Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

A Campfire Chat

My curiosity burning in my chest I walked forward into the area and quickly discovered the entrance to a dark cave tunnel winding round to the right. Small swatches of orange played against the wall on the left-hand side. A fire burned here.

I carefully crept up to the corner of the passage and peered around into the cave. A man sat by the fire on a low bench, reading a book. He did not appear to be armed.

I moved forward slowly, into the cave.

"Sam?" the man asked, sensing my presence, "is that you?"

"Who are you?" I asked back. "How do you know my name?"

"Get ready to have your mind blown," the man said. "My name is Ezekiel Cage, most people call me Zeke. I'm your brother."

"My what?" I said. I didn't know I had a brother, although this was not impossible, after all, I was an orphan who had been adopted out shortly after I was born.

"I was slightly older than you when mum and dad died," Zeke said. "So I knew you were out there, somewhere. When I was captured by Abstergo I knew they might come for you too, so I had a friend of mine help me out with this," he gestured around at the cave.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I hope you're asking me questions," Zeke said. "This is really no more than a sort of interactive presentation that advances whenever you say something. It's not much but it's all we had time for. Also, it's all we could hide in the boot ROM chip for the animus."

"Go on," I said, prompting presentation-Zeke.

"Anyhow, I haven't got much time so I'll tell you what I know. Recently the Assassins and the Templars got into some almighty battle over a guy called Desmond Miles. Desmond had some ancestral key to the Templars' grand designs."

As Zeke spoke a ray of golden light appeared to project upwards from the fire in the centre of the room. A picture of a young man with brown hair and a broad, handsome face appeared in mid-air, like a holographic projection.

"You remember that massive power outage in December 2012? Apparently, that was the apocalypse. The files I've read indicate that Miles lost his life saving the earth with some massive device under the earth in New York State."

The holograph display showed pictures of a giant cave, much larger than the one I stood in now, it was filled with strange blocky columns ranging back for about a quarter miles. The columns appeared to be decorated with straight lines picked out in luminous blue.

"It was the assassins that put together the team that saved the earth. When Desmond died it was as an assassin making a sacrifice for all mankind. Don't get the impression, though, that this makes the assassins into the good guys."

The holograph changed showing a number of different hooded figures in a variety of historical settings. I wasn't much for history so I couldn't tell you where many of them were although I swear I saw the pyramids in one of them.

"The fact is," Zeke continued, "that the two sides are in opposition, fundamentally opposed in philosophy and intention. The Assassins believe in freedom for all men, so they tend to get the popular vote over the authoritarian Templars and... Well, Abstergo, the corporate arm of the Templars, and the single largest Templar entity on the face of the planet at this time is pure evil through and through. That makes them no more than a mega-corporation when you break it down."

The holographic display showed a bunch of historical images showing Templars, and, later on, some pictures of Abstergo premises and personnel. Zeke's lecture picked up again.

"Both organisations have splinter cells, people who've broken from the core of the larger organisation. It's traditionally been a difficult life, these people know about assassins and Templars but don't identify as either and are regarded as enemies by both."