User blog:Matt47v/Assassins Creed: Explanations

'''This article contains major spoilers and should not be read by anyone wanting to finish the game themselves and find everything out for themselves. Don’t blame me if you read it anyway.'''

Disclaimer: These are purely my own opinions based on what I have seen in the games and (occasionally) the novels, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone else, particularly UbiSoft, who hold the rights to the entire franchise. My opinions and deductions are my own. They may also contradict each other, but are there for speculation as opposed to confirmation.

I am here to dispel certain rumors regarding the story within the Assassins Creed franchise, I will also put my opinions forth, and back them up as best as I can. This will be based mainly on what I’ve seen on the games, with some backup where needed, obviously.

For the record, and call me sad, but (over the years) I’ve completed AC1 3+ times, AC2 5 times and ACB 5 times. I consider myself familiar with all the small details that are relevant. If you feel the need to correct me then contact me, or use the thread, whatever you wish.

Also my word dictionary is locked on the US English for whatever reason so forgive my spelling MISTAKES brought on by this. UK English rules.

Where to start…I suppose the most interesting case is Lucy, and whether she is a Templar to-the-bone or just an Assassin. To begin with she was infiltrating Abstergo Industries and remained there for seven years. As she told Desmond, she was a prisoner. In AC1 she often defends Vidic personally when Desmond questions his attitude. She later tells him that Vidic saved her life when anyone who was connected to the Animus project had been marked for termination. She feels she has a debt towards the man because of this. From this point on she will have been more willing to accept Vidic’s views or ideas (always the way with guilt and debt, etc)

In the emails in ACB, when referring to Desmond screaming in his sleep, she tells Rebecca that “she hates doing this to [Desmond], but it’s necessary.” To me that’s got ‘Templar ideology” written all over it (the ends justify the means). In AC1 she comments that what Abstergo wants, is good, but the way they go about it is bad. She could easily have picked up their general outlook after spending 7 long years with them, in the same way one eventually picks up an accent after migrating to another country or city.

This doesn’t make her a Templar

But…there’s more to it…she disappears in ACB during sequences 6 and 7, is nowhere to be found. Where is she? Someone commented in the forums that he searched for 20 minutes, eagle vision on and off and found nothing. She literally disappears. I think that’s more down to a glitch in the game as there’s no way she could leave the town without Shaun or Rebecca noticing. (Anyone experience the glitch after talking to Subject 16 inside the animus? You know, after he disappears… “Find me in the darkness,” then Desmond falls through the floor, gets pulled out of the Animus and Lucy is scared for him. EVERY SINGLE TIME I’ve done this, Desmond is stuck inside the animus chair and looks like he’s having a seizure. The camera pans around as if he is standing there, talking to Lucy, and you can hear him talking to Lucy. Lucy is right there, but (visually) he is stuck in the chair.)

It’s a very common glitch apparently. I hate it personally.

So yeah, Lucy disappearing is a glitch, but what if it isn’t? People think she is meeting with a Templar agent, and Rebecca does comment on an ‘unmarked van’ in the town, which swiftly disappears. Lucy could’ve bartered a truce with this so-called agent…but that’s just shooting in the dark. I don’t believe it personally.

There is now the question of the red footsteps that you can find outside the Villa in the present day when you turn eagle vision on. The first thing you think is: “THERE IS A TRAITOR IN OUR MIDST!” Then you follow the steps and they disappear at the front of the villa. They could be Lucy’s…Maybe the van was parked where they end. Actually I think it was, but when you think of it, Some of the patterns inside Juno’s temple are the same color, and do not represent the floor as an enemy. People who are enemies are red, but not everything else.

HMMM

It’s shooting in the dark, again, so ignore that theory for now. The red footsteps do however, follow the path that Ezio takes to the back of the Villa when injured. He sees the thief (who turns out to be a traitor) and the thief runs back to ‘help the troops.’ That sounds very literal. He could easily run back to the Papal armies and tell them about the tunnel. They do encircle the town before Ezio escapes on the horse, so the traitor obviously tells the army.

The more likely scenario (disregarding my ‘no enemies’ theory) for the red footsteps is therefore the traitor. We often hear of this ‘traitor’ throughout ACB and so the footsteps would serve as a hint in the present as to whom it is before we finally find out.

