Back here on the Isu Codices, we are closing in on the end of two currently running comics for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and while there aren’t any new concepts to bring up, let’s do a deep dive into the issues themselves.
New Issues
Assassin’s Creed: Origins #3
Continuing from the prior part of the framing story, Cleopatra and Caesarion are trying to escape the city, with the former disguised in a hooded cloak, but her son not hidden much at all. Why he does not have any real disguise is unclear, but perhaps relates to it limiting his combat ability, or even his face not being as well known as hers.
The pharaoh does learn of Octavian’s plans, much like in real life history, but her response is rather different after hearing of them from her son.
As this difference comes with the basic difference we have a comprehension of in the extant lore of the series itself, it isn’t too much of a surprised that she is not filled with despair and willing to kill herself or hide away.
That said, she does appear to be rather paranoid, killing not only the man who actually did try to assassinate her, but also the guard who left just before, who does not seem to have actually been disloyal at all and merely made a mistake about who to trust with his pharaoh and her son’s lives. All signs point to the idea that perhaps she really does need to die for things to change one way or another, given how unhinged and untrusting she has become.
Back with Aya fourteen-years prior, she was apparently arrested after the altercation at the end of last issue. While she could certainly have handled herself well enough against a gang of civilians, she still has a good heart, and so would probably have been hampered by her desire to avoid unnecessary casualties, leading to her defeat by sheer numbers.
Adding to this view of her kindness in spite of her harsh nature regarding the Hidden Ones, she feeds a dog that had been hurt when said dog comes over to her cell.
Mark Antony, being… well, him, takes the time to try to appeal to Aya and get her to give up her comrades, bringing up how chaotic Brutus is in his methods of handling oppression.
As she is not one to fall for his ruse, Aya does not relent, despite the fact that he does have a point: for all she knows, Brutus and Cassius already are on their way to Crete.
As he is rather angry, he does not make any attempt to stop her imminent execution, which has her dropped from a height that normally would probably have broken her legs… into a pool of water underground that has a rather uninviting group of guests, her arms still tied behind her back for the time being.
Despite everything, she manages to fend off and kill some of the hippopotami and free her arms, though the crowd watching from above shouts for her to be slain by the animals. Her death seems inevitable, given she has no weapons of her own, but fate has something different in store.
Brutus and Cassius evidently did not leave Rome just yet, as their arrows save her from one of the hippos, and they follow her through an animal tunnel below the water to attempt an escape (with her apologizing to the deceased animals at the bottom of the water in the process).
Once they momentarily escape, we have an explanation of why the Roman Hidden Ones even came back for her.
Using an unfinished tapestry to make a fire to block the assailants at their backs, the three Hidden Ones flee through the tunnel, ready to taste freedom… but someone is in their way, closing out on a cliffhanger with plenty of soldiers and civilians.
Assassin’s Creed: Uprising #11
Picking up where we last left off with the modern day, Juno is slowly gaining consciousness within her newly physical body. However, due to some remaining strands from the original Shroud being used in her creation, she has an unexpected guest during her formation: Consus.
The benevolent Isu of course abhors the horrific things that Juno hopes to accomplish, and even calls her coming body a monstrosity to boot, a far cry from how he sometimes is overly clinical about organic forms as an organic computer system of sorts. It also seems that, due to the Shroud being incomplete, he is unable to stop the process of generating the body, as much as he seems to want to do so.
However, he does seem to have hope, namely Charlotte de la Cruz, our primary heroine, believing that she will stop the ascension, or at least kill the mortal body.
At the former base of the Assassin cell, the whole place had been burned down by Guernica Moneo and My’shell Lemair to cover their tracks, and the former was apparently stabbed in the gut when he jumped on an Instrument last issue. Aside from his obvious wound, he is well aware that there is no going back to the Instruments, but still thinks he did the right thing, that while the Instruments of the First Will are monsters, they scared both the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order very badly, so he felt that it would be a good “lesser of three evils” scenario to take the common enemy and run with them instead. While Guernica’s assessment of the entire war of the Assassins and the Templars as being “a great game between proponents of two insanely reductive concepts of human progress” isn’t exactly wrong, My’shell has to make her own point in all of it.
In all, My’shell comes across as the only sane woman in this entire conflict. She is completely aware of how idiotic all sides of it are, and wants to try for some form of peace so that people can just live their lives for once. It’s highly unlikely, of course, but points for wanting it.
Oh, and let’s also give her some bonus points for leaving Guernica holding his bleeding wound in the rooftop without confirming anything about calling for paramedics, after his betrayals. Can’t forget that part.
