Hidden Ones

The Hidden Ones, also known as the Liberalis Circulum (Circle of Liberals) during the time of the Roman Empire, was the name of an organization created by the Egyptian Bayek and his wife, Aya, that was dedicated to fighting for humanity's free will. They operated within Ptolemaic Egypt, the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire. In 1050, under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, they founded a sovereign state in their own right, becoming a public organization that eventually became known as the Assassin Brotherhood.

Foundation
The Hidden Ones were founded in 48 BCE by the Egyptian Medjay Bayek and his wife, Aya, who cast away her former identity and took a new name, becoming Amunet. Eventually, Amunet founded a bureau in Rome along with a man named Lugos, and recruited several Roman Senators, including Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, as well as the Roman philosopher Publius Volumnius. The Roman Hidden Ones referred to themselves as Liberatores.

Later on, Lugos traveled to Egypt to recover two Pieces of Eden, the Ankh and the Scepter of Aset, which had been found in a pyramid by Roman plunderers. However, while carrying the two artefacts aboard his ship back to Rome across the Mediterranean Sea, a terrible storm opened an enormous waterway within the ship, causing it to sink. Before his demise, Lugos recorded a message with the Ankh, detailing the ongoing events and lamenting the failure of his mission.

Assassination of Julius Caesar
In 44 BCE, forty Senators, secretly Hidden Ones, conspired against the Roman general and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, whose appointment had been supported by the Order of the Ancients. After being assigned by Cassius as the one to come up with the plan of assassinating Caesar, Brutus designated a temple preceding a sealed First Civilization vault hidden beneath what would eventually become the Santa Maria Aracoeli as a meeting place for his co-conspirators. Having received visions of Caesar's future assassination within the vault, Brutus was further motivated and scheduled their attack for the Ides of March.

On 15 March 44 BCE, the Hidden Ones, led by Amunet, assassinated Caesar while he was addressing the Senate. After Amunet stabbed him from behind, the other senators attacked him. Caesar resisted at first, but resigned himself to his fate upon recognizing Brutus. Driven to severe guilt from his actions, Brutus later returned to the Colosseum, and abandoned the dagger he had used to strike down Caesar within the vault, along with his heirloom armor and the scrolls describing his dreams and discovery of the vault, as well as include drawings of the chamber and its pedestal.

Attempted resurrection of Brutus
"Whatever power lies within this artifact, it has not returned our Brother to us."

- Publius Volumnius commenting on the failed resurrection of Brutus.

After the assassination, the Senate passed an amnesty on the Hidden Ones, which was proposed by Caesar's friend and co-consul Marcus Antonius. Nonetheless, uproar among the population caused Hidden Ones to leave Rome.

In 42 BCE, armies under the command of Caesar's allies clashed with those of Brutus and Cassius at the in Macedonia. Faced with certain defeat, the two Hidden Ones fled and committed suicide shortly thereafter.

After Brutus' death, his fellow Hidden Ones gathered in Philippi, Macedonia and tried to reanimate him using a Shroud of Eden. Since they had never used it before, the Hidden Ones feared its effects, but nevertheless wrapped Brutus in the cloth. Though the corpse opened its eyes and moved its arms, it neither breathed nor reacted to any touch, and eventually fell still in a seeming "second death".

As some of the Hidden Ones wept, Brutus was wrapped instead in a burial mantle, and the Shroud was returned to its wooden storage box.

Assassination of Cleopatra
On 12 August 30 BCE, Amunet infiltrated Cleopatra's palace. There, she killed Cleopatra using a venomous asp.

Later activities
On 24 January 41, the Roman Hidden One Leonius killed Roman Emperor Caligula with a dagger.

By the mid-3rd century, the Roman branch of the Hidden Ones, now known as the Liberalis Circulum, had spread throughout the Roman Empire, having members in Gaul, Germania and Iberia.

In 259, Aquilus, a Gaul Hidden One based in Lugdunum, was tasked with assassinating two Generals and a Senator, and then ordered to retrieve an artifact in possession of his cousin Accipiter, a Hidden One and a General of the Alemanni tribes. As Aquilus reached his third target, the General Gracchus, his intent was discovered and he was stabbed by his own target. Fortunately for the Hidden One, Aquilus was saved by his cousin who gave him the Ankh, which had been finally recovered, centuries after Lugos' death. The Gaul took back the artifact to Lugdunum, but it was then stolen by the Hidden Ones' ancestral enemies, with Caïus Fulvus Vultur killing Aquilus' father, Lucius.

Aquilus tracked Vultur to Rome, where he eliminated him and his fellow conspirators, and retrieved the artifact. Later, the arrest and execution of Aquilus was ordered by the prefect of his home city, but even after Aquilus' death, the artifact was successfully hidden. It was this same Prefect with whom Cuervo, an Iberian Hidden One sent to preserve the Circle's interests in Lugdunum from the Germanic armies raiding the Empire, and Accipiter were negotiating the spare of the Roman city in exchange for a significant tribute to the Alemanni.

In the 4th century, an unidentified Roman Hidden One operated in the Roman Empire during the rise of Constantine I as emperor, witnessing the foundation of Constantinople.

Reformation into the Assassin Brotherhood
In 1050, under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, the Levantine branch of the Hidden Ones founded a sovereign state in their own right from their capital of Alamut, openly operating from the impregnable fortress as a public organization which eventually became knwon as the Assassin Brotherhood. Under Hassan's command, public assassinations occurred much more often and the people were encouraged to stand up to their oppressors, realizing that they were not on their own.

Members
Ptolemaic Egypt / Roman Republic
 * Aya
 * Bayek
 * Marcus Junius Brutus
 * Gaius Cassius Longinus
 * Lugos
 * Pasherenptah
 * Phanos the Younger
 * Phoxidas
 * Tahira
 * Publius Volumnius
 * 38 other senators involved in Caesar's assassination

Roman Empire
 * Julio-Claudian dynasty


 * Leonius


 * 3rd century


 * Accipiter
 * Aquilus
 * Cuervo
 * Lucius


 * Constantinian dynasty


 * Roman Assassin

High Middle Ages
 * Hassan-i Sabbāh