Moving on

The ‘Lucy is a Templar’ theory, based on what I’ve said so far, sounds so obviously true, but too obvious. I didn’t believe it myself until the last time I completed the game, when I finally made sense of Juno’s words, plus what holographic Subject 16 says: “She is not who you think she is.” It’s ambiguous at most, and may not be referring to Lucy, but at the moment, who else?

Juno on the other hand says that the path must be opened…she lies not within our sight…the cross darkens our horizon. “Awaken the sixth [sense], go alone!” Juno wants to reunite the bloodline of her species by using Desmond (a descendant) and a woman (‘Eve’) who is also a descendant. Logically, Desmond killing Lucy will focus his senses on finding ‘she, or Eve’ as Sixteen says. This may or may not unlock his knowledge sense to the full, beyond his mere eagle vision. Lucy also happens to be a Templar in Juno’s view. ‘The cross darkens our horizon.’ Lucy, whilst working under Vidic, did commit some humanitarian monstrosities against people like Subject 16, so this, plus, her ideologies of ‘the end justifies the means’ pretty much sums up why Juno considers her a Templar.

Stabbing her will be the sacrifice that Desmond needs to proceed onward to save the world.

You are now saying: “But it could be an illusion, like when Al Mualim faked Altair’s death through the Piece of Eden.”

I’ll come to that.

People are wondering who is this William M.? I think he is an Assassin; it’s the simplest explanation. Others think he is a Templar. But the way he talks to Lucy in the emails is very casual, not so ‘New-World-Order’ like. He also refers to Lucy’s feelings for Desmond, which only an autistic savant couldn’t possibly have picked up on through the flirting throughout the games and their dialogue on top of that. William reminds her that ‘when they arrive’ at the HQ…they will test Desmond for Bleeding Effect symptoms. Shaun always talks in ACB about going to HQ, and this is the common link that tells us William M is an assassin.

But how does he find them in Juno’s temple after the events of ACB?

Most likely Rebecca forwarded the location beforehand, as she is in contact with him as well. This is seen in the email you receive from William if you downloaded the Da Vinci Disappearance DLC, and initiate the memory before completing the main storyline.

Why does he have an animus that he plugs Desmond into at the end? Most likely he uses the 2.0, it will have been in the truck that Lucy’s team brought to the Coliseum. They would just be plain stupid to leave it behind. Or he could have schematics, again forwarded by Rebecca, but that is the lesser of two possibilities, Desmond would need the same animus with the same memory core to continue into Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Common sense.

SO Lucy…every little detail (Juno, her disappearance, 16) points at her being a Templar? It’s too obvious I think, and my gut feelings are good. Believe what you want but I have summed up everything that point at either possibility, so we can only wait. I think there’s more to it.

BUT IS SHE DEAD AND DOES IT MATTER?

I hope not.

Like I said, the stabbing could be an illusion, as with Al Mualim and Altair. She is stabbed in the same place for one, and when the pair collapses, the Apple falls between them and does touch her. Altair lived to a grand old age of 80+ due to his contact with the apple (see the codex, and the wiki page). It could have healed her. Sacrifice doesn’t always mean death (see the Matrix, and Morpheus sacrifice to make Neo realize his potential). It’s completely possible. And if she is dead we won’t know her allegiances.

One final thing about Lucy, when outside the Villa she says she has been searching for the Pieces of Eden for nearly a decade. Her birth year is 1988 and the game year is 2012. The wiki seems to think she was 14 when she began her search (10 years prior)

OBSERVE HER CHOICE OF WORDS, she says ‘nearly a decade.’ Also in AC2, Rebecca points out that they have been apart for 7 years. Give or take, Lucy could’ve been 16-17 (Ironically the same subject numbers for Desmond and, well, Sixteen) when she began the search, around the time Universities could have been dismissing her.

Moral: Don’t take speculation completely to heart.

That’s enough about her for now.

Next: Who is Erudito?

People on the forums mistakenly believe he works for Abstergo. He in fact hacks them, and anyone who plays Project Legacy (not me) will know, as will anyone who looks at the wiki, which clearly states his non-allegiance to Abstergo. He also sends Desmond an email containing his fellow Assassins’ passwords.

