against oppression alongside the Assassins.[9]
In 1162, the Brotherhood was led by Hassan the Younger from Alamut. He sent an individual who would later come to be known as Al Mualim to establish another fortress in Masyaf, which some speculated to be the consequence of an ideological rift between the two Assassins.[35]
By the 1170s, control of the Brotherhood in the Levant had fallen to Al Mualim.[36] He enforced a series of rules for his Assassins, including prohibiting the use of poison, as well as promising new initiates that paradise would await them upon their deaths.[2]
In 1176, Saladin set up camp outside the Levantine Assassins' headquarters of Masyaf, intent on destroying the Brotherhood. Al Mualim sent Umar Ibn-La'Ahad to silently infiltrate Saladin's tent and plant a message, but Umar was discovered and forced to kill a nobleman. Saladin discovered Umar's name from interrogating Ahmad Sofian, and sent his uncle Šihāb ad-Dīn to negotiate peace with the Assassins; however, he called for Umar's execution, to which Al Mualim reluctantly complied.[36]
Conflict during the Third Crusade[edit | edit source]
Following an attack on Masyaf by the Templars in 1189, the Assassin and Vejovis' Sage Faisal rode to Damascus and met a Templar known as "The Hideout" who, believing the Assassin had defected to the Order's cause, gave him part of Vejovis' blade to transport to Beirut. Their meeting was interrupted by the Assassin Rafee, who followed and attacked Faisal, believing he had betrayed the Brotherhood. The Sage killed Rafee but explained that his act would ultimately help the Assassins. Faisal then delivered the dagger to Beirut and, from there, to Constantinople.[13]
Since at least 1189,[37] Al Mualim was aware of an Apple of Eden located somewhere in the Holy Land. Unbeknownst to his subjects, he collaborated with the Knights Templar's high-ranking members to find the artifact and, secretly, claim the Holy Land for himself. They eventually located it in an ancient vault beneath the ruins of Solomon's Temple.[38]
Before the Templars could claim it, Al Mualim had three of his Assassins, including Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, retrieve the artifact. Arriving at the same time as the Templars, Altaïr ignored his master's orders and decided to seize this oppportunity to kill Grand Master Robert de Sablé, but failed. Though Malik Al-Sayf was gravely injured and his brother killed, he returned the artifact to Masyaf.[38]
The Knights Templar followed Altaïr back to Masyaf, where they attempted to lay siege to the fortress, but were routed by Altaïr. For breaking the tenets of the Creed, Altaïr was demoted to a novice and was sent on a quest to restore his rank of Master Assassin by killing nine notable Templar targets on both sides of the crusader conflict in Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem, winning back the trust of his master and fellow Assassins.[38]
After Grand Master de Sablé used his subordinate Maria Thorpe as a decoy to prevent Altaïr's attempt on his life, he rode to meet Saladin and King Richard I of England at the Battle of Arsuf to rally them against the Assassins. Altaïr faced de Sablé in combat during his meeting with King Richard, as per the king's request, and killed the Grand Master, who in his dying moments revealed Al Mualim's treachery.[38]
Meanwhile, Al Mualim used the Apple of Eden to make his Assassins bend to his will. They ultimately faced opposition from a small group of Assassins including Altaïr and Malik. Altaïr confronted his master in the Masyaf fortress' garden, where he fought off the illusions created by the artifact and ultimately killed the Mentor.[38]
Reforms and globalization attempts[edit | edit source]
- "Though I ask my brothers now to abandon their rituals, I do not ask that they abandon the creed. THIS is what makes us Assassins. Not the removal of a finger. Not a false promise of paradise. Not the prohibition of poison. Our duty is to the people, not to custom."
- ―An excerpt of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's codex, 1191.[src]-[m]
After the death of Al Mualim, a minor civil war broke out among the Levantine Assassins, stirred by Abbas Sofian. Altaïr eventually managed to become the new Mentor through gaining the support of his fellow Assassins. He initiated a series of reforms, allowing the use of poison and prohibited the taking of the ring finger and the promise of a false paradise.[2]
Altaïr later left on a journey to Cyprus, the Templars' new headquarters, supporting the local resistance movement. Due to Altaïr's efforts, the Templars left the island with the artifacts from the Templar Archive in Limassol, though the Assassin managed to kill the new Grand Master Armand Bouchart,[39] gaining the island for the Assassins in the process.[2]
Altaïr and Malik Al-Sayf worked together on inventing new assassination techniques for the Assassins, resulting in the usage of dual Hidden Blades. All the while, Altaïr continued to study the Apple and wrote in his codex, which defined the Creed for generations to come.[2]
Altaïr and his Assassins also started visiting other countries to spread their reformed philosophy.[36] However, Altaïr failed to spread his teachings in Constantinople in 1204, due to the chaos of the Fourth Crusade, and returned to Masyaf.[36]
First Barons' War[edit | edit source]
- "Your barons are no better than the King if they take aid from the French."
- ―William of Cassingham justifying his allegiance to King John, 1215.[src]
In 1215, tensions rose among the aristocracy in England, when King John fell under the sway of the Knights Templar. In doing so, the king refused to abide by Magna Carta. This led the Assassin Robert Fitzwalter to lead the local barons in a rebellion against the king, with additional support from the Kingdom of France.[40]
However, this created a rift in the Brotherhood, as the Master Assassin William of Cassingham opposed Fitzwalter's support of the barons and alliance with the French. He instead worked to support John's young son Henry, seeing him as the lesser evil. By the end of the conflict, John had passed away and Henry became the new King of England.[40]
Assassination of Genghis Khan[edit | edit source]
- "A dark tide rises to the east - an army of such size and power that all the land is made quick to worry. Their leader is a man named Temujin, who has adopted the title Genghis Khan. He sweeps across the lands, conquering and subsuming all who stand in his way. Whatever his motives, he must be stopped."
- ―An excerpt from Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's codex, c. 1217.[src]-[m]
Around 1217, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad recognized the threat of the rising Mongol Empire under the leadership of Genghis Khan, and suspected him of wielding a Piece of Eden. Together with his wife Maria and eldest son Darim, he left the Levantine Brotherhood in the care of his younger son Sef and Malik Al-Sayf and journeyed to Mongolia. They joined forces with the fledgling Mongolian Brotherhood, and made plans to take down the Khan and stop the Mongol horde.[36]
In February 1227, Darim and Qulan Gal pursued Genghis Khan's son Jochi, who was fatally poisoned by Darim.[40] In August 1227, Qulan Gal joined Altaïr in an attack on the Great Khan's camp in China, though Altaïr was wounded in the process and the Mongols were alarmed.[36]
Genghis Khan attempted to flee, but his horse was shot down by Qulan Gal, followed by Darim who killed him with another arrow.[36] The Assassins consequently rescued Qulan Gal's apprentice Nergüi, who was left disfigured.[40] With the Mongols left leaderless, Altaïr and his family concluded their business in Mongolia and departed for Masyaf.[36]
Fall of Masyaf[edit | edit source]
Circa 1226, Abbas Sofian plotted the murder of Altaïr's son Sef, and framed Malik Al-Sayf for the crime. With the Levantine Brotherhood left leaderless, he installed a council with himself as its head. Altaïr and his family returned in 1228, and after meeting with Abbas, Altaïr rescued Malik from imprisonment. During their absence, Abbas' right-hand man Swami killed Malik,[36] spurring Altaïr and Maria to meet with Abbas. The meeting turned violent, resulting in the deaths of Maria and Swami. Altaïr fled with the help of his son Darim,[37] and started living in exile in Alamut,[36] while Abbas became the new Mentor of the Levantine Brotherhood.[37]
For almost twenty years, Altaïr spent his days studying the Apple of Eden, creating new inventions such as the Hidden Gun. In the Isu temple beneath Alamut, he discovered artifacts known as Memory Seals, six of which he took with him.[36] Meanwhile, tensions between the Assassins and Mongols rose when Qulan Gal and Nergüi respectively killed Chagatai Khan and Ögedei Khan in 1241, creating a power vacuum in the Empire.[40]
Altaïr returned to Masyaf six years later and quickly gained support from the Levantine Assassins. He went on to kill Abbas and retook his title of Mentor, bringing the Brotherhood back to its former glory. He also started construction of a library beneath Masyaf.[36]
In 1256,[36] under the orders of the Mongol Templar Möngke Khan,[41] Hülegü Khan destroyed the Assassin fortress of Alamut. Knowing the Mongols' arrival at Masyaf was imminent, Altaïr requested the travelers Niccolò and Maffeo Polo to visit their fortress. Altaïr started telling the Polo brothers his life story and trained them in the ways of the Assassins, seeing them as the Order's future.[36]
On 12 August 1257, Hülegü Khan laid siege to Masyaf. The old Mentor handed the Polos his codex and five Memory Seals, and ordered the other Assassins to abandon Masyaf, wanting his Assassins to operate amongst the people. He then locked himself in his library with the Apple of Eden and his final Memory Seal and passed away.[37]
Conflict with the Mongol Empire[edit | edit source]
- "Altaïr means us to spread the word of the Assassin, that is his plan. [...] He is entrusting the spirit of the Brotherhood. He is passing the torch to us."
- ―Niccolò Polo in his journal The Secret Crusade, 1257.[src]
After escaping from Masyaf, the Polos were attacked by the Mongols and lost the codex. Nonetheless, they arrived in Constantinople, founded an Assassins Guild, and hid the Memory Seals in the city.[36] They journeyed to the Mongol Empire in 1259 to retrieve the codex, but their efforts were unsuccessful.[37]
That same year, the Mongols started expanding further into China, to the dismay of the Chinese Brotherhood. To halt the Mongol advance, one Assassin served as a general in the Chinese army and helped prevent the capture of Diaoyu Castle, but was killed. Later, on 11 August, his daughter Zhang Zhi, an Assassin apprentice, killed Möngke in revenge, against her Mentor Kang's wishes.[41]
Only four years later, Nergüi carried out another high profile assassination when he killed the Templars' Russian ally Alexander Nevsky, who held a notorious alliance with the Mongols. He succeeded in exacting revenge for the Levantine Brotherhood, by killing Hülegü Khan on 8 February 1265.[40]
The Polos returned to Venice in 1269, establishing another Assassins Guild in the city.[9] They took Niccolò's son Marco with them on their next journey to the Mongol Empire two years later. Arriving at the Mongol court in 1275, Marco gained the trust of Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan, and retrieved the codex from the Khan's palace in Shangdu. The Polos brought it back to Venice,[42] where they handed it to their new Brothers. Around 1296, it was under protection of the Assassin and poet Dante Alighieri, who also began training the individual later known as Domenico Auditore.[2]
Rebirth as a secret order[edit | edit source]
- "In breaking the Templars' public facade, are we merely driving them into the shadows? Fifty years ago, the Templars thought us destroyed, after all. Vanishing from the public eye has proven our greatest strength in this interminable war—are we now granting the same boon to our enemies?"
- ―An excerpt of the journal of Thomas de Carneillon, 1307.[src]-[m]
The Assassins decided to make their continued existence unknown to their mortal enemies, by devising a plan to eradicate the Knights Templar. The Mentor of the French Brotherhood, Guillaume de Nogaret, poisoned his political enemy Pope Benedict XI in 1304, and exerted his influence over King Philip IV of France and the new Pope Clement V to turn them against the Knights Templar.[43]
On 13 October 1307, Assassins dressed as the king's mercenaries launched an assault on the Temple in Paris to arrest the Templars and their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. Master Assassin Thomas de Carneillon also infiltrated the Temple to obtain the Codex Pater Intellectus and a Sword of Eden, though de Molay's advisor hid them in the Temple's crypt. With de Molay and numerous other Templars arrested, de Carneillon led a decade-long hunt for Templar remnants in Europe. In 1314, de Molay was executed, and the Assassins believed their mortal enemies officially disbanded.[43]
In 1321, Dante Alighieri was killed by Templars, causing Marco Polo and Domenico Auditore's father to order Domenico, Alighieri's apprentice, to take Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's codex to Spain. Though the Templars hired pirates to attack Domenico and his family in Otranto's harbor, the Assassin hid the codex's pages from the pirates in various boxes. Three years later, the Templars also killed Marco Polo and Domenico's father. Domenico founded the noble House of Auditore in Florence, and moved into the Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni, which became the new headquarters of the Italian Brotherhood.[2]
In 1340, the Egyptian Assassin Numa Al'Khamsin was tasked by an Assassin elder to retrieve the Scepter of Aset, an artifact given to rebelling Mamluks by another Assassin in 1250, from the Templars.[44] Numa and his apprentice Ali Al-Ghraib recovered it in Karnak, though Numa was imprisoned by the Mamluks upon his refusal to hand it over.[45] Escaping with the Templar agent Leila, Numa was led into a trap by his apprentice under the pressure of the Templars and subsequently killed by Leila. Nonetheless, Ali hid the Scepter in a well, but died before he could contact the Assassins.[46]
Near the middle of the 14th century, the Brotherhood in Germany discovered that a group promising protection from the plague known as the Brothers of the Cross was a secret Templar organization pursuing the Ankh. In 1350, both the Brothers of the Cross and the German Assassin Lukas Zurburg mysteriously vanished.[47]
In 1402, the Templars aided the ascension of the Yongle Emperor, which was followed by a purge of the Chinese Assassin Brotherhood. Li Tong and an apprentice escaped with an Apple of Eden, and she later exacted revenge on the emperor in 1424.[47] Another notable assassination was carried out by the Ottoman Assassins' leader Ishak Pasha when he led the attack that resulted in the death of the Templar Vlad the Impaler.[37]
Hundred Years' War[edit | edit source]
- "Rumors have been swirling about a Maid of prophecy for years. I have investigated them all. Most are liars, memorizing the story and adhering to it, hoping to get a little bit of coin and some fleeting fame. But the stories about Jeanne were different."
- ―Yolande of Aragon to Gabriel Laxart, 1429.[src]
After the Assassins caused the disarray of the Templar Order in Paris in 1307, the Assassins kept France free from Templar influence. Their enemies, meanwhile, had strengthened their presence in Britain. Under the Templars' influence, the Hundred Years' War between England and France started in 1337, with the Templars hoping to regain control of France under the English banner.[48]
By the early 15th century, prophecies of a Maiden who would lead France to victory over the English and their French allies, the Burgundians, had begun to spread. Hoping to find truth to the prophecy, the French Mentor, Queen Yolande of Aragon, deployed Assassins throughout the country, hoping to stumble upon the real Maiden. In January 1429, the Assassin Jean de Metz, a squire working for Robert de Baudricourt, met Jeanne d'Arc.[48]
Jeanne possessed a high concentration of Isu DNA, being able to enchant others by merely being in their presence. She also heard "Voices" who she believed to be angels delivering God's messages to her and who informed her of her destiny to lead France to victory in the war.[48]
Recognizing her as the prophesied Maiden, Jean de Metz swore loyalty to her and helped her and her companion Gabriel Laxart to gain an audience with his lord, who sent her to Duke Charles of Lorraine. Through the Duke of Lorraine, Jeanne, Gabriel and Jean met the Dauphin of France, Charles. Jean also started training Gabriel Laxart in Assassin skills, recognizing that he also had high IsuDNA. Jean and Gabriel dug up the Sword of Eden that Jeanne had been informed of by "the Voices", and after Jeanne met with the Mentor, Queen Yolande, the Assassins ensured Jeanne received the aid required to form her own army to help the besieged city of Orléans.[48]
Renaissance[edit | edit source]
Fight against the Borgia[edit | edit source]
- "Your father and I managed to make out bits of a prophecy scrawled across these pages. It was written by an Assassin like us, who long ago held a "Piece of Eden." His name was Altaïr... He spoke of something powerful and ancient hidden beneath the land."
