#isu ac

[marley-warriors]

History had not remembered him with kindness. So be it. Let them slander and mock his name. Basim no longer needed it anyway. He had a new name, a new chance to reunite his family. But the calculations would guide him to a past rigged with pain and longing, lest he repeat the cycle of his doom.

Loki. He wished his only crime had been his birth, or the cruelty born of boredom, but his crime was far greater. He loved too fiercely, too deeply. It was his fault, he had known better. Still, no one made him feel the way Aletheia had, uncovering his lies with her truths. The truth hurt. Its pain stung much deeper than any blade, and bruised more than even his greatest lies.

A parallel narrative alternating the modern day in which Basim bites back at fate, and Loki's Isu era, without the over-imposed mythological filters

[chadsawman]

is there anything to like about the isu?

[greenlaut]

son of adam

[sneaky-eel]

“Come to me now again and deliver me from oppressive anxieties;

fulfill all my heart longs to fulfill,

and you yourself be my fellow-fighter.”

- “Ode to Aphrodite” Sappho

----------------

Found the ask!

———————

Edit: This cut looks better

[eziosofia]

Me, after Mirage, 6 feet deep into my delusion, thinking of ways we can get non-Isu Basim back:

[frenchoravocadotoast]

Hytham headcanons

Hytham (AC Valhalla) x GN!reader

Word count: 1078

A/N's note: I've been meaning to write about Hytham these past few weeks! Have some headcanons while I finish reading The Golden City :) (it got a bit angsty at the end)

Hytham’s love languages are gift giving and quality time. Hear me out.

He's pretty quiet (compared to the rowdy Vikings, at least), but true to his creed, he watches everything and everyone like a hawk. This applies to you too.

Hytham is willing to wait when he starts to grow interested in someone. He’d much rather approach them only once he feels like he’s gotten to know them both from the inside and the outside. I don’t see him seeking his crush out from the very beginning – he prefers bonding with them over time and seeing where things go.

Do not be fooled by his acting. Whether he’s cackling at a joke, dining at the longhouse or target practicing, Hytham is sure to be eavesdropping on your conversation. If you’re nearby, that is. This doesn’t mean that he’s spying on you specifically – he tends to strain his ears (like all Hidden Ones do, really), and sometimes, if he’s lucky, he might just hear your voice.

When he does, he smiles to himself.

You’re good friends with Eivor, and often accompany her on her errands around the village. This has led you to the bureau multiple times, and Hytham is always caught off guard by the unexpected visit.

“🧍🏾‍♂️Oh. Good evening.”

You like the place, it’s cozy and the man isn’t bad company either. So you stay, and even if there’s other parchments he needs to finish before sunset, Hytham perks up at the chance to answer any question you might have (grinning and kicking his feet when you show interest in the creed).

So that’s where you spend time together. Celebrations in Ravensthorpe are also guaranteed to lure him out of his cove – you’ll be sure to find him letting loose and coming out of his shell more. His favorite game is apple bobbing, and he’s determined to win everytime – but despite his competitive streak, he might pretend to lose if he’s going up against you.

As for gift giving, it doesn’t evolve into actual physical gifts until later on (he thinks that’d be way too obvious). Instead, his first ‘gifts’ are things you might need.

Whether you have experience in fighting/self-defense or not, Hytham hints at the training yard he and Basim use. He invites you to use it whenever you please (you can pummel the dummies for a bit, as long as you put them back in their place); and if you have no experience whatsoever, he’ll gladly teach you some things.

You don’t get to have your own hidden blade though. Sorry (ask Basim for one)

But you can try his! Just don’t die.

If you do somehow get injured, you can have the medicine he’s made. It’s all yours.

Interested in a particular topic? He probably has a book about it at the bureau (or he’ll find it somehow, don’t ask) and will gladly let you take it.

Teaches you how to do the leap of faith. If you pull his leg just like Eivor did and don’t leave the haystack, I think he’d have a similar reaction.

“Very funny. You can come out now.”

“We are so not doing this rn.”

“Please.”

“Please, Basim will kill me.”

