The saga of Assassin's Creed has been going on for thirteen years, when in 2007 the very first chapter of the series was released starring the now iconic Altair. Since then, water under the bridges has passed, and twelve titles have come out (plus five spin-offs), making the Ubisoft series not only one of the longest-lived but above all one of the richest in the videogame world. The series has become famous mainly because of the various historical contexts in which the various killers were lowered. From third crusade toRenaissance Italy, From American war of independence to the French Revolution, From 'Ptolemaic Egypt toAncient Greece.
All these different historical contexts have obviously enriched the lore behind the eternal struggle between Assassins and Templars, and between prequels, origins of origins and various spin-offs the situation has gradually become more and more tangled. So let's try to make sense of this intricate skein by retracing, in chronological order, the entire narrative of Assassin's Creed, from its origins to the present day.
Adam and Eve and the origins of humanity
At the dawn of time, humanity was ruled by higher named beings Isu. These creatures, similar to humans in physical appearance, ruled the humanity they created. Men, in turn, revered the Isu as true deities. The peace between the two races, however, did not last long. The Isu were able to have some influence on humanity thanks to the Pieces of Eden, tools forged with a futuristic technology that managed to repress the human will so as to make them real slaves.
Some Isu, also known as Creators, Those Who Came Before o Precursors, probably gave birth to hybrid offspring with humans. These new beings, halfway between humans and Isu, were immune to the effects of the fruits of Eden and this will lead to the rebellion of mankind on their creators, aware that they were exploited as workforce by those they had worshiped as gods.
The rebellion started from Adam and Eve, who stole the Apple of Eden. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and will lead to war between the two species. This conflict, however, distracted the two factions from much greater danger. On earth, in fact, a terrible disaster was breaking down which would later take the name of Catastrophe of Toba. This cataclysm, caused by a solar explosion so powerful it destroyed the Earth's magnetic defenses, would later decimate Earth's population.
Three components of the Forerunners, namely Jupiter, Minerva and Juno, they refused to participate in the conflict in order to find a solution for the salvation of the Earth, their species and mankind. Unfortunately, every possible solution did not seem enough to avoid catastrophe. Beyond that Juno, after losing her husband Aita, poured out all her anger towards mankind and secretly meditated revenge, but was stopped in time by Jupiter and Minerva who sealed her inside the Great Temple so as to prevent her from carrying out his plan.
Minerva eventually managed to find a method to save the planet. He created a device called "the Eye" with which the Forerunners could tamper with the space-time continuum in order to stop the solar flare. Minerva, however, realized that Juno had tampered with the instrument and if used she would have freed her from her imprisonment. Minerva then found herself faced with a difficult choice: stop the catastrophe or stop Juno? Eventually, he opted for the latter.
Eventually the cataclysm occurred, and greatly reduced the Earth's population. It was mainly the Isu that made the most of it, who remained too few to be able to refound their own species. This led to their extinction.
The Kassandra Odyssey
We move to the ancient Greece of 5th century BC, between 431 BC to 422 BC historical period faced by the most recent chapter of the series but which at the same time is set before any other, or Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Kassandra (she is the protagonist, according to the official canon), grandson of the legendary leader Leonidas, will make his way in order to defeat the Sect of Cosmos, ancient incarnation of the Templars. Kassandra also has divine origins as she is a descendant of the Forerunners. This journey of hers in search of the members of the Sect will lead her, at the end of her journey, to discover a terrible truth: her brother Alexios is a member of the Sect.
The story of the two brothers is quite dramatic: the two were children of Nicolao, a Spartan warrior, and Myrrine, daughter of Leonidas. Nicholas had learned through a prophecy that Alexios, the youngest son, once an adult, would lead to destruction in Greece. Learning of the terrible fate of his son, he decided to throw him from the mountain Taygetos, but Kassandra tried to save her brother, however, causing the death of the one who had foretold this prophecy. After this action, Nicolao decided to kill his daughter as well, throwing both her and Alexios off the mountain.
Incredibly, both brothers managed to survive, one without the knowledge of the other. Finding themselves after years, now as enemies, Kassandra will try to bring the found brother to reason, trying in vain to make him understand that the Sect was manipulating him. Once it was understood that Alexios, renamed Deimos by the Sect, was now totally subjugated, Kassandra decided to face him and eventually managed to defeat him.
