#not sure yet who we’re making desmond’s isu ancestor

[teecupangel]

Yeeeeessss. Jacob is definitely drowning it in pirated media and having a blast. Will never think about it, nope. Maybe he’d watch a movie or a series that has ‘what makes us real’ themes and he’d have that spark of fear and doubt but that spark would be ignored and forcibly forgotten by the time that scene would be done.

Jacob hears Arno’s words and he acknowledges the kind of pain and maturity Arno had to have to get to that point (not even Evie thought that hard and she had Jayadeep with them already so it wasn’t like she was ever going to think about what it means to lose someone she loves the way Arno did) but he’s awkward around these kinds of things so… yeah. Not gonna touch that at all.

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Yeeesss. Jayadeep and Jacob rushed to save Evie, forcing Arno to take over riding the carriage that was still BEING SHOT AT by the other security programs and antivirus programs so, like, thanks, guys.

It was a daring rescue and they were about to kiss then CORMAC shot at their sports car so they had to make a quick long jump towards the carriage that Arno was driving next to the car.

The car explodes and that’s what takes out the missile. It starts shattering and Jacob took one piece out of instinct and he’s the first to be infected. More shards strike the carriage and the horses glitched out when they got hit by the shards. Arno blocked a shard coming for his eye but it only made him absorb the virus instead. In the exploding chaos, Jacob slams to Jayadeep when the carriage started skidding into the shattering surface of the virus missile and he infects Jayadeep as well as Evie who was on Jayadeep’s other side.

Then the missile itself explodes, pushing CORMAC and the other programs away while…

The carriage plunges to the sea of data.

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We should also add that Haytham would most probably know that the de la Serre had a daughter, not a son, that was around Arno’s age (since the Syndicate trio and Arno did say what year they’re from to explain the tools/weapons and outfits they had) and Haytham was sure Arno was a man so, yeah, definitely not a de la Serre. At least, not the de la Serre Templar family that he knew. For all he knew, Arno could have been an illegitimate child or a member of another de la Serre branch. Haytham didn’t know if the de la Serre he was familiar with did have siblings or cousins, after all.

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But all that paled in comparison to the fact that it was affecting Haytham and Edward too. Not as severe as the three but it was getting worse. The closer they seem to be to where Desmond was leading them, the more undeniable the urge to meet and protect Desmond became.

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“To him, Charles Dorian was just another Assassin that he had to take down for the Templar cause.” Arno says bitterly as he and Jacob walk behind the others, “He might not even remember him.”

“I get the feeling…” Jacob rubs his chin as he stares at Shay’s back, “He remembers every single Assassin he killed.”

“Well…”

The wall to their right suddenly burst open, separating Shay, Arno, and Jacob from the rest of the party as CORMAC steps between them. CORMAC turns to face Shay and Jacob immediately shouts, “Of course he smashes a wall! Classic jumpscare!”

“Not the time, Jacob!” Evie shouts from the other side.

“Everyone,take cover!” Shay shouts back as he aims his grenade launcher at CORMAC. The shrapnel grenade hit CORMAC’s shoulder and exploded, forcing it to take a step back.

The smoke clears and they see CORMAC’s shoulder was now glitching rapidly.

… fixing its damaged shoulder.

“Oh, come on!”

“It’s this place!” Ezio shouts from the other side.

“Abstergo has full access to Sample 17! It’s using that access to absorb the data around us!” Altaïr continues without even missing a beat.

“Don’t attack it! It’ll keep absorbing this place and destroy the data!” Ratonhnhaké:ton shouts next and, yeah, Jacob’s getting mind-hive vibes and it's definitely creepy.

“Alright then! Mister X Protocol it is!” Jacob shouts, “Go! We’ll lead him away and catch up with you in the safe room!”

“What’s a safe room?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Evie tells Aveline before shouting, “Don’t do anything too stupid, Jacob!”

“I always try, Evie!” Jacob says casually before shouting at CORMAC, “Hey! Yeah, you, you Terminator knockoff. How does it feel to know that Abstergo doesn’t have any creativity at all and made you to be their own Arnold- Oh shit! Runrunrunrun!”

