#actually the only one I struggled with was al mualim

[masterorionart]

Wanted to do a little design exercise and drew some Assassin's Creed characters as cats

[xadoheandterra]

Series: The Heir, The Reader, and Clay

Title: Run It Again Fandom: Assassin’s Creed Characters: Desmond Miles, Malik Al-Sayf, Kadar Al-Sayf, Al Mualim Pairings: Altair/Malik Chapters: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII | XIV | XV | | XVI | XVII | XVIII Enabler: @kingbob2-0 Tags: Time Travel, Big Brother Kadar, Desmond Raised By Others, De-Aged Desmond, Al Mualim Being Creepy (Or Is That Just Me?), Discussion Of Disability, Research Hell Summary: They hadn’t found an answer yet, and Layla was impatient despite the promise of the Grey being timeless in its nature. She didn’t want to have to search for an answer that might never come–so she made another suggestion. Why not just change it? Why not counter the Isu influence on the Pieces of Eden where it counted, and counter what Juno inevitably did to the Eye in the Grand Temple?

It was all the push that Desmond needed to let himself be just that bit more selfish. So selfish he chose to be, and there was one moment where the Isu’s hold on the Pieces of Eden had a profound effect–the Levantine Brotherhood. Altair Ibn La’Ahad. Al Mualim. There was just one problem–Desmond was eight, a child, and didn’t remember dying.

Layla at least had his back, even if she was just a bit fashionably late.

 Malik grit his teeth as he struggled with the toggles on the front of his modified Assassin's robes. Kareem had brought the familiar white robes two days ago--repaired, freshly laundered, and modified. Malik hadn't been able to do much aside from hold the robes numbly with his one hand for the first day; gaze down on the clean, crisp white cloth without even really seeing it. The next day Malik found the robes neatly folded on the chair that had the black Rafiq over-robe with the special stitching that signified his change in status as Dai--and today Malik had no choice but to dress in the robes as Kareem informed him Al Mualim had decided now was the time that they were to talk.

Never mind that Malik was still healing--that the bandage on his arm still needed to be changed daily and the sutures checked; that he was still required to take the medication that Kareem and the healers ordered him to have--it would be time before Malik truly should be up and moving, but Malik didn't have time. As if to remind him his left arm throbbed in the stitched sleeve and his right hand trembled and missed the corded connector for the fifteenth time. Frustrated tears gathered at the corners of his eyes as he let out a yell and smashed his right hand into the stone wall.

The new ache drew his attention away from the way his left arm tried to remind him of the lack of it--the way his fingers ached except he didn't have any fingers anymore because his hand was gone. Malik breathed in, shaky and heavy as he closed his eyes and trembled, white robes only half done up. His pants had already been enough of a struggle, and he still didn't even have the belt or waist sash in place yet--he didn't want to think of the utter pain it would be to get those tightened down with one hand. Malik wasn't even sure if he'd be able to do this--dress himself and function--not now that he was crippled and what use would he be as a Dai anyway?

What had the Master been thinking?! Malik ground his teeth together and tried to take in another breath, shaky and through his teeth as he fought down the way his hand throbbed. He pulled it from the wall and stared at where the skin alongside the side of his palm reddened. He couldn't rub it with his left like he would have normally--his left arm hurt when he jerked with the motion to follow through before his brain caught up and remembered he couldn't anymore. Instead Malik lowered the hand and dug his fingers into the sides of his white robes and focused on his breathing.

Malik didn't hear Al Mualim approach until the elderly Assassin was actually in front of him, words oddly gentle as the only sign of warning before fingers gathered into Malik's robes and quickly did up the fastenings. "It is not so easy to dress oneself when missing a piece, is it?"

Malik swallowed heavily; he looked to Al Mualim and then turned his gaze to the wall as he said thickly, "It is not."

Al Mualim fussed with the robes for a moment, straightened them on Malik's shoulders, before he grabbed the red sash and began to wrap it around Malik's waist. Malik fought back the warmth to his cheeks; the way Al Mualim's actions made his stomach curl with shame. He was a grown man; he should be able to dress himself.

"It will get easier with time," the Master said. "Soon you will not even notice the change." Malik's lip curled at the thought, especially as Al Mualim tugged the sash into place tightly. Malik couldn't withhold the grunt as the Master tied the sash off. He picked up the leather belt next and quickly moved it into place before he reached for the black robe and slipped it over Malik's stiff shoulders.

"It will never get easier," Malik eventually said, as Al Mualim tugged the dark robes into place. He knew he was being the slightest bit petulant, but where normally he would be quiet, less inclined to be childish and churlish to the Mentor, Malik was in pain, exhausted, and utterly ashamed that he had to be dressed like a child. He still couldn't think of Al Mualim without the knowledge that the old man had killed Altair. Malik pressed his lips together and stared down at his right hand and the sleeve.

"The robes suit you," Al Mualim said with one last tug to get them to settle on Malik's shoulders. "You look...distinguished." Al Mualim stepped back and Malik frowned, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared as he stared at the unique stitching along the sleeve.