Later, Kassandra will discover that her biological father is actually Pythagoras, who is guarding Atlantis. Kept alive by the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras will ask his daughter to seal the legendary city. Once you find the keys to Atlantis, Kassandra will find herself in the presence of Aletheia, an Isu, who informs the protagonist that the only way humanity has to evolve is for the knowledge of the Forerunners to be destroyed. After obtaining the Staff from Pythagoras, dying shortly thereafter, Kassandra decides to follow her fate and guard the sacred temple for eternity.
In the DLC The legacy of the first blade, as the title suggests, we will also discover the origin of the iconic Hidden Blade. Kassandra, during her journey, will get to know Dario, who will turn out to be not only the killer of King Xerxes but also the first user of the Hidden Blade, although it was a prototype and therefore different from those seen in the other chapters of the series (In fact it was placed on the upper part of the forearm). Kassandra will fall in love with Dario's son, that is Nakata, and their sentimental bond will give birth He ordered.
After Nakata's death at the hands of the Order of the Ancients, powerful organization born in Persia, Kassandra and Dario will be able to defeat their enemies and save Elpido, who had been kidnapped by the Order, who turns out to be a primordial sleeper of the Templar Order. Kassandra reluctantly decides to separate from her son and will entrust him to Darius, who will leave with Elpido in Egypt. The child will give away the bloodline from which it will be born Aya, Wife of Bayek.
Bayek's origins and revenge
We move to 49 BC, a historical period faced by Assassin's Creed: Origins where we see the bloodline drawn by Kassandra and Elpido taking shape in the aforementioned Aya. The latter, wife of Bayek, she will be the victim of a terrible misfortune together with her husband. L'Order of the Ancients, as previously mentioned primordial form of the Templars, will accidentally end the life of Khemu, son of Aya and Bayek. This terrible tragedy will push two to seek revenge, with the goal of killing the members of the Order of the Ancients.
From the deeds of the two, the tradition of the amputated ring finger typical of the Brotherhood of Assassins. Bayek in fact in a clash with Eudoro, a member of the Order, will use a weapon given to him by Aya which turns out to be a hidden blade, at the cost of his ring finger.
During their journey, the two will discover not only that the Order has absolute control of the world in mind, but that among their members there are also Cleopatra e Caesar, who believed their allies. Furthermore Flavio, Caesar's lieutenant and head of the Order of the Ancients, will slaughter all the remaining medjays except Bayek himself, whose thirst for revenge will be further fueled.
After killing Flavio (powered by Apple of Eden) and Caesar, he will spare Cleopatra and her son Caesarion but on the condition that she is a good sovereign. After their revenge, Bayek and Aya realize however that their mission has a greater importance and, aware of the fact that sooner or later the Order would return, they decide to found the Occult, or a first version of what would later become the Brotherhood of Assassins. Aya changes her name to Amunet and will settle in Rome, where she will found a section of the Occult, while Bayek will remain in Egypt where she will continue to recruit new followers.
The Third Crusade and Altaïr's rebellion
Let's move on to the first historical chapter of the series, that is Assassin's Creed, where we are catapulted in 1190 into a Holy Land torn apart by the Third Crusade. The protagonist of this chapter (and historical era) is the iconic Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad which, after having endangered the Brotherhood of Assassins and having disregarded the three rules of belief (keep the blade from the flesh of the innocent; be one with the crowd; never compromise the brotherhood), is demoted by Prior a Noob. In order to move up the ranks of the Brotherhood and find redemption, the head of the Brotherhood Al Mualim entrusts him with an important mission: to kill nine individuals belonging to both Crociati that ai Saracens.
These nine, in fact, all belong to the Order of the Templars, an organization that has as its ultimate goal the control of the world to impose their own idea of peace and order. Furthermore, at the end of his mission, Altaïr will discover a terrible truth, namely that his mentor Al Mualim is actually a member of the Order of the Templars. His real goal was to use Altaïr as a means of preventing others from getting their hands Piece of Eden, artifact capable of controlling the minds of others.
After defeating his master, Altaïr takes possession of the artifact which reveals the location of other Pieces of Eden scattered around the globe. Altaïr will live a life of betrayal and suffering, facing a struggle within the Creed that sees him and his old friend opposed Abbas. Arriving at the ripe old age of 92, Altaïr will die and his body will be found in 1512 by another murderer: Ezio Auditore.
The Renaissance and the history of Ezio Auditore
We are in 1472 when Ezio Auditore, an exuberant Florentine boy, joins the order of the Assassins after his father and brothers are executed, betrayed by a friend of the family, or Uberto Alberti, who turns out to be a Templar. In his quest for revenge, Ezio will discover that his father was a member of the Assassin Brotherhood and that the conspiracy behind the deaths of his loved ones was hatched by the family. Crazy people, members ofOrder of the Templars.