- ―Mario Auditore to his nephew Ezio about Altaïr's prophecy, 1478.[src]-[m]
In 1476, after Rodrigo Borgia became the Italian Templars' new Grand Master,[42] Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, a leading Italian Assassin, was publicly executed alongside his two sons Federico and Petruccio in an attempt to stop his meddling with Templar affairs. Secretly receiving aid from other Assassins, Giovanni's sole remaining son Ezio exacted revenge on executioner Uberto Alberti and joined his uncle Mario, the Assassin leader, in their headquarters at Monteriggioni.[2]
With the aid of his uncle and several underworld figures, secretly Assassins, Ezio fought back against the Italian Templars and stopped their conspiracies. This included eliminating the participants in the Pazzi conspiracy, who planned to overthrow Lorenzo de' Medici as leader of Florence, and opposing the Barbarigos in Venice, who were successful in killing Doge Giovanni Mocenigo and claiming leadership of the city, albeit temporarily.[2]
All the while, Ezio collected the scattered pages of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's Codex, discovering a prophecy that foretold of a Prophet who would appear when a Piece of Eden was brought to Venice. In 1488, the Italian Templars recovered an Apple of Eden[2] from the Templar Archive, hidden there by the Byzantine Templar Cem,[49] and brought it to Venice. Ezio stole the artifact and confronted Grand Master Rodrigo Borgia, eventually routing him alongside the other Assassins. Unbeknownst to Ezio, it was he who was the Prophet.[2]
Unsure of what to do with the Apple of Eden after their ally Leonardo da Vinci was unable to divulge its purpose, the Assassins endeavored to hide it in the Rocca di Ravaldino in Forlì under the supervision of their ally Caterina Sforza. Rodrigo Borgia employed the brothers Checco and Ludovico Orsi to obtain the Apple from the Assassins. While they were briefly successful, Ezio reclaimed the artifact before being gravely wounded by Checco and passing out, at which point the artifact was stolen by the monk Girolamo Savonarola.[2]
In the late 1480s, the Templars searched for a part of Vejovis' dagger in Venice. Ezio asked Leonardo da Vinci to draw a map for the Assassin and Vejovis' Sage Giulia to locate the artifact. She infiltrated the Basilica di San Marco and killed a Templar who revealed the existence of a treasure in the hidden vault beneath the Basilica. Entering the vault, Giulia met Vejovis' hologram who tasked her to hide the dagger deeper in the vault.[13]
By 1493, rumors had begun to spread of the Templars attempting to rebuild their presence in Florence. Concerned about the possible Templar resurgence in his hometown, Ezio requested aid from different Assassin Guilds to put a stop to it. A team of Spanish Assassins worked with the Italian Assassins Corvo Antonelli and Perina di Bastian to investigate the rumors, and found that the Templar Bonacolto Contarini had been attempting to forcefully recruit merchants and officials to the Order's cause. The Assassins ultimately killed Contarini, liberating Florence of Templar influence.[50]
Spanish Inquisition[edit | edit source]
- "The Inquisition has finally delivered Spain to the Templars. Sultan Muhammad and his people still hold out in Granada. But if his son, the prince, is captured... he will surrender the city and the Apple of Eden. [...] If the Apple falls into their hands, the Templars will destroy everything that stands in their way."
- ―The Mentor Benedicto, at the induction of Aguilar de Nerha, 1491.[src]
By the 1490s, the Spanish Inquisition, led by the Master Templar and Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, had begun to capture and execute members of the Assassin Brotherhood, branding them as heretics. Among their victims were the parents of Aguilar de Nerha, who subsequently joined the Assassins.[51]
In 1491, Christoffa Corombo and his friend Luis de Santángel, an Assassin, were lured to Venice with the prospect of funding by Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who secretly wanted to kill Corombo to stop him from discovering the New World. Santángel employed the aid of fellow Assassin Ezio Auditore to protect him, who later joined them to stop the Inquisition's persecution of the Brotherhood. There, Ezio worked with a branch of Assassins at eroding the Borgia's influence in Spain yet was unaware of Torquemada's Templar affiliations.[52]
Meanwhile, another Brotherhood of Assassins under the leadership of Benedicto endeavored to stop Torquemada's Templar schemes. They set up a headquarters in an abandoned fortress in Sierra de Cazorla and learned about Torquemada's search for the pieces of the Shattered Staff of Eden. The Assassins managed to prevent the Templar Ojeda from acquiring one section of the artifact at the Monastery of St. Lucia, and sent it to their allies at the University of Salamanca for safekeeping.[53]
However, the Inquisitor and Templar Gustavo Ramírez retrieved one Staff piece from St. Rafael Abbey, and found the final one at Sobroso Castle with the aid of the Assassin turncoat Diego de Alvarado. Diego later betrayed and killed Ramírez in order to personally deliver the Staff to Torquemada, and stole the final section of the artifact from the University of Salamanca. When the Assassins uncovered Diego's treason, they tracked him down and killed him, but he had already delivered the Staff into Torquemada's hands.[53]
During this time, the Spanish Brotherhood sought to bolster their ranks and recruited numerous members from among those who had suffered because of the Inquisition. Among them was Horacio de Heredia, a former Knight Hospitalier whose family had been executed by the Inquisition's forces. After the Assassins helped Horacio exact revenge on the Templar commander Duran, he agreed to join them.[54]
In 1492, the Assassins learned of Torquemada's intent to kidnap the son of Emir Muhammad XII of Granada to trade him for the Emir's Apple of Eden. A team of Assassins including Benedicto, Aguilar de Nerha, and María rode to stop the Templars from finding the sultan's son, but were unsuccessful and captured. Sentenced to be burnt at the stake, Aguilar and María escaped from their shackles after Benedicto was executed.[51]
When the Templars began besieging Granada, the Assassins sought to defend the city and its citizens.[53] Despite their efforts, the Templars ultimately managed to breach Granada's defenses and Torquemada arranged a meeting with Sultan Muhammad XII, to trade his son for the Apple. Aguilar and María interrupted the exchange, resulting in the deaths of María and Torquemada's right-hand Ojeda. Aguilar retrieved the Apple and later gave it to Christoffa Corombo, trusting him to keep it safe.[51]
Meanwhile, after eliminating several key members of the Inquisition and ensuring Corombo's voyage was financed, Ezio Auditore decided to confront Torquemada. The Grand Inquisitor, feigning ignorance of Templar affairs and declaring loyalty to Rodrigo Borgia, eventually escaped Ezio. The Assassin decided against pursuing Torquemada, believing him to only be a puppet, and returned to Italy.[52]
Control of the Spanish Brotherhood eventually fell to Aguilar, who became the new Mentor after Benedicto's death. Facing continued opposition from Torquemada, the Assassins confronted the Grand Inquisitor at the Real Monasterio de Santo Tomás on 16 September 1498. There, Torquemada had discovered an Isu site known as the Forge, and used the technology inside to restore the Shattered Staff of Eden. The Assassins killed Torquemada and broke the Staff, which also resulted in the Forge's destruction.[53]
In 1499, the Spanish Brotherhood helped the Libyan Assassin Najma Alayza in her hunt of her brother Ubayd, who had defected to the Templars and murdered their father many years ago. After Ubayd was killed by his Templar handler Garza upon realizing the Order had deceived him, Najma killed Garza and decided to join the Spanish Brotherhood.[55] Meanwhile, Luis de Santángel, the finance minister of King Ferdinand, had slowly been poisoning Queen Isabella after she had succumbed to the influence of the Borgia family, a task which a group of Italian Assassins completed in 1504.[16]
Liberation of Rome[edit | edit source]
In 1497 and 1498, the Italian Assassins endeavored to retrieve the Apple of Eden from Girolamo Savonarola, who had used it to become the leader of Florence. After dismantling his influence and turning the people against Savonarola, Ezio retrieved the artifact during the chaos of a riot, at which point the Assassins turned their gaze toward the Borgia once more.[2]
Through Altaïr's Codex pages, the Italian Assassins discovered that Rodrigo Borgia intended to use the Apple and Staff of Eden to open an ancient vault beneath the Vatican. While the other Assassins caused unrest in the city as a distraction, Ezio infiltrated the Sistine Chapel and eventually bested Rodrigo. Ezio, as the Prophet, managed to open the vault using the Staff and Apple of Eden and received a message from the Isu Minerva, intended for his descendant Desmond Miles.[2]
After Ezio's return to Monteriggioni, Rodrigo's son Cesare attacked the town in retaliation for thwarting the Templars' plans, resulting in Mario Auditore's death and the Villa Auditore's destruction. Ezio later joined Niccolò Machiavelli in Rome, where he took the lead in building up the resistance against the Borgia. With their new headquarters on Tiber Island, Ezio began recruiting new members for the Brotherhood and taking down Borgia institutions. Utilizing the city's underworld, Ezio assassinated key Templars Juan Borgia and Octavian de Valois.[14]
In August of 1503, Rodrigo Borgia, who opposed his son disturbing the Templar-led peace in Rome, hid the Apple of Eden from Cesare, resulting in his own son killing him. Ezio retrieved the artifact before Cesare, and used it to remove the last Borgia holdouts in the city. Cesare, the new Grand Master, was arrested on orders of the new Pope Julius II,[14] an Assassin ally. He escaped the next year and fled to Spain, where he joined the army of his brother-in-law John III of Navarre.[56]
In 1506, the Apple of Eden told Ezio to hide it in a vault beneath the Colosseum, where it would be found later be his descendant. In March of 1507, Ezio had tracked Cesare to Viana, where a battle was taking place. Ezio pursued Cesare to Viana Castle, where he eventually threw the Grand Master off the castle walls, permanently ending the Borgias' schemes.[14]
Fight against the Byzantine Templars[edit | edit source]
After an earthquake struck Constantinople, the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in 1509, a group of Templars uniting under the banner of the Byzantine Empire showed up in the city. They engaged in conflict with the Ottoman soldiers and Ottoman Assassins, hoping to reconquer the Empire under Byzantine Templar rule.[37]
In 1510, Ezio Auditore found letters from his father detailing Altaïr's library underneath Masyaf, and he set off to find it. However, after facing opposition from the Byzantine Templars in the fortress and discovering that the keys were Memory Seals hidden in Constantinople, he joined the Ottoman Assassins' fight against the Templars. The Assassin leader Yusuf Tazim regularly employed Ezio's aid in their troubles, and Ezio also made use of his new friendship with the young Ottoman prince Suleiman.[37]
Slowly, Ezio recovered the Masyaf Keys hidden in the city. He recovered the final key from the leading Templar Manuel Palaiologos, whom Ezio killed in Derinkuyu in Cappadocia. However, the Ottoman Prince Ahmet, the true Grand Master, killed Yusuf Tazim and kidnapped Ezio's paramour Sofia Sartor to exchange for the artifacts, leading to the Italian Assassin pursuing the Grand Master. At the end of their confrontation, they were met by the forces of Ahmet's brother Selim, who swiftly opted to kill his brother to ensure his own claim on the throne.[37]
With the Masyaf Keys in his possession, Ezio opened Altaïr's library beneath Masyaf, where he discovered Altaïr's remains and his Apple of Eden. Ultimately, he decided to leave the artifact hidden away, and retired back to Italy,[37] having left the Ottoman Brotherhood in the hands of Dogan[57] and in good relations with future Sultan Suleiman.[37] Ezio continued leading the Italian Assassins for several years, keeping his fame amongst the Assassins as a legendary Mentor across the world, before retiring[57] sometime after 1515.[58]
Continued operations in Italy[edit | edit source]
After returning to Italy in 1513, Ezio decided to retire from his position as Mentor, appointing Lodovico Ariosto to succeed him.[57] He remained involved in the training of new recruits for some time, and in 1515 he oversaw the training of Giovanni Borgia and the Englishman Hiram Stoddard. That year, he assigned them a task to recover an Apple of Eden from the Templar Dei Petrucci based on information from Ezio's friend Michelangelo. However, the apprentices failed in the task and the Templar escaped with the artifact.[58]
After Hiram found out a jealous Giovanni had revealed his adultery to his lover Elena, Hiram angrily confronted his fellow apprentice, and a brawl ensued. Consequently, Giovanni became possessed by Consus, whom he had become tied to due to exposure to a Shroud of Eden. In the confusion, Elena ran away from Hiram and fell off a roof to her death, traumatizing Hiram. He left the Brotherhood and, a year later, assaulted an Assassin compound in Greece to steal the Apple of Eden he had failed to retrieve before. He was subdued by Giovanni, who took the artifact elsewhere.[58]
In February 1519, Giovanni Borgia joined Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés' voyage to Mexico to locate a Piece of Eden. After several months of travel, Cortés and his entourage were welcomed into the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. When the Spanish massacred the Aztecs on the night of 20 May 1520, Giovanni killed an Aztec priest and took his Crystal Skull—the Piece of Eden he was looking for—before escaping during the Night of Sorrows and traveling back to Europe.[16]
Operations in the New World[edit | edit source]
- "The natives of this new world had a philosophy like our creed for as long as they've been here. And when Europeans arrived, our groups sort of... matched up. Cultures and religions and languages keep folks divided. But there's something in the Assassin's Creed that crosses all boundaries. A fondness for life and liberty."
- ―Mary Read about the Assassins in the New World, 1716.[src]-[m]
As early as 1503, the Assassins had started to spread to the New World.[16] By 1510, they had established a presence in Florida, and welcomed the Puerto Rican refugees Alonso Carlo and Miguel Ramón Carlo de Lugo into their community.[47]
In 1521, Juan Ponce de León, another conquistador, traveled to Florida to discover the Fountain of Youth. The fountain, secretly a Piece of Eden, was under the protection of the Assassins, and Miguel Ramón Carlo was sent to meet Ponce de León. Upon the latter's insistence to find the fountain, the Assassins shot him with poisoned arrows, resulting in his death sometime later.[47]
By 1533, a Spanish Assassin named Gonzalo Pardo had infiltrated the company of Francisco Pizarro, a Templar-affiliated conquistador who subdued the Inca Empire. On orders of the Brotherhood, Pardo was to save the Incan Emperor Atahualpa from execution to help the Incas, but failed in his task. He stayed in the Empire, wandering Peru as a drunkard, until joining forces with the Incan Quila in 1536 to stop a conspiracy orchestrated by Pizarro to kill Emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui.[59] Eventually, in 1541, Pizarro was killed by the Assassin Brotherhood.[2]
Activities in Tudor England[edit | edit source]
- "Henry VII of the House of Tudor rules England with unflinching power. Though England enjoys peace and stability under his command, he may soon become a victim of Templar manipulation."
- ―The Assassins on the state of England, 1503.[src]
Since the late 15th century, the Assassins noticed the Templar Order attempting to spread its influence over the House of Tudor, the ruling house of England. In 1503, Ezio Auditore da Firenze sent a group of Assassins to England to aid King Henry VII in stopping a Templar plot. On his behalf, the Assassins poisoned the last key figure in the Templar conspiracy, Margaret of York, on 23 November 1503. In response, the Templars infiltrated Henry's Star Chamber, the secret high court. After removing the conspirators, the Assassins were offered a seat on the Star Chamber by King Henry.[16]
During the mid-1550s, the Templars once again held the upper hand in England by exerting a strong influence over the court of Queen Mary I.[2] The Assassins, instead, supported her half-sister Elizabeth.[60] To end the Templars' reign, the Assassins killed Mary on 17 November 1558. She was succeeded by Elizabeth, who used an Apple of Eden to guide England into a golden age.[2]
Rebuilding the Chinese Brotherhood[edit | edit source]
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During the reign of the Zhengde Emperor in China, both the Assassins and Templars held presences in the Imperial court. After the Emperor's death in 1521, a group of Templar eunuchs called the Eight Tigers seized power in court, installed the Jiajing Emperor as their puppet, and planned to eradicate the Assassins from the Beijing.[61]
The Brotherhood's Mentor Wang Yangming was warned of the Templars' plan by the young concubine Shao Jun, and after a failed attempt to kill the Tigers, many of the emperor's enemies, including the Chinese Assassins, were hunted down and killed in what became known as the Great Rites Controversy in 1524.[61]
Wang Yangming evacuated the Assassins and their allies from the Forbidden City and went into hiding. Zhu Jiuyuan succeeded him as Mentor and trained Shao Jun in the Assassin ways. As the Tigers' hunt for the Assassins continued, Jiuyuan and Shao Jun left China to seek the aid of Ezio Auditore da Firenze.[61] Only Shao Jun survived the journey and arrived at the retired Mentor's villa in Tuscany, where he reluctantly offered her aid and wisdom, as well as a Precursor box, a Piece of Eden.[62] Shao Jun returned to China in 1526, joining forces with Wang Yangming to rebuild their Brotherhood.[61]
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With no other Assassins remaining, the Mentor and his former student traveled across the country to take down the Eight Tigers. Though their efforts initially proved successful with the deaths of four of their enemies, the Tigers' leader Zhang Yong and Qiu Ju killed Yangming in Nan'an in 1529 and stole the Precursor box.[61]
Shao Jun continued the fight, ultimately killing Zhang Yong during a Mongol attack on the Great Wall in 1532. Despite having lost the box, Shao Jun rebuilt the Chinese Brotherhood as its new Mentor, and finally ordered the death of the Jiajing Emperor in 1567.[61]
Expansion to Japan[edit | edit source]
- "I care little for Nobunaga's ambition, but it must be fulfilled. All pieces must be in play before Ieyasu can claim his rightful place."
