Shards of Eden

This article is about leftover shards of Pieces of Eden. You may be looking for the Rings of Eden.

Shards of Eden are leftover fragments of Isu technology maintaining some of the power of the Pieces of Eden. The Shards are capable of possessing qualities of various different Pieces of Eden, such as Staves or Rings.

History[]

The Maya created an armor out of scavenged Shards possessing the magnetic qualities of the Rings of Eden. The armor was locked away in Tulum at some point before the 18th century, and was later retrieved by the pirate-turned-Assassin Edward Kenway around 1721.^[1]

When the Russian Imperial Sceptre, a Staff of Eden, was destroyed during the Tunguska explosion in 1908,^[2] one shard of the artifact survived the blast and was later retrieved by the Russian Templar Grigori Rasputin. He proceeded to use it to influence those around him, including the Imperial Romanov family. After his death, he was buried with the artifact, and it was retrieved by the Russian Assassin Nikolai Orelov in late 1917.^[3]

Nikolai wore the shard as a necklace for several years and, in July 1918, was sent to retrieve a Precursor box in the possession of the Romanov family. After the Templars, who also sought the box, executed most of the familly, its sole surviving member, Princess Anastasia Romanova, fled with the artifact and encountered Nikolai while hiding from her family's killers. As Nikolai tried to calm down Anastasia and take the box from her, the artifact and Nikolai's shard interacted with each other and imprinted Anastasia with the genetic memories of Shao Jun, one of the box's previous wielders.^[4]

Nikolai eventually passed down his shard to his daughter Nadya,^[5] at some point after the Assassin and his family migrated to the United States.^[3] During the Palmer Raids of 1919, Nadya was deported back to Russia alongside her mother Anna, but she would continue to hold onto the shard until as late as October 2002, despite being unaware of its true nature.^[5]