Callum Lynch

Callum Lynch
Biographical information
Born	21 October 1979 Alcalde, New Mexico, United States
Species	Human
Political information
Affiliations	Assassins (since 2016)

Callum "Cal" Lynch (born 1979) is a member of the Assassin Brotherhood and a descendant of the 15th-century Spanish Assassin Aguilar de Nerha and the 18th-century French-Austrian Assassin Arno Dorian.

In 2016, as the last known surviving member of Aguilar's bloodline, Callum was sought out by Abstergo as part of a Templar plot to locate a specific Apple of Eden wielded by his ancestor. Captured and interred in their Madrid facility, Callum was forced into the Animus 4.3 to relive Aguilar's memories in search of clues to the Apple's location.

After months at Abstergo's mercy, Callum and a handful of other Assassin prisoners escaped from the Madrid facility and went on to retrieve the Apple from the Templars at their Grand Hall in London after assassinating Abstergo CEO Alan Rikkin, landing a heavy blow to the company.

Biography

Early life

Young Callum with his mother

Callum Lynch was born on 21 October 1979 to Joseph and Mary Lynch, both members of the Assassin Order, in Alcalde, New Mexico. At the age of seven, when the family lived in Baja California, Mexico, he returned home after a day of joyful bike-riding to find his mother dead at his father's hands. Joseph told him to run and Callum witnessed his father's subsequent capture by Templar agents led by Alan Rikkin.

Growing up, Callum spent a lot of time in various foster homes and juvenile detention centers but managed to avoid both the Assassins and Templars, until his eventual arrest for the murder of a pimp. He also used to shoplift Animus software with the intention of selling it to kids who had too much wealth.

"Execution" and imprisonment

On 21 October 2016, the date Callum was to be publicly executed by the State of Texas, he was visited by a priest in his cell for last rites. Uninterested in the biblical philosophy, Callum instead requested the priest recite the poem "After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost, his mother's favorite. The guards then arrived and took him to the execution chamber, and after being injected with a powerful sedative, he later learned that his execution had been staged with the help of the Abstergo Foundation, a Templar-run initiative led by Dr. Sofia Rikkin.

Callum waking up after his apparent execution

Sofia informed Callum that he had been brought to her facility in Madrid, Spain, in order to help Abstergo find the "cure to violence" inherently present in mankind—and more specifically, the numerous descendants of historical Assassins. In order to do so, he would need to locate an artifact known as the "Apple of Eden", which was last known to be in the possession of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha, a 15th-century Spanish Assassin.

Callum was hooked up to the Animus and equipped with Aguilar's Hidden Blades, which had previously been retrieved from the dead Assassin's burial site. Inside the machine, he was forced to relive the genetic memories of his ancestor, before being suddenly pulled out. Whilst collapsed on the floor, Callum began to see images of Aguilar in the modern day.

The next day, Callum was introduced to the wider population at the facility, including Moussa, a descendant of the 18th-century Haitian Assassin Baptiste. During a confusing encounter for Callum, he learned that the Assassins had protected, and continued to safeguard, the Apple from the Templars.

Callum 'encoutering' Aguilar

Upon returning to his cell, Callum was once again greeted by a vision of Aguilar, and this time engaged in combat with the vivid image. It was at that moment that his cell was entered by a multitude of guards on the insistent orders of Dr. Alan Rikkin, who was under pressure to locate the Apple in a timely fashion.

Still under the effects of the Bleeding Effects, Callum began fighting the guards, downing three before being restrained. Dragging him out, they stopped in front of the facility's head of security, McGowen. Callum suffered another episode when he started singing "Crazy" by Willie Nelson, imprinted in his subconscious from the day of his mother's apparent murder.

This time, Callum's Animus session ended violently when he rapidly desynchronized from Aguilar, following the latter's Leap of Faith within the Animus. Any cerebral damage from the rapid desynchronization was quickly prevented by Sofia's medical team, though Callum was briefly forced into a wheelchair due to the onset of a temporary paralysis.

Reunion

Callum reuniting with his father

The next day, Callum was greeted by Alan Rikkin, who in an attempt to coerce Callum into willingly entering the Animus, informed him that his father was also present at the facility. Rikkin correctly assumed that Callum, rather than wanting to come to terms with his past, wished to destroy it. Presented with Joseph's Hidden Blade, Callum confronted his father. Joseph informed Callum that his mother's death had been necessary in order to keep the Templars from placing her in the Animus and locating the Apple.

Though Callum was unwilling to kill his father in cold blood, he promised to aid the Templars in locating the Apple, so that they might use it to destroy the Assassins in the modern day. Callum once more returned to the Animus, this time willingly, in order to locate the Apple through Aguilar's memories. This time he was confronted by McGowen, who gave Callum a brief history of the Assassins. McGowen then admitted that while he was not an Assassin himself, he respected the Assassins' integrity and commitment to a cause, comparing Callum unfavorably against them.