- ―Chaya Shirōjirō Kiyonobu to Hattori Hanzō, 1571.[src]
Having suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the Assassins in the early 16th century, the Templars in Europe aimed to spread their influence to new lands. By 1549, they had set their sights on Japan, and Francis Xavier used the guise of a Jesuit expedition to expand their interests.[40] While in Macau, the excommunicated Spanish Assassin Alvaro Catarribera overheard the Templars' plans and infiltrated Xavier's delegation.[63]
In Japan, Catarribera found and trained an orphaned girl named Tsuyu, and together they founded their own branch of Assassins called the Kakushiba ikki.[63] The Assassins found allies in the Japanese ninja,[40] more specifically members of the Iga ikki, including its leader Momochi Sandayu and Hattori Hanzō,[63] from whom they learned new techniques.[40] Not too long after, Fujibayashi Nagato was recruited into the ranks of both the Kakushiba ikki and Iga ikki, and became an integral part of both groups.[64]
Unaware of the Assassin activity that was already happening in Japan,[63] Kotetsu, a member of the Chinese Brotherhood of Japanese descent, was granted leave by his Mentor Shao Jun around the same time to fight the growing Templar influence in his ancestral homeland. Intending to establish a new Brotherhood, Kotetsu left China on a journey to Japan to find and recruit like-minded allies.[65]
Sometime after establishing the Kakushiba ikki, the Assassins were tasked by Emperor Go-Nara with safeguarding the three Imperial Regalia, a mission which would be continued by Tsuyu following Catarribera's departure.[63] They also made contact with the warlord Oda Nobunaga, who promised an alliance with the Brotherhood as soon as he accomplished his goal of uniting the fractured country. Not fully trusting Nobunaga, the Assassins made a secret alliance with Nobunaga's ally Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hattori Hanzō's master.[40]
By the 1570s, the Kakushiba ikki had grown to include members from all across Japan and established several outposts throughout the land. After spending some time serving Ieyasu's interests, Hattori Hanzō returned to Iga to find that Tsuyu and Nagato had become romantically involved and were raising a daughter, Fujibayashi Naoe. Beset with jealousy over Tsuyu's affections, Hanzō sought to disrupt the life they had built in Iga.[63]
Hanzō made contact with the Shinbakufu, a Templar puppet organization founded by shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiaki following his deposition by Oda Nobunaga, and revealed the location of the Imperial Regalia to them. The Shinbakufu attacked Iga and killed most of the Assassins, stealing two of the Imperial Regalia for the Templars, while Tsuyu managed to protect the third artifact. After entrusting it to Nagato, Tsuyu left to search for the missing regalia, but failed to return and was eventually presumed dead.[63]
Having abandoned his duties to the Kakushiba ikki,[63] Hanzō continued aiding his lord in helping Oda Nobunaga's conquest of Japan. To this end, the Master Assassin killed the rival warlords Mōri Motonari in 1571 and Takeda Shingen in 1573, the latter of whom held a Sword of Eden, which subsequently wound up in Oda Nobunaga's ownership. Five years later, Hanzō also killed the warlord Uesugi Kenshin, who had been recruited into the Templar Order.[40]
In September 1581, Nagato and Momochi Sandayu, the last members of the Kakushiba ikki, were killed during Iga's invasion by Oda Nobunaga, and the third Imperial Regalia safeguarded by the Assassins was stolen by the Shinbakufu. Naoe set out to recover the artifact and eliminate the Shinbakufu as revenge for her father's death. During her quest, Naoe formed her own league of allies who aided her in her hunt, including Tomiko, an old friend to the Fujibayashi family who allowed her homestead to be used as the league's base of operations, and Junjiro, a young monk and son of the late Shinbakufu member Ido Yoshihiro.[63]
In June 1582, Oda Nobunaga's vassal Akechi Mitsuhide, a secret member of the Shinbakufu, planned to attack his lord and manipulated Naoe into helping him by framing Nobunaga as the Shinbakufu's leader.[63] During the incident, Hanzō protected Ieyasu while his ally, the monk Yamauchi Taka, retrieved Nobunaga's Sword of Eden amidst the chaos. Their contact, the Chinese Assassin Liu Yan, then transported the artifact away from Japan.[40]
During her attempted assassination of Nobunaga, Naoe realized she had been deceived and met Nobunaga's samurai Yasuke, who recognized the Hidden Blade she wielded. Having been saved years earlier by an Assassin, Yasuke became Naoe's ally after Nobunaga's death and helped her hunt down the remaining Shinbakufu members. The pair eventually succeeded in eliminating the group and recovering the Imperial Regalia, while also discovering Ashikaga Yoshiaki's identity as the Shinbakufu's leader, though they elected to spare him.[63]
Later, Naoe discovered the Kakushiba ikki's existence through their old outposts and Alvaro Catarribera's journal and decided to revive the Brotherhood. She also met Hattori Hanzō, who had recovered the second Imperial Regalia from the Templars with Ieyasu's help. Despite learning of Hanzō's actions that had led to the original Kakushiba ikki's demise, Naoe chose to forgive him and invited him to help her search for her mother Tsuyu.[63]
At the same time, Yasuke learned about the Templars' presence in Japan and their influence over the Shinbakufu with the help of the Jesuit priest Luís Fróis. Seeking to avenge his mother, killed by the Templar Nuno Caro, and to protect his new homeland from the Order, Yasuke tracked down and eliminated Caro and his subordinates, putting a temporary end to the Templars' activities in Japan.[63]
In the 1590s, Hanzō pursued and killed Shingen's former spymaster Mochizuki Chiyome, who had been using her vast network of spies to support the Templar cause. In 1596, Hanzō himself was killed by a rival ninja, Fūma Kotarō. Suspecting that Nobunaga's successor and the new ruler of Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, played a part in his death, Ieyasu tasked Taka with the investigation, which resulted in Hideyoshi's assassination in 1598.[40]
As tensions rose between Ieyasu and the Toyotomi vassal Ishida Mitsunari, the land became divided between Toyotomi loyalists and Tokugawa supporters, which included other Assassins like Mogami Yoshiaki and Yamauchi Kazutoyo. This led to the Battle of Sekigahara, in which Yamauchi Taka killed the general Shima Sakon to help ensure Ieyasu's victory, and consequently, the foundation of the Tokugawa shogunate.[40]
The Assassins continued to support Ieyasu in the following years, when he decided to attack the Toyotomi clan's last remnants during the Siege of Osaka. Hanzō's son Masanari, also an Assassin, joined Ieyasu's side during the conflict but was killed in battle.[40]
Age of Imperialism[edit | edit source]
Salem witch trials[edit | edit source]
In the early 1690s, word reached the British Assassins of an artifact hidden somewhere in Salem, Massachusetts. The Brotherhood sent the Master Assassin Thomas Stoddard, who had become legendary for tracking Isu artifacts, to America to recover the artifact. Around the same time, reports of young girls with strange illnesses led the Puritan villagers of Salem to accuse one another of witchcraft in early 1692, starting the Salem witch trials. After the Templars Samuel Parris and William Stoughton arrived looking for the artifact, they took a central role in the persecutions of accused witches. In June 1692, Stoddard arrived in Salem and met the local Assassin Jennifer Querry.[66]
The two Assassins infiltrated a warehouse, where they freed a young girl named Dorothy Osborne and a mute boy named David from Templar imprisonment. When Dorothy became possessed by the Isu Consus, Stoddard discovered that she was the artifact they had been looking for, and he brought her to safety at the Salem docks. However, the Assassins, Dorothy and David were soon captured by the Templars.[66]
During their interrogation, while the Templars were distracted by Dorothy being possessed by Consus, Querry managed to kill a guard and free Stoddard before being killed by Stoughton. While Stoddard was also shot in the arm by Stoughton, the Templar was betrayed by his remorseful accomplice Parris before he could finish Stoddard off. Dorothy, overcome by guilt for Querry's death, decided to kill herself in a fire. With Dorothy dead, Stoddard abandoned his quest.[66]
Great Recoinage of 1696[edit | edit source]
In 1696, the Great Recoinage in Great Britain resulted in the rise of money counterfeiters in the country. That year, King William III tasked his Secretary to the Treasury and secret Assassin member William Lowndes with resolving the issue through the help of the Royal Mint's warden Isaac Newton. Lowndes, in turn, employed his fellow Assassin Omar Khaled to help Newton as his new assistant.[67]
After tracing counterfeiters to William Chaloner, Omar and Newton attended a ball held by Lord Benedict Crystal that Chaloner would attend. There, Omar reconnected with his childhood friend Rose Galloway. After Rose pursued a thief who tried to steal her jewelry, Omar discovered she also possessed Eagle Vision, leading him to recruit her into the Brotherhood. Upon informing Lowndes and having his suspicions about her skills confirmed, Omar started Rose's training. From the jewelry thief, Omar and Newton recovered the blackmailers' addresses.[67]
The first two counterfeiting locations were seized, and Omar and Newton left for the last location in Bristol. There, they found Newton's former assistant Nicolas Fatio de Duillier naked in the house and returned him to Newton's London residence. After Omar and Isaac evaded a Templar attack, they discovered that Chaloner had false evidence planted to become the new Warden of the Royal Mint and have Newton arrested for counterfeiting. Subsequently, after Omar stopped Rose's training and Newton escaped Newgate Jail, he and Omar discovered from his butler Finnegan that he had planted the evidence, before he was killed by Rose from above.[67]
From Rose's father Nigel, they learned of her working for Chaloner and the latter's plot to destroy the counterfeiting evidence in the Tower of London. Omar confronted Rose in the Tower's catacombs, and dismantled the evidence by opening the floodgates, drowning Rose in the process. Meanwhile, Newton confronted Chaloner and discovered he had abducted Nicolas, though Nicolas managed to knock Chaloner out when he was distracted by Newton. Chaloner was arrested on Lowndes' orders, and Newton handed Omar a counterfeited coin with the inscription "Je maintaindrai" ("I will maintain") as a gift before Omar departed.[67]
Search for the Observatory[edit | edit source]
Since at least the 1670s, the Assassin Brotherhood in the Caribbean was engaged in a conflict with the Templars over their search for Sages, reincarnations of Aita capable of opening the Isu complex known as the Observatory. In 1673, the Mentor Bahlam abducted the Sage Thom Kavanagh to prevent him from falling under the influence of the Templar Laureano de Torres y Ayala, and set him on his quest to find the Observatory.[68]
In 1714, Phillip Randall, Mentor of the British Brotherhood, sent the Master Assassin Duncan Walpole to meet with the new Caribbean Mentor Ah Tabai and train with him, unaware that Walpole sought the local Templars instead. Seeing this task as an insult, Walpole was convinced by Henry Spencer to join the Templars[69] and compiled locations of the Assassin bureaus in the Caribbean for Grand Master Torres. Before he could finalize his betrayal, he was killed by the pirate Edward Kenway in 1715.[68]
The Caribbean Assassins later attacked the Templars in Havana to rescue another Sage, Bartholomew Roberts, but were slaughtered by the Templars, including Edward posing as Walpole. Edward's fellow pirate, the Assassin Mary Read, attempted to persuade him to join the Brotherhood. Edward aided the Assassins in fighting off a Royal Navy attack on the Brotherhood's Tulum headquarters, but Ah Tabai banished him for his earlier misdeeds. Nonetheless, Edward helped the local Assassin bureaus fend off Templar attacks and performed assassination contracts for the Brotherhood, in exchange for payment.[68]
Mary continued to try to persuade Edward to see the error of his ways, though it was only after Mary's death in Port Royal's prison that Edward decided to fight for the Assassin cause; by then, Edward's quartermaster Adéwalé had already joined the Assassins. Under the tutelage of Ah Tabai in 1722, Edward was assigned three targets: the Sage Roberts, Templar Governor Woodes Rogers, and Grand Master Torres.[68]
After killing Roberts and grievously wounding Rogers, Edward assassinated Torres during the latter's siege on the Observatory, placing both the complex and the Crystal Skull it held under the Assassins' protection. Edward left after offering the Caribbean Assassins his Great Inagua hideout,[68] while the Brotherhood continued its stewardship over the Observatory. At some point in the 18th century, the complex suffered a catastrophic collapse, after which it was deliberately buried by the Assassins.[43]
Fall of the London Assassins[edit | edit source]
Edward Kenway returned to Bristol in 1723, where he exacted revenge on his former father-in-law, the Templar Emmett Scott, and his henchman Wilson. He and his crew were pardoned by Robert Walpole, acting as a neutral party between the Assassins and Templars, and Edward was offered a home at Queen Anne's Square.[70] Edward settled down and became co-leader of the London Brotherhood alongside Miko, and together they strengthened the Assassins' presence in London.[60]
Both Miko and Edward often travelled across Europe, doing research into Isu sites and the Pieces of Eden.[60] Edward's research led him to the discovery of several Isu temples in Italy and beneath Alamut, and he endeavored to find the location of the Grand Temple, detailing his findings in a journal.[71] At some point, Edward also found a Shroud of Eden, which he hid away in a secret location in the Tower of London.[60]
In late 1724, Edward was informed of a potential Isu site in the lost Khmer city of Angkor, which the Caribbean Assassins had learned about from a document recovered from an East India Company ship. Edward subsequently travelled to Macau to search for additional leads, where he quickly came into conflict with other factions seeking Angkor's treasure, including the Japanese Templar Shimazu Saito, the merchant Madam Lee, the Hualien Trading Company, and the Templar-influenced Far East Company.[72]
Angkor's treasure was also sought by Chinese Assassins led by their Mentor Xiao Han, who hoped to use it to overthrow the Qing dynasty, which was responsible for purging the Brotherhood and persecuting countless Han Chinese people. As Edward believed Xiao Han's goal went against the Brotherhood's principles, he clashed with the Chinese Mentor several times as the two raced against each other to find Angkor. While Xiao Han allied with Madam Lee to help him find the lost city, Edward recruited the various allies he had made in Macau, including Saito, to form the Zhang Wei Union, a shipping company that soon rose to prominence thanks to a partnership with the Dutch East India Company.[72]
In the Philippines, Edward and his fellow Union members came into conflict with a native resistance led by the Visayan chief Rajah, who had acquired a Piece of Eden—a crescent amulet—and sought to use it to secure the Philippines' independence through a violent revolution. Edward ultimately defeated Rajah and retrieved the amulet, narrowly avoiding Xiao Han and his Chinese Assassins in the process.[72]
The Zhang Wei Union and the Chinese Assassins later crossed paths again in the Sultanate of Sulu, where the Union members had been imprisoned after being betrayed by their ally Jan van Aert, the Dutch East India Company's chief navigator. Both Edward and the Chinese Assassins sought to retrieve the crescent amulet, which had been confiscated by the Suluese authorities, and the former managed to seize it first. However, after Edward was distracted by a vision of the future, Xiao Han stole the amulet, inadvertently killing the Union's doctor Xialun Qing in the process, and escaped with his fellow Assassins.[72]
Meanwhile, the Union members traveled to Singapore to recuperate from their defeat. There, Edward was briefly reunited with his wife Tessa and daughter Jennifer, who had come to warn him about a Templar plot against his life uncovered by Adéwalé. Afterwards, Edward and his companions sailed to Burma in search of another Piece of Eden housed within the Shwedagon Pagoda.[72]
Although Edward and Saito successfully retrieved the artifact, their ally John Young soon stole it and betrayed the Union, revealing that he was a Templar spy and that the Order had promised him a way to resurrect Xialun Qing using the Pieces of Eden's power. After John escaped with the artifact, Edward and his remaining allies pursued his ship to the Strait of Malacca in an attempt to recover the Piece of Eden, only to be ambushed by an East India Company fleet under the command of the Templar Grand Master Alan Jacob.[72]
Narrowly escaping thanks to the arrival of Jan van Aert, who had decided to resume their partnership, the Union members traveled to Batavia, where they recruited additional allies from among the city's pirates and privateers. They then embarked on their final voyage to find the third and final Piece of Eden, which was housed in Angkor.[72]
As the Union's fleet sailed to Indochina, it was forced to fight through a blockade formed by the East India Company and Madam Lee's fleet. Successfully sinking both enemy fleets, the Union members and their allies proceeded to the mainland, where they used the Celestial Chariot Mk. 4, a prototype blimp built by Yun Pyeong-Gyu, to fly to Angkor.[72]
Upon his return to England, Edward abandoned his pursuit of Isu artifacts as he began tutoring his young son Haytham, hoping to one day recruit him into the Brotherhood. However, on 3 December 1735, the London Assassins were dealt a major blow when Edward was killed in his own home by mercenaries hired by his senior property manager Reginald Birch, who was secretly the Grand Master of the British Templars.[70]
Following Edward's death, Birch obtained his journal detailing the Assassin's research of Isu sites and indoctrinated Haytham into the Templar Order.[70] Haytham grew up to become one of the Order's most efficient killers and, in 1754, assassinated Miko to steal the Grand Temple's key in his possession,[73] leaving the London Assassins leaderless. Under Birch's leadership, the Templars managed to rout the Assassins from London, and would maintain control of the city for over a century.[60]
Activities in North America[edit | edit source]
- Achilles: "You have no idea what you're doing. The future of the whole continent, maybe the whole world, is tied up in that Manuscript."
