Nikolai Orelov

"My father wanted this life, Anna, not I. He came to this country with a dream and made the Narodnaya Volya his cause. I do not know if I have the strength to serve the Order of Assassins as he did."

- Nikolai Orelov to his wife.

Nikolai Andreievich Orelov was a Russian Assassin who lived during the late 19th and early 20th century. A member of the Russian branch of the Assassin Order, the Narodnaya Volya, Nikolai was, notably, closely involved in the hunt for the Imperial Sceptre of the Royal family, which was secretly one of the Staves of Eden.

Nikolai was responsible for several notorious events during his career as an Assassin. In 1888, when tasked when assassinating Tsar Alexander III, the fight that ensued between the two men accidentally caused the Borki train disaster. Twenty years later, in an attempt to retrieve the Imperial Sceptre from a facility in Tunguska, Nikolai's failure to get the artifact out of the facility caused the object to explode when Nikola Tesla broadcasted a burst of electricity to it, resulting in a massive explosion known as the Tunguska event.

He was the great-grandfather of Daniel Cross, an individual who would cause the fall of the Assassin Order generations later.

Early life
"I see [Alek] in my dreams, Anna. He calls to me, pleading for me to help him. To save him from the gallows. And I cannot."

- Nikolai, about his nightmares during his early life.

Orelov was born in the latter half of the 19th century. His father, Andrei Orelov, immigrated to Russia and became a devoted member of the Narodnaya Volya, a left-wing terrorist offspring of the Russian Assassin Brotherhood. He decided to raise Nikolai as an Assassin as well, and thus had him start his training at a young age. In the Assassin Order, he befriended Aleksandr Ulyanov and his younger brother, who would later go by the name Vladimir Lenin.

On May 20, 1887, Nikolai witnessed the execution of Aleksandr after the latter was captured during a failed assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. As the rope was put around Aleksandr's neck, he pointed his finger towards Nikolai, meaning that he found Nikolai guilty for not rescuing him. This traumatic event caused Nikolai to have nightmares for the next year.

Borki train disaster
"Russia will soon be strong and free from imperial rule, an example to the world. But I fear that I will fail our master again."

- Nikolai about his mission to Crimea.

Sometime in 1888, Nikolai woke in bed after having another nightmare about the death of his close friend, Aleksandr Ulyanov. He confided in his wife, Anna, that he felt deeply responsible for his death. She told him that Alek knew the risks when he joined the Brotherhood. Nikolai then confided in her that the Mentor had tasked him with assassinating Tsar Alexander III, an ally of the Templar Order, in order to loosen the Templars' grip on the region. Anna wished him safety in his mission, for she needed him to help raise their child, with whom she was pregnant.

Nikolai rode on horseback to Crimea in Ukraine the next morning, chasing the Imperial train. After infiltrating the train, Nikolai killed several patrolling guards and extorted information from another. Making his way to the royal carriage, Orelov burst through a door with his gun raised and was shocked to find the entire Royal family traveling, when he had been told only the Tsar was aboard. Alexander III attacked him from behind for threatening his family and the two fought. However, Nikolai managed to stab Alexander in the right kidney, though the Tsar was not seriously injured. During the fight between the two men, the train careered off the tracks and crashed.

Whilst Nikolai was recovering from the crash, Alexander III started beating Orelov down while taunting him about killing his loved ones. Alexander III then pulled out a Staff of Eden from a box among the remains of the dining cart and challenged the Assassin to kill him with it, throwing the Staff to him. Despite wielding the Staff and relying upon his Assassin training, Nikolai was defeated by the physically superior Alexander, but was spared death when the Tsar's children came into view. Nikolai fled to report his failure to the Order.

At some point within the next twenty years, Nikolai and Anna's child was somehow "lost", before or after it was born, causing Nikolai to become bitter and filled with anger, which caught the attention of his Brothers.

Tunguska event
In 1908, the Assassins captured a Templar named Dolinsky who was tortured by Orelov in order to reveal where the Staff of Eden had gone following his failure. Two other Assassins were present and one noted that his methods were extremely harsh, while the other replied that it was because Orelov had lost his child. Under threats to his family, Dolinsky revealed that the facility that housed the Staff was located in Siberia and Orelov set off for Tunguska.

The Mentor requested that Nikolai and his fellow Assassins retrieved the Staff of Eden, which was being tested with electrical machines based upon designs stolen from their ally, Nikola Tesla. While approaching the facility, which had a Tesla coil built above it. Orelov explained to the others that Tesla stood ready with his teleforce weapon in America, ready to destroy the facility, and noted that they had to make haste to retrieve the object.

Nikolai and his comrades stormed the facility, killing all of the Templar guards within. When Orelov reached the top, the Staff of Eden had been activated by the electrical current. He heard voices coming from it, saying things like "Always the fighter," "Adam, I have it," "Just like your father," and "Eve." At that moment, the vengeful Tesla activated his weapon with the words "Rot in hell, Thomas," and the facility was destroyed while the Staff and the Assassins were still in it. Orelov was the only survivor, laying with his clothes in tatters, on the edge of the explosion mumbling that the Staff had been destroyed. Nikolai returned home to Anna, "bleached and broken," who welcomed him with a look of horror and grief.

Nikolai and Anna had another child, a daughter, a few years afterwards.

Search for the shard
"I no longer consider myself a crusader for change, but I must find the splinter of the artifact. First, however, I need to learn more about it."