Things start to shift when you see the signs. You crack a joke with your friends and notice Hytham’s already looking at you with a soft smile. You tell him your pouch is broken, and remember the beautiful purse you’d once seen at a market in Lunden. Days later, coincidentally, Eivor brings you a beautiful leather pouch from the same city (hint: it wasn’t Eivor’s idea). You also find him playing hide and seek with the Norse children outside, and he urges you to join.

You start testing out your theories. When spring comes, you comment on the beauty of the blooming flowers and he’s immediately crouched down, going through every plant in your vicinity to tell you everything he knows about them. By the end, you have a large bouquet of flowers in your hands.

Eivor sees this, and jokingly tells Hytham he should get some purple ones and smack you in the face with them (a courting tradition amongst Vikings). Needless to say he’s mortified.

Random secret: he knows how to make flower crowns – his mother taught him when he was younger.

He’s giving you instructions as you weave the stems together, and you can’t help but feel his eyes glancing repeatedly between your hands and face.

It’s not until Ravensthorpe is attacked that you’re forced to face your feelings. The ambush is bad – there is no escape as the docks are on fire, and arrows are whizzing past you no matter where you run. Whether you’re a villager, a sage, or a warrior doesn’t really matter. It’s the kind of attack where you’re certain your next stop is going to be Valhalla.

But then the clashing of swords stop. The last enemy falls to their knees, and through the smoke and the ringing in your ears, you hear the roaring victory of your people.

Sigurd and Basim are looting the bodies. Eivor is opening the longhouse where the villagers have barricaded themselves. But you don’t catch sight of Hytham, not until you see him emerge from the woods along with the other Drengr. His white robes are flapping in the wind, his sword dripping with blood, and he’s holding his side as he grimaces. So you run to him.

He sheathes his weapon when he sees you alive and well, eyes darting all over your face as if scanning for injuries; and before you can say anything, he cups your face and locks his lips with yours.

Congrats! You’re now dating.

Basim tells you and Eivor something enigmatic months before his sudden betrayal. Hytham’s happiness is clearly reason for his gratitude, and no matter how much you insist that Ravensthrope is Basim’s home too, you’re only rewarded with a wry smile from the assassin.

It’s months later, when you’re sitting in the empty bureau with Hytham, that you reason Basim must have known. You watch as Hytham grips the table and rakes his hands through his hair, how he paces the room when he’s not squeezing your hand. He questions everything when you realize Basim must have known all this time – must have known that he wasn’t going to stay, that his apprentice would be alright. That Hytham would be happy in Ravensthorpe. And thus, you make sure it stays that way.

[no-barbarians-here]

Codextober 2024, Day 12: Isu

Structures

[mandrake-does-art]

What if... Desmond Miles survived, just as a technological entity, trapped in a temple instead of Juno?

IT'S TIME FOR ONE OF MY FAVOURITE HEADCANNONS LESGOOO

[Inspired by Sky Burial by Avatar]

[teecupangel]

Hello! So I've gotten into assassins creed thanks to you (and me lurking), this is the first time I've sent an ask because the pervious desmond time travel language barrier idea has gotten me in a strangle hold

Ok so we know that the isu are remembered by human society as myths (apple, Adam and eve, etc.)

What if the language desmond speaks due to isu bs is the isu language, but! This language is the one used before the solar flare aka. Before the "tower of Babylon" myth

It's the root of all human languages Ala atlantis lost empire

I'm thinking that this language could allow desmond to learn any language and be sort of understood by everyone, but it can't be that easy cause desmond; like the isu bs (he merged with the apple when he was sent back maybe?) makes it so that he is essentially always using the voice tm (like dune, thanks to the mind manipulation abilities of the POEs) so he's always afraid of accidentally making people do things against their will

That would make him especially attractive to the Templar so they're after him, and it would work with any assassin of any time period basically

I can image the earlier he lands the more likely it is that the assassins help him Kickstart the widespread use of sign language or at least the assassins have a sign language specifically for desmond

The “Desmond knows every language BUT any language his ancestors know” idea from before.

