Precursor box

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Precursor box
Description
Type	Piece of Eden
Powers	Siphoning other artifacts as power sources Decyphering Isu writing and producing holograms Imprinting memories into the minds of users
Current location	Unknown (one box destroyed during Resurrection Day)
Historical information
Time period	Prehistory Ming dynasty Seven Years' War Age of Enlightenment Sikh Empire Russian Revolution Modern times
Created by	Isu
Notable wielders	Ezio Auditore Shao Jun Shay Cormac William Sleeman Ulysses S. Grant Anastasia Nikolaevna Álvaro Gramática

A Precursor box, also known as an Isu Data Cache, is a type of device created by the Isu capable of interacting with other Pieces of Eden to accomplish a variety of functions, though it principally stores vast contents of knowledge on any single given subject.

Normally powered by the Piece of Eden it is paired with, in the absence of such a device, electricity can be used in its place. However, the amount of electricity required is on the magnitude of a lightning strike and can damage the box. One such box was indeed powered in this way, and when activated, it was able to decipher the Isu script written in the Voynich manuscript and display a holographic map marking the Seismic Temples' various locations. Using the Koh-i-Noor diamond to power another box, the Templars used the artifact to translate the writings in the Tosha Khana Temple beneath Amritsar to locate the emplacement of other Temples.

Combined with Staves of Eden, the boxes were also shown to have the ability to imprint the genetic memories of someone into another individual, like in 1918 when Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna ended up with the Chinese Assassin Shao Jun's memories.

History

Move to China

Ezio handing the box to Shao Jun

By November 1524, one Precursor box was owned by the Italian Assassins' retired Mentor Ezio Auditore in his villa in Tuscany, Italy. When the Chinese Assassin Shao Jun arrived there seeking Ezio's advice on resolving problems back in China, he gave her the box and told that it would aid her, stating that she should only open it if she were to lose her way.

Upon returning to China, Shao Jun used the box as bait to get closer to Gao Feng, a Chinese Templar and one of the Eight Tigers responsible for conducting a near-complete purge of the Chinese Assassins. She assassinated him, but the box itself was taken by Gu Dayong. Eventually, Shao Jun assassinated Dayong and reclaimed the box. She subsequently entrusted it to her Mentor Wang Yangming, who took it to have a contact help them study the box.

However, the Eight Tigers' leader Zhang Yong traced Yangming's location and joined an ambush to the Assassin's meeting. Promptly murdering the contact, he attacked the outnumbered Mentor until Yangming was fatally wounded, then took the box and later had it sent out of China to other Templars.

West Indies

Adéwalé handing the box to Bastienne

By 1735, the Precursor box had wound up in the possession of the French Templars, who were transporting it on aboard a galleon to Port-au-Prince to be given to Bastienne Josèphe. However, the Caribbean Assassin Adéwalé attacked the fleet transporting the artifact and retrieved the parcel that contained the box from the Templar admiral. In July 1737, after two years of working alongside her, Adéwalé eventually handed the artifact to Bastienne.

By November 1751, the Saint-Domingue Assassins' Mentor François Mackandal owned both the Precursor box and the Voynich manuscript. Using the artifacts, Mackandal discovered the existence of an Isu Temple near Port-au-Prince and sent his subordinate Vendredi to investigate it. Unbeknownst to Mackandal, the Temple was part of a system that held the Earth together.

Vendredi activated the Temple's machinery, causing a massive earthquake which destroyed Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region. After the disaster, the Master Templar Lawrence Washington stole the Precursor box and manuscript from Mackandal's camp and took the artifacts with him to Virginia, where the Templars studied the artifacts in an attempt to learn how to use them.

Struggle in the colonies

Shay holding the Precursor box

In 1752, the Colonial Assassin Shay Cormac killed Washington in an attempt to recover the box. However, the artifact was already in the possession of Washington's Templar brother Samuel Smith, while the manuscript had been entrusted to James Wardrop. In 1754, Shay managed to track Smith down and assassinate him, with the help of fellow Assassin Chevalier de la Vérendrye. Shay then recovered the box from Smith's body and delivered it to the scientist Benjamin Franklin, who was confident conducting electricity through the box would activate it.

With Shay and Hope Jensen's assistance, Franklin succeeded in powering the box, which projected a map of the Earth and displayed locations of several Isu sites, one of them in Lisbon, Portugal. The box was subsequently given to the Colonial Assassins' Mentor Achilles Davenport, who kept it secure at the Davenport Homestead, the Assassins' primary base of operations in the British colonies.

In October 1759, Hope managed to replicate Franklin's experiment and discovered another Isu Temple hidden in the Arctic. After the ordeal, Liam O'Brian took the box and gave it to Chevalier de la Vérendrye, who was tasked with shipping it away from the colonies.