- Shay: "Perhaps. But we don't have the right to decide that future."
- Achilles: "The right? We have the responsibility!"
- —Achilles Davenport and Shay Cormac about the Assassins using the Voynich manuscript, 1756.[src]-[m]
In 1735, Adéwalé was tasked with intercepting a parcel which contained a Precursor box from a French Templar admiral in the Caribbean. His ship, the Victoire, was lost at sea when he tried to escape through a storm, and Adéwalé washed up near Port-au-Prince. For the next two years, Adéwalé supported the local Maroon rebellion, culminating in him aiding the French Geodesic Mission and killing Governor Pierre, Marquis de Fayet. Before leaving Port-au-Prince, Adéwalé entrusted the Precursor box to Bastienne Josèphe.[74]
By 1732, the Maroon François Mackandal had created his own Brotherhood in Saint-Domingue. Mackandal took a more radical approach to the Creed, aiming to exterminate French colonists from the colony and actively searching for Precursor relics. In 1746, on orders of his Mentor Ah Tabai, Achilles Davenport established the Colonial Brotherhood in the Thirteen Colonies, which rapidly became one of the strongest branches of the Order.[71]
In November 1751, Mackandal acquired the location of a Precursor temple near Port-au-Prince from using the Precursor box alongside the Voynich manuscript. When the Assassin Vendredi entered the temple to acquire its Piece of Eden, the temple activated its defense mechanism and triggered an earthquake that destroyed the city. During the chaos, the Master Templar Lawrence Washington killed Vendredi, stole the artifacts from Mackandal's camp and brought them to the Thirteen Colonies, with Adéwalé in pursuit. Achilles Davenport then tasked Shay Cormac with recovering the artifacts from the Templars.[71]
Shay assassinated Washington and, in 1754, killed the Templars Samuel Smith and James Wardrop to acquire the Precursor box and the Voynich manuscript. After the Assassins discovered the location of another temple near Lisbon, Portugal, Shay was sent to find it. However, upon touching its artifact, the temple triggered an earthquake that destroyed Lisbon. Angered by his Mentor's decisions, Shay stole the manuscript after his return to the Davenport Homestead, and the Assassins attacked him and left him for dead.[71]
Unbeknownst to the Assassins, Shay survived and joined the Templar Order. Alongside George Monro and later Grand Master Haytham Kenway, he hunted down his former Brothers. Though Liam O'Brien managed to kill Monro and retrieve the Voynich manuscript, Shay's efforts resulted in the deaths of Kesegowaase, Adéwalé, and Hope Jensen. In 1760, with the location of a temple in the Arctic acquired, Achilles tasked the Chevalier de la Vérendrye with distracting the Templars while he and Liam sought the temple.[71]
Haytham and Shay arrived at the temple before Achilles and Liam could disrupt its defense system, though in their struggle Liam accidentally activated it. While Shay killed Liam and retrieved the manuscript, Haytham defeated Achilles but spared his life so he could warn the Assassins about the temples' danger.[71] Following a purge of the Colonial Assassins in 1763, Achilles, crippled by Haytham, was forced to spend the rest of his days in exile at the Davenport Homestead.[73]
Defeating the Louisiana Templars[edit | edit source]
By the 1750s, François Mackandal had built up the Saint-Domingue Brotherhood by recruiting numerous slaves, whom he trained in the Assassins' ways. However, the Mentor's goal to exterminate the island's white colonists ultimately failed when he was captured and burned at the stake in 1758. His Brotherhood quickly crumbled and fell apart, and the few remaining Saint-Domingue Assassins had to flee the colony.[75]
One of Mackandal's former students, Agaté, chose to travel to Louisiana in search of his former lover Jeanne, who had since been purchased and freed by the merchant Philippe de Grandpré, with whom she had a daughter, Aveline. Jeanne was later manipulated by Philippe's new wife Madeleine de L'Isle, secretly the leader of the Louisiana Templars, into leaving New Orleans and traveling to a Templar-run excavation site in Chichen Itza, where the Order was searching for Isu artifacts.[75]
Despite learning of Jeanne's departure, Agaté decided to remain and founded the Louisiana Brotherhood. He soon recruited both Aveline, admiring her dedication to fighting oppression and injustice, and her friend Gérald Blanc, and trained them to be his agents in New Orleans. However, Aveline and Agaté's relationship soured over time, due to the latter's secretive nature and the former's tendency to disobey orders.[75]
In 1765, Aveline killed Louisiana's governor Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, a Templar puppet, and Baptiste, a former member of the Saint-Domingue Brotherhood who had defected to the Templars and created his own cult in the Louisiana Bayou to track down Agaté. In 1768, after the Templar Antonio de Ulloa was appointed as the new governor of Louisiana, Aveline provoked the Louisiana Rebellion, forcing the governor to leave the city. The Assassin spared his life in exchange for information on the Templars' plans.[75]
Learning about the excavation site in Chichen Itza, Aveline infiltrated it and eliminated its overseer, the Templar Rafael Joaquín de Ferrer. In the process, she also recovered one half of a Prophecy Disk and was reunited with her mother Jeanne. Following her return to Louisiana, Aveline sabotaged the operations of the Templar Diego Vázquez, who attempted to take control of the Louisiana Bayou on Madeleine's orders. During this time, Aveline returned to Chichen Itza to retrieve the second piece of the Prophecy Disk, which she did with her mother's help.[75]
In 1776, Philippe was secretly poisoned by Madeleine after discovering the Templars' interference in his business. His shipping company was inherited by Gérald, though it continued to be run by Aveline. During this time, Aveline assassinated Vázquez, and rescued the former slave George Davidson at Madeleine's request. In 1777, Aveline journeyed to New York to kill Davidson after the latter joined the Templars and became an officer in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War.[75]
Upon learning of Madeleine's Templar affiliations, Aveline confronted her stepmother, who revealed that she had been grooming her for membership in the Templar Order and asked her to kill Agaté. Aveline instead tried to warn her Mentor, but the latter believed his apprentice had betrayed him and committed suicide after a fight. Using Agaté's death to her advantage, Aveline pretended to pledge allegiance to the Templars, and killed all members of the Order who attended her feigned induction, including Madeleine.[75]
American Revolution[edit | edit source]
In 1769, Ratonhnhaké:ton, a boy from a Kanien'kehá:ka tribe, was told by Juno through usage of a Crystal Ball to join the Assassin Order to protect his tribe. He contacted Achilles Davenport, who, despite his initial reluctance, agreed to train the boy. After several months of training, Achilles and the boy, who he named Connor, travelled to Boston, where they witnessed the Templars, led by Connor's father Haytham Kenway, plotting igntion of the Boston Massacre. Despite his efforts, Connor failed in stopping their scheme.[73]
Connor started pursuing the members of the Colonial Rite of Templars and training new apprentices, and in his devours, supported the revolutionaries' desire for independence from Britain. He joined the Sons of Liberty in participation in the Boston Tea Party and the Battles of Lexington and Concord.[73]
Connor met George Washington at his inauguration as Commander-in-Chief of the new Continental Army, and fought alongside the Continentals at the Battle of Bunker Hill to assassinate officer John Pitcairn, a Templar. He also prevented the Templars' attempts to kill George Washington and replace him with Charles Lee, and continued to participate in various battles throughout the American Revolutionary War.[73]
When pursuing Benjamin Church, Connor formed an alliance with his father Haytham, as Church had betrayed both the Continental Army and the Templars. They chased Church to Martinique, and after killing him, temporarily continued their alliance. When Haytham exposed Washington's plans to attack Connor's tribe, the Assassin cut off ties with both his father and Washington. Despite this, he fought alongside the Marquis de Lafayette in the Battle of Monmouth on the revolutionaries' behalf, and later exposed Benedict Arnold's betrayal as a final favor to Washington.[73]
In 1781, Connor targeted his arch-enemy Charles Lee, gaining the support of Admiral de Grasse for an attack on the Templars' headquarters at Fort George in New York by aiding the French Navy in the Battle of the Chesapeake. However, Haytham had ordered Lee to flee before the assault, and Connor was forced to kill his father.[73]
Around the same time, Achilles passed away, and Connor became the new steward of the Davenport Homestead. In 1782, he chased Charles Lee from Boston to Monmouth, where he finally killed his adversary. The next year, the British Army surrendered at the Siege of Yorktown, and the United States were officially founded soon after.[73]
Sometime later, Washington met Connor in the woods, where he showed him the Apple of Eden he had found in Yorktown. After the two experienced a vision of an alternate reality where Washington was corrupted by the Apple and had named himself King of the United States, Washington handed the artifact to Connor, who dumped it into the ocean on his behalf.[73]
In 1784, Connor sought to recruit the escaped slave Patience Gibbs into the Brotherhood but was rejected, so he turned to Aveline de Grandpré, whom he had met and befriended seven years earlier, for help. After working together to kill the Templar Edmund Judge and recover a charm-sized Piece of Eden that he had stolen, Aveline convinced Patience to join the Assassins.[76]
French Revolution[edit | edit source]
Due to France's financial costs during the Seven Years' War and inspired by the American Revolution, unrest started among the citizens of France in the late 1780s. The French Mentor Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, began to mediate between King Louis XVI and the revolutionaries, hoping to bring the conflict to a peaceful end while maintaining his truce with Templar Grand Master François de la Serre.[43]
In 1789, de la Serre was killed in a coup led by the exiled Templar François-Thomas Germain, who intended to reform the Templar Order. While the reformed Templars under Germain started fueling the French Revolution to undo the established positions of power, the Master Assassin Pierre Bellec recruited the late Assassin Charles Dorian's son Arno, whom de la Serre had adopted, into the Brotherhood to find de la Serre's murderers at the behest of the French Assassin Council.[43]
After eliminating de la Serre's murderers, Arno rescued Germain, unaware of his Templar affiliations and believing him to be held hostage by the Order. Germain directed Arno towards Chrétien Lafrenière, who was loyal to de la Serre, and the Assassin consequently killed him. At a Templar meeting in the Jacobin Club, Arno discovered that the Templars were orchestrating the Revolution and planned King Louis XVI's execution.[43]
Arno subsequently formed an alliance with his adopted sister Élise de la Serre, from whom the Assassins discovered that Germain was the new Grand Master. Soon after, Bellec killed Mirabeau, angered over the truce with the Templars and fanatically believing the Assassins needed to be destroyed to be built back up, similar to Masyaf, Monteriggioni and the American colonies.[43]
Though Bellec was in turn killed by Arno, the Council lost two of its members. They sent Arno to recover Mirabeau's correspondence with the King from the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792, and while there, Arno formed an alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, who was looking for an ancient key.[43]
The Council forbid Arno from pursuing Germain, instead tasking other members with the investigation. When Arno directly disobeyed their orders by tracking him to the King's execution, the Council exiled him from the Brotherhood. Arno nonetheless pursued Germain and Maximilien de Robespierre, instigator of the Reign of Terror, and killed the Grand Master in the crypt beneath the Parisian Temple on 28 July 1794.[43]
Still exiled from the Brotherhood, Arno stopped Napoleon's attempt to recover an Apple of Eden from the Saint-Denis Temple, and gave the artifact to an Assassin for delivery to Al Mualim in Cairo.[77] Arno was later reinstated into the Brotherhood and became a Master Assassin.[43]
While Napoleon later retrieved the artifact from Egypt,[77] the Assassins prevented an attempt on his life on 24 December 1800.[43] Council member Sophie Trenet later played an important role in the events leading to the foundation of the French Second Republic.[42]
Haitian Revolution[edit | edit source]
- "I will create a new Brotherhood in Saint-Domingue. I will make it a thousand times better than the one created by the disgraced Mackandal."
- ―An excerpt of Eseosa's codex, 1776.[src]
As early as 1776, Eseosa, son of Babatunde Josèphe and grandson of Adéwalé, worked to rebuild the Assassin Brotherhood in Saint-Domingue after its decline since the death of François Mackandal. To this end, he recruited the Maroons Dutty Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, Georges Biassou, Jean-François Papillon and Jeannot Bullet into the Brotherhood's ranks, and started making preparations to help other slaves in the colony.[42]
In 1791, during a ceremony inspired by Mackandal, Boukman prophesized that Papillon, Biassou and Bullet would be leaders of a rebellion to free the slaves of Saint-Domingue. Violence erupted, which soon escalated in a colony-wide rebellion. Boukman was captured in battle in November 1791.[42] Though the Assassin Elsie was adamant on rescuing Boukman from execution and procuring his book, Fabien had been given orders to let the execution proceed to bolser their cause.[78] The same month, Eseosa executed Bullet for breaking the tenets of the Creed.[42]
Despite these setbacks, slavery was abolished by Maximilien Robespierre in 1794, and Louverture became the de facto leader of Saint-Domingue. In 1801, they faced opposition from the Templars, who unsuccessfully tried to install Jean-Louis Villatte as governor before the Assassins ousted him. However, by then both Biassou and Papillon had lost faith in the rebellion and joined the Spanish.[42]
By then, the French government had fallen under Napoleon Bonaparte's leadership, and sent Charles Leclerc to secure Louverture's surrender. By May 1802, Louverture surrendered and was imprisoned in France. His general Jean-Jacques Dessalines continued the fight, triumphing over the French, and declared himself Emperor of the new republic of Haiti, subsequently slaughtering thousands of white colonists. Eseosa travelled to the Davenport Homestead to train with Connor, in preparation for assassinating Dessalines.[42]
Hunt for the Koh-i-Noor[edit | edit source]
By the early 1800s, word reached the Assassin Brotherhood that Sultan Selim III of the Ottoman Empire had come into the possession of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a powerful Piece of Eden. As the Templars and Napoleon were also seeking the artifact, the Assassin Ahkbar was tasked to infiltrate Selim's social circle and he became the Sultan's right hand.[79]
In 1805, Ahkbar caught wind of the Black Cross Solomon Bolden and Napoleon's agent Jan van der Graff seeking passage into the Sultan's palace. He led them into an ambush, resulting in Bolden's death and van der Graff's capture and imprisonment. In July 1808, after the Sultan refused the Assassins' offer to buy the diamond, Ahkbar resolved to fatally poison the Sultan.[79]
However, rather than give the Koh-i-Noor to the Assassins, Ahkbar chose to keep it for himself, betraying the Brotherhood. He was killed shortly after by van der Graff, who had escaped his imprisonment. A group of Assassins then confronted van der Graff, who pretended to hand over the Koh-i-Noor, but they were given an empty box.[79]
Struggle in Lower Canada[edit | edit source]
- "Fellow patriots! The Oppressors have laid claim to Saint John's Day! As we speak, they are celebrating the creation of their secret association. No longer will this blessed day be theirs! We will form our own society! We will give this day back to the people!"
- ―The Assassin Ludger Duvernay at a soirée for the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society, 1834.[src]
By the 1830s, members of the Canadian Brotherhood of Assassins were engaged in a struggle with the Château Clique, a group of wealthy Templar families that effectively ruled Lower Canada. The journalist Ludger Duvernay, a member of the Brotherhood, posted a series of articles criticizing the Château Clique in 1832, hoping to expose their connection to the Templar. Duvernay was subsequently censored and imprisoned, and the people were rallied against Duvernay.[47]
Duvernay was rescued by the Brotherhood, who then used an Apple of Eden to turn the people against the Château Clique. In 1834, Duvernay created his own secret society, the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society, with the intention of spiritually unifyig Quebec and gaining indepedence from the rest of Canada.[47]
Conflicts in the Sikh Empire[edit | edit source]
- "While the diamond may bring untold wealth and power to those who worship it, in the wrong hands it is lethal. [...] If we do not take the Syamantaka now it will surely fall into Templar hands."
