#It was a sleepy dying settlement before Desmond came and ruined it

[fanworldbuildingfun]

Recently I have landed on a lovely Auspex series by Lithuva on A03 and now, rent free, in my head a Desmond who runs an Assassin Bureau lives. Except he did not set out to create one. Or realizes he is running one

To spice things a bit, I’m sending Desmond to AC1 era

Let’s assume Desmond shall not, immediately, realize where he is, nor shall he go to search for any big city. And when he does, he is just… Too tired after everything that went on in the last few months to even actively want to. Instead, he just wanders. Tries to get a lay of the land. Indulges the desire to get up as high as he can to learn the map of the location

And then, when he is more or less satisfied that he knows the immediate area he is in (because I’m going to just go and assume that the “Syncronization makes you avare of points of interest” is a valid, Isu-derived offshoot of Isu Knowledge), Desmond heads for the nearest settlement where he sees flecks of gold

Now, apparently 1100s have been a bad time for the region when it came to earthquakes. As in, they were so bad there have been entire cities destroyed in landslides, and entire fortresses collapsed. We are talking 7+ on Magnitude scale ~ every decade from 1138 to 1170. How is it relevant? Rebuilding takes time, and bigger cities would obviously get more attention first

So when Desmond reaches that golden speck? It’s a small settlement that is partially abandoned, and the only remaining people are those who could not afford to move away. So… Desmond sticks around. Hunts for his food. Helps to clear everything up, relying on whatever memories he has from his ancestors that dealt with architecture. There isn’t much, and most of it is surface-level (none of them got involved in more than approval / supply review / labor review/ costs), but even that helps. He can eyball the damages and estimate how much it may cost to repair, and that alone is a good starting point of for the settlement

But till someone can be called in, he helps

Helps moving rubble. Helps taking apart the houses that look beyond saving. Helps do what fixes can be done without outside help. Desmond’s climbing skills and Eagle vision help here. Slowly, he becomes just one of the people of the settlement. When he’s not helping on fixes, he somehow ends up entertaining kids with stories. Then it shifts to teaching, because some stories require further explanations of concepts Desmond did not realize were common in 21st century, but not in 12th.

It’s not conventional by any means, but for this time? It works just fine. He pulls on Altaїr’s memories of lessons at Masyaf. He pulls on Ezio’s memories of being tutored as a child. And it’s all applicable so even if some of the adults grumbled at the start, they eventually stopped. Some even joined in on the lessons

At some point, Desmond gets a house of his own. It wasn’t really meant to be his. It was an old inn building that was one of the more damaged ones, and the owner left it almost a generation ago, now. So Desmond slowly worked on it till everyone just… Accepted it as his and there was that. They all are a tight knit bunch at this point

But then, the Crusades reignite. And suddenly the out-of-the way settlement is no longer out-of-the-way, because trading routes shift to avoid the fighting

The settlement becomes busy. Desmond’s barely finished inn becomes busy. And security becomes an issue

…It wasn’t an unknown that Desmond has been trained. But it has been a backburner knowledge that the settlement now had to face because suddenly, they had to pick up more self-defense skills - after the overall higher level of literacy came to bite them in the butt. When the traders discovered most of the settlers could read/write (and in several languages at that!), the settlement became a hub from which messages would be sent. And then some of the younger people that weren’t interested in tending to their parents’ land (and anyway, they had siblings to do that) became couriers or scribes

Somehow, that became Desmond’s problem

He had all of a year, less even, to enjoy being an inn owner before he had to delegate that – because he got dragged into coordinating the mail, arranging protection for the settlement, dealing with obstinate merchants… There was no time to actually, you know, run the inn

It all came to a peak when a harried young man arrived to the settlement, and Desmond pegged on him as one of the Brotherhood novices. One that had clearly run into some amount of trouble – the kind that was likely to follow him. So he just… Shoos him in with his messengers and makes sure that, when the trouble comes, finding the novice among them is night impossible. He does not acknowledge it. He does not present himself as an Assassin

That doesn’t mean his action aren’t noted. By the novice or the settlement.