Exchanging hands

Shay stealing the box from Charles Dorian

By December 1776, the French Assassins owned the box. Having defected to the Templars twenty years before, Shay learned of this and traveled to Paris. Rescuing Franklin from a group of criminals, Shay enlisted his aid in entering the Palace of Versailles, claiming to have a business meeting there. After a meeting in the palace, the Assassins entrusted the box to Charles Dorian. Having made his way inside, Shay assassinated Charles and took the box from him, reclaiming it for the Templars.

Eventually, the box ended up in the hands of the British Templar Francis Cotton. After Cotton's death in 1839, his appointed successor William Sleeman took possession of it, and in 1841, launched a campaign to find Isu Temples in Asia by using the artifact. In order to power it, he stole the Koh-i-Noor from the Assassins. However, the Indian Assassin Arbaaz Mir and the Sikh Empire princess Pyara Kaur countered his efforts and recovered the stolen artifact. Despite discovering a new Temple in Herat, Arbaaz could not prevent William from fleeing with the box.

After Ulysses S. Grant's election as President of the United States in 1868, the American Templars infiltrated his inner circle and subsequently corrupted his administration. During the American Civil War, the Assassins gave Grant the Trident of Eden's Faith Prong and helped him master its powers, which gave him access to the Precursor box and pages of the Voynich manuscript. The former presidential candidate Horace Greeley discovered this and tasked one of his associates in Grant's office to steal the box from the Templars. His associate managed to bring him the box and inform him of several manuscript pages which were housed at the British Museum before being murdered.

In 1872, the Templars learned Greeley kept the Precursor box in his home and sent their agent Alice to recover it and eliminate Greeley. Although the Pinkerton agent Tommy Greyling thwarted Alice's attempt on Greeley's life, the Templar succeeded in recovering the box and brought it back to her superiors.

Revolutionary Russia

The box and the Staff shard interacting

Decades later, the box had come into the possession of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who in 1918 and along with his family was held prisoner by the Bolcheviks in Yekaterinburg. Sent by the Brotherhood to recover the artifact, Nikolai Orelov was confronted by the Templars who had infiltrated the ranks of the Red Army and also coveted the box. Infiltrating the Ipatiev House where the Romanovs were kept, Nikolai witnessed their murder but reached Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was holding the box, in time to secure the artifact.

However, as Nikolai was taking the Precursor box from Anastasia's hands, the box interacted with a shard around his neck from the destroyed Imperial Sceptre, and the girl was imprinted with the Chinese Assassin Shao Jun's genetic memories. Suffering from a kind of Bleeding Effect, Anastasia became overwhelmed by Shao Jun's skills and memories, and the older man decided to take both her and the box to the Brotherhood in Moscow.

Once in Moscow, the pair met the Assassin Sergei, who took the box and promised Nikolai that they would keep Anastasia safe while discovering what the box had done to her. However, Nikolai soon found out through eavesdropping on some Assassins' conversation that they did not care about Anastasia's safety, that Sergei only wanted to uncover the box's secrets, and that the procedure they planned to use on Anastasia would most likely kill her. Nikolai ultimately managed to rescue Anastasia, but left the box behind.

Phoenix Project

By February 2014, Abstergo Industries had come into possession of this Precursor box, which they kept at their facility in Rotterdam. Although the Assassins Harlan Cunningham and Arend Schut managed to steal it during their raid of the facility, they were forced to leave the artifact behind after being pursued by Abstergo's Sigma Team led by the Master Templar Juhani Otso Berg.

Álvaro Gramática holding the box

In 2015, Laetitia England assigned Berg to deliver the box to Álvaro Gramática’s top secret laboratory, so he could use it for the Phoenix Project. Gramática would subsequently experiment on the box, as well as a Shroud of Eden delivered to him by Violet da Costa, until 2018, when his laboratory was forcefully taken over by the Instruments of the First Will.

The Instruments sought to create a new body for the Isu Juno to inhabit and Gramática complied, using the knowledge from the box, along with the Shroud's healing properties and Isu DNA extracted from the young Sage Elijah, to give Juno a new body. However, the Phoenix Project laboratory was shortly after attacked by an Assassin cell led by Galina Voronina and Juhani Otso Berg, who sought to prevent Juno's resurrection. During the subsequent battle, the laboratory was destroyed by a high-caliber explosive thrown by Berg, which presumably also destroyed the box and the Shroud.

Attempts to find other boxes

By 2019, the Japanese Templar Kaori Kagami was attempting to locate Shao Jun's Precursor box. When Kō Risa, a descendant of Jun, began attending therapy sessions at the Abstergo clinic in Yokohama, Kagami placed her in the Animus to relive her ancestor's genetic memories. However, Jun's memories ultimately proved to be a dead end, and Kagami was forced to postpone her search after Risa destroyed her Animus. Shortly after, Risa and her cousin Mari were recruited into the Brotherhood by the Mentor Saeko Mochizuki, who tasked them to find Jun's box.