My opinion? He is Subject 16. An alias anyway. Think about it and go back to the start. Sixteen hacked the animus at Abstergo and everything he did wound up in the memory core. The animus was no doubt connected to the rest of Abstergo, so he could easily have diffused through the networks, presuming he is now a part of cyberspace, or a part of the animus (pretty much confirmed in ACB). It explains his role in Project Legacy and also how he contacts Desmond via email, knowing the passwords of the others. The Animus 2.0 is connected to the assassins’ computers so again he can diffuse through them.

It is a simple explanation. It also explains why he is sabotaging Abstergo and their recruits.

Let’s delve into Subject 16 himself.

First off, he IS related to Desmond through Ezio. He is a distant relation but a relation nonetheless. This is proven when Lucy is breaking Desmond out in AC2 – she finds a common match between Desmond and Sixteen; the last ancestor being Ezio. But let’s not forget that Sixteen is also a descendant of the Adam and Eve in the truth video. That doesn’t make Desmond that (it took me a while to figure this out), it just means one of Adam’s descendants had kids with one of Ezio’s descendants, and the family tree split there…it’s the only logical outcome.

The only thing then is…the bloodline would be reunited, in theory. Which can’t be right. But it sure explains Sixteen’s ability to preserve himself in hologram form. Speculate on this if you will, but ditch the theory until we have more knowledge.

Sixteen was captured by Abstergo to (as told by Lucy) find the vault, amongst other things. His later Animus sessions were unstable however due to his rapidly deteriorating mental state. They could not find the vault in the end, so went off to find their next subject.

Abstergo possibly didn’t know they were related at the time.

In between his Animus sessions, Sixteen hacked the machine and placed the truth files in glyphs scattered around Renaissance Italy. His sanity was lost however and he killed himself by draining his body of blood and painting his room with it. Abstergo couldn’t use him any longer.

It’s funny how it says ‘date classified’ on the truth video, and I wonder if this is one of Vidic’s sessions or what Sixteen found himself.

The codes at the end of each truth file corresponded to coordinates in the Animus for famous landmarks around Rome. When Desmond searched these he found rifts in the animus programming that eventually led him to a holographic version of Subject Sixteen, who told him the cryptic messages about Lucy and the path .etc

I would love to know what he means with "I will shut it down, Desmond Miles."

Moving on: The Templars

According to the truth files, the Templar Order began with Cain and Abel, whereas Cain was named Mahan, the keeper of the great secret (he had an Apple of Eden).

What happened here and after, I don’t know until the Templars became ‘The Knights Templar’ and integrated themselves into the Crusader/Christian armies. Under Robert De Sable they excavated Solomon’s Temple for the Apple of Eden but lost it to Al Mualim. The Master Assassin then used Altair to kill all of Robert’s lieutenants, and finally Robert; but the true purpose of this, as revealed by Maria and Robert, was to unite the crusaders and Saracens against the Assassins. Al Mualim then became greedy and took the apple for himself. As you know already.

With Robert’s death, Armand Bouchart took over and Altair killed him.

Officially the order was forcibly disbanded in the early 1200’s but they moved underground, operating from the shadows. They infiltrated the papacy in the late 15th Century through Rodrigo Borgia but were ultimately stopped by Ezio Auditore.

Rodrigo’s son, Cesare, is a character himself. I think he suffers a severe god complex, thinking of himself as the ultimate warrior and that ‘no man can kill him.’ He clearly used the Apple at one point, as he knew he would escape prison. But beyond that he just has a god complex. But when I first played through and Ezio killed him, his attitude towards ‘men’ and death made me think he was another descendant. Alas no, he just has a huge ego. A huge ego with his own goals in mind as opposed to the Templar goals.

If this is what he was really like back in the 16th Century, then he would have been very good inspiration for Shakespeare when writing Macbeth, who also had a god complex and thought that no man could ever kill him.

What if Ezio had tried to stab Cesare though? The Apple has never ever been wrong as far as I remember…either Cesare would survive, or he would counter Ezio and kill him. It’s logical. That is why he was instead thrown off the battlements of the Castel Viana.

Now we move onto the most interesting ones: The Ones who came before!