- ―Hamid concerning the Koh-i-Noor diamond, 1839.[src]
In 1839, Hamid, the Mentor of the Indian Brotherhood, tasked Arbaaz Mir with finding a map from the Voynich manuscript detailing the Koh-i-Noor, which had fallen into the hands of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire and was sought by the British Templars. To keep the artifact out of the Templars' hands, Hamid sent Arbaaz to obtain the diamond and protect the Maharaja from their enemies.[80]
Together with the slave boy Raza Soora, Arbaaz infiltrated a feast at Singh's summer palace. With Raza's help, Arbaaz obtained the artifact from Isu ruins beneath the palace. However, the Templar General Francis Cotton had the palace guards arrest the Assassin, allowing him and William Hay Macnaghten to poison the Maharaja.[80]
After Arbaaz escaped and engaged in battle with Cotton and the palace guards, Arbaaz's ally, Princess Pyara Kaur, interrupted the battle by using the Koh-i-Noor's powers, changing her shape into that of a Precursor. While giving a warning to unite against a common enemy, Cotton shot at the Precursor, who released a burst of energy that killed Cotton and the Imperial guards.[80]
The Koh-i-Noor remained under Hamid's protection until 1841, when the Mentor was abducted by Master Templar William Sleeman and his right-hand Alexander Burnes, who took the diamond. Arbaaz pursued the Templars after rescuing Hamid, tracking them to the Amritsar Temple where he witnessed Sleeman use the Koh-i-Noor in conjunction with a Precursor box to obtain the location of the Herat Temple. Chasing the Templars to Herat in Afghanistan, Arbaaz discovered the temple's pedestal to be broken, and was taken captive. Eventually defeating Burnes in a duel, Arbaaz traveled back to India.[8]
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After his return to Amritsar, the Assassin was forced to rescue his lover Pyara Kaur, who was being held captive by Sleeman in the summer palace. Having made his way through the palace, Arbaaz confronted Sleeman. During the confrontation, Pyara, who was held at gunpoint, stabbed Sleeman, allowing Arbaaz to steal the Koh-i-Noor before they fled. He then met with fellow Assassin Ethan Frye and gave him the diamond, telling him to hide it somewhere safe.[8]
Early modern era[edit | edit source]
California Gold Rush[edit | edit source]
As the government of the United States expanded its territory across North America, the Assassins ensured their continued presence in the newly formed American states. As such, the Assassins operated in the new states in the west of North America, such as California.[66]
In 1852, at the height of the California Gold Rush, the Brotherhood dispatched an Assassin on a mission to retrieve stolen gold from John Sutter, one of the pioneers during the Gold Rush. The Assassin attacked Sutter's carriage while in transit in the Great Basin Desert, and took the gold from Sutter to bring it back to the Maidu people, through whose labor Sutter had acquired the gold.[66]
American Civil War[edit | edit source]
- "If the Confederacy wins, or even forces the negotiation of a treaty, the Templars could take control of the country. [...] Everything we've achieved. Everything my grandmother fought for in New Orleans. It will all be lost."
- ―The Mentor about the importance of a Union victory to Varius, 1863.[src]
In 1863, the United States was in the midst of the American Civil War over states' rights to continue human slavery. The American Brotherhood supported the abolitionist Union States under President Abraham Lincoln against the Templar-backed, pro-slavery Confederate States. In order to help win the war, the American Mentor tasked New York City's lone Assassin operative Varius with stealing a Dagger of Eden—in actuality a prong of the Trident of Eden—from the Aztec Club and delivering it to General Ulysses S. Grant, whom the Mentor perceived as the Union's best hope for winning the war.[20]
After retrieving the Dagger, Varius became entangled in a fight with the Templar agent "Cudgel" Cormac and lost the artifact. Together with a new apprentice, Eliza, whose father Abraham was killed during the Templar-planned draft riots, Varius recovered the artifact as Cormac was about to deliver it to Grand Master William M. Tweed. Eliza later participated in the Civil War and successfully brought the Dagger to General Grant.[20]
The Assassins continued to remain active during the war. After President Lincoln's assassination at the hands of the Templar affiliate John Wilkes Booth, the Brotherhood killed Booth on 26 April 1865.[2]
Liberation of London[edit | edit source]
Since the fall of the London Assassins in the mid-18th century, the Templars held control over the capital of the British Empire and the Assassins mostly operated from outside London. In early 1868, the Assassin twins Jacob and Evie Frye assassinated two Templar targets, Rupert Ferris and David Brewster, in Croydon, with the latter assassination resulting in the destruction of an Apple of Eden. Against the will of their superior George Westhouse, the Frye twins left for London to retake the city from Templar rule.[60]
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Whilst there, the twins met the local Assassin agent Henry Green and built up a network of allies including Frederick Abberline, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx. While Jacob took over the local Clinkers gang and renamed them the Rooks to aid them in their battle against the Templars and their Blighters gang, Evie instead opted to focus her efforts on finding the Piece of Eden the Templars were seeking.[60]
Over the course of a few months, Jacob single-handedly killed most of Grand Master Crawford Starrick's closest agents, including John Elliotson, Pearl Attaway, Philip Twopenny, James Brudenell, and Maxwell Roth. Meanwhile Evie worked on undoing the chaos some of these assassinations did to London's political and social spheres, and traced leads on the Shroud of Eden.[60]
With his influence dwindling, Starrick discovered the artifact to be hidden beneath Buckingham Palace and planned to eliminate all heads of state and church at Queen Victoria's garden party at the palace. While the Frye twins killed Starrick's agents at the party, Starrick recovered the artifact from the crypt and a battle ensued between the Grand Master and the Frye twins. The Assassins ultimately overcame their enemy, but decided to leave the artifact in the crypt.[60]
In 1872, Evie and Henry were contacted by Frederick Abberline to help Pinkerton detective Tommy Greyling, who had traveled from the United States in pursuit of a Templar named Alice. Discovering Alice planned to steal pages of the Voynich manuscript from the British Museum, the Assassins and Greyling confronted her and her Blighter henchmen, but Alice managed to escape with the pages. Greyling chased and eventually cornered her on a ship, where Alice chose to commit suicide over being captured.[81]
By 1888, one of Jacob's apprentices, Jack, had become insane and took control of the Rooks to service his own twisted version of the Creed. After several of Jacob's female initiates dressed as prostitutes failed to kill Jack, Jacob requested his siser to return from India, where she was living with Henry. Jacob was shortly after abducted by Jack, who had become known as Jack the Ripper.[82]
Evie eventually managed to cripple Jack's hold over London, with the help of Inspector Frederick Abberline. She tracked Jack to Lambeth Asylum, where he had been previously incarcerated, and ultimately killed the rogue Assassin and freed her brother.[82]
Opposing Imperial Russia[edit | edit source]
Since at least the reign of Tsar Alexander II, the a sub-set of the Russian Assassins operated in public as the Narodnaya Volya and had been battling the Templars' influence over the Russian Empire. In 1881, the Assassins were successful in killing the Tsar, a puppet of the Templars. This resulted in the ascension of his son Alexander III, who became a willing ally of the Templars and was gifted a Staff of Eden.[83]
A failed attempt on his life resulted in the execution of several Assassins including Aleksandr Ulyanov in March 1887. The next year, their Mentor responded by tasking Nikolai Orelov with killing the Tsar while the latter was travelling by train; the attempt failed, with the conflict resulting in the Borki train disaster. The Tsar eventually died in 1894 from kidney failure developed from injuries inflicted by Orelov.[83]
In 1908, the Assassins discovered that Grigori Rasputin had stolen a Staff of Eden used as the Imperial Sceptre from the new Tsar, Nicholas II.[83] They employed the overseas aid of Nikola Tesla, an inventor discredited by the Templar Thomas Edison,[2] and stormed the facility in Tunguska that housed the Staff. Tesla released a burst of energy to the facility from his Wardenclyffe Tower, resulting in the destruction of the Staff in a huge explosion. Orelov was the sole survivor, and Rasputin later managed to retrieve a splinter of the artifact from the site.[83]
World War I[edit | edit source]
On 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, World War I broke out between the Allied Powers of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia against the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.[42] Assassins from across Europe were pulled in every direction to ensure the Brotherhood was present in every theatre of war and seat of power. As such, many members of the British Brotherhood enlisted in the army.[60]
Open conflict soon started in the Western Front; on Christmas Eve of that year, British and German troops started a truce, during which a British Assassin medic killed the German Templar general Erich Albert.[16]
The war would last several years, and by 1916, the Brotherhood had found an ally in Winston Churchill, former First Lord of the Admiralty. He worked closely with Jacob Frye's Assassin granddaughter Lydia to take down a German Templar spy network in London, culminating in the assassination of the network's Master Spy, a Sage.[60]
The war continued until 1918,[42] by which point a series of revolutions had started in several countries, including Russia,[83] and Ireland, in the latter of which at least one Assassin participated.[43]
Russian Revolution[edit | edit source]
In 1917, after World War I brought Russia to near collapse, the Russian Revolution broke out. The Assassins supported the peoples' desire for a new government and pressured the Tsar into abdicating.[9] The revolutionary Bolsheviks' leader Vladimir Lenin then asked his old friend Nikolai Orelov to kill Nicholas II. Unwilling to comply, Orelov infiltrated his residence only to determine if the Tsar's new Sceptre was the Staff of Eden. The Assassin spared Nicholas' life, and the latter told him about Rasputin's mysterious shard; Orelov then retrieved the artifact from Rasputin's corpse, and planned to leave Russia with his family to start a new life.[83]
The Bolsheviks effectively seized control of Russia after the October Revolution. In reward for their support, Lenin and the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded the Assassins with several of the Academy's facilities. One such facility in Protvino was turned into an Assassin science city, inhabited by a community of Assassins and scientists including Sergei.[42]
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In July 1918, Orelov took up one final task from the Brotherhood, to retrieve the Precursor box from the Imperial family in Yekaterinburg. After Orelov infiltrated the Ipatiev House, the Templars murdered most of the Imperial family to obtain the artifact, with only the Tsar's youngest daughter Anastasia surviving. When she met Orelov, the box she held came in contact with Nikolai's splinter of the Staff, transferring the consciousness of Shao Jun to Anastasia. The Assassin eventually brought her and the box safely to his Brothers in Moscow.[84]
The Assassins instead imprisoned Anastasia in the Kremlin to experiment on her, causing Nikolai to betray the Brotherhood and rescue her. After giving her identification papers belonging to "Anna Anderson",[84] Orelov himself left Russia with his family.[83]
After Lenin's death in 1924, the Russian Assassins faced opposition from the new Soviet government led by Joseph Stalin, a Templar puppet. Yuri Petrovich Figatner, a Templar in the Politburo, started a "counter-revolutionary" commission to hunt down the Assassins and turned the Russian Academy of Sciences into a Stalinist organization, forcing their Mentor to go in hiding.[42]
Roaring Twenties[edit | edit source]
- Assassin: "Shouldn't we have checked back with the Bureau by now? What if—"
- Team leader: "This is above Hoover's head. We're answerable to the Brotherhood and I'll be damned if I'm going to tell them that one old man killed half my team."
- —The Assassins discussing their mission to pursue Nikolai Orelov, 1928.[src]
By 1919, the American Brotherhood had infiltrated the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Around this time, the Russian Brotherhood reached out to their American counterpart hoping to locate the deserter Nikolai Orelov to obtain the knowledge he possessed of a vision during the Tunguska explosion. The American Brotherhood used its position to have Orelov's wife and daughter detained back to Russia during the Palmer Raids, but Orelov and his son managed to elude capture.[85]
By 1926, the American Brotherhood located Orelov, and the Russian Assassin Sergei tried to take him back to Russia. After Sergei was killed by Orelov, American Assassins working at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover tried again in 1928. Orelov and his young son Innokenti managed to kill the Assassin team, though the encounter proved fatal for Orelov.[85]
Through the 1920s, the Brotherhood retained its strong presence in the United States. During this time, one Assassin became affiliated with Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.[24]
Spanish Civil War[edit | edit source]
As civil war broke out in Spain between the leftist Republicans and rightist Nationalists in 1936, several Spanish Assassins joined the war on the Republican side. Ignacio Cardona supported Buenaventura Durruti, even after his death in November 1936. On 26 April 1937, a team of Assassins was present at the bombing of the town of Guernica.[86]
In May 1937, the team was joined in Barcelona by the Templar Rufus Grosvenor, secretly serving the will of the Isu Juno and claiming to be Norbert Clarke, sent by the British Brotherhood as reinforcements. As internal fighting broke out between the anarchists and communists in the city, the members of the team were unable to reach a consensus on who to support. Grosvenor handed Cardona the Koh-i-Noor diamond to force them to stop, and the latter unwittingly used its powers on his fellow Assassins until finally dropping it to prevent further harm to himself and the others.[86]
Albert Bolden, the former Black Cross from whom Grosvenor had stolen the Koh-i-Noor, had been watching the ordeal and attacked Grosvenor. He was forced to flee after being attacked by the other Assassins, but took the unconscious Cardona with him. Eventually pursuading Cardona to team up against Grosvenor, they confronted him and the other Assassins, who had been turned to Grosvenor's cause.[86]
The confrontation eventually came to a head in a run-down church, where the former Assassins overpowered Cardona and Bolden. Grosvenor gave Cardona another opportunity to unlock the Koh-i-Noor's power. The Assassin used the artifact to create bulls from the artifact's energy, which destroyed the church, and also created an illusion of the artifact's destruction. After Bolden rescued Cardona from the rubble, he swore to remain a protector of the site where the Koh-i-Noor had been buried, and the pair continued fighting in the civil war together.[86]
World War II[edit | edit source]
- "It was the Templars who delivered Germany into Nazi hands. If we do nothing, the world will crumble. In the age of shadows, the price doesn't matter, we need to stop them."
- ―Boris Pash to Eddie Gorm, 1942.[src]
International tensions that arose in the aftermath of World War I ultimately resulted in World War II, orchestrated by the Templars to bring about a new world in the war's wake.[2] Many Assassins across the world participated in the conflict, including a group that operated from a cabin in the Swiss Alps to train, supply and lead local Maquis cells against German troops.[42]
After the start of the war, a team of Assassins led by Boris Pash infiltrated the German nuclear weapons project, headed by the Templar Obbergruppenführer Gero Kramer. After their attempt failed, Pash employed docking manager Eddie Gorm to infiltrate Kramer's inner circle in 1940. Gorm abducted Werner Heisenberg, the lead scientist on the nuclear project, at a meeting in September 1942. From him, Gorm learned that the project was a cover-up for Kramer's real project, Die Glocke.[87]
After receiving formal training to become a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, Gorm infiltrated the hydroelectric water plant of Vemork on 27 February 1943 to stop Kramer's project. During a fight with the Templar, Gorm was overpowered and placed inside Die Glocke, a precursor to the Animus built by Nikola Tesla. Kramer intended to search for other Pieces of Eden by having Gorm relive his ancestors' memories in the device.[87] However, due to Tesla's sabotage, the machine exploded. Gorm was rescued by Julia Dusk in the midst of the British army's infiltration of Vemork, and gained information on Project Riese from their longtime ally Tesla.[88]
The Assassins then diverted their attention to the Project Riese base underneath Książ Castle in Poland, where Abstergo Industries had built a base for the German Templars to build superweapons from Isu knowledge. Gorm and Dusk infiltrated an auction at Książ Castle, where they killed Obbergrupenführer Kramer and claimed the Apple of Eden and the base for the Assassins. However, Tesla revealed that Pash was in collusion with the Templars, hoping to build nuclear weapons for the Americans to turn the tide of war. Gorm and Dusk turned against Pash, with Dusk blowing herself up to destroy the Apple, to no effect.[88]
On 28 October 1943, under the supervision of Pash and the Templar John von Neumann and using the Apple of Eden and Die Glocke, a group of scientists attempted to conduct a time travel experiment on the USS Eldridge, known as Project Rainbow. Their plan was to kill Adolf Hitler before his rise to power, as the Templars were unable to maintain their influence over the Nazi leader. Before the experiment could be conducted, Gorm killed Tesla to sabotage it, then took his own life, refusing to take part in Pash's plans for mankind.[88]
The Assassins were in contact with the anti-Nazi youth group the Edelweiss Pirates, namely Barthel Schink. Before he was sentenced to be hanged in 1944, Schink tasked Miriam Kurtz with bringing a Piece of Eden hidden in the spire of Cologne Cathedral to the Assassins in Paris.[68]
The war continued until 1945. On 30 April of that year, Adolf Hitler exited his Führerbunker in Berlin after executing his body double. The Assassins, who had been lying in wait for Hitler to show himself, killed the Nazi leader, aiding in bringing the conflict to an end.[2]
Post-war period[edit | edit source]
- "We had hoped to return to our roots, but now our own Mentor is dead. Suddenly, we are aimless, without vision. Without a strong leader, we are losing influence with our government, and funding is drying up."