(Evie has a lot of free time too so she has been watching Jacob play some of the games in the servers, all of them in one specific SSD called 'Games better than whatever Abstergo publishes (aka every game out there)'. Some don’t work all that well because… well… cloud gaming isn’t stable all the time in the Assassin’s servers XD)

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Ohohohoho. Yeeesss. Mister X is my favorite Tyrant in the remakes so I’m game in making CORMAC into one. Also, Jacob might believe CORMAC can’t enter any safe room but they don’t know that there is no safe room.

And, may I suggest…

One of the most stressful parts of any RE game is having to do puzzles while we’re being chased so, during the whole checking for DVDs? How about…

So they’re all running around into two groups and shouting at each other (maybe we’ll have the main staircase of RE2R in this one? Or they’re using the high beams of the warehouse of AC2 to shout at each other with Jacob’s team running around the warehouses to ‘confuse’ CORMAC while the other teams used the high beams to not be targetted)

“Jacob! We need to find DVDs!”

“DVDs! Got it! Have you explain-”

“Yes! Shao Jun is tagging you out! We need everyone who knows what they look like to look around!”

“Got it!”

Shao Jun jumps from the beams at the same time Jacob jumps on one side of a container, kicks it to propel himself to the container on the other side and get up.

Evie grabs his hand and pulls him up and Jacob shouts, “Keep strafing in this warehouse! His AI is dumb!”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Shay! Abstergo’s NPCs can be buggy, don’t let it get to you!”

So now they’ve split up with Evie and Jacob leading the search since they know what a DVD looks like (Jayadeep, sadly, has not gotten caught up in all that due to his existential crisis) while Altaïr, Ezio and Ratonhnhaké:ton are going by ‘feeling’ and Haytham and Edward sorta has a gut feeling of what the DVD looks like.

Anyway, around maybe after five or seven minutes since they started looking for DVDs, CORMAC finally stops chasing Shao Jun, Arno and Shay and started chasing the others which lead to them splitting more (I’m thinking Altaïr with Edward, Ezio with Shao Jun, Ratonhnhaké:ton with Aveline, Haytham with Shay, Evie with Jayadeep and Jacob with Arno) And other than Shao Jun, Shay and Arno, they all know what a DVD is supposed to look like now.

Finally, CORMAC manages to corner Altaïr and Edward and, because two of his ancestors are in danger this time (since, technically, CORMAC had been trying to take down non-ancestors in the warehouse chase sequence), that’s when the Sample 17’s own firewall appears and Edward (who has a feeling that it was meant to help them) and Altaïr (who did immediately know what it was meant to do) tagteamed CORMAC to push him into the firewall without harming it or destroying anything in the room (that looked like the training room on the Farm).

Everyone gets to the room in time to see Edward and Altaïr kick CORMAC into the firewall and they watch for a bit before Shay does talk about how creepy CORMAC was.

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Ohohohohoho.

Yeeessss.

My plan was for the Grand Temple’s deepest parts that don’t exist in the actual Grand Temple?

It’s a patchworked maze of every Isu temple and location that Desmond’s genetic memories know.

This means every Isu location/temple Altaïr, Ezio, Ratonhnhaké:ton and Edward has been to are there.

As well as Desmond’s Isu ancestor which, not surprisingly enough, isn’t actually Sisyphus as he once joked.

I wonder if you’ve ever thought about like, a glitch or a virus in the Animus accidentally causing all the playable ancestors to become self-aware and sentient. I kind of like the idea of them realizing they’re all essentially kinda stuck in the Animus servers and then banding together to essentially blow up Abstergo. hell, maybe Desmond is the reason why they’re all sentient, something about the Apple and the Eye started doing weird things to the samples they took from him so now the ancestors have to find his consciousness!

also I am ngl I think it would be very funny for them to occasionally be able to break into each other’s simulations for various purposes. Edward popping into the American Revolutionary War to say hi to his kid and grandkid. Jacob and Evie and Henry in Constantinople. Altaïr rolling around in the Caribbean, god help this poor non-swimmer.

(and maybe once they’ve gotten him out of wherever he’s been stashed Desmond can teach these guys how to like actually get into Abstergo’s servers and start ruining their lives?)

Ooooohhh, this would be fun and, considering which company Abstergo partnered with to develop the Animus games, this could have just as easily happened because bugs had always been part of the course when it concerned the games they have published.