On the Abstergo plane to the Phoenix Project’s site, Arend Schut-Cunningham tries to make some form of amends with Juhani Otso Berg. It… doesn’t go according to plan, in part due to Berg’s business-centric focus and awareness of the arrangement being completely temporary between the Templars and the Assassins.
As he notes, the Finns, like himself, are pragmatists, taking the example of Finland technically switching sides three times in World War II as an example. His loyalty is entirely circumstantial, as it seems, though he does lean toward the Templars on the whole, or at least the code they should follow rather than their own self-interests.
This logic is very ironic, considering the person he contacts to make sure that the Phoenix Project’s base of operations is safe turns out to be Violet da Costa, an Instrument mole. Unfortuantely, this gives ample time for the Instruments to prepare to fight off an infiltration…
… and for Juno, whose body is nearly complete on account of the triple-helix rich DNA of Elijah, to awaken.
Speaking of Elijah, it seems that the torturous surgery used to take his bone marrow gave him reason to begin speaking for the first time in the franchise. His attendant and “friend,” Richmond, seems to worry about him somewhat, but that could just as easily be an act to stay on his good side. Elijah himself is actually pretty benevolent, even nice, and very smart for his age, which is likely in the single digits. His account of what being a Sage means for his beliefs about the Isu “gods” is especially telling, and not unlike those of his father, Desmond Miles, in the months before his death in 2012.
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As far as Sages go, they could perhaps be seen as having varying levels of “strength” based upon how well they can resist the pull of Aita’s DNA to be their own person. The weakest examples appear to be the Master Spy from World War I and John Standish in the mid 2010s, both of whom turned into raving lunatics above all else. Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts (1682 – 1722) ended up similarly possessed, but was less of a raving, rampaging psychopath than a selfish man who could be construed to merely be a bad person on the whole. Then we have Thomas “Thom” Kavanagh, Jr. (1652 – 1706), who realized how troubled he was, and wrote down journals about his struggles for identity. On the stronger end, there is François-Thomas Germain (1726 – 1794), who kept his mind entirely, but was able to use Pieces of Eden such as a Sword and view visions of the past, in addition to other relatively special powers involving memory.
Elijah is at the top of all of that, perhaps on par with Germain at the very least. A very smart boy who is able to have articulate, advanced conversations with other adults and recognize the parasitic nature of Aita, he also has taken even more than even Germain, siphoning out important bits of information from Aita rather than merely utilizing his own inborn traits. Couple that with his less-than-stellar opinion of Abstergo and the Phoenix Project for their torturous extraction of marrow one issue prior, along with Violet da Costa’s treatment of him as an object to torment rather than an actual person, and we have an easy way to develop another, one-person faction, perhaps even able to take over some of the Instruments themselves to face Juno. His decision to sneak around the facility and see what is going on, in addition to doing some hacking of his own, further shows his rebellious side, and how if he really wanted to, he could kill key people in the area without anyone able to be aware enough to stop him.
On the plane, Berg explains the plan. He and Galina Voronina are to act as a distraction at the front for the likely hail of gunfire from Instruments, while Arend and Kiyoshi Takakura are to go in through a side entrance. Of particular note is the fact that Berg actually corrects Arend’s surname, calling him Schut before stopping himself to say Schut-Cunningham. It’s a small gesture, but still nice anyway. Perhaps it’s just a means to keep things under control after the hostile behavior Berg showed to Arend earlier, but anything helps.
In any case, the last unit is to consist of only Charlotte herself, who is to infiltrate the facility through a ventilation shaft that is entirely against safety codes and fit for a grown person like herself, in order to assassinate Álvaro Grammatica, the head of the project. Berg even admits that the reason he approved the design is that he could use the overhead vent to sneak into the lab to assassinate the doctor if he ever wanted to, considering pretty much nobody likes the replacement for Warren Vidic.
Although Galina and Charlotte bring up the idea of calling in other Assassin cells through the Initiate known as Bishop, Berg realizes that by the time the reinforcements come, it will be far too late to stop Juno’s resurrection. Therefore, they begin their preparations, including Arend finding a copious amount of firearms on the plane, the ones he had been wanting since the last mission he had been on.
Meanwhile, Elijah has plans of his own. Having done some scouting and probably some preparing beforehand, he seems to have set up a torture chamber for Richmond, and seals them both inside of it.
Although Charlotte lands outside of the project’s compound in order to fulfill her own part in the plan, she has a bad feeling about this, one that says that the Templar-Assassin allied group might not be coming back from their infiltration. It’s hard to argue, both because this series (and the entire Phoenix Project arc) is concluding next issue, and because of one other wrinkle in it all.
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Berg doesn’t have to worry about being ready before Juno is reborn. She’s already here.
We eagerly await the finale of both of these comics next month, along with any revelations about the franchise at the Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2018 that same week.