- ―Medeya Voronina describing the state of the Russian Assassins after the war in her journal, 1953.[src]
After the Second World War, the Russian Academy of Sciences was able to reorganize, ridding itself of Templar influence and strengthening the Russian Brotherhood's foothold.[42] In 1953, they eventually managed to poison Joseph Stalin.[2] Around the same time, the Russian Mentor passed away, leaving the Russian Assassins without proper direction and influence.[42]
After World War II, the United States government formed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Assassin William King Harvey became its director. Harvey created a CIA unit known as the Bloodstone Unit, with Boris Pash at the helm. He ordered Pash to conduct research into the Pieces of Eden and genetic memory, known as Project BLUEBIRD. Pash believed that for mankind to be truly free from the shackles placed upon them by the Isu, all humans needed to have access to the memories of their ancestors, and to that end attempted to make the consciousnesses of one's ancestor co-exist alongside a subject's own consciousness.[89]
On 8 February 1957, Pash killed his former ally, the Templar scientist John von Neumann, to obtain the Apple of Eden they had used during Project Rainbow, intending to use it for Project BLUEBIRD.[89]
Vietnam War[edit | edit source]
During the Vietnam War, the American Assassins fought on the side of South Vietnam and the United States. Pash used the Bloodstone Unit, which included Alekseï Gavrani, Julia Gorm, and Zenia, to uncover Templar machinations during the war.[89]
By 1963, Harvey had secretly defected to the Templar Order, using his position in the Assassins and the CIA for the Templars' benefit. Alongside his fellow Templars, Harvey began orchestrating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,[89] who did not have Abstergo Industries' benefits at heart. Though the Templars employed their own sleeper agents for the assassination as well,[2] Harvey tasked Pash to use members of the Bloodstone Unit to kill Kennedy and take his Apple of Eden.[89]
Kennedy's driver William Greer, an Assassin, took the Apple, but was intercepted by Alekseï Gavrani, who had left the Bloodstone Unit and took the artifact back to Harvey, unaware of the latter's involvement in the plot. Harvey subsequently implored Gavrani to stop Pash and eliminate the Bloodstone Unit, secretly to further his own schemes.[89]
Pash and the Bloodstone Unit continued their operations in Vietnam, which included experimenting on Julia Gorm to allow the consciousnesses of her ancestors to exist alongside her own. This eventually led to her father Eddie's mind taking over, which in turn led to her wanting to kill Pash, like her father did.[89]
By 30 July 1964, Gavrani, on board one of seven American ships disguised as South Vietnamese vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, had tracked Pash and the Bloodstone Unit to the island of Hòn Mê. To escape Julia Gorm, Pash and his accomplices fled to the mainland, hoping to escape to the Red River via the Vietnamese canals.[89]
After Gavrani tracked his targets down, he agreed to bring Pash and Zenia, who was pregnant with Pash's child, to safety in exchange for the location of Pash's Apple of Eden. Zenia confided in Gavrani that it was her plan to bear Pash's child in order to have Julia Gorm's consciousness be reborn in the child. When Gorm located and attacked the group, both she and Gavrani were left mortally wounded in their subsequent confrontation. Pash used Gavrani's radio to contact the USS Maddox for a rescue operation, promising to give up the Apple.[89]
After the rescue operation, Pash was met by William King Harvey, and learned the truth regarding Harvey's Templar affiliations. At Harvey's mercy, Pash was helpless to stop his plan to trigger open warfare between the United States and North Vietnam. After the Templar Warren Vidic helped Zenia's labour, which proved fatal for Zenia, Harvey intended to take the newborn child for Templar experimentation. He wanted Pash to pledge loyalty to the Templars, to leave the CIA, and to hand his genetic memory research to Vidic if he were to have a role in the child's life. Additionally, Julia Gorm was turned into a Templar asset, as the new Agent QJ/WIN.[89]
End of the century[edit | edit source]
One of the Brotherhood's last high profile assassinations came in 1971, when they killed the Templar-supported President François Duvalier of Haiti.[2] However, by the end of the century, the Assassin Brotherhood ceased to use violence to change regimes, and instead focused their attention on stopping the manipulation of the Templars through the subversion of regimes and corporations.[83]
In the late 1970s, Borish Pash's daughter Nathalie Chapman learned of her father's work while held in confinement by Warren Vidic for experimentation related to the construction of the Animus.[89] In 1977,[42] Chapman escaped Vidic's laboratory, stole blueprints for the Animus, and handed them to the American Assassin[89] William Miles.[42] While being pursued by Templar agents in Moscow, William handed the blueprints over to fellow Assassin Medeya Voronina, asking her to construct an Animus ahead of the Templars.[42]
In 1983, Nikolai Orelov's grandson, later known as Daniel Cross, was kidnapped by Abstergo Industries to be experimented on by Warren Vidic.[83] Three years later, an Abstergo team headed by Grand Master Alan Rikkin located the Assassin compound in Mexico where Joseph and Mary Lynch resided, hoping to use Mary's genetic memory to located Aguilar de Nerha's Apple of Eden. The raid resulted in Mary's suicide, Joseph's capture, and their son Callum's escape.[51]
By the end of the century, the entire Assassin Brotherhood had also fallen under the leadership of a single Mentor,[9] a reclusive figure known only through stories by most members of the Brotherhood.[83]
Contemporary era[edit | edit source]
The Great Purge[edit | edit source]
In April 1998, Hannah Mueller brought Daniel Cross, whom she had mistaken for a confused Assassin, to an Assassin compound outside Philadelphia. The compound's director, Paul Bellamy, believed it was Cross' destiny to join the Brotherhood, which the latter refused to acknowledge. After sneaking away with Mueller to get his medication, Cross experienced a Bleeding Effect-induced vision of reliving the Tunguska event from Nikolai Orelov's memories, and believed it was now his purpose to find the Mentor.[83]
The next two years, Cross trained as an Assassin and travelled across the world visiting Assassin cells to ask for aid in his quest. On November 5, Cross was abducted from a hotel room and woke up in the Mentor's Dubai headquarters, where the Mentor explained his role to Cross, and expressed his desire to name Cross his successor.[83]
After he awarded Cross with a ceremonial hidden blade, the latter acted upon a hidden impulse to kill the Mentor, implanted into his brain in 1983 by Dr. Warren Vidic. The Assassins were left in a state of chaos,[83] allowing the Templars to gain the upper hand in the American presidential election and install their puppet George W. Bush.[14]
Cross fled back to Abstergo's Philadelphia facility, where he revealed the location of all Assassin hideouts he had visited. The Templars then initiated a worldwide attack on the Assassins called the Great Purge, resulting in the near-decimation of the Assassin Order.[83] Abstergo also employed the aid of several other brainwashed Assassins during the purge, including Maxime Gorm, who became Cross' war dog.[89] The remaining members of the Brotherhood continued to operate in covert cells around the globe,[2] eventually falling under the leadership of William Miles.[37]
In the following years, the Templars continued to hunt the Assassins, and achieved to thin out their diminished numbers.[2] In October 2002, Cross, then a Templar agent, infiltrated the Assassins' secret library of Ivan the Terrible and retrieved the Prophet's Codex, from which the Templars learned about "Desmond" and his importance to the Isu.[85] Desmond, William Miles' son, fled the Assassin compound known as the Farm to escape from his Assassin life on his next birthday. Two years later, Miles sent Lucy Stillman to infiltrate Abstergo as an assistant to Dr. Warren Vidic, director of the Animus Project.[38]
Infiltrating the Animus Project[edit | edit source]
Since the 1980s, the Assassins lost several members to experimentation in Abstergo Industries' secret Animus Project, including Paul Bellamy.[85] The Mentor William Miles aimed to have someone infiltrate the company to gather intelligence. To this end, he recruited Clay Kaczmarek into the Brotherhood in 2010. After Clay successfully gathered intelligence from the personal computer of Abstergo's CEO Alan Rikkin, the Assassins decided to plant Clay deeper into Abstergo, realising how important the project was to Abstergo.[90]
On 1 February 2011, Clay was intentionally captured by Abstergo's Lineage Discovery and Acquisition division to become the latest test subject for the Animus Project, known as Subject 16; secretly, William planned to have Clay eventually extracted by his mole, Lucy Stillman, who had been working as project lead Dr. Vidic's assistant. Over time, Clay became aware that the Templars intended to find an Apple of Eden through the exploring of the memories of his ancestors, and aimed to use the artifact for their Eye-Abstergo project.[90]
However, overexposure to the Animus led to Clay suffering the "Bleeding Effect", causing him to explore his ancestors' memories without using the Animus and leading to mental instability. Through the Bleeding Effect, he spoke with the Isu Juno, who revealed to him that Lucy had switched sides to the Templars out of resentment for the Assassins abandoning her.[90]
After realizing he could not escape and finding out about Vidic's Project Siren, a plan to stage Lucy's betrayal of the Templars and let Desmond find the Apple of Eden with the Assassins, Clay decided to follow Juno's instructions to help Desmond. He left secret messages for Desmond in the laboratory written in his blood and created a digital construct of himself inside the Animus before taking his own life on 8 August 2012.[90]
Preventing the Second Disaster[edit | edit source]
- "Every day for the past two weeks the sun has been throwing off larger and larger flares. Older satellites are starting to malfunction, I hear rumblings of recalling the crew on the international space station. There's already work being done as well to shield power stations and transformers on the ground. Not that any of it matters. This goes far beyond some brownouts..."
- ―Shaun Hastings on the imminent solar flare, 2012.[src]-[m]
Following Clay's death, Abstergo endeavored to find Desmond Miles as the Animus Project's next subject.[38] On 1 September 2012,[42] they located and kidnapped him, and he was placed inside the Animus in the Abstergo Campus in Rome under Dr. Vidic and Lucy Stillman's supervision. After Abstergo acquired a map of the Pieces of Eden from the memories of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Lucy escaped with Desmond to join the Assassins Rebecca Crane and Shaun Hastings,[42] as part of Vidic's plan to make Desmond willingly find an Apple of Eden.[90]
The Assassins then made Desmond explore the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze to find his Apple of Eden. From Ezio's meeting with Minerva in 1499, the Assassins discovered that an imminent solar flare posed a larger threat than the Templars, and they focused their attention to finding the Isu temples. After an attack on their Rome hideout,[2] the team fled to Monteriggioni, where Desmond discovered the Apple's location from Ezio's memories. They travelled back to Rome, where they discovered the vault beneath the Santa Maria in Aracoeli. When Desmond picked up the Apple, he became possessed by the Isu Juno.[14]
Faced with visions of Lucy leading the team and the Apple to the Templars,[73] Desmond stabbed Lucy, and went into a coma. The team was picked up by William Miles, and Desmond was placed into the Animus. He retrieved the coordinates to the Grand Temple from Ezio's memories,[91] and while Desmond continued to explore his ancestor's memories, the team travelled to the Grand Temple in New York to combat the incoming disaster.[37]
With aid from a digital construct of Clay Kaczmarek inside the Animus, Desmond awoke from his coma, and the team took up shelter inside the Grand Temple. Once they were inside, Juno, who had been digitally imprisoned inside the temple, forced Desmond to live the memories of Haytham Kenway, and later his son Ratonhnhaké:ton, to find the temple's key.[73]
While reliving his ancestors' memories, Desmond conversed with a digital construct of Juno inside the Grand Temple, learning more about their attempts to stop the first solar flare. He also went on missions to New York City and São Paulo to find power source for the temple, which led to encounters with Templar agent Daniel Cross. When Wiliam went to find a third power source in Cairo's Egyptian Museum, he was captured by Sigma Team. Desmond subsequently flew to Rome to rescue him from the Abstergo Campus, which resulted in Desmond killing both Cross and Dr. Vidic.[73]
Eventually, Desmond recovered the Grand Temple Key's location from Ratonhnhaké:ton's memories and recovered it from the Davenport Homestead. Using it to open the Grand Temple's inner gate, Desmond discovered the global aurora borealis device and was met by digital constructs of both Juno and Minerva. While Juno offered Desmond a choice to use the device to shield the planet from a solar flare, on the condition that it would also release her from imprisonment in the temple, Minerva warned Desmond that releasing her would bring more horror than the solar flare.[73]
Believing it to be the lesser of two evils, Desmond opted to use the device to protect the Earth from near-complete destruction. Telling William, Shaun and Rebecca to go, Desmond used the device, resulting in his own death but also the successful protection of the planet. After Juno left the temple,[73] Desmond's body was eventually found and recovered by an Abstergo team.[68]
Regaining their foothold[edit | edit source]
- Shaun: "So what do we do now?"
- Gavin: "We go to work. We turn the page."
- —Shaun Hastings and Gavin Banks on their course of action, 2013.[src]
Unable to cope with the death of his son, William Miles went to live in seclusion. In May 2013, he passed his codex onto Gavin Banks, and named him the new leader of the Brotherhood. Banks, operating from the Altaïr II, sent Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane to the United States to report on Templar activity, while Banks and his crew proceeded to continue Miles' work by following instructions from his codex.[42]
Shaun and Rebecca decided to recover Desmond's body, and moved to Montreal after discovering that Abstergo's new entertainment division was recruiting employees.[42] They infiltrated their Montreal facility as a barista and courier, respectively, and allied themselves with Abstergo technician John Standish to acquire inside information. Standish forced an analyst of the Sample 17 Project to hack into the company's computers to obtain information for the Assassins in early November.[68]
However, on 26 November 2013, Standish, revealed to be a Sage, betrayed the Assassins and tried to acquire the analyst's body for Juno to possess. His plan ultimately failed, and he was killed by Abstergo security guards. After discovering what had happened to Desmond's body, William Miles came out of hiding.[68]
On 3 November, an Indian Assassin cell including siblings Siobhan and Jasdip Dhami abducted Jot Soora, a MysoreTech employee whom they erroneously believed to be a descendant of Arbaaz Mir, after he was assigned to test a localized version of the virtual reality Animus. Abstergo's Sigma Team raided the safehouse in which they held Jot to acquire him for themselves. Jasdip and Jot survived the attack and fled to a safehouse in Mumbai. Exploring more memories of Arbaaz through the Abstergo Cloud, Soora was unable to find the location of the Koh-i-Noor before the Templars attacked the safehouse again. During the chaos, Jot escaped from both the Assassins and Templars.[80]
In December 2013, the Altaïr II arrived in Osaka, Japan, where its crew tried to establish contact with the local Assassins. Sometime prior, the Japanese Assassins' hideout had been attacked by a yakuza gang, the Onmoraki-Gumi, resulting in the death of their Mentor Kenichi Mochizuki. His wife Saeko became the new Mentor, eliminated the Onmoraki-Gumi's leaders and took over the organization to blend the Assassins into the city. Banks and Emmanuel Barraza discovered the Yakuza's hideout, and despite Banks' disapproval of the Yakuza, the crew left the Japanese Assassins behind.[42]
In February 2014, Harlan Cunningham and Arend Schut infiltrated an Abstergo facility in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and stole the Precursor box. After a firefight with Sigma Team led by Juhani Otso Berg, the Assassins were forced to abandon their mission, leaving the artifact behind in the process.[71]
In March 2014, Banks, Barraza, and Emmett Leary left the Altaïr II to travel to Moscow and meet with Galina Voronina, an Assassin from the Protvino cell who needed aid in assassinating her mother, who went insane from exposure to the Animus. The Assassins accompanied Voronina to the science city, where she single-handedly took out all remaining feral Assassins including her mother, who was strapped to the Animus under Juno's control. With the science city abandoned, Voronina accepted Banks' invitation to join his crew as an enforcer.[42]
Banks, determined to find William Miles, led the Altaïr II to a bunker in Tromsø, Norway, based on instructions from the codex. There, they rejoined William, Shaun, and Rebecca, and the latter discovered that there was a spy for the Initiates among the crew. After interrogating the crew, both Dr. Stephanie Chiu and Eric Cooper were exposed as spies. William and Banks decided to recruit the Initiates, and on 16 June, Shuan sent a message to the group with an invitation to join the Brotherhood.[42]
In October, a team of Assassins including Gavin, Shaun, and Galina attacked Abstergo's Paris facility,[71] where the Templar scientist Dr. Álvaro Gramática was conducting research for their Phoenix Project,[60] an attempt to sequence an Isu genome to unlock the true potential of the Pieces of Eden.[43] To thwart their progress, the Assassins destroyed the facility, including the body of the Sage John Standish[71] and the original Shroud of Eden, connected to the consciousness of the Isu Consus.[60]
By November, Shaun and an Assassin codenamed Bishop contacted users of Abstergo's new Helix program on behalf of the Assassins. One such user became an initiate tasked with exploring the memories of Arno Dorian to find the body of the Sage François-Thomas Germain ahead of the Templars. After discovering that Arno had hidden the body in the Paris catacombs, the Assassins abandoned their search.[43] Around the same time, Berg sent a video recording of Shay Cormac killing Assassins across their network. The Assassins, fearing an attack by the Templars, were sent into a temporary state of chaos.[71]
In late 2015, Bishop contacted another Helix user to help her, Shaun, and Rebecca find the location of a Shroud of Eden in London by exploring the memories of Jacob and Evie Frye. Through their memories, the Initiate discovered its location in the vault underneath Buckingham Palace, where Shaun, Rebecca and Galina faced off against Isabelle Ardant, Berg, and Violet da Costa. Shaun killed Ardant, but when Rebecca was critically shot, the Assassins had to leave the artifact and escape to safety.[60]
With the Shroud in his possession, Dr. Álvaro Gramática subsequently became the Assassins' primary target and finding his lab a top priority. Meanwhile, the Templars started targeting the Initiates, resulting in the death of the Abstergo analyst. After various Assassins voiced their concerns over the Initiates' involvement, William Miles enacted the Rooftop Garden Protocol, ending all communications on the Assassins' worldwide network and with the Initiates.[82]
Renewed Assassin operations[edit | edit source]
- "Above all, your primary target remains Dr. Gramatica and his lab. If you find either, DO NOT ENGAGE. Report to me immediately and we will assemble a strike team. Outside of this, you are free to choose your own targets, so long as you follow the Creed."