It might have been a flaw in the Animus game console itself, simply because they had developed a ‘console’ that either didn’t require that the user be related to the genetic memory at all (which had been necessary to stabilize and synchronize with the memories) or they had included a ‘data set’ that includes the DNA origin to stabilize and synchronize with the memories (which meant that they were dealing with a setup they had not fully checked yet (considering Black Flag’s modern day setting was set in 2013 and was released before Rogue’s modern day setting in 2014, that would mean that their Animus iteration had to have been developed and send to Abstergo Entertainment with Sample 17’s data in a year or less).

Also, also, we have seen how ‘viruses’ can interact with the Abstergo games. Liberation’s secret ending which shows the ‘scenes’ that Abstergo tried to remove so that it seemed like Aveline joined the Templar Order in the end could only be accessed by finding a specific NPC in the game in various memory blocks.

So, in this scenario, the whole ‘non-canon character’ popping into other games could have happened during development BUT the Animus game they ship was meant to copy the memory blocks that research analysts got in development so those small inconsistencies could have happened during their breaks or flat-out during a time when no one was using the Animus at all.

The easter eggs (or some fans like to call them “too unrealistic and plain fanservice”) would be included in all the copies of their specific games those games only had minor tweaks to ensure they won’t crash (and have DRMs, I guess) and lesser time for Q&A because, let’s face it, they needed to cut costs somewhere before they were shipped off to ensure they had a yearly release.

It became just a normal part of the charm of these games and Abstergo is just going “Yes, it’s meant to show that we are all connected no matter how many centuries we are from one another!” but internally there are memos going “WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING???”.

Also, also…

We should set up some kind of timeline, I guess?

Because, as far as we can be sure, the only confirmed games that Abstergo Entertainment released are the following:

Liberations (based on Liberation with Aveline) - Prior to 2013

Pirates of Nightmares (based on Black Flag with Edward) - Around 2013 (also has a movie version called Devils of the Caribbean)

Note: We do not have any confirmation that they released any games based on Shay Cormac and, honestly, with how much Shay’s defection hinged on the power of the artifact (which they had probably had to cut out since they were going for ‘realism’), any games based on Rogue would probably need a lot of cuts and edits. They might have just, you know, given up on that in the end.

Buuuuutttt we have confirmation of these games as having been published prior to Arno Dorian’s memories being checked:

Not counting the three on the bottom which we don’t really have any information about, this means that we have confirmation that the following have been released (and, in Edward’s and Aveline’s case, this could have been a re-release ala HD remastered style which Liberation did get in the PS4 era):

Altaïr

Shao Jun

Ezio (also, it’s just sooo Abstergo to go for ‘Fear and Loathing in Florence’, a reference to AC2, but use Ezio’s Brotherhood robes… soooo like Abstergo to use the Brotherhood!Ezio model)

Ratonhnhaké:ton

Aveline

Edward

BUT then you also get

Jacques De Molay

Rodrigo Borgia

Haytham Kenway

This means that if you want the Animus servers' data to be sentient then you can make at least these three Templars sentient as well if you wish to add more conflict to the entire thing.

Now, if we keep the supposed release date with the idea that they released it as Aveline → Edward → Altaïr → Shao Jun → Ezio → Ratonhnhaké:ton → HD releases (or maybe Helix is meant to be a collection like the real-world example of Ezio Trilogy or Rebels Collection)

Then what can happen is that Aveline is the first one to ‘wake up’ and she finds herself in the Caribbean, waking up on Edward’s ship. She tries to ask where she is and her appearance caused Edward to snap out of the ‘Animus control’ and gain sentient.

Then they decide to try and find out where they are via the Jackdaw, sailing her beyond the supposed walls of this place they find themselves in.

It’s during their travels and checking the strange ports (imagine lots of glitching + the entire vibe of Animus Island back in Revelations with each map turned into an island so this means that landlocked maps like Florence and Monteriggioni are now islands) that they see an Assassin taking down a target at the port before running away. They give chase and that’s how they meet Altaïr in Acre docks. Their appearance snapped Altaïr into gaining sentient but not just that…

He remembers up to his death, unlike Aveline who remembers up to her wedding night and Edward who remembers up to a night with Tessa.