Welcome to fandom, nonny! Sorry for the late greetings hahahaha. I hope you’re enjoying AC and all ideas we have floating around here XD

I’m gonna be honest. My headcanon for the Tower of Babel myth is that the Tower of Babel was meant to be one of the failed solutions for the Solar Flare that was similar to a space elevator ala Gundam 00 with long distance communication function added and the whole ‘disappearing of the only language’ being a metaphor to the destruction of the communication system housed in the tower.

Anyway, for this one, we’ll use your idea and make the Isu language the lost original language and, to add more salt to the “are you still human?” wound we’ve inflicted Desmond, the reason why his voice holds so much sway on everyone is because Isus have programmed humans to be more easily manipulated into doing their bidding when they use their language because, in this case, the Isus’ language is primarily used by Isus. Humans use a different language that originated from the Isu language and their language is different depending on their location. The Isus made it a crime for humans to even learn the Isu language.

This will be our reason why humans have different languages in AC world and none of them were able to keep using the Isu language.

Everyone is hardwired to do Desmond’s bidding and Desmond hates it. That’s why he preferred to not talk. But he will use his ‘powers’ if the need arise… usually when there’s a specific Templar or target that deserves Desmond’s fury.

Most of the time though, he uses sign language to speak. Many people actually assume he cannot speak but the Brotherhood and the Order knows of his power.

This means that there are rumors that Desmond is using his power to hold such powerful sway to certain Assassins in seats of power.

Which is bullshit.

Out of everyone, Desmond doesn’t want to control his ancestors the most. He feels disgusted by the very idea.

Then there’s Altaïr who thinks it’s a good idea to research Desmond’s power primarily because:

(1) they can find out the limitation and

(2) check if one can gain resistance the more it’s used on them.

Desmond can see the logic behind it but keeps saying no because he knows Altaïr is doing it for his own curiosity.

By the time Ezio’s time roll around, Desmond does know the limitation of his powers but Altaïr didn’t leave any records of it. Whenever Ezio talks about the ‘research’ they did, Desmond just stares him down until Ezio stirs (drifts) the conversation elsewhere.

Not even Leonardo can pry how Altaïr and Desmond’s research went.

All they know is that, whatever it is, it brought great headaches to Malik Al-Sayf.

[muse-of-fandoms]

Desmond miles 🤝 paul atreides 🤝 eren yeager

I saw my ancestors memories, I saw what you have done to them, so I will do the same to you.

I am the culmination of desperation and hatred, I was created thousands of years ago, my destiny written and carved into the very universe.

But I will not yield, You have created me to change the world and I will do it. But not in the way you want me to. I puppet my own strings, and with this path you made, even for the salvation I was suppose to bring to you. My hands will be stained in blood, and the only thing you can hope is that all those thousands of lives you gave will be enough.

[demigoddessqueens]

Isu

Day 4 of @codextober

Also on ao3

The markings on you always garnered some unwanted attention from the crowds. Basim could see their eyes following your every move, but he always said they were your "tattoos."

At least there was some truth to that.

He had seen them glow in the dead of night when it's darkest, and it only led to him asking more questions about them.

Isu, you had called it. A vast civilization beyond the stars that only wanted to enlighten others. Strange how the young Hidden One always looked to you in admiration, but you knew deep down what the truth was.

Regardless of what you had told him, directly or indirectly to shield for his own protection, Basim felt set aside from the rest you conversed with. You trusted him. You only sought him out with this knowledge of yourself.

As guilty as any admission would be, he found himself absently tracing the intricate marks on your skin. It was a fascination how it pulsed with what felt like energy under his touch.

You welcomed his admiration but felt that pang of guilt deep within yourself whenever you left what is, and always was, his fate to be.

For now, you knew he would do whatever he could to protect you from whatever came your way.

[altairz]

[cippicat]

Codextober - ISU

"No. Not gods. We simply came... before."