He will also learn that both Assassins and Templars are looking for the pages of the mysterious Pharmacopoeia, a sort of mosaic book which would provide the key to obtaining a powerful secret. Find all the pages, Ezio activates the Apple of Eden (previously subtracted from Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI in the meantime). The combination of the two artifacts reveals to Ezio that he is the Prophet, then indicating his next destination: Rome, in the Papal State. Here the final battle takes place between Rodrigo Borgia, who has come into possession of a second Piece of Eden, and Ezio himself, and in the end the murderer will be the winner.
Having reached a mysterious crypt so coveted by Rodrigo Borgia, here Ezio will meet a woman who presents herself as the goddess Minerva, which manifests itself to the killer in the form of a hologram. The Isu tells Ezio the story of his race and why it disappeared from the face of the earth, then warns the killer (and someone else in the future, through Ezio's eyes) that the catastrophe that led to the extinction of his race would reappear putting humanity at risk again. But it is not Ezio Auditore's job to stop this new apocalypse. He is The Prophet, and as such he is only a conduit, a messenger for someone who will live after him.
The story of Ezio Auditore, narrated in Assassin's Creed II, will continue in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where the assassin will begin to rebuild the order of the Assassins in Rome while trying to stop the influence of the powerful Borgia Templar family, and in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, where he will travel to the stronghold of Altair in search of answers, eventually discovering what happened to the founder of the modern order of Assassins and finding a Piece of Eden.
The teachings of the legendary assassin will live on in one of his pupils, that is Shao Jun, protagonist of the spin-off Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China.
The trilogy of colonial America
In 1715 the Brotherhood of Assassins is in serious crisis in South America, and its members are forced to hide from their Templar rivals. The war between the two factions, however, will see an unexpected protagonist, that is Edward kenway, an English pirate in search of fortune protagonist of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Edward will meet on his way Duncan Walpole, a member of the Brotherhood of Assassins who betrayed his Creed to serve the Templars and give them an Isu artifact. Killed by Edward, the latter will wear his Assassin robes without knowing that he has become part of something much greater.
Initially driven only by personal gain, Edward will embark on a journey of personal growth that will lead him to support the cause of the Assassins. After having managed to defeat the Templars and have protected theObservatory (place built by the Forerunners with which anyone can be spied), Edward Kenway, who went from being an unscrupulous pirate to a faithful member of the Brotherhood of Assassins, will become part of Haytham Kenway, who, however, will not follow in the footsteps of the man who conceived him.
Haytham Kenway, in fact, will become a member of the Order of the Templars where he will act as a guide of Shay Patrick Cormac, a young Assassin who joined the Brotherhood in America led by his mentor Achille Davenport who, disappointed by the methods of the Brotherhood, will decide to change faction. In Assassin's Creed: Rogue we live the story of Shay who, after joining the Templars, faces and defeats his old mentor Achilles, who is spared, however, with the knowledge that in America the Brotherhood is now gone, destroyed by the Templars. Shay Patrick Cormac will also be the architect of the death of Charles Dorian, father of Arno Victor Dorian, an event that will take place in 1776.
The Colonial America trilogy ends with Assassin's Creed III (and its spin-off Liberation). Haytham Kenway embarks on a journey to the British colonies of North America to discover a Forerunner refuge. He recruits men for his cause and helps a group of Native Americans who they believe know the location of the Isu temple. Eventually he falls in love with a Native American woman and the two will give birth to a baby boy. Years after his son, Ratonhnhaké: ton, will ally with the Assassins after seeing the Templars raze his village, killing his mother as well. His mentor will be Achilles, who will rename him Connor. The fu Ratonhnhaké: ton thus joins the American Revolution and participates in several key moments of the war, fighting against his father and other Templars before securing the medallion needed to open the Temple of the Forerunner.
Parallel to these events we live the experiences (through the aforementioned spin-off Liberation) of the killer Aveline De Grandpré, a woman of Franco-African origins, who will fight against the Templar forces in post-French and Indian New Orleans, while discovering a site of the First Civilization and an ancient artifact known as Disc of Prophecy. Through the latter, moreover, he will discover that during the era of the First Civilization Eva she had been elected leader of the rebellion during the first civil war between humans and the Isu.