"...why did you--" Malik started, and then raised his head to look at Al Mualim. He blinked black the tears in his eyes, took in a deep breath, and restarted a bit more firmly. "Why did you give me the title Dai." He swallowed down the why did you kill Altair, and the why didn't you kill me? Malik licked his lips as Al Mualim stared at him, gaze inscrutable as always.

"You are upset," Al Mualim spoke slowly. He turned to look at the side table beside Malik's cot where the tea Kareem had left in its pot waited. Malik hadn't touched it yet, and Al Mualim lifted the pot and poured a cup of the warm liquid.

"Yes," Malik said, and then stared at the cup as Al Mualim held it out to him. With shaking, aching hand Malik took the cup from the Master and everything felt--too much, too sudden. It had been a week and it felt like it hadn't been any time at all as well as being too much. Malik sat down heavily on the cot "No," Malik continued as he stared at the tea, and then shook his head. "I--I don't know."

Al Mualim wrapped his hands around Malik's and the cup, and then patted him gently. "Drink, Malik." He pulled his hands away and sat himself down; Malik followed the order silently. His hand shook, but as he drank the tea he felt himself calm the slightest bit. "I do understand how you feel," Al Mualim said, tone soft.

Malik scoffed; he doubted Al Mualim understood how he felt.

"When I was named Mentor to our Brotherhood," Al Mualim said, "it was on the backs of my Brothers who had died before me." Malik froze. "It is not well known but I was not sent to establish Masyaf alone, Malik." Malik looked up at Al Mualim, who seemed focused on his own cup, a frown behind his beard as he stared at the tea. "I wasn't even the original designated mentor, either. That title belonged to Mahdi, at first."

Malik set his cup down, confused as to the sudden reason for Al Mualim's--confession? He couldn't determine what this was meant to be. Al Mualim let off a faint laugh, a depreciative sort of chuckle under his breath, and shook his head a second later.

"The same day we lost Mahdi was the day I lost my eye," Al Mualim said, just the faintest hint of bitterness in his tone. He set his cup down and raised his eyes to look to Malik. Malik looked away.

"You...never said," Malik cast his gaze around the room for a moment, before it landed to his lap and his hand that rested there. He clenched it into a fist.

"It is ancient, why bother to bring up the past?" Al Mualim waved a hand, moved as if to press away the onslaught of a memory. "Bah, but I ramble when I came to discuss your duties. You are well enough to do so, yes?"

Malik forced himself to unclench his fist with a murmured, faint, "Yes, Master."

"Good, good," Al Mualim nodded slowly. "No doubt Kareem or the others have already provided their opinions as to where and what you may be required to do, now." Malik ducked his head at that; Assassins were if anything notorious gossips and the fact that Al Mualim was well aware of all the gossip around Masyaf settled weirdly in Malik's chest. "The truth of the matter is thus," Al Mualim set his cup down and faced Malik, face stern. Malik quickly adopted a more professional posture and blank face as best he could with the drugs in his system.

"The Apothecary that Kadar ran in Jerusalem was discovered as a 'den of killers' by Majd Addin's men," Al Mualim said brusquely. "From what our few informants in the city have been able to get to us Kadar and his novices were killed." Malik furrowed his brows at that; it was oddly thorough. Several of those novices should have at least been able to escape, but then he didn't know the situation in Jerusalem since before Solomon's Temple. "There has been suspicion placed upon every apothecary in the city as a result."

Malik said a short, "I am not as skilled as an apothecary as the Rafiq was."

"And nor do I expect you to run the same type of business that was discovered," Al Mualim shook his head. "You have talents in far more practical skills that foreigners such as these Christian men would find more palatable." Malik's brow furrowed, lightly. "The new Bureau is primarily in favor of cartography."

Malik dipped his head; it made sense. The majority of his skills outside of the sword rested with art, maths, and geography. HIs calligraphy had always been above his peers, but his true talent laid with reading written accounts and recreating them. The Brotherhood often called upon Malik in his down time to map areas and regions for that reason alone. Still that had been when Malik had two hands, and now he had just the one--Al Mualim held a hand up to forestall anything Malik might say, stilling the young man's thoughts in an instant with the gesture.

"I know healing takes time," Al Mualim said, "and you will need plenty of product to provide for those who seek your services."

"It will not just be maps, will it?" Malik questioned, tone softer.

"No. You will undoubtedly be expected to provide the services of a scribe, from time to time," Al Mualim said calmly.

It would serve well for information gathering if Malik were to work as a scribe for those within power on occasion. He could gather intel, and if Al Mualim were serious about the cartography front for the Bureau then Malik would be expected to have apprentices underfoot--in this case Novices of the Brotherhood--which would doubly be expected given his condition.

"You have two weeks," Al Mualim said. Malik nodded again, slowly, to the statement. "I expect by then you will have plenty of maps for Jerusalem, and have been recovered well enough for the trip."

"Yes Master," Malik said, then paused and asked as Al Mualim got to his feet, "Who is to be traveling with me?"