Minerva / Gunlord

Jupiter/ Suttungr

Juno / Hyrrokin

Aletheia / Angrboda

Aita

Persephone

Hades

Poseidon

Hekate

Hermes

Havi/ Odin the allfather

Loki

Tyr

Freya

Thor

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #85: The Old Guard, but make it Assassin's Creed

My brother has always been a big fan of Assassin's Creed, but I never gave the games a shot until recently, when it seemed a natural progression from all the Crusades research I've been doing for The Old Guard fic I want to write but probably never will. Once I realized Isu bullshit could be a perfect explanation for TOG immortality, this (incredibly self-indulgent) crossover was born.

Or: What if Merrick Pharmaceuticals was a competitor of Abstergo Industries?

Just imagine it:

Pharmaceutical research is an expensive, cut-throat business. Viagra is a $2 billion dollar a year industry. Humira, the blockbuster drug of 2018, sold nearly $20 billion in the US alone. So I imagine if you're a pharmaceutical CEO of limited morals and great ambition, it might seem like a better idea to steal ideas from your competitor who seems to hit it out of the ballpark every time instead of pouring billions of dollars into what may turn out to be an unfruitful venture.

Enter Hugh Merrick, father of Steve Merrick and founder of Merrick Pharmaceuticals. Needing a blockbuster and desperate to get one over on Abstergo, he hires a hacker to slip into Abstergo's servers and find him the ripest, juiciest plum they can sometime in the early 2000s, before the (modern) events of the games or the 2019 TOG movie.

The hacker comes back with the schematics for the Animus.

The idea of genetic memories seems absurd, but Hugh figures that if Abstergo has been using the Animus since the 1980s to get ahead, there's no reason he can't do it too - all he needs is a single Piece of Eden and all his problems are solved.

Hugh builds the Animus and has the hacker go back into Abstergo's systems looking for a candidate to put into it. But finding someone with Assassin blood seems dangerous - they're likely to be an assassin too and could be dangerous if they try to escape, plus the Templars killed off nearly all of them. Templar descendants are out because most are Templars themselves and if Hugh's plan is to succeed he heeds to stay off their radar for as long as possible.

The hacker returns with Abstergo's list of people who may be useful if all other avenues fail. It contains a list of people who were peripherally involved during the invents that interest them - mainly high-ranking courtiers close to Popes Alexander VI and Julius II - and their descendants. They might know things about events of Ezio's time.

Enter Joe and Nicky.

For the past few hundred years, their primary cover identities involve being the children or grandchildren of their previous cover story, all the way back to their first deaths. There are fewer questions and you get to "inherit" all your old stuff.

This method has worked quite well for them - until Merrick learns that their "ancestors" were part of the court of Pope Julius II from 1497 (when he was still Bishop of Ostia) until his death in 1513. Nicky was his private secretary, Joe was a court painter, and contemporary sources suggest they were highly placed enough to know whatever Pope Julius II knew about Ezio's apple. Such as where Ezio might have hidden it.

It's not an unreasonable plan, except for the pesky fact of Joe and Nicky's immortality. After all, the animus is designed to draw on genetic memory, not the subject's own memories. And even if it can be used to view memories laid down in their own genes 500 years ago - which is doubtful, - there's a high likelihood of it killing them - and if Hugh were to learn of their immortality, things would only get worse for them. But they have little choice once they're captured and brought to Hugh's secret research bunker somewhere north of Inverness.

What follows is a largely self-indulgent stroll through the more interesting episodes of Joe and Nicky's life together.

Nicky's first go in the animus is a jumbled, confused mess as Hugh's tech minion learns the ropes as she goes. Nicky ends up hopscotching through his early memories - for instance, a memory where he's learning how to use a sword as a young squire jumps to him using the same move during the Siege of Jerusalem. That strand of memory continues on for a bit until another interaction gets him sent into the memory of another battle/training session/conversation with the person in question and so on.

Joe's first time in the animus goes a little better, as Hugh realizes that his minion needs to learn how to program the animus before they put their most valuable subject into it, and so let's her learn with Joe. Hugh's minion (who is really beginning to regret taking this job) succeeds, pulling Joe into the genetic memory of one of his ancestors: al-Kahina, an Amazigh religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. There should be suggestions of a Sword of Eden somewhere in events, but since they don't share Precursor knowledge, Hugh's not interested in letting the memory play out.