From the French Revolution to the Victorian era
Let's take a leap forward a few decades. We are in 1789 imagined by Assassin's Creed: Unity, whose main protagonist is the aforementioned Arno Victor Dorian, deprived of his father at the hands of the Templar Shay Cormac. After his father's death, Arno Dorian is greeted by a family friend named François de la Serre and his daughter Elise, which are unbeknownst to Arno members of'Order of the Templars. Arno establishes a strong sentimental bond with Elise, but the balance is shattered when he is unjustly accused of the murder of François de la Serre.
After this event he will decide on universes in the Assassin Brotherhood, convinced by the Assassin Pierre Bellec, but in his help Elise in search of the real supporter of the death of François de la Serre he will lose the right path and will be excluded from the Brotherhood. In search of revenge and redemption, and driven by his feeling for Elise, Arno will continue his search for the truth and will discover not only that the instigator of the murder of François de la Serre is François-Thomas Germain, a Sage of the Order of the Templars , but that the one who physically committed the murder is Bellec, whom Arno will kill albeit in remorse. In the final fight between Arno and Germain, (who will use the Sword of Eden) both the Templar and Elise will lose their lives. After these events, Arno will be reinstated in the Confraternity and will be promoted to Master Assassin.
In Assassin's Creed: Syndicate let's leap forward nearly a hundred years. We are in the Victorian London of 1868, where we live the experiences of Jacob and Evie Frye, two twin brothers belonging to the Brotherhood of Assassins, who fight the Templars while looking for a Piece of Eden called The Holy Shroud. The artifact is said to have the ability to heal any wound. Although the Templars manage to find the Shroud first, the twins defeat them and return the Shroud to its hiding place. The twins, after various disagreements during the course of the adventure, will eventually make peace and will even be appointed members of the Order of the Garter by the Queen together with Henry Green, born from the union of the Assassin Arbaaz Mir and the princess Pyara, whose events are narrated in Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India.
At the temporal level, the chapter that deals with the most recent historical period (before the events of the present) is Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia, which takes place in 1918 during the final phase of the Russian revolution and features the veteran Assassin Nikolai Orelov.
Today, from Desmond Miles to Layla Hassan
The various Assassin's Creed titles mentioned so far alternate the phases in the role of the assassins to others set in the present day. These narrative sections are divided into four sagas, namely: the Desmond Miles saga (Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Assassin's Creed III), the Abstergo saga (Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Assassin's Creed: Unity, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate) and the Layla Hassan saga (Assassin's Creed: Origins, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Valhalla)
The first saga features a boy named Desmond Miles, a New York bartender who is kidnapped by the Abstergo (the current Templars) and forced to relive the memories of his ancestors through the Animus to help them find the locations of the Pieces of Eden. He ends up being saved by Lucy Stillman, an Abstergo employee who secretly works for the Assassin Brotherhood (but who is later found to be doing the "triple game"). While they are on the run they discover that in 2012, more precisely on December 21) the world will suffer a cataclysm similar to the one that destroyed the First Civilization. To prevent this solar flare from sweeping humanity away, Desmond and some members of the Brotherhood of Assassins find a Temple of the First Civilization and encounter an Isu known as Juno, which wants to conquer the world and enslave humanity once again. Desmond finds himself forced to choose between keeping Juno prisoner or saving humanity by freeing the Isu as a result. In the end he will choose to save the earth, but dying in the urn of the machinery.
After the brief parenthesis of the Abstergo saga, where we will impersonate various "anonymous" characters involved in spite of themselves in the cold war between Assassins and Templars, we move on to Laya Hassan saga. The latter was a former Abstergo employee who later became a member of the Assassin Brotherhood in order to fight the Order of the Templars. During the events of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, she attempts to find the Staff of Hermes on a mission that ultimately takes her to the ruins of Atlantis. This is where he meets Kassandra, who has been kept alive for thousands of years thanks to the Staff of Hermes. Kassandra warns Layla that the Assassins and the Templars must always be at war to maintain the balance between order and chaos, because if one prevails over the other, the world will be doomed. Layla is apparently the one who was prophesied to bring balance between the two factions, and when Kassandra gives her the Staff of Hermes, she dies.
In the events of the Odyssey DLC, Layla is subjected to some tests by the Isu Aletheia to prove that she is worthy to be the keeper of the Staff. As this happens, the Abstergo agents arrive as Layla is arguing with her doctor, Victoria, who fears that Layla is becoming bewitched by the power of the Staff. A fight breaks out that leaves all but one Abstergo agent dead. Otso Berg, leader of an Abstergo strike team, then shows up to steal the Staff from Layla, but ends up being paralyzed as a result. Layla finally manages to reconnect with other Assassins and informs them of what has happened.