Al Mualim paused, then glanced to Malik with a raised brow. For a moment there was silence and Malik thought Al Mualim meant to imply that Malik would be traveling alone--that no Novices would be considered his apprentices and that this was all a ploy to get him killed in Jerusalem. That Al Mualim merely didn't want to sully his hands with Malik's blood like he had with Altairs. Then Al Mualim smiled, and said gently, "Jawad, Kalid, Mahki, and Nasir will be accompanying you as the Bureau's novices."

Malik dipped his head and uttered a faint, "Thank you, Master." He knew the names; they were all young, not yet blooded. Each of them still had their ring finger and were still learning the ways of the Creed. Malik would be in charge of their training in Jerusalem; he'd have to ensure they kept up with both the 'soft skills' that were expected of apprentices of a cartographer, and the more physical skills expected of Novices. It would be a lot of work, especially as no older Novices would be with them to help curb the younger's enthusiasm. It meant any mistakes would come down on Malik's head.

He breathed out slowly, climbed to his feet, and turned to seek out Kareem. Malik needed access to the archives if he were to work on his skills and make enough maps in time for the opening of the new Bureau. He needed to also find his Novices; Malik would have to assess their skills before they traveled in two weeks time.

Kadar breathed through his nose as he went through the motions of gentle stretches that he remembered Rauf going over once in the practice yard. They did not pull on his abdomen, but worked on his arms and his legs and the slightest bit of his upper torso. It gave him back just the slightest bit of feeling like he wasn't weak, wasn't broken thanks to the still healing wound. Most of the superficiality of it had already healed up; it'd been nearly three weeks now since he'd gotten the original injury. His shoulder--the right--still ached on occasion from when he'd wrenched it out of the socket back at Solomon's temple, but that pain Kadar was used to. It wasn't the first time he'd pulled a socket out of place--although it had been the first Malik witnessed.

In a corner in the darkness Desmond watched him with golden eyes, lips pressed together with the hard eagle's stare. More than once Kadar wondered what Desmond saw with his second sight; he'd only gotten tidbits out of Altair when the man had his softer moments, out of earshot of Malik's acerbic tongue. Usually such softer moments came in the evening, after Malik and Altair had their fun 'sparring' where Altair would leave chest black and blue but oddly satisfied to his leonine stalk out of their little corner of Masyaf. Kadar made a habit of staying up, of waiting Altair and Malik out, before he'd pounce and ask Altair question after question in those calmer moments back at the fortress. He'd been younger then, much more open with his curiosity.

Malik had been much less sharper, then, too Kadar remembered. It was before the disparity in their rank had taken any sense of comradery from them. It was in one of those quiet moments thought that Kadar learned about the 'colors' that Altair claimed to see the world in. How Altair talked about targets and enemies that shined red-gold-orange in the black of the world. Kadar didn't know what the 'black of the world' was supposed to mean but he knew that red apparently meant dangerous, bad things. That Desmond saw red what was supposed to be around an apothecary had chilled Kadar's bones.

Kadar learned that Kadar-the-elder had been ruthlessly cut down two days later when he'd snuck out while Desmond napped off a viscous headache brought on from using his second sight too much, and Kadar silently thanked Allah for the warning that Desmond provided that day. If they had walked up none-the-wiser to the danger at the Bureau then Kadar and Desmond would probably not be here where they wait for Malik to make his way back to them. Kadar didn't doubt that his brother would return, either. Malik always returned.

Kadar finished his stretches as Desmond blinked golden bright eyes back into honey and said softly, "Another one of the golden people wandered by again." Kadar hummed and wiped at his brow--Desmond's skill was useful in keeping watch for threats and those of interest as they waited in the relative dark. They only really left the abandoned building to gather water or pilfer some coin for food--Kadar to beg for it while Desmond snuck purses off of unsuspecting passersby. Kadar wouldn't call them lucky to not be caught only because Desmond was clearly trained and Kadar had long passed his pre-novice years and the the width and breadth of his own skills or lack thereof.

"Which direction did they go?" Kadar asked, and Desmond tilted his head to the side in that bird-like manner that was probably genetic--Kadar wondered when Altair had sired a baby because obviously it had to be Altair. Umar was dead when Kadar was littler than knee height and there was too much of Masyaf's Eagle to be anything but Desmond's sire.

Desmond hummed, then pointed to the right. "Around the building, back toward the apo-the-cary." He kept the word apothecary slow and methodical because he was unused to it, Kadar knew. The word had tripped Desmond up the first five times he said it to more and more frustration before Kadar told him to just say the word slow and careful like until he felt like it could fit his tongue better. Desmond had yet to change the speed of the word, but given the way he smiled every time he said it Kadar bet it was more because he found saying it slow and careful to be amusing and not because he couldn't now.

"Could you make out any details this time? Kadar asked as he set the cloth used to dry himself into the only space of sunlight they allowed into their hidden space. He eyed the windows contemplatively as he mentally took stock of what supplies they would need in the next few days.

"Umm," Desmond dragged the noise out as he tilted his head back and bit his lip. Kadar watched the way he tapped his fingers together back and forth, twisting his hands around and atop each other while he thought. "Kind of? It was still all--" Desmond made a gesture with his hand, waving them around like he had some sort of ball between them before he shrugged and then slumped down. "--just a big glowing ball of person."