In August 2020, the Assassin Antony Henry mentioned in his notes to Layla Hassan detailing his efforts translating Isu script that he had tried to translate some of the Voynich manuscript's pages. His attempt was unsuccessful, but he theorized that the text may have required a Precursor box to decode.

Behind the scenes

There is inconsistency over the identity of the Precursor boxes across the Assassin's Creed series. In Assassin's Creed: Rogue, the Templar John Harrison wrote to Grand Master Reginald Birch that the Chinese Assassins had sent Shao Jun's box to Acapulco, and from there, to the West Indies, about a century after her death. Since the box in Rogue seems to be identical to the one held by the Caribbean Assassin Adéwalé, this heavily suggests a clear continuity from Shao Jun's box in Assassin's Creed: Embers to Adéwalé's box in Freedom Cry and to Shay Cormac's box in Rogue, that they are all the same box.

However, Richard Farrese, the lead writer to Assassin's Creed: Rogue, discounted in a podcast with the YouTuber Loomer that Shao Jun's box is identical to that of Shay. With the release of Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India and Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia, Shao Jun's box is implied to have passed from the Chinese Templars to the British Templar William Sleeman operating in India and thence to the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. If this were true, it would be peculiar that Harrison reports that the Chinese Assassins retained Shao Jun's box for more than a century given that the box would be assumed to have remained in Templar hands from the end of Chronicles: China, though it is not impossible that Shao Jun had recaptured the box before it eventually fell into the hands of Sleeman.

At the same time, the box's presence in Chronicles: India and Chronicles: Russia does not necessarily contradict the war letter in Rogue, as the events of Freedom Cry and Rogue are set in between those of Chronicles: China and Chronicles: India. This allows for the possibility that the Chinese Brotherhood really did send the box to the West Indies, and after Shay took it back from Charles Dorian, it eventually fell into the hands of William Sleeman. Indeed, the fact that the box handed to Álvaro Gramática at the end of Chronicles: Russia is labeled "SHAY'S PRECURSOR BOX" heavily suggests that Ezio's box seen throughout the spin-off series is Shay's box. This is because it would be a peculiar narrative choice for the game to end with Gramática receiving a different item of no relevance to the game's story, i.e. Shay's box if it is distinct, rather than Ezio's box.

On 21 March 2017, Assassin's Creed's then-Head of Content Aymar Azaïzia answered in an AMA on Reddit that Ezio's box and Shay's box were the same in response to a question concerning this matter, thereby clearly contradicting not only Richard Farrese, but seemingly the reference book Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide as well. Aside from consistently describing Precursor boxes in the plural, The Essential Guide states that "Two confirmed Precursor Boxes exist; one is currently in possession of Álvaro Gramática, while the location of the other is unknown". The reference to two Precursor boxes rather than one highly suggests that Shay's box, the one given to Gramática, and Ezio's box are distinct. However, it stops short of explicitly describing the second box, meaning that it technically does not contradict Aymar's claim because it could be that Ezio's box and Shay's box should still be taken as an identical box in Gramática's hands while the second box is merely one that has never appeared in the series. It would be odd, however, for the book to mention two boxes while intending one to be one that has been absent from the entire series.

Adding to the confusion, while Farrese also clarified that Adéwalé's box in Freedom Cry is the one that ends up in Shay's hands in Rogue, they are distinct in design. While the latter bears a rectangular lid which splits in half and slides open, with even the sides of the box unraveling to expose the mechanisms within, the former has a round lid that seems to open on hinges like a typical box. Ironically, this means that the box in Freedom Cry is actually more similar in design and appearance to the one in Embers.

Another inconsistency appears in the 2019 manga Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun. During its modern-day events, which are presumably set in 2019, both the Japanese Assassins and Templars seek to find Shao Jun's Precursor box. However, if Shao Jun's box is the same as Shay's, then it would have already been destroyed during the events of Assassin's Creed: Uprising, which take place in 2018.

Because the city of Atlantis in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey's downloadable expansion The Fate of Atlantis: Judgment of Atlantis was a simulation made by Aletheia, it is possible there were multiple Precursor boxes in the real city.

Gallery

Concept art of the Precursor box

An Isu Data Cache in the simulation of Atlantis

The box used to lure the Chinese Templars

Zhang Yong with the box

The Precursor box being used

The box displaying a map of the Seismic Temples

Sleeman using the box and the Koh-i-Noor to find Isu Temples

Pyara and Sleeman fighting for the artifacts

Anastasia being imprinted with Shao Jun's memories

Álvaro Gramática gloating over the Precursor box

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Embers (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Freedom Cry
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue (first identified as Precursor box)
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus
• Assassin's Creed: Uprising
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – The Fate of Atlantis (simulation only; first identified as Isu Data Cache)
• Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun
• Assassin's Creed: The Ming Storm (non-canon)
• Assassin's Creed: Turbulence in the Ming Dynasty (non-canon)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)