Rikkin family

The Rikkin family is an English lineage affiliated with the Templar Order. The family's most prominent members were Alan Rikkin, a Templar Grand Master, Guardian, and CEO of Abstergo Industries, and his daughter Sofia Rikkin.

History

Early history

The family's oldest known member was Alan Rikkin, who joined the Templars sometime during the late 20th century and rose in the ranks to become a Grand Master and a member of the Inner Sanctum, while also taking a leading position in Abstergo Industries, the Templars' front company. At some point, Alan married a fellow Templar, who gave birth to their daughter, Sofia, in 1980. However, four years later, Sofia's mother was killed by the Assassins.

Widowed, Alan became a cold and distant man, yet a controlling father to Sofia. He tightened the security at their homes, ensured Sofia had a private education under governesses, and forbade his daughter from playing with "ordinary children". Sofia would wake up at night screaming, afraid that the Assassins would make her an orphan, but Alan was too busy running Abstergo to be present.

Suffering a lonely childhood, Sofia grew up fascinated with history and technology, envisioning the historical figures from the books she read as her "friends". She also took an interest in Animus technology from a young age, and computers became her only source of entertainment. At one point, Sofia took in a stray dog she had found and convinced a reluctant Alan to let her keep it. However, after the dog accidentally bit Sofia when it was frightened during a walk, Alan had it taken away and euthanized, only informing his daughter after the fact as he did not want to see her pain.

Templar family

In the early 1980s, Alan established the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Madrid, Spain, as part of Abstergo's ongoing efforts to suppress free will through the use of Isu technology. In particular, the Abstergo Foundation focused on locating an Apple of Eden once wielded by the Spanish Assassin Aguilar de Nerha using the genetic memories of one of Aguilar's descendants.

Alan Rikkin in Baja California

In 1986, Alan led an Abstergo strike team to Baja California, Mexico, to capture the Assassin Mary Lynch, the last known living descendant of Aguilar. However, Mary, anticipating the Templars' arrival, had taken her own life with the help of her husband Joseph, who was captured instead. Unbeknownst to Abstergo, Mary and Joseph's young son Callum had managed to escape beforehand.

After excelling in her studies during adolescence, Sofia was made aware of her family's ties to the Templars and was herself inducted into the Order. She subsequently followed in her father's footsteps, beginning her Templar career as a scientist for Abstergo's Animus Project. In 2006, Sofia met Layla Hassan in Berkeley and, impressed by her technological expertise, offered her a position at Abstergo, allowing her to advance toward the Animus Project.

Leading Abstergo Industries

In January 2012, Alan took over as CEO of Abstergo Industries following the death of his predecessor and focused on establishing the Templars' New World Order before the free market collapsed and the world turned to anarchy. As CEO, Alan personally oversaw a number of Abstergo's operations, including the New Fluoride initiative, which caused a major scandal upon the discovery that Abstergo had poisoned an entire town's water supply to test their product; and the Eye-Abstergo satellite, which the Templars planned to launch into space by the end of the year, allowing them to enforce their will through the powers of an Apple of Eden.

Alan Rikkin at the Animus Project laboratory in Rome

Due to the New Fluoride scandal, which resulted in Abstergo being investigated by the United States government, Alan pressured the Animus Project's head, Warren Vidic, to achieve results quickly, and personally oversaw the kidnapping and subsequent use of Desmond Miles as an Animus test subject to track down an Apple of Eden. After Desmond's memories revealed a map with the locations of various Pieces of Eden, Alan ordered Desmond's termination due to the subject having outlived his usefulness, but Lucy Stillman convinced him to keep Desmond alive until they were certain his memories held no more secrets.

After the failure of the Eye-Abstergo satellite launch, Alan continued to be involved in various Abstergo operations, including the search for and subsequent excavation of the Observatory in Jamaica, and the retrieval of a Shroud of Eden from London. Meanwhile, Sofia was appointed as the head of the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Madrid, where she sought a "cure for violence" through the Animus Project.