Kadar knocked his bare feet against Desmond's which were almost covered by the hem of his pants. "Sit up," Kadar said, and Desmond quickly adjusted himself from his slouch.

They were running low on water; the water-skins definitely needed refilling and Kadar knew they needed more bathing water. He breathed out slowly and let the motion settle within him, felt how it pulled on the muscles in his abdomen and relaxed while he directed Desmond to describe what he could see with his second sight of the stranger. Gold could mean many things--Desmond claimed Kadar was blue-and-gold-and-safe-and-important although Kadar had little understanding how important he could be. He listened with one ear as Desmond described best as what he could of what he saw.

"Ummm, a belt and--and a sash. And they were all 'swooshy' like," Desmond made a gesture as he talked. Kadar tried to imagine what 'swooshy like' actually meant, but he saw the way Desmond swayed his hands had paused--perhaps like the robes around his ankles when he wore them?

Kadar had not put on his robes since he removed them before they came to Jerusalem. They were bloodied and otherwise useless right now; he hadn't had a chance to work the stain out of them and Kadar doubted be would ever be able to now. The blood would have set stubbornly in by this point, and they still needed to be tended to and mended anyway. They served as little else but a reminder right now. He shook his head a moment and brushed aside the thought it was another Assassin or even a Novice that lurked around. If that were so Kadar would have seen them or they would have seen Kadar and someone should at the least recognize him. Altair, Malik and himself passed through the Jerusalem Bureau before they went to Solomon's Temple after all.

"Go on," Kadar gestured, "what of our surroundings could you see?

Desmond scrunched his nose up and carefully began to recall how the room looked in his second sight. Kadar noted he couldn't see well into the furthest corners where the light couldn't touch--but he could name the strangers that passed out front, the number of red that walked by--only four this time--and that there were no blue in the area. Blue Kadar thought meant safe, if he remembered Altair correctly and how Desmond phrased the feelings he got from the colors in his second sight. Kadar rubbed the side of his cheek where stubble stubbornly still refused to grow and then looked to Desmond again with eyes drawn down in thought. A moment later Kadar sighed and headed toward his boots.

"Come, Desmond," Kadar called, and the boy jolted to his feet. "Boots on. We need to head to the well." He watched how Desmond scuffed his toes in the sand and looked for a minute ready to whine before he complied silently. Like Kadar Desmond gathered the boots--better shoes than the strange pair Desmond came in. Those would draw attention at their pristine, white-colored soles of strange material. They were kept hidden with the clothing Desmond and Kadar had to forgo to hide in plain sight in the city. The new boots, good simple leather shoes that cost them a pretty piece but it was well worth it, Kadar thought.

Desmond followed Kadar's motion to shake the boots out quickly, wary of any wayward bugs that had crawled their way in, before both boys put the shoes on and made their way out into the hot sun. Kadar tugged Desmond just a bit close, kept him at a distance where most would see an older brother looking after his younger, even as he said softly, "I want you to practice with your second sight. Rest every fifteen." Kadar watched Desmond pout, but then his eyes went from honey to golden and reflective as he watched. "Tell me if it hurts," Kadar added, to which Desmond just pouted harder.

It did not help that in those first few days where Desmond used his second sight far too much he had not told Kadar the pain it brought him. Kadar had guessed it was like running without properly stretching first; Desmond would inevitably strain something and ruin his second sight if he pushed too much, so Kadar took it upon himself to make sure Desmond only pushed enough to give a slight ache, but not to drive him to pain. While Kadar definitely understood the safety and comfort the second sight brought to Desmond, he worried that overreliance on it beyond potentially damaging the boys eyes would also lead to a dangerous precedent. Kadar couldn't be sure how accurate that second sight really was--what if it relied far too heavily upon the boy's own interpretation of people? What if someone labeled gold was not in fact as important as Desmond seemed to place them? He was a child with a child's mind; he could completely misunderstand what he was seeing and Kadar would be none-the-wiser about it because Kadar did not have this second sight.

Kadar wondered how Malik did this; raising him when he was willful and playful and wanted to push himself beyond what was necessary. He couldn't imagine it was all that easy, especially not with how often Kadar had to stop Desmond from overdoing something as simple as looking through his eyes or climbing a building. Kadar couldn't protect the boy that well, not yet, but soon he would be healed enough for more rigorous activity and then he could maybe press more on Desmond about caution and safety and--oh Kadar wanted to palm his face. He could still remember Malik's own lectures on such weeks before, when Kadar had taken a foolish jump in Jerusalem on the way to the Bureau and--yes, Kadar decided, he would just have to apologize to Malik for being so childish.

The walk to the well was not too far, and Kadar had made sure they collected the buckets for washing water. Desmond would carry several upon his shoulders, and Kadar several more. He first wanted to fill their waterskins before they filled the buckets. They worked in relative silence, Desmond with his eyes periodically gold and Kadar with his own attention on the work, eyes out for anyone who might try to stop them although why they would stop them about water Kadar didn't know. He worried it would be because of how ragged and worn their clothes were--they were beggars clothes and the best Kadar wanted them to wear because it kept the Templars in the city off their backs as long as they ducked and stuck to crowds or shadows.