- ―Bishop sending a message to the Assassin cells, 2015.[src]
In late 2015, a new Assassin team consisting of Xavier Chen, Galina Voronina, and Kody Adams rescued Charlotte de la Cruz, an individual with Eagle Vision they had considered for recruitment, from a Templar ambush. The Assassins had received intel that one of their members, Joseph Laurier, had made contact with the Templars to inform them of an artifact hidden by his ancestor during the Salem witch trials. In order to determine if he was telling the truth or baiting the Templars, Charlotte was forced to relive the memories of her ancestor Thomas Stoddard in the Animus.[66]
With time running out, Galina pressured the team into confronting the Templars at their local headquarters. While initially believing Joseph spoke the truth, Charlotte later discovered his treachery through her ancestor's memories. However, Joseph took the opportunity to kill Xavier and gravely injured Galina.[66]
Charlotte and Galina escaped with Kody, relocating to Mexico City in early 2016, and refocused their efforts on Joseph. Meanwhile, Charlotte became convinced they had to find Erudito, a hacker collective, per Consus' warning through her ancestor's memories.[59]
Trying to find leads through local Templars, and while Charlotte relived the memories of her ancestor Quila, the Assassins instead angered a local cartel led by Arturo Viera. After Viera kidnapped Kody, a team of Templars led by Ortega Sanchez eliminated Viera at a meeting between him and the Assassins. He planted a tracking device in Charlotte's foot, and made a deal to spare her team's life if she'd surrender herself to them later. While she held up her end of the deal, Galina and Kody made a deal with the cartel to kill the Templars and Sanchez. This allowed them to proceed to Argentina, having discovered the password and coordinates of Erudito's hideout hidden in Quila's memories.[59]
The Assassins were brought to an Erudito base at an undisclosed location. While Erudito's leader, Charlotte's grandmother Florencia, wanted to help the Assassins, several of the other hackers were initially reluctant to give up their independence. Charlotte ensured the opportunity to convince the hackers, by having her explore the memories of Hiram Stoddard, who worked with Giovanni Borgia, for more signs from Consus, while Galina took Erudito's field agents to find Joseph Laurier in Somalia.[58]
Eventually, after Sanchez, who survived the earlier ordeal, and the Templars tracked Charlotte using the device planted in her foot, many members of Erudito were killed during their attack on the island. Joseph, who was engaged in a fight with Galina, Sheed, and My'shell Lemair, offered them aid after word of the attack reached them, wishing to ensure Charlotte's safety. While Kody, Sheed and Joseph died during the attack, the others were able to escape with help from the Assassins Arend Schut and Kiyoshi Takakura.[58]
Ascendance Event[edit | edit source]
In the latter half of 2016, the Assassins discovered a secret operation being run by the rogue Abstergo employee Sebastian Monroe, who had recruited a group of teenagers he believed might help him discover more about the "Sub-DNA" hidden away in the human genome. The Assassin Griffin was tasked with looking into their activities, and killed a Templar agent who approached one of the teenagers, Owen Meyers, in a street.[20]
After a Templar strike team captured the teenagers, Griffin rescued the only two escapees, Owen and Javier Mondragón, and persuaded them to work with him. Via a phone call, Gavin Banks informed the teenagers that the artifact they were looking for in their Animus sessions was a prong of the Trident of Eden. Based on what they discovered in their previous Animus session, the teenagers left with Griffin to recover a prong hidden beneath Ulysses S. Grant's house, but the Templars had recovered the artifact ahead of them.[20]
Griffin subsquently trained Owen and Javier the techniques of the Assassins. They fled to another Assassin safehouse after the Templars discovered their location. There, Rebecca Crane revealed Owen's ancestor Zhang Zhi might lead them to the second prong. As the memories reached a dead end, Griffin decided to rescue the other teenagers from an Abstergo facility named the Aerie. Though Griffin and Javier were able to rescue Natalya Aliyev and David Collins, Owen was left behind at the Aerie with Monroe. Griffin persuaded Natalya to dive into the Animus to find more information on the second prong, after which they left for China and met with the Assassin Yanmei.[41]
While en route to the tomb of Möngke Khan to recover the prong, the Templars shot the Assassins' plane down, though they all survived. Upon arriving at their destination, Yanmei had to convince Natalya, who was distrustful of the Assassins, to lead them to the tomb. As they arrived, Natalya incapacitated the Assassins using Javier's sleep darts. They were joined by Owen and Monroe, who escaped the Templars, and excavated the entrance of the tomb. Before they could enter, Isaiah, head of the Aerie and a rogue Templar, appeared and recovered the artifact instead. Griffin and Yanmei recovered, but Yanmei was killed when the two attacked Isaiah.[41]
After Isaiah announced his defection from the Templars and left, the group made their way to Abstergo's now-abandoned nearby camp. Dr. Victoria Bibeau, a Templar psychiatrist at the Aerie and former Assassin sympathizer, revealed that Isaiah had also taken the first prong. Owen suggested a ceasefire between the two factions to combat Isaiah, which Griffin and Victoria agreed to.[41]
Working together to find the third and final prong, Griffin assisted Victoria in overseeing Javier and David's Animus simulations while Owen, Natalya, and Grace Collins entered a separate simulation with Monroe's help, based on a memory they all shared in their unconscious sub-DNA. There, after completing a series of trials, they achieved an Ascendance Event and met a hologram of Minerva, who granted them a "shield" to protect them against the Trident. Minerva also spoke to Javier and David, who successfully discovered the prong's whereabouts in Sweden.[34]
Griffin, accompanied by Owen, Natalya, and Grace, subsequently traveled to Sweden to recover the artifact from the museum it was stored in. However, Isaiah and his men ambushed them, seizing the prong and mortally wounding Griffin, who in his final moments gave his Hidden Blade to Owen, so he could pass it to Javier. The three teenagers were saved from Isaiah by Sean Molloy, who had escaped Isaiah's captivity, and they all returned to the Aerie to make their final stand against the rogue Templar.[34]
With the help of Monroe and Victoria, as well as Minerva's "shield"—which was nothing more than the lessons they had learned and the challenges they had overcome during their journey—the teenagers ultimately defeated Isaiah, who was killed by Javier using Griffin's Hidden Blade. They then depowered the Trident, which was taken by Monroe, and returned home to their families after Victoria promised them that the Templars would leave them alone. Javier, inspired by Griffin's lessons and sacrifice, was given a phone number to contact the Brotherhood if he ever wished to join the Assassins, but decided to wait for the time being.[34]
Destruction of Abstergo Madrid[edit | edit source]
In October 2016, Abstergo faked the public execution of Callum Lynch, a convict on death row with a strong Assassin heritage. He was brought to Abstergo's Madrid facility, where he was placed in a new Animus by Dr. Sofia Rikkin, daughter of Abstergo CEO Alan Rikkin. They forced him to explore the memories of the Assassin Aguilar de Nerha in the hope of finding his Apple of Eden. Meanwhile, Callum met various imprisoned Assassins in the facility.[51]
Working closely with Sofia, Callum relived the memories of his ancestor and eventually came to trust Sofia, becoming determined to help Abstergo. When he reached Aguilar's target memory in the Animus, Callum was greeted by ghastly visions of his ancestors, including his mother, who convinced him to accept his place among the Assasins. The other Assassin prisoners staged a prison break, and Callum escaped along with Moussa and Lin.[51]
In order to retrieve the Apple from the Templars, the three Assassins infiltrated Holborn Hall in London, where Rikkin was celebrating the artifact's retrieval at a Templar meeting. Sofia, dissatisfied with her father stealing her successes, allowed Callum to infiltrate the meeting. The new Assassin consequently killed Rikkin and retrieved the Apple before fleeing in the chaos.[51]
Stopping Project BLUEBIRD[edit | edit source]
In July 2017, the Assassin Tomo Sakagawa contacted Hajime Shimada to inform him of new discoveries he had made regarding the Assassin turncoat Maxime Gorm and a neurology clinic in Switzerland run by Nathalie Chapman, which he believed was used to secretly collect data for Abstergo's Helix database. Through the archives of the Abstergo Madrid facility destroyed by Callum Lynch, Tomo discovered that Gorm was linked to the facility's Animus specialists Thomas and Alice Adler. He also discovered that an Elisa Adler checked in at Chapman's clinic under a false name, and believing her to be related, decided to investigate the clinic with Hajime's approval.[89]
In October 2017, Tomo met with Chapman under the identity of Dr. Florence Carpentier, claiming to be an expert on brain disorders. Chapman subsequently introduced him to "Elisa Bouvyer", who suffered from memory loss, and with whom Tomo began to have sessions. By the end of the month, Chapman discovered Tomo's true identity as an Assassin, revealing herself to also be part of the Brotherhood. She claimed her goal was also to kill Maxime Gorm, and revealed information regarding Boris Pash and Project BLUEBIRD, a project that involved Maxime's mother and grandfather. She persuaded Tomo to help her discover more, and he decrypted the genetic memories of Pash's former subordinate Alekseï Gavrani in the Helix to explore them.[89]
Hajime later joined Tomo in Switzerland, and revealed that Pash had been in possession of an Apple of Eden, which Tomo subsequently learned more about through Gavrani's memories of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Elisa later revealed that Chapman had her use the Animus, which Tomo claimed he had to report to the authorities. Elisa responded by saying she should rejoin her parents in Madrid. After Tomo told Hajime that he feared Chapman was continuing Pash's Project BLUEBIRD, he joined Elisa on her trip to her parents in Madrid.[89] There, Tomo discovered Maxime Gorm held captive by the Adlers. He killed Thomas and Alice, but was stabbed through the eye by Maxime.[88]
Hajime assumed control of Chapman's clinic, and was able to confirm that she planned to continue Project BLUEBIRD and resurrect the memories of the deceased in new hosts. He recovered the injured Tomo from Madrid, and had him continue exploring Gavrani's memories. The Assassins discovered Maxime and Elisa were located in Gimmelwald in the Swiss Alps, and Hajime halted Tomo's session, at which point the Bleeding Effect caused him to destroy the Animus and kill all the Assassins present, including Hajime. After returning to his senses, Tomo resolved to infiltrate Chapman's facility in the Alps on his own.[89]
Tomo planted a virus in the facility's network and persuaded Elisa to help him stop Chapman's plans. While the guards were transporting Maxime, Tomo finally managed to kill him. He then confronted Chapman, bargaining for his and Elisa's release in exchange for the virus encryption key.[89]
Chapman accepted, but attempted to convince Tomo of her vision of a future in which BLUEBIRD would guide mankind towards wisdom and freedom through the memories of all people of the past. Tomo retorted that mankind did not need any external influence, and left with Elisa. Chapman inserted the encryption key, but it held a virus that caused the facility's cooldown systems to fail, resulting in Chapman's death and the facility's destruction, including the Apple of Eden it contained.[89]
Conflict with Juno[edit | edit source]
- "All these bodies... It's a statement. Templars don't make statements. Why would they drag this war into daylight? The cell we lost in Hong Kong... now this in Germany. We haven't seen anything like this since the Great Purge. This is something new."
- ―Kiyoshi Takakura about their new enemy, 2017.[src]-[m]
By February 2017, Charlotte de la Cruz had become an essential part of the Assassin Brotherhood. That month, Charlotte and Guernica Moneo, an Erudito hacker and reluctant Assassin ally, worked with Barindra Mitra's cell to search a Phoenix Project lab in Hong Kong for data. However, upon their arrival, a group of men wearing high-tech Assassin armor attacked Charlotte and she was introduced to the young boy Elijah, Desmond Miles' illegitimate son.[92]
This mysterious faction were secretly the Instruments of the First Will, a group serving Juno and fighting to restore Isu dominance over humanity. After Jasdip Dhami, an Assassin who had joined the Instruments, gravely wounded Guernica, Charlotte was forced to take him and escape to regroup with the rest of her team at a London safehouse.[92]
In March, Galina and Arend met their Abstergo contact, Heinrich Hart, in Berlin, to question him on the intel about the Hong Kong safehouse. Feigning ignorance, Hart, himself an Instrument, was able to convince the Assassins of his innocence. After Hart blew himself up shortly afterwards during a confrontation with Juhani Otso Berg, the new Black Cross, the Assassins became convinced they were facing a new faction. Using intel from the Hong Kong safehouse, they discovered the Instruments were after the Koh-i-Noor, which Consus had previously told Charlotte to find. Intending to explore the life of her ancestor Ignacio Cardona, who had interacted with the artifact, Charlotte instead got stuck inside the Animus, unable to get out.[92]
Guernica, himself secretly an Instrument member, insisted the Assassins find Felix Oladele, an Abstergo extraction specialist, to help Charlotte, but instead led Arend and Kiyoshi into another trap laid by the Instruments, which they barely escaped. Juno secretly infiltrated the Assassins' Animus, sifting through Charlotte's memories to find the Koh-i-Noor's location. Guernica, willing to spare Charlotte future atrocities, attempted to kill Charlotte after Juno was done, but was caught and stopped by Galina.[92]
Meanwhile, My'shell Lemair, blaming herself for Charlotte's situation, decided to investigate leads on old Assassin accounts, leading her to discover they were secretly being used by a third faction. Berg also investigated the accounts and interrogated her, before being ambushed by an Instrument cell led by Jasdip. Gravely wounded, My'shell took Berg to the London safehouse, where the Assassins reconvened. Reluctantly, the Assassin cell and Berg decided to join forces to stop the new faction which had infiltrated both their orders.[92]
Over the following months, Charlotte relived the memories of Ignacio Cardona, discovering that he interacted with the former Black Cross Albert Bolden. After Charlotte was unable to carry on due to fatigue caused by the Animus, Berg relived the memories of Albert Bolden using the DNA from his descendant André Bolden. They eventually discovered the artifact was buried in the rubble of an abandoned church in Spain. Meanwhile, the Instruments hijacked Abstergo's Phoenix Project laboratory for their own means.[86]
In August 2018,[4] the Assassins and Berg left for Spain, where Arend and Kiyoshi faced initial resistance from two elderly protectors of the site assigned by Cardona and Bolden, before being captured by Jasdip's team of Instruments. As Charlotte uncovered the Koh-i-Noor, she unwittingly activated the artifact and created a blast of light.[93]
Dhami managed to subdue Charlotte in the midst of the light explosion and, after calling in a mortar strike, escaped with the artifact. Shortly after, the Assassins' London safehouse was attacked by the Instruments. My'shell managed to escape with Guernica, though she ultimately left him behind gravely wounded.[93]
Meanwhile, the Instruments forced Abstergo's Phoenix Project head Álvaro Gramática to create a new body for Juno, using the Shroud of Eden and DNA taken from Desmond's Sage son Elijah, in a lab somewhere in Australia. As Juno's new body was complete and she was reborn, the Assassins and Berg stormed the facility, while Elijah rebelled against his Instrument captors. The Assassins killed many Instruments, including Dhami, while Charlotte climbed down into Gramática's lab.[93]
As Charlotte and Elijah both reached the lab, Elijah stole the Koh-i-Noor and touched it alongside Charlotte, using its powers to fend off the Instruments. Charlotte then used it to create an illusion of Consus to distract Juno, before killing the Isu with her Hidden Blade. Though Charlotte was still inside, Berg set off a highly destructive grenade inside the facility once he, Galina, Arend, and Kiyoshi escaped, killing Charlotte despite the Assassins' protests. Elijah, meanwhile, escaped with the Koh-i-Noor.[93]
Search for the Staff of Hermes[edit | edit source]
- Victoria: "I believe this staff is important. But the Templars and Assassins have found Staves of Eden before. Nikola Tesla blew one up in Russia, if I remember correctly?"
- Layla: "This is different. If what I saw in Egypt is true, this staff doesn't control minds... it controls physics. Time. Imagine rewriting the rules of the universe."