This ancient civilization became extinct in the prehistory, or the earliest records of human history, most likely around 75000 – 70000BC. Subject Sixteen, in AC2, revolves a glyph puzzle around the solar event and notes “Toba, 75KE was not a volcano.”

Toba, in reality was an explosion of a monstrous scale in the Indonesian islands – also where Krakatoa exploded in the 19th Century. The scale was not as big however but it is still the same place, which is interesting.

Anyway, the First Civilization was made up of few, and at first they joined with humanity to rebuild the world after the disaster. They had “set [their] knowledge to parchment and stone, but it was cleansed by fire.” Humanity’s view of them became even more distorted than it already was, and over the centuries referred to them as gods and myths. The names remained however; Jupiter, once called Tinia, Juno, who was once called Uni, and Minerva, once called Merva.

These are the ones (including herself) referred to by Minerva to Ezio in the vault beneath the Vatican; there will have been more of them, but not that many. All of the statuettes found around Monteriggioni in AC2 point at the identities of these ‘gods.’ Research if you will.

Pluto (Hades, in Greek) is never once mentioned (except as a statue), but I have a feeling he as a major part to play! In ACB when Desmond is jumping around inside the church (Santa Maria in Aracoeli) Juno makes a clear reference to ‘time.’

“But time erodes us. We can distract him, we can see past him. Feint left when he strikes right. But his reach is so very long, his stamina un-ending. We cannot evade his grasp, not forever.”

Hades (Pluto, I should keep to Roman names) ‘resides at the end of time’ according to the description by the statuette. He is the lord of the underworld and has always been (in modern times) the personification of death. This contradicts the Greek mythology, as he was not, but this may not be inaccurate.

Juno has personified time as well, and could be referring to Hades (Pluto). He may have betrayed them for his own gains, and has a part to play.

ALL of the gods from different civilizations (Egyptian, Roman, Greek, even Saxon and Vikings) are somehow connected to these original ones found in the AC series. The three mentioned – Minerva, Juno and Jupiter – are know as the Capitoline Triad, the three most important in my view. The church (Santa Maria in Aracoeli) is built on top of the Temple of Juno, beneath Capitoline Hill in Rome. Coincidence? Also, as you will have seen in ACB, the temple is accessible via the coliseum as well as the hidden architecture in the church.

Minerva mentioned that ‘we are gone now, all of us.’ We believed it.

Then lo and behold:

“We commit to this space the epilogue of our ending.” We encounter Juno in her temple and the church – but if they are gone then how is this possible? Maybe the presence of the Piece of Eden in the Temple has done something. But Juno is a lot more ‘alive’ than Minerva was, and a lot more hostile. She takes direct control of Desmond and [SPOILERS] forces him to stab Lucy. To me this says the First Civilization still lingers in some form that is more than pre-recorded holograms. Yet, she says that the ‘safe places’ were made to preserve knowledge and artifacts, but not life, [they] almost had the means.’ Why is she so alive though?

This leads me back to reuniting the bloodline. “We did not build them to be wise, and now they are our final faulted hope. You are they.”

Clearly she is referring to Desmond. But Juno still talks about how they kept the sixth sense through the blood before they became extinct, but it didn’t really work. They ‘see the blue shimmer’ but that is all, all humanity can do is grasp, and for a hundred years of Juno speaking they would still not understand her people. Fine.

What has just bugged me (quote, 3/7/2011) is what Juno says inside the temple: “you will activate it, you will know only when it is too late.”

What the hell does she mean there? The Apple in the Vault? Or the temples in the future? Maybe the temples are a trick…but Minerva seems to think they are for humanity’s protection. Juno and Minerva seem to have different views, so maybe Juno and her ilk have done something unspeakable to kill humanity off when their need for the temples is dire. “You will know only when it is too late.” Desmond strives to activate the temples to save humanity but does not know the truth about them, as he does not have a complete sense of knowledge as Juno says. Maybe they just don’t do anything.

One more thing here, Lucy and co. cannot hear Juno talking, so therefore only descendants can hear and see her. Ezio was the same, but Lucy and co. could see her because it’s what Ezio saw, and they were his memories, a direct link to what he could see.