As Kadar filled the last bucket Desmond tugged on his sleeve and drew his attention back; Kadar raised his brows in silent question and watched how Desmond gnawed on his lip and then whispered, "Gold is back," as he nervously glanced behind them. He raised his hand to point and Kadar carefully grasped it and lowered it back down with a chastising noise that had Desmond ducking his head.

"It is rude to point. Gesture with your head, slowly," Kadar said and Desmond tilted his head in the direction and Kadar darted his gaze about as he bent to the water buckets and began to draw Desmond's attention on what to grab. He caught a flash of Assassin white and Novice grey and felt for a moment the breath still in his lungs. A second later he said a short, "Ally," to Desmond who stilled, and then perked and brightened.

"Maybe--maybe then can help us?" Desmond asked, bright-eyed in the way that children are and Kadar felt his lips twitch as he ducked his head and grasped his own buckets. The strain was more on his shoulders than his abdomen so he felt comfortable in the motion.

"It is possible," Kadar said. "They might have been the Rafiq's Novices." They started their way back to their abandoned building. "Keep your eyes open for them. No more second sight." Kadar watched how Desmond pouted at that, and lightly nudged the boy who squawked in surprise when the motion spilled some of the water he carried. "You need to rest your eyes, Desmond."

Desmond huffed and puffed his cheeks and said with a whine, "I knoooooow."

"Then rest your eyes," Kadar rolled his own eyes with his own huff. "They will come to us or we will go to them. Give it a few more days."

"But--but they could help us?" Desmond tilted his head, brow furrowed in the way that meant he didn't understand exactly why they weren't just going to seek out the golden people that he saw. Kadar had tried to tell him before that even if they could be helpful, even if they were important, it was good to wait and watch first.

"Observe, then act," Kadar repeated the words that Malik had said to him a million times before. He hated those words, and he hated them now but he needed to set a good example for Desmond because Malik wasn't there and Desmond was foolish. They needed to be alive for his brother when his brother returned and Kadar would do his best to make sure they were alive even if it went against everything he wanted to do in the moment. The twinge in his gut reminded him of the other reason why he was determined to actually listen to Malik's advice for once; Kadar could not take on anyone in this condition and hope to live to tell about it, especially not if they were a Novice of the Brotherhood.

Observe, Malik said forcefully in Kadar's memory. Observe the people around you; listen to the world and the hints it tells you. Observe what they do and what they say. Observe what they don't do and don't say. You must observe before you act so that you have all the information at your disposal. Observe, understand your observations, then plan your path and act appropriately, understood, Kadar?

Kadar then had whined about it because really all he wanted was the sweets that Malik was hiding and Malik had caught him and it wasn't his fault. Kadar ducked his head down and promised, silently to himself again, that he would apologize for all the trouble he caused his brother when he saw Malik again. 

[worldly-diversity]

( @lost-assassins​ ) asked : "I ask you, can the ends ever justify such wretched means?"  —  Kadar & Altair

Altair took one last look at the bodies before pulling his hood up over his eyes, and gently pulling away Kadar from the horrible sight. He had no explanation ready for the massacre that lay below the cliff, the village all but annihilated.

The sad part, perhaps, is that he can no longer with a clear mind lay such actions at the feet of the Templars, for while terrible and cruel, he knows now that they can be no different at times. How many lives had he taken, for entirely the wrong reasons, at the behest of his trusted mentor and father figure?

Teeth grit harshly under the shadows of his hood, trying to push back the pain that blossomed in his chest like a sharp knife, cutting away at his faith in the Hidden Ones, in their brotherhood. There were signs here, this wasn't just slaughter. It had been a battle, and while incriminating dead seemed to have been removed most suspiciously, the trace elements that had been left behind gave the master assassin no choice but to admit that there had been an assassin presence here. Several, actually.

"Come Kadar…" He said, cursing softly under his breath. There was a fury and a helplessness in his veins that was only tempered by his grip on the apprentice's wrist. Kadar was grounding him from his fury, before he flew into a blind rage of it. Accusing the Mentor would not go over well with anyone, and Al-Mualim was much skilled in the art of turning one's words against them.

"I wish we could grant these people the honour of the final rites, find them a burial site, but this—" He struggled over the words, venom being bitten back as he tried to control his breathing. "This massacre was meant as a message for those who come upon it. We will make inquiries of this, I promise you, but we must do this very quietly. We can tell no one, do you understand?"

At that, finally, he stopped. The carnage was just barely out of sight now, and he took hold of Kadar's shoulders tightly as he turned to face him.

"You must promise me that you will tell no one of what we have seen here today. Not the other assassins, not Al-Mualim… Not even your brother, Kadar. If what I believe has happened here is true, then our knowledge will mark us for death. Do not doubt this."