During a dinner with her father, Sofia shared her idea for an Animus machine that would allow subjects more physical movement instead of remaining passive, believing this approach to be more effective. She contacted Layla Hassan for help in improving the schematics for the Animus 4.3 and, after sharing Layla's designs with Gabriel King, the chief engineer at Abstergo Madrid, the latter saw their potential. Layla's improvements would subsequently be implemented in the Animus 4.3 used by the Aerie and the Abstergo Foundation, but Sofia never informed or credited Layla. When the latter found out and tried to reach out to her, Sofia cut contact with Layla, claiming that her unpredictable nature made her unfit for the Animus Project.

In October 2016, Alan conducted Simon Hathaway's induction into the Inner Sanctum and granted him permission to use the Animus to rediscover lost secrets for the Templar Order. Hathaway was tasked with learning more about Jeanne d'Arc's depowered Sword of Eden, which Alan had in his possession, but the Grand Master soon became concerned that, if Hathaway pried too much into the Sword's history, he could learn about Jacques de Molay's influence on the Templars. Since this clashed with Alan's own ambitions for the Order, he secretly sabotaged Hathaway's research and eventually tried to have him killed.

However, Hathaway survived and managed to recover the Heart, the Sword's missing component which restored its full power. He then shared his discoveries with the Inner Sanctum, inspiring some of its members to re-evaluate how the Templars operated in the 21st century. In response, Alan privately set about activating Omega Team, a clandestine task force that operated without the Inner Sanctum's knowledge and answered solely to him, to prepare to move against the entire Sanctum if need be. First, however, Alan had other matters to attend to in Spain, so he left Omega Team on standby until his return.

Recovering the Apple of Eden

Sofia meeting Callum Lynch

In October 2016, the Abstergo Foundation made a breakthrough in their search for Aguilar's Apple of Eden when they tracked down Callum Lynch, whose genetic memories could lead them to the artifact. After faking his death, Callum was brought to the Madrid facility, where Sofia greeted the confused man and told him about the facility's purpose, as well as her mission to eradicate violence. At first erratic due to the unfamiliar environment, Callum resisted the Animus 4.3 he was placed in, resulting in a synchronization error.

Meanwhile, Alan, pressured by the Council of Elders to locate the Apple in a timely manner or risk losing the Abstergo Foundation's funding, arrived in Madrid to personally oversee his daughter's work, much to Sofia's frustration due to their conflicting methods. After several Animus sessions, all of which ended with Callum's desynchronization from Aguilar, Sofia was able to win the former's trust by sharing some of her past with him, discovering that they both blamed the Assassins and human violence for their mothers' deaths.

Concurrently, Alan tried to further turn Callum against the Assassins by taking him to meet his father Joseph, also imprisoned at the facility. Although Callum was offered the opportunity to kill Joseph and avenge his mother, he refused, instead resolving to help the Templars find the Apple so they could destroy the Assassins. After Callum entered the Animus willingly, the Templars were able to discover the Apple's whereabouts, just as the facility's inmates staged a riot against the guards.

With the Abstergo Foundation having served its main purpose of helping the Templars find Aguilar's Apple, Alan ordered that the facility be shut down and all its subjects terminated. Despite her objections, Sofia reluctantly followed her father as they escaped the compromised facility and traveled to Seville to retrieve the Apple from Christopher Columbus' grave.

Callum Lynch assassinating Alan Rikkin

Having successfully acquired the Apple, Alan organized a ceremony at the Grand Templar Hall in London, where he intended to unveil the artifact before the assembled Templar Order and use it to eradicate free will. During the ceremony, Callum, Lin, and Moussa, who had all escaped Madrid and joined the Assassins, infiltrated the hall to recover the Apple. Although Sofia witnessed Callum's arrival and confronted him, she reluctantly allowed him to act, having become disillusioned with her father stealing her successes and shifting the Templars' goal to eliminating the Assassins instead of human violence.

After Callum killed Alan to retrieve the Apple and escaped with his fellow Assassins, Sofia, mourning the loss of her father, came to regret her choice. She subsequently vowed revenge against Callum and the Assassins and dedicated herself to chasing down her father's killer.

Members

• 
  Alan Rikkin
  (1951 – 2016)
• 
  Mrs. Rikkin
  (died 1984)
• 
  Sofia Rikkin
  (born 1980)

Family tree

Alan Rikkin

Mrs. Rikkin

Sofia Rikkin

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Unity (indirect mention only) (mentioned in Database entry only)
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Heresy
• Assassin's Creed film
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization
• Assassin's Creed: Origins (indirect mention only)