- —Victoria Bibeau and Layla Hassan discussing the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, 2018.[src]-[m]
In late October 2017, William Miles rescued the rogue Abstergo operative Layla Hassan, whom the Templars' Inner Sanctum member Simon Hathaway had tasked as head of Abstergo's Historical Research Division with visiting the Qattara Depression in Egypt and retrieving the sarcophagus that held the Hidden Ones' co-founder Bayek of Siwa. After Layla decided to explore Bayek's memories on her own with her Portable Animus rather than bring the sarcophagus to Abstergo, the company unsuccessfully sent agents to kill her. William eventually found Layla and offered her an opportunity to work on the Assassins' Animus project, which she reluctantly accepted.[7]
Over the next year, Layla's reluctance to join the Brotherhood subsided and she became a valued member of the Assassins, even gaining leadership over her own cell. In late 2018, Layla found evidence that pointed to the location of the broken Spear of Leonidas, and gathered a team consisting of fellow former Abstergo employee Victoria Bibeau, Kiyoshi Takakura, and Alannah Ryan to recover it. Using a DNA sample found on the artifact, she proceeded to explore Kassandra's genetic memories in the Animus in a safehouse in London, hoping to find clues leading to the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus.[4]
Eventually, through Kassandra's memories, the cell discovered the location of the sunken city of Atlantis and how to reactivate the Gateway to the Lost City that served as its entrance. After doing so, Layla was met by Kassandra, who had lived over two millennia thanks to the powers of the Staff. She then passed the artifact on to Layla, imparting on her the responsibility to bring balance between order and chaos back to the world. As she let go of the Staff, Kassandra made Layla promise to destroy all the Pieces of Eden after achieving her goals, before Kassandra's immortality faded and she passed away.[4]
Layla decided to explore more of Kassandra's memories, through which she was directly contacted by the Isu Aletheia, from whom she discovered that Layla was intended to be the "Heir of Memories" and was to learn how to use the Staff and fight its corruption. Through her experiences in the Animus, Layla discovered how to reach further into the Gateway. Once there, she was joined by Victoria and the two were eventually discovered by Abstergo's Sigma Team, which was swiftly eliminated by Layla.[4]
Through Kassandra's memories, Layla experienced several simulations of Isu civilizations created by Aletheia with the intent of learning how to master the Staff's power. During these Animus sessions, Victoria implored Layla to stop, to prevent the Bleeding Effect from taking over. In a moment of rage induced by the Staff, Layla accidentally killed her friend. She continued exploring the simulations, eventually learning all Aletheia had to teach. At this point, Juhani Otso Berg confronted Layla, though she left him crippled in their resulting fight before calling the Altaïr II for extraction.[4]
New operations[edit | edit source]
In 2019, Gavin Banks and My'shell Lemair discovered that Abstergo planned to release a new digital program called Project Lighthouse with which they could influence the dark web, so that they could control illegal practices such as weapons deals and other forms of trafficking. Hoping to stop the program, they discovered that the program's failsafe code was tied to a counterfeited coin from the Great Recoinage of 1696 that had come in possession of the Assassin Omar Khaled. Gavin located Khaled's descendant, Aliyah Khan, in London and persuaded her to help the Assassins in exchange for financing her studies by giving her the money that Aliyah's former business partner Jarrod Eubanks had stolen from her.[67]
Aliyah explored Omar's memories in the Animus, and Gavin and My'shell slowly revealed details about Abstergo and their plans to her. Eventually, they were forced to stop and flee after they detected Templars near their vicinity. Leaving the Animus behind, they evaded the Templars and relocated to the London Zoo. To gain access to another Animus, they decided to disguise themselves as cleaners and infiltrate the London office of ExploreDNA, an Abstergo subsidiary that examined people's DNA. Using a VR Animus, Aliyah continued exploring her ancestor's memories until she discovered the inscription written on her ancestor's counterfeited key, "Je maintaindrai".[67]
My'shell, in the meantime, discovered that Eubanks' money was handled by Abstergo Financial CEO Agneta Reider, and that Aliyah's father Fahad Khan, who she believed to have been dead for ten years, was her employee. Fahad stormed the ExploreDNA building and managed to capture Gavin. With the help of the ExploreDNA AI, based on Shaun Hastings, they located Agneta Reider and stole her watch, which they exchanged for Gavin's location at the Isaac Newton Cambridge Museum. During the subsequent confrontation, Aliyah was forced to kill her father with a Hidden Blade. Gavin then invited her to the Brotherhood, but she initially refused. After hearing that Eubanks had been arrested thanks to the actions of a rogue group that promised to bring other thieves like him down, she changed her mind and joined the Assassins.[67]
That same year, Kiyoshi Takakura was sent to investigate an Abstergo project in Yokohama involving an Animus subject who, unbeknownst to the Assassins, was Kō Risa, a descendant of Shao Jun. Outside the Abstergo clinic, Kiyoshi overheard a conversation between the girl and her doctor, Kaori Kagami, and contacted Saeko Mochizuki to inform her of the situation, expressing concern for Risa as he feared overexposure to the Animus might kill her.[65]
Several days later, Kiyoshi approached Risa and her cousin Mari in a café to warn the former of the Animus' dangerous side effects, revealing his Assassin affiliations to her in the process. The next day, he met the two cousins again and explained the nature of the Assassin-Templar War to them while warning Risa that Kagami was a Templar and did not care about her safety. However, the girl refused to believe him and stormed off, leaving Kiyoshi alone with Mari, to whom he explained Abstergo's far-reaching influence. Understanding the predicament her cousin had found herself in, Mari offered to help Kiyoshi rescue Risa.[65]
However, Mari failed to convince Risa to end her Animus sessions with Kagami, as her cousin was interested in discovering the fate of Shao Jun's Precursor box. This soon resulted in Risa being taken hostage by Kagami, who true to Kiyoshi's words, did not care about her well-being and forced her into the Animus despite Risa already suffering from a severe case of the Bleeding Effect.[65]
Learning of the situation, Kiyoshi called Saeko Mochizuki for backup before storming the Abstergo clinic alongside Mari to rescue Risa. To their surprise, the two found that Risa had subdued Kagami on her own, taking the doctor's gun and using it to shoot and destroy her Animus. As Kiyoshi, Mari, and Risa left the clinic, they were greeted by Saeko, who invited the latter two to join the Assassins. After they accepted, the cousins were tasked to find Shao Jun's Precursor box, whose whereabouts remained unknown.[65]
Layla Hassan's sacrifice[edit | edit source]
- "You'll wonder where I am. You might wonder IF I am. I don't know how to answer that. But I'm not afraid. And I'm not alone. We have work to do. Work that may take us days or years. It's impossible to say. But we'll finish it. What I mean is... don't come looking for me. It's too dangerous... and too late. Take care of yourselves. Take care of the world we still have. And take care of—"
- ―Layla's final message to Shaun and Rebecca, 2020.[src]-[m]
By 2020, Layla Hassan had been re-assigned to a new Assassin cell with Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane. Following her accidental killing of Victoria Bibeau, Layla was given a mood stabilizer by Shaun on the orders of William Miles, to ensure she did not succumb to the Bleeding Effect or the influence of the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus again.[19]
That year, Layla, Shaun, and Rebecca worked with Kiyoshi Takakura on a mission in Tokyo to extract an Assassin informant, Doctor Kazui, from an Abstergo facility. During their infiltration, the group destroyed Kazui's DNA from Abstergo's archives to prevent the Templars from exploring his genetic memories, and discovered Abstergo's experimentation with a Staff of Eden. Following a confrontation with Juhani Otso Berg, no longer a paraplegic, the Assassins successfully escaped the facility with Kazui.[94]
By May, the Assassins had noticed several anomalies caused by the strengthening of the Earth's magnetic field, such as a permanent aurora borealis in the sky. Seeking to find a solution, Layla, Shaun, and Rebecca followed a mysterious signal they received to a set of coordinates in New England. There, they discovered the remains of Eivor Varinsdottir and decided to set up a temporary base of operations in the area, renting a cabin where Layla used her Animus to relive the Viking's memories.[19]
After learning about the Yggdrasil Chamber in Norway from Eivor's memories, Shaun theorized the strengthening of the magnetic field to have been caused by Desmond's activation of the global aurora borealis device in 2012. Believing Yggdrasil could be used to reverse the process and restore the magnetic field to normal proportions, Layla travelled to Norway and entered the chamber, using the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus to protect herself from the lethal radiation emitted by Yggdrasil.[19]
Upon connecting herself to the machine, Layla entered the Grey and met Basim ibn Ishaq, who had been trapped in the simulation for over a millennia. Basim revealed that he had sent the signal with the coordinates of Eivor's remains to the Assassins and showed Layla how to save the planet. However, in doing so, Layla doomed herself, as her consciousness remained trapped in the Grey for eternity. After meeting "the Reader", Layla decided to help him analyze numerous calculations to find ways of preventing future disasters, and sent a final message to Shaun and Rebecca, telling them not to worry about her, as she had made peace with her choice.[19]
Basim ibn Ishaq's recruitment[edit | edit source]
Layla's sacrifice also inadvertently allowed Basim to escape the Grey. This was in accordance to the plan formulated by Loki and Aletheia, the latter of whom had her consciousness stored in the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, which Basim used to rejuvenate his body. After musing at having a whole new world ahead of them, Basim travelled to New England to meet Shaun and Rebecca. Though the two Assassins were furious to learn of Layla's fate, they reluctantly conceded to Basim's request to meet William Miles and left to bring the Mentor, leaving Basim alone with Layla's Animus.[19]
Basim used the Animus to relive the remainder of Eivor's memories, hoping to find evidence of Loki's children Fenrir, Hel, and Jörmungandr still being alive so that he could reunite his family. After completing Eivor's memories, Basim was met in the Animus by a hologram of William, who did not want to risk an in-person meeting. As the Mentor questioned Basim's motives, the latter claimed that he was still loyal to the Creed and wished to help the Assassins back to form. William agreed to work together but requested a sample of Basim's blood so that he could access his genetic memories and learn more about his nature as a reborn Isu.[19]
After reliving Basim's memories, William initially kept them hidden from his fellow Assassins, claiming they had been lost, due to fearing the wrong lessons might be learned from them. However, he later changed his mind and, believing the Brotherhood had much to learn from Basim, had an unknown individual research the former Hidden One's memories.[26]
Preventing Vejovis' return[edit | edit source]
In late 2022, two Assassins, Colm and Alera, traveled to London and recruited a museum guard named Joey, who was secretly a Sage of Vejovis. Joey had inadvertently found one piece of Vejovis' dagger which had been locked away within a puzzle box, and was targeted by the Templars, who sought to acquire the artifact. After rescuing Joey, Colm and Alera worked with them to explore the memories of Vejovis' other Sages Cadmus, Khepri, Alva, Faisal, and Giulia to find the second dagger blade.[13]
Upon learning of the Isu vault in Venice found by Giulia, the three Assassins traveled there, but as Colm and Joey entered the vault without Alera, the former revealed himself as a Templar double agent. Colm then tried to force Joey to unlock the case containing the blade, but was assassinated by Alera. Following this, Joey combined the two dagger pieces to complete the artifact, which began a resurrection process for Vejovis. To prevent the Isu's return, Joey broke the dagger back into two blades and destroyed one of them, then left with Alera before the Templars arrived on the scene.[13]
Operations in Southeast Asia[edit | edit source]
- Nathan: "We've got a family member on the line here. We're in too deep to turn back now. It was only a matter of time until they found out anyway."
- Claire: "I suppose there's no way around it. I never expected my generation to be the one to rekindle the flame... of our long-lost bond with the Assassin Brotherhood."
- —Nathan and Claire Zhang, c. 2023.[src]-[m]
Following its establishment by Edward Kenway in 1725, the Zhang Wei Union eventually grew into the international Zhawang Corporation and continued to help the Assassins safeguard the Pieces of Eden in Southeast Asia, until the ties between the two organizations were indefinetely severed at some point in the first half of the 20th century. Despite this, some of the Corporation's members continued to be affiliated with the Brotherhood, including Nathan Zhang, brother of the company's director Claire Zhang and leader of the Doom Eagle criminal organization.[72]
In 2023, Nathan and Claire sought to rescue Noa Kim, a descendant of Edward who had been abducted by Abstergo in order to use his genetic memories to find a Piece of Eden. After a failed first attempt to retrieve Noa in the A-Ma Cultural Village, Claire's agents surveilled the Exitus research vessel, which Noa was held on, and contacted their boss once the ship left Macau and sailed to the Philippines. In Cebu, Nathan and Doom Eagle took over the rescue operation and ambushed the Abstergo convoy containing Noa, the Templar Shimazu Sei, and Sei's bodyguard Yuki. After chasing the convoy to a shopping mall, Nathan's men injured Yuki in a shootout while Noa and Sei fled into the mall.[72]
Following them, Nathan and his men cornered Noa and Sei before the Assassin engaged in a fistfight with Noa, who refused to leave with him. In an attempt to change his mind, Nathan revealed that Noa's father, who had abandoned him in his childhood, was an Assassin and had done so protect him from the Templars.[72]
Ultimately, Nathan was forced to abort the rescue mission when Sigma Team arrived on the scene, though before escaping he encouraged Noa to stay true to the Creed and see where it led him. He also told him that the Zhawang Corporation would always be at his service if he required their help, and gave him a sea log which contained information useful to Noa's quest.[72]
Later, Nathan predicted that Noa's genetic memories would lead Abstergo to the crescent amulet hidden in the Strait of Malacca, so he devised a plan to ambush the Templars there. With the help of the DedSec hacker group, Nathan contacted Sei and made a deal with her to ensure Noa's safety, as Abstergo had ordered his termination, believing Noa had outlived his usefulness.[72]
After Noa was sent to recover the amulet from the shipwreck of the SS Ourang Medan, Nathan and his men attacked the Abstergo ship as a distraction. This allowed Noa, Sei, and Yuki to escape with the amulet, whereupon Nathan brought them to a safe location per the terms of his deal with Sei. Arriving in Singapore, Noa was taken to receive medical attention due to his contact with the amulet, which began corrupting his mind, while Sei informed Nathan of her plan to save Noa's life. Believing another Piece of Eden could be used to cure Noa, Sei volunteered to find it by reliving the memories of her ancestor Shimazu Saito.[72]
When Sei began to suffer from the Bleeding Effect, Noa took her place in the Animus, and his genetic memories ultimately revealed the location of a Piece of Eden in the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar. Shortly after, Abstergo tracked down Sei, Noa, Yuki, and Nathan and dispatched Sigma Team to capture them, but the group was able to fight off the Templars and escape Singapore.[72]
In Yangon, Noa and Sei retrieved the Piece of Eden from the Shwedagon Pagoda while Yuki, Nathan, and his men fended off an attack by Sigma Team. Nathan also contacted the Assassins for help, though they failed to arrive. After escaping from the pagoda, the group resolved to flee Yangon by stealing a seaplane from a hangar near the city's harbor. However, they were discovered during their infiltration of the harbor, forcing Yuki to sacrifice herself to delay Sigma Team.[72]
Even with Yuki's sacrifice, Sigma Team managed to corner Noa, Sei, and Nathan inside the hangar, prompting Sei to use the crescent amulet to temporarily subdue the agents. This allowed Noa and Nathan to escape with the second artifact, while Sei was captured along with the amulet. Hiding out on an uncharted island, Noa and Nathan decided to save Sei and stop Abstergo's plans by tracking down the third and final Piece of Eden in Southeast Asia.[72]
Meanwhile, Claire met with the three Assassins contacted by Nathan, who requested Noa's whereabouts so they could protect their "brother". Claire reluctantly conceded, rekindling the old ties between the Zhawang Corporation and the Brotherhood, and the Assassins traveled to the island Noa and Nathan were hiding on, which had come under attack by Sigma Team. After saving the pair, the group headed to the Corporation's headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, to meet with Claire.[72]
After an alliance between the Assassins, the Zhawang Corporation, and DedSec was formed, the group decided to eliminate Sei, whose genetic memories had been used by Abstergo to find the third Piece of Eden. Noa, wishing to save the doctor instead, volunteered to carry out the mission and infiltrated the Abstergo Genetic Research Lab in Osaka, Japan, where he freed Sei from the Animus. With Sei suffering from a severe Bleeding Effect, Noa carried her to safety while the Assassins protected them, ultimately escaping the facility with help from Nathan and his men.[72]
Back in Jakarta, the group resolved to find the Forgotten Temple to prevent Abstergo from using it to unlock the Pieces of Eden's full power. While waiting for Sei to recover, Noa used the Brahman 3.0 developed by the Zhawang Corporation to relive Edward Kenway's memories and locate the temple. However, Abstergo found the site first, and their attempt to breach it created a temporal paradox that caused the present and past timelines to begin merging, putting the entire world at risk.[72]