Taking a deep breath, he sighed, knowing this was a lot to lay on to someone so young, even though he was close to becoming a fully fledged assassin now. The struggles between Assassin and Templar were of a complex nature, and carried lines far more blurred than anyone would like to admit. That their Mentor was in the thick of it, was highly unsettling. But to destabilise Kadar's faith in such a manner was cruel, so he would not share his suspicions either. Not yet…

"I am sorry for placing this burden upon you. Truly, I am. But I wish to see you live past these horrors, and the dangers that currently haunt the brotherhood. So please, promise me that you will not tell a single soul of what has happened here. And I will be there for you should you ever need to speak with me, about anything at all. This I promise you."

[rachelkaser]

Has the Assassin’s Creed series lost its way... or its mind? (Part 2)

Disclaimer up front: The fact that my last blog post coincided with the reveal of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was a complete coincidence. That being said, I’m so glad it happened, because it gives me more examples of the, we shall say, modern problems with Assassin’s Creed. But still, I won’t judge it too harshly considering I haven’t seen it yet.

It’s time for me to give what I think are the two most prevalent (and fixable) problems regarding the series -- namely what the fuck everyone in the games is doing, and what they’re trying to accomplish. I also want to talk about the disconnect between the way the series started and where we currently are.

And we might as well start with the biggest disappointment in the series so far: Juno.

Juno A Thing or Two

First, let’s go all the way back to when this series began. The original game cloaks Those Who Came Before in very sinister hints, and Al Mualim speaks of them with even more quiet reverence than he does the Apple of Eden. In the next game, we meet one of TWCB, Minerva, albeit very briefly, and she outright states that her people, who aren’t gods, are long gone from the world and have only left behind a trail of bread crumbs in order to protect humanity -- their creation -- from a world-scorching solar flare.

If you think about it, that ought to have been all we ever knew about TWCB, at least to a certain degree. We know they aren’t gods, and we know they’re no longer around. Based on the cutscene from AC Revelations, we know they also didn’t manage to protect humanity from the previous solar flare. They were kind of like the Protheans from Mass Effect: a wise, powerful predecessor race brought low by their own overconfidence, acting as a warning for humanity to use their talents for better things.

Yet, by the time Odyssey rolls around, we see them constantly meddling with human history, undermining the original point that it was a last-ditch effort on the part of Minerva to avoid utter catastrophe, and not something they otherwise would have tried. In spite of the fact that Minerva explicitly said she and her kind weren’t gods, and weren’t strong enough to stop the solar flare, later games ramped up their power as a way of trying to make them interesting enough to take up a bigger part of the story.

They really didn’t need a bigger part of the story.

Also, the first six games of the series -- that’s about a combined 200 hours of play time, roughly -- revolved around one central plotline: The Juno story. It was even brought up, albeit in a tangential way, in later games such as Syndicate. Essentially, it was the backbone of Desmond’s story arc, and involved him making the difficult decision to unleash a literal evil god in the machine in order save all of humanity from a natural disaster. Not only did he die, but subsequent Assassins were left to deal with the fallout of a malevolent entity trying to assert herself in the modern world. It was corny as all hell, sure, but in the hands of interested and creative writers, I think it could have gone somewhere cool.

Now the modern stories are primarily about the pursuit of the Pieces of Eden, and the Juno plotline has been dropped entirely. Juno herself was actually unceremoniously killed off -- in a comic book, no less. Just to make the whole thing feel more like a rip-off, she was killed by Desmond’s bastard son (a character the games have only hinted at up to now) who’s also a Sage, meaning he carries the soul of Juno’s dead husband.

I can’t even begin to describe the disdain and frustration within me when I say, “Gee, I sure as hell wish I could have played that.”

The son of the previous protagonist, struggling with the sinister presence in his head, joining forces with both Templars and Assassins to take down the sinister would-be god responsible for his father’s death, his own mental health struggles, and potential global catastrophe? Pardon my language, but why the actual FUCK was this not the plot of one of the games?

The comics came out in 2017 and 2018. What were the games we got in that same time period? Origins and Odyssey, which star Layla Hassan in the modern sections, quite possibly the most boring person in the whole series. You’re telling me that someone seriously looked at this series and decided the modern gameplay of two tentpole games would best be propped up with the most uninteresting stick of wood Ubisoft has yet crafted? Fuck. Right. Off.

Everything the first seven games, from AC1 to Black Flag, had been building towards with regards to the modern story, including Desmond’s sacrifice for humanity and the race to give Juno a physical form, is for absolutely nothing. It’s abandoned in-game for no better reason than to give the player Pieces of Eden to play with instead.

Having mentioned that, it’s about time I told y’all what I really think about this particular plot device.

Pee Oh Ees? Pee Oh Ess

For the uninitiated who’re only here to see me have a big ol’ fangirl aneurysm, the Pieces of Eden are gadgets left behind by TWCB with various superpowers assigned to them as the plot demands. In-universe, they’re objects of great renown that cropped up in various forms throughout recorded history -- as crystal skulls, sacred orbs, swords, staffs, blankets, jewelry and even, in one memorable instance, the actual Koh-i-Noor diamond.