- Nikolai's personal thoughts on the Shard, 1917.

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin was leading a revolution against the Tsarist royal house. Lenin had personally sent a letter to Nikolai, asking for him to dispose of Tsar Nicholas II and thus eliminate the last symbol of Imperialism. Nikolai did infiltrate Nicholas' residence, asking him for the location of the Staff, which he had spotted on a picture of the Tsar. Nicholas, threatened, brought Nikolai to the Staff, though Nikolai was quickly able to conclude that it was a fake. He said that the real Staff had a light shining from within and that when looked into it, one could see "the turn of the world and a glimpse of what lies beyond."

He broke the fake Staff, proving it was indeed a replica. When Nicholas asked him to spare his family just like he spared his father's if he would kill him, he replied that he wouldn't kill him, saying that he did "not care any longer" and that he only wanted to make sure that the Staff was indeed destroyed. He did warn Nicholas that the next Assassin to come after him wouldn't be as objective as him, however.

Nikolai proceeded to leave the building via a window, but not before hearing Nicholas confirm to him that Grigori Rasputin had worn a splinter around his neck, which was of the same material as the Staff, according to Nikolai's description.

Traveling to Krasnoyarsk, the aged Assassin scaled the walls of the city's asylum and broke into the cell holding Khioniya Guseva, one of Grigori Rasputin's former disciples who had attempted to assassinate him. Nikolai offered to free Guseva in exchange for the information he sought, forcibly taking her by the hand and leading her from the building.

After bribing a priest, the two took refuge in the city's Svyato-Troitsky Cathedral. Guseva then revealed the details of her attempt on Rasputin's life; how, despite her stabbing and mutilating him where he stood, Rasputin survived the attempt, thanks to his shard from the Staff. She then informed Nikolai that her facial wounds had been self-inflicted; her own hands, controlled by Rasputin and the shard. At her request, Nikolai then killed Guseva with his hidden blade.

Nikolai and two other men went to search for Rasputin's grave and upon finding it, dug him up. Examining the corpse, Nikolai searched for the splinter that Nicholas II had mentioned, finding is and then returning to Anna, who was waiting for him in their carriage.

Later life
"Whatever debt I owed my father and Alek has been paid. Tonight we start anew."

- Nikolai about starting a new life with Anna.

Some time after taking the splinter from Rasputin's corpse, Nikolai chose to retire and abruptly cut his ties with the Assassin Order. Along with their daughter, Nikolai and Anna crossed Russia's borders and boarded a ship bound for the United States, where they started a new life together and had another child some time later, a son.

Unfortunately, during the Red Scare of 1919, his wife and daughter were taken by US agents and deported to Finland, where Orelov looked for them during two years before dropping his quest, believing them dead. He returned to the United State, settled in an isolated cabin in the woods where he raised alone his son.

A dozen years later, one of his former Assassin brother was sent by the brotherhood, who had traced him, to bring him back and get lessons from events preceding the departure of Orelov. But the old man refused to follow him and killed the assassin. Orelov then decided to begin the training of his son, Innokenti, for the inevitable clash that would occur when the Brotherhood will send more of its members after them. It was during this skirmish that Nikolai was fatally injured, not once before he had eliminated the Assassin group sent to capture him.

Before he died by the hands of Innokenti, the last Assassin alive revealed that the Brotherhood, "who always took care of his own", had exfiltrated Nikolai's wife and daughter away from Finnish camps, a fact that Nikolai refused to believe while he made ​​his last breath.

Legacy
Long after the deaths of Nikolai and Inokenti, their common descendant, the Templar Daniel Cross, tracked down his great-aunt Nadya Orelov, now an elderly woman in a church in Moscow, thanks to the discovery of the library of Ivan the Terrible used by Assassins and his visions of Nikolai's life.

Characteristics and personality
"I began as a crusader for change and now I am no better than a common grave-robber."

- Nikolai Orelov to his wife, after recovering the shard of the Staff from Rasputin's grave.

At an early age, Nikolai was trained as an Assassin, though this was his father's choice, not his, and he sometimes showed disdain in his life as an Assassin. Nikolai also felt intense guilt from Aleksandr Ulyanov's death, which haunted him for over a year. Though despairing in his life as a Assassin, Nikolai's personality went through a massive change after the death of his first child.

Following the loss of his child, Nikolai became bitter and unflinching, no longer lamenting his role as an Assassin. Nikolai also became noticeably more heavy-handed in his actions as a result of his loss, showing little compassion or lenience towards Dolinsky, a Templar that had recently been captured, and even made threats against the man's innocent family in order to coerce some information from the man. During this interrogation, Nikolai's two Assassin counterparts remarked on how the death of Nikolai's child had driven him to become as "savage" as he was, and that before, he had been a gentler man.

Nikolai wore a large fur coat with the traditional Assassin's hood. He wielded one Hidden Blade, a dagger, a sabre and a rifle. He also wore a sash and a baldric with the Assassin insignia on it.

Trivia

 * Nikolai's surname, Orelov, is not a Russian name; the closest match being "Orlov" (Оpлов), which means "сын орла" (syn orla), or "son of eagle." Other Assassins such as Aquilus, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze also contain references to eagles in their names.
 * Nikolai's portrait is available as a patron image in Assassin's Creed: Revelations Multiplayer after purchasing the Mediterranean Traveller Map pack DLC.
 * If you read Orelov back to front it reads "Volero". In Italian "Volreo" means "I will fly".