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The history of the origins of the Assassin-Templar War in the Americas is… patchy, to say the least. Some records say the Assassins started up in the Americas in the early 1700s, others say they started during the Age of Discovery, and still others believe that the Assassins (or at least some ancient counterpart) arrived during the Ice Age via crossing the Bering Strait. It's rather confusing, honestly, but oh well. One of the earliest confirmed records of the Assassins reaching the Americas is when Ezio Auditore sent a few recruits on a voyage with Amerigo Vespucci in 1503, since he had received word that the Templars were planning to start anew with their conquest in the New World.

The earliest detailed account of an Assassin in the Americas was during the 1519 voyage of Hernán Cortés. An Assassin named Giovanni Borgia, a man who ran away from his abusive Templar family as a boy and joined the kind Assassins that treated him as a brother, snuck aboard one of Cortés’s ships disguised as a crewmember. He had been assigned by his Brotherhood to follow a lead on a Piece of Eden, and when the conquistadors arrived in Yucatán, he wasn't disappointed. They had landed within the borders of the Aztec Empire, a mighty force that had ruled over the lands it conquered since 1428. Cortés, after a series of interactions with both the Natives and their Spanish prisoners, eventually managed to enter the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and get an audience with Emperor Moctezuma II.

Come the Festival of Toxcatl in 1520, the Spaniards were introduced to a central part of Aztec culture: gruesome human sacrifice. The conquistadors watched in uneasy horror at the bloody event and, despite the protests of Giovanni Borgia, they drew their swords and began a massacre, either out of fear or out of an excuse to rob the Aztecs of the immense riches they held. As the Spanish led their slaughter, Giovanni found the Piece of Eden, a Crystal Skull, in the hands of an Aztec priest. He killed the priest and took the Skull before fleeing the chaos. Moctezuma tried to call to his people after the Spaniards took him hostage, demanding that they end the violence and return to their homes. The Natives refused to take the beating from the invaders, however, and they stoned Moctezuma to death. This event would eventually go down in the history books as “The Night of Sorrows”.

The Spaniards soon fled the city, returning to their ships despite the gold they stole weighing them down. Many escaped back to Europe, and many were killed by the pursuing Aztec warriors. Cortés eventually returned and laid siege to Tenochtitlan, and began a full-on conquest of the Empire. Superior weaponry and Old World diseases gave the Spanish an upper hand, and the Aztec Empire officially fell by 1521, its lands claimed in the name of the Spanish crown. Thousands of Spaniards were killed during the conquest, but thousands more were slaughtered on the Native side. It was a terrible, bloody time, and was only the first of many expansive conquests in the history of America. And the Assassins and Templars would soon begin their war on a whole new battleground. A whole new continent to explore and interact upon.

But until things really start to kick off in the Americas, we'll return to Europe, where something big was about to happen that would change the lives of everyone. A frantic young priest from Wittenberg was starting to spout radical new ideas, ones that would challenge the Catholic Church and change the ways people thought about their religion, and themselves. A new era was about to unfold, and things would never truly be the same afterwards.

Description

The history of the origins of the Assassin-Templar War in the Americas is… patchy, to say the least. Some records say the Assassins started up in the Americas in the early 1700s, others say they started during the Age of Discovery, and still others believe that the Assassins (or at least some ancient counterpart) arrived during the Ice Age via crossing the Bering Strait. It's rather confusing, honestly, but oh well. One of the earliest confirmed records of the Assassins reaching the Americas is when Ezio Auditore sent a few recruits on a voyage with Amerigo Vespucci in 1503, since he had received word that the Templars were planning to start anew with their conquest in the New World.

The earliest detailed account of an Assassin in the Americas was during the 1519 voyage of Hernán Cortés. An Assassin named Giovanni Borgia, a man who ran away from his abusive Templar family as a boy and joined the kind Assassins that treated him as a brother, snuck aboard one of Cortés’s ships disguised as a crewmember. He had been assigned by his Brotherhood to follow a lead on a Piece of Eden, and when the conquistadors arrived in Yucatán, he wasn't disappointed. They had landed within the borders of the Aztec Empire, a mighty force that had ruled over the lands it conquered since 1428. Cortés, after a series of interactions with both the Natives and their Spanish prisoners, eventually managed to enter the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and get an audience with Emperor Moctezuma II.

Come the Festival of Toxcatl in 1520, the Spaniards were introduced to a central part of Aztec culture: gruesome human sacrifice. The conquistadors watched in uneasy horror at the bloody event and, despite the protests of Giovanni Borgia, they drew their swords and began a massacre, either out of fear or out of an excuse to rob the Aztecs of the immense riches they held. As the Spanish led their slaughter, Giovanni found the Piece of Eden, a Crystal Skull, in the hands of an Aztec priest. He killed the priest and took the Skull before fleeing the chaos. Moctezuma tried to call to his people after the Spaniards took him hostage, demanding that they end the violence and return to their homes. The Natives refused to take the beating from the invaders, however, and they stoned Moctezuma to death. This event would eventually go down in the history books as “The Night of Sorrows”.

The Spaniards soon fled the city, returning to their ships despite the gold they stole weighing them down. Many escaped back to Europe, and many were killed by the pursuing Aztec warriors. Cortés eventually returned and laid siege to Tenochtitlan, and began a full-on conquest of the Empire. Superior weaponry and Old World diseases gave the Spanish an upper hand, and the Aztec Empire officially fell by 1521, its lands claimed in the name of the Spanish crown. Thousands of Spaniards were killed during the conquest, but thousands more were slaughtered on the Native side. It was a terrible, bloody time, and was only the first of many expansive conquests in the history of America. And the Assassins and Templars would soon begin their war on a whole new battleground. A whole new continent to explore and interact upon.

But until things really start to kick off in the Americas, we'll return to Europe, where something big was about to happen that would change the lives of everyone. A frantic young priest from Wittenberg was starting to spout radical new ideas, ones that would challenge the Catholic Church and change the ways people thought about their religion, and themselves. A new era was about to unfold, and things would never truly be the same afterwards.