But let me establish -- as indeed we must again -- that while the POEs have always been described as powerful, in the first several games in the series they were only ever used to further a larger purpose. They were part of an elaborate communication network left behind by TWCB in order to contact Desmond, specifically, and get his help averting the end of the world.

The only reason they were ever important was because they usually somehow led to the clue that would help him move forward with that goal. Altair’s Apple? Showed where to find the other Pieces. Ezio’s Apple? Led to Desmond’s first contact with Minerva. Connor’s crystal ball? Showed Desmond where to find the medallion that opens the chamber where the end of the world may be averted. My point is, while the concept of them was cool, laying hands on them was never the ultimate goal.

Sure, they’re leftovers from the Precursor society, but let’s not forget they had a literal Precursor spirit haunting Abstergo’s computers, and the writers chose instead to focus on this garbage. And I don’t use the word lightly: In Assassin’s Creed 2 codex, Altair even wonders if humans are just squabbling over what was effectively rubbish to TWCB. He’s not exactly right (see again: communication network to Desmond), but you gotta wonder if he’s completely wrong either.

Instead of examining that, and pondering whether anyone, Assassin, Templar, or otherwise, should have these artifacts, the series has settled for shuffling them around like so many footballs. And to make them more interesting, the writers of later games have chosen to make the PoEs more powerful.

For example, the one in Syndicate is essentially a healing blanket that brings people back from the brink of death. The one in Odyssey makes the bearer immortal. All I could think when I found out about these was “Gee, it sure would have been nice if Minerva had led Desmond to that one when he was preparing to sacrifice himself for humanity.”

It’s getting to the point where I’m goddamned sick and tired of seeing them crop up. All three episodes of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles were about retrieving a POE -- the same POE, no less -- and playing keep away with the Templars at three different points in history.

It’d be different if we saw the Assassins ever used the POEs to further their cause or make the world a better place, but it’s happened almost never in the series. Most of the time it’s as though playing POE hot potato with the Templars is the only thing the Assassins can actually be bothered to do.

Which brings me to my last, and biggest issue...

Road to Nowhere

Let me ask a question: What, at this point, is the endgame for the Assassin’s Creed universe?

I don’t mean what’s the planned endpoint of the series -- Ubisoft will keep making them for as long as we keep buying them. I mean, what’s the desired world state for the Assassin and Templar factions -- what, in essence, is the end goal of their efforts?

I have played every game in the series multiple times, read the comics and novels, and even watched the movie. I know this series very well, and it disturbs me that, when I ask myself that question, I can’t come up with more than a vague answer for the Templars, and no answer at all for the Assassins.

Think about it: What have the Assassins done for the last few games besides follow behind the Templar group du jour with a paint roller, covering up and undoing whatever it is they’ve done? When’s the last time the Assassins made an effort to do anything, rather than just react? When’s the last time you, the player, felt like you were playing a character that could have actually existed in history and made some kind of an impact?

The longer we do this dance, the less it feels like we’re working towards some kind of goal -- and that’s a damned drag. At the very least, with the Desmond storyline, we had a definite end. Ubisoft kind of painted itself into a corner by needing Desmond’s story to be wrapped up before the end of 2012 in order to tie into that whole “Mayan Doomsday” thing from December of the same year. So if nothing else, we knew his story was going to have to end by then.

Even Disney is aware it couldn’t just keep making Marvel adaptations forever without some kind of larger destination in mind or people would lose interest. But apparently that lesson’s escaped Ubisoft, because there doesn’t seem to be a cosmic expiry date on the modern-day story.

Its very tempting to say the series would be better off it cut out the figurative tumor and no longer have a modern narrative at all. But if it did, what would tie these games together, truly?  Because the meat-and-potatoes of the games takes place in the past, it falls to the modern-day sections to deliver the big-picture story, which they have failed to do for a while now.

The problem isn’t that the modern sections exist. The problem is that the modern sections aren’t good. They’re aimless and boring, and the characters are so bland and uncontextualized that it’s impossible to sympathize with them. And that sucks because it means we have no connection to the world beyond the past storyline anymore. If you’d told me circa 2012 I’d be missing Desmond Miles in a few years, I wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are.

I’m not trying to give the impression, with this screed, that I don’t like or have fallen out of love with Assassin’s Creed. Because somehow, shockingly, I haven’t. I still love AC. I’ve loved AC since I was 17, which is over a third of my life. I’m just bitterly dissatisfied with AC at the present moment. At this point I’m afraid Valhalla is going to resemble For Honor more than previous entries in the series.

A franchise can change. A franchise can evolve. But this isn’t evolution. This is a game series that has gone completely off the rails and is spinning its wheels aimlessly in the air. I’ll revisit this topic after Valhalla, but I’m not holding out hope for a great change.

[reflectionsofacreator]

The first thing that really stuck out to me is the subtle difference of the Animus between Ezio and Altair. Altair’s Animus is a brown tint, whereas Ezio’s is blue. It’s a tiny thing, but when you get down to the intimacy of the confession screen, and the fact that we’re inside an Animus inside an Animus, it’s an interesting layer of character. 