Enough of this. Let’s sidestep and look at the scrolls of Romulus. Brutus writes that he has discovered a hidden room beneath what became the Roman Forum. We cannot find it, but in the scrolls he draws what he saw, and it is revealed to be another room created by the First Civilization. What purpose it serves is unclear, only that Brutus used it as inspiration for where the Roman Forum should be…it is the place where there are a lot of underground tunnels, and where a Borgia Captain is residing. Beyond that and the armor locked away, there is nothing significant, only that he found it. But what of the other room in Rome, the one within the Pythagorean temple? That simply serves the purpose of communing coordinates to the modern day through the memories of Ezio. The creepy thing is, Ezio is aware of this.

The First civilization, through their powers of foresight, deduced that the people of 2012 would look into the memories of Ezio through Desmond to find answers. They also deduced that Ezio would find something and therefore laid messages out for Ezio to find. He is stumped when Minerva calls out to Desmond, knowing full well that he will be watching. In the novel ‘Brotherhood,’ the Apple tells Ezio to hide it away so that future generations can use it. When Ezio finds the Pythagorean temple, it was again a message to be relayed to Desmond, only this time Ezio is aware of it. It still confuses the simple mind of old Leonardo though.

Have I missed anything? Well there’s more than enough info on the Pieces of Eden, all I didn’t go into is why they don’t affect Cesare. Because I honestly don’t know, the only explanation is that he doesn’t have the neuron that is influenced (See one of the glyph puzzles, it explains all). He is not related to Ezio is for certain, but he could be a direct descendant of Cain.

That neuron by the way is initially present in all humans who aren’t descendants of the First Civilization people, but evolution is slowly cancelling it out, albeit at a slower rate than classic Darwinian models say it should. Or maybe it isn’t, and there are just a lot more descendants than I realized, only they aren’t all assassins. The rift puzzles in ACB say more, also that human cortical brain activity is increasing in certain age ranges and Abstergo deduces that these people will not be affected by their plans. A major setback for them, as they are also starting to fight the system that Abstergo worked so hard to build.

My final entry is about Desmond and his current situation (Post-Brotherhood). He has entered a coma for reasons unknown (the sheer shock of being forced to stab someone he cares so much about) and is falling through the layers of the animus. He was able to stay as Ezio in Rome for a while until William M found his 1506 memories (that reminds me!) and discovered the Pythagorean temple. He then falls into the ‘black room’ as they are calling it at the moment, we’ll see if that changes. He is supposed to piece together his shattered subconscious and wake from the coma, and in the meantime he is still stuck with Ezio’s memories…only these memories include Ezio living Altair’s memories as well.

When he finds the ‘Nexus point’ and discovers a unique memory involving him, Ezio and Altair, he will wake up. I have a STRONG feeling that this artifact Ezio is hunting for, that Altair created or found, is literally going to link the three and they will all talk to each other about something. That wouldn’t be too far-fetched as the Pieces of Eden have foresight capabilities, it would only make sense that a stronger artifact could do the same only more powerfully.

Will Desmond’s bleeding effect also be cured? It has never been heard of, as animus users only get worse, but Rebecca theorized it in ACB and so therefore it is completely possible. I personally cannot wait for Revelations – which by the way is in the Middle East. Many of you thought the next would be the American Revolution, based on the symbols seen by Shaun (Masonic eye and Phrygian cap). I think it is a red herring, and just because the coordinates point at a place in America, it doesn’t mean the American Revolution will play a part.

But I could be wrong.

1506 – what I was reminded of…Rebecca says in ACB that Ezio hid the Apple sometime in 1507. 1507 is when Ezio killed Cesare Borgia, but it is clearly referenced in the Da Vinci Disappearance that Ezio has already hidden the apple by 1506 – so Rebecca is wrong, sort of.

It is just that when she tries to access the particular memory of hiding the apple, it takes her to 1507 instead (the whole memory inside a memory thing) so she assumes it is 1507, because as Shaun says, “Rebecca just isn’t a very good engineer.”

Well that’s me done, I hope my own way of deducing problems isn’t too confusing for everyone, if you do have questions then use the thread (if I’ve posted this in the right place), otherwise, just keep thinking, it works. But ask yourselves this; does Lucy rent a room in an inn at Monteriggioni? She mentions a windowsill where she put the Paracetemol, but as far as I can tell, there are no windows in the Sanctuary.