Callum in the Animus

Inside the Animus, Callum witnessed the betrayal of the Templars, when Aguilar's companion, María, was murdered by Ojeda in order to regain the Apple. As Aguilar, in the past, escaped his Templar pursuers, Callum remained fully synchronized enough to successfully perform a Leap of Faith. Landing forcefully on the ground, the Animus arm attached to Callum jerked violently and broke, though he remained connected long enough for those present to witness Aguilar handing the Apple to Christopher Columbus. Having successfully located the Apple in Columbus' tomb in the Seville Cathedral, Sofia and Alan Rikkin were forced to evacuate the facility due to a revolt led by Moussa and his fellow Assassin inmates.

Meanwhile, Callum remained connected to the Animus and was greeted by ghostly visions of several of his Assassin ancestors, including Aguilar, Arno Dorian, an Assassin resembling Sofia, and his own parents. Accepting his place among the Assassins, Callum resolved to escape the facility and retrieve the Apple. Together with Moussa, Nathan, Emir, and Lin, Callum fought his way out of the facility.

Retrieving the Apple

Callum assassinating Alan Rikkin

Despite the deaths of Nathan and Emir, the Assassins were successful in escaping the facility and tracking Alan Rikkin to the Grand Templar Hall in London, where the Templar Order was meeting en masse to celebrate the retrieval of the Apple. Callum, Moussa, and Lin managed to infiltrate the meeting by breaking down their Hidden Blades into separate parts, before reconstructing them inside.

Callum briefly confronted Sofia who, having become disillusioned with her father's priorities—eliminating the Assassins over eliminating violence in general—did nothing to prevent Callum from retrieving the Apple and killing her father. Escaping the Hall before the authorities arrived, Callum and his allies climbed the city buildings before performing a getaway Leap of Faith.

Personality and traits

Affected by the death of his mother, Callum grew up with a disdain for violence against women. On one occasion he killed a pimp, although such an action would lead to his eventual arrest and death sentence. Callum also initially had no interest in the Assassins' fight and opposed them out of spite for his father, whom he blamed for his mother's death.

After several sessions in the Animus 4.3, Callum developed the Bleeding Effect and saw his ancestor Aguilar as a hallucinatory phantom. When Callum violently desynchronized from an Animus session, he was left temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.

Callum's opinion about his father and later, the Assassins, changed after he learned that it had been his mother's decision to take her life, in order to prevent the Templars from using her genetic memories to find Aguilar's Apple of Eden. Initially siding with the Templars in their search for the Apple in question, Callum soon understood what Joseph had truly felt at the time of Mary's death when relieving the moment Aguilar was forced to watch María die. This, coupled with meeting phantoms of his Assassin ancestors, eventually led him to embrace his heritage and continue his parents and fellow Assassins' battle against Templars.

Skills and equipment

As a child, Callum was a proficient BMX-rider. Although he failed to jump a nearly 2 meter gap between shipping containers while fleeing Abstergo, and despite dropping a little more than 2 meters, he was mostly unharmed and continued riding without difficulty.

Callum using a crossbow

During his imprisonment in the Huntsville Department of Criminal Justice, Callum donned a white prison uniform that denoted his status as a death row inmate. He wore it until his faked execution and forced recruitment into the Abstergo Madrid Facility. At the facility, he wore a simple blue uniform with a white under-shirt. After his escape, he wore more Assassin-appropriate robes which were completely black in color to facilitate stealth.

Prior to Abstergo's discovery of him, Callum was a skilled criminal, stealing Animus technology with the intent of selling it to wealthy kids. Due to the Bleeding Effect, Callum quickly learned all of Aguilar's skills and abilities, even becoming fluent in Spanish. He could fight efficiently with swords, crossbows, and the standard bow. He was also extremely proficient in blending and freerunning, using those skills to infiltrate the Grand Templar Hall and assassinate Alan Rikkin. His newly-equipped Hidden Blade could also pass undetected through security systems by being split up into multiple parts and reassembled after the checkpoint.

Behind the scenes

Callum Lynch is a character created for the 2016 film Assassin's Creed, where he was portrayed as a child by Angus Brown, and as an adult by Michael Fassbender.

In the scene with the bulletin board showing Callum's family tree, the photograph of a young Callum has his name written as "Cal," with the "A" written as the Assassin insignia.

Callum seems to share some of his ancestry with Sofia Rikkin, as one of his ancestors appearing through the Animus was a female Assassin who looked similar to Sofia. Besides Arno and Aguilar, Callum also had Assassin ancestors who fought in the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II.

Etymology

"Callum" is a masculine Gaelic name meaning "dove" in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, deriving from late Latin Columba (dove). This continues the trend of Assassin's Creed protagonists having avian-themed names. "Lynch" is a surname of English and Irish origin. In English, it is derived from the Norman-French de Lench and Kentish hlinc (hill), while in Irish it is derived from Ó Loingsigh (descendant of Loingseach), later Anglicized as "Lynch."

Although Callum and his father share their surname with Victor Lynch, a British Templar present in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, there is no known relation between them.

Gallery

Abstergo's collage of Callum

Callum's family tree

Callum in his prison cell

Callum talking with Father Raymond

Callum with Sofia

Callum in the Animus

Callum walking with Alan Rikkin

Callum seeing an apparition of Arno Dorian

Callum with Lin and Moussa atop the roof of the Holborn Hall

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed film (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization
• Assassin's Creed: Origins (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Bloodstone (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun (appears in flashback(s))