This got hella long, so under the cut it goes. 

So this is something that’s touched upon if you read Abbas’ database entry, but otherwise not at all. Altair’s father, Umar, was betrayed by Abbas’ father, Ahmad, and was executed. Ahmad, wracked with guilt, snuck into Altair’s room, confessed to betraying Umar, and then slit his own throat. Altair was only around ten or eleven when this happened, and it traumatized him rather deeply. Ahmad asked Altair not to tell Abbas, and Altair tried to keep it a secret, as Al Mualim had advised. Altair told Abbas, struggling under the weight of the secrets, and seeing Abbas torn up over his father’s death. Abbas said nothing, and it wasn’t until the next day that Abbas challenged Altair to a ‘practice’ duel, only using real swords. 

Abbas attacked Altair, calling him a liar, and eventually managed to get his knife under Altair’s throat, yelling loudly that Altair had lied about his father’s death to shame him. To keep his throat, Altair “admitted” he had lied, and the two were locked up in the dungeons after the commotion was heard by the instructors. Altair only spent a month in confinement, whereas Abbas had to spend an entire extra year training, per Al Mualim’s orders. 

Abbas, even now, is still consumed with grief over his father, and loathing for Altair. These two were best of friends as children, only for the weight of what Ahmad had done driving a wedge between them that sparked a hatred for Altair. Abbas is, or was, convinced that Altair was the source of all of his problems, despite himself being the perpetrator for most of them. 

Sighs. I don’t particularly ... buy it. It feels cheap somehow, in a way that I can’t really articulate very well. Perhaps I’m just not the sort of person that can hold onto hatred for a lifetime, so therefore I can’t really understand it. I also don’t have a good relationship with my father, so the idea that a character holding onto their father’s death their entire life just ... feels off. But I don’t think that’s why it feels odd to me. 

I think it’s actually more because as a concept, Abbas being Altair’s lifelong villain just ... doesn’t jive well, doesn’t have enough screen time to really justify and bring it home. The whole thing feels hollow, and more like an outline of a full story than an actual arc and narrative. There wasn’t enough time spent with Altair to make this feel like an actual problem for him, or that Abbas was just a threat, it was more of a “this sure is happening, isn’t it?” sort of thing to me. We also didn’t really get any sense of how Altair felt about Abbas, and Abbas’ hatred of him. It kinda felt as though all this stuff happened to Altair, not that he was an active participant with his own life. 

I had kinda figured that Altair’s whole sequence/concepts were kinda thought of more of as an afterthought, and I recently learned that I was sort of right, via some wiki hopping. According to Darby McDevitt, the narrative director for AC Revelations, Black Flag, Embers, and the new Valhalla, “Altair wasn't even supposed to be in Revelations until [he and Alex] decided to revive him at the last second. :)”. Admittedly that might be taken a bit out of context, considering the thread is talking about how Ezio had three games because he was “Universally well received”, and how each new character is a risk of investment vs money spent. 

Because of how late in development the decision was, I get the sense that Altair’s extremely short sequences, the lack of fleshing out of stories, and awful narrative shortcuts, were a result of that. Fuck, this is the fourth of five keys, and we haven’t heard anything about Malik, who was The major supporting character in ac1, save for a throwaway line in the 3rd key that he was executed by Abbas. It’s just... poorly executed, imo, and it doesn’t actually feel like this is Altair’s life, or the logical extension of the sort of character we saw in ac1. 

That being said, these flashbacks need to have some kind of narrative thread, a sort of overarching plot to tie them all together. Quite simply, story structure wise, it’s smart for them to create Abbas to be a lifelong villain to Altair, if only so that you can justify having a plot that spreads across his life. I’m not a fan of it, but I can see the reasons why Abbas exists, especially so late in development. But I also feel as though it’s ... well, again, it’s a narrative shortcut. 

Like... as a creator, I can see why they did this. It’s always interesting to see characters in new contexts, and when they realized they had the chance to maybe show more of Altair’s story, or have at least a small opening for it, they probably jumped on it. But as a consumer, as a writer? I don’t agree with this. It’s narratively weak, it has issues with characterization, and ultimately isn’t satisfying, at least not to me. The time spent with these Keys and characters isn’t enough to justify the emotion they’re trying to pull from the audience, there’s barely any time to really get to know these people, the situation. And like, because there isn’t enough time, they relied on shortcuts to try and elicit emotional reactions out of the players, by killing Maria, by killing Sef, by doing a bunch of shocking things instead of actually giving it some weight. 

Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t have a problem with character death. But you have to care and know about the character for that death to have any impact, and like... We didn’t even see Sef, now did we? One of Altair’s sons, the son who’s bloodline would lead to Desmond, and we don’t even know what he looked like. 

Overall though, I’m actually rather happy with this particular sequence -- the fourth key is solid from start to finish, and I feel as though it’s actually a good conclusion to this arc revolving around Abbas. I kinda felt like, warm and fuzzy, a little bit, and it was a good thing to see him inspiring so many younger assassins. 

There’s still one more key to find, so we’ll see how this works out.