No.

Altaïr knows more about where they are than he should.

And that’s when he sees it.

A figure walking the streets of Acre, walking further and further away from them, clad in white that did not belong in his time.

Altaïr gives chase and the two followed him because Altaïr knows more than them, that was for sure.

Altaïr still loses him but he feels like he knows that figure… knows it’s a man and he’s important.

He points at Edward as he says, “Important to both of us.”

But he also knows the man isn’t here in the island composed of Altaïr’s memories anymore.

And Aveline and Edward get a crash course of who they truly are (digital construct of the memories of long-dead Assassins) and where they are. The where is more confusing because Altaïr uses words like “the Animus must always be online to connect to the servers”, “this is the server that has all the data of all researched and analyzed memories”, etc but Edward just summarized it as “prison created by Templars, right?”

“In a way.”

So they board the Jackdaw to try and find an exit and to find this supposed man that was important to Altaïr and Edward.

Along the way, they docked in a port that ends with them waking up Shao Jun as she’s running away from those hunting her. She remembered that this was the memory where her mentor told her to find Ezio Auditore and Altaïr thinks he knows the name.

“But I know of a different name for him as well… Prophet. He was… He was the prophet of that man.”

Shao Jun joins them and she recognized Florence so they docked there and they find Ezio who was looking for feathers.

Ezio stares at Altaïr for a moment then he stares behind Altaïr, his eyes going wild. Altaïr immediately knew what he was looking at he quickly turned around.

This time, the figure was running the rooftops of Florence and the two gave chase, making the rest run after them.

During the chase, Ezio shouts, “Desmond!” and the figure stopped and turned around.

Before they could see his face, a flock of birds flew between them, and the man was gone.

They reached where they last saw the man and Ezio recognized it.

This… was where he and Federico wished that their lives would not change… the day before Ezio’s entire life turned upside down.

With Ezio becoming part of their crew, Ezio had the same information as Altaïr. He knows who he is, where they are, and what they truly are.

But his memories end after seeing Altaïr’s remains underneath Masyaf.

And… he also has his Apple.

Altaïr sees the Apple and realized…

He opened his pouch and, yes…

He has an Apple as well.

So Ezio joined them too and they continue to sail Jackdaw. (If you’d like Adéwalé to be sentient as well even if we have no confirmation that Abstergo profited from his memories as well, this would be a good time to do it)

This time, they get into a naval combat with an unknown ship and Edward is enjoying himself. The ship was beautiful and whoever was in command knew what they were doing.

So Edward decided to ram it and they’d all pile onto the other ship. The crew wouldn’t be able to win against 5 Assassins after all.

But the moment they rammed the ship, both of their ships began to glitch just as they hear a man with a British accent shout, “How is it you came to captain a ship, given the way you sail?”

When the glitching stopped, the Jackdaw looked like it had absorbed the other ship, creating a new ship that seemed to be a merged version of the two.

And there was an Assassin on board that they didn’t know. An Assassin holding an Apple and… he was looking to their right.

Where a lone island filled with buildings taller than any towers they had ever seen could be seen just before the horizon.

The Assassin pointed at the island and turned to face Edward as he said, “He’s waiting for us there… grandfather.”

(If you want Haytham to gain sentient, he’s in the captain’s quarters and he’d open the door a few seconds later with a splitting headache, telling Ratonhnhaké:ton his sailing is shit then stop when he sees Edward. Cue awkward family reunion)

Other Unorganized Notes:

I’m sorry I couldn’t include Jacob, Evie, and Henry, nonny. :(

This was focused on the idea that the Abstergo servers mainly have data of the published ‘games’ while the memories still being researched are in another more secured private server.

Although, considering that Arno and the Frye twins were more ‘modified’ by the Assassins, maybe they could come in as a virus before Edward and the others meet Ratonhnhaké:ton. I think it would be a change of pace if Arno and the Fryes (with Jayadeep) know more than the ‘old guards’. Hell, they could say “We hitched a ride with the virus Erudito sent to find Sample 17 because the public noticed he always makes an appearance as an NPC in all the games so the Assassins think that he’s somewhere here.” “He’s not 17. His name is Desmond.” “Right, didn’t mean to offend anybody.”