Nicky's second session gets them to the time period they want, but his memories have next to nothing to do with the PoE. The same holds true for Joe, when his second session puts him through his POV of that time period. And though Hugh has his minion take them up and down every memory of that time period searching for the smallest hint of anything that might point them in the right direction, there's nothing to find.

Or, rather: Nicky and Joe did meet Ezio once or twice, in waiting rooms or reception areas or the like, but they spent that time talking about art, or the weather, or philosophy - nothing about politics, or Ezio's travels, or PoEs at all.

Otherwise, most of Nicky and Joe's memories of early 16th century Rome involve Joe's rivalry with Michelangelo, who among other things persisted in flirting with Nicky even after he made it clear he wasn't interested. (Joe was, among other things, responsible for getting Michelangelo the commission for David in Florence to get him out of Rome and away from Nicky.)

There's some Vatican politics as well - Nicky's part in organizing the Swiss Guard, Joe's in organizing the Vatican Museums, and the removal of the Borgias from power - and some global politics - the 1503 dispensation for Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, etc. But most of their memories are largely Joe and Nicky being Joe and Nicky in the High Renaissance (and rather hating their jobs, as neither of them particularly like working for Julius II but were blackmailed into it to avoid being labeled as Ottoman spies.)

This goes on for several days until Hugh orders his minion to start looking for the memories of other "ancestors" - essentially, to refine the animus and her technique while he gets his hacker to find better candidates for the animus. And if this accidentally destroys Joe and Nicky's minds in the process? So be it. The plan was always to kill them at the end of their usefulness anyway.

Hugh's minion spends a day doing as asked - there's a few tantalizing glimpses of Joe and Nicky at the court of Kublai Khan in the 1270s - before she has an opportunity to act on the guilty conscious that's come to plague her.

The minion helps them escape - destroying the animus, wiping the records, and blowing the place sky high to cover the bloody swath they have to cut to get out of the secret research bunker. Amongst the casualties is Hugh Merrick, propelling his son Steve into position as youngest CEO in Pharma.

Joe and Nicky rejoin Andy and Booker - who'd been doing their best to cut their own bloody swath through anyone tangentially related to the mercenaries who kidnapped their brothers - and decide to turn their attention to tracking down PoE and destroying animus technology wherever it can be found, believing there are no peaceful uses for either. As a glad you escaped present, Booker tanks Merrick Pharmaceutical's stocks so badly the company never recovers, eventually going bankrupt.

As for the minion? Maybe she's a young Rebecca Crane prior to her recruitment by the Assassins and it’s her experiences with Hugh's animus that get her recruited by the Assassin Order. Maybe she's just a random OC who sets herself up with a new identity halfway around the world and watches gleefully as Merrick Pharmaceuticals and Abstergo Industries both eventually crash and burn.

Bonuses include: 1) Joe and Nicky being the most passive aggressive kidnapees in the history of kidnappings - on the face of things, going along with exactly what Hugh asks of them, but doing their best to focus on innocuous memories and figuring out how to purposefully make memories "skip" between similar episodes without Hugh ever noticing the glitch. Also, playing up the Bleeding Effect so that by day three they're only speaking in Medieval Italian; 2) Hugh being a better class of villain than his son. Immoral? Unethical? Yes, but in a sophisticated businessman way, not a jacket and hoodie, stab a man with a letter opener type way. For some reason I'm imagining him as Jean-Luc Picard, if Picard ever had a Mirror Universe alternate; and 3) Interludes of Andy and Booker searching for Joe and Nicky after they've been kidnapped. This should be part action-thriller along the lines of Taken, part buddy comedy, and involve an arc wherein Andy learns of Booker's deep unhappiness with his immortality and helps him come to terms with the feelings that would have otherwise eventually led to the events of the 2019 movie.

And that is surprisingly more than I thought I would have had. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you decide to do anything with it.

More TOG Fic Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

[frenchoravocadotoast]

A visual representation of Basim fighting against Loki’s memories (ac mirage summarized)

[wentian]

i really enjoyed odyssey until assassin's creed showed its ugly face 😭