"but I will travel down it, nonetheless."

yeah this is an Assassin's Creed sideblog now

[t00thpasteface]

even more optional malik dialogue i don't think i shared yet (talal + majd addin + no jerusalem assignment)

god i love them. and i love how the fact that you can get all this dialogue without a desync or any "whoah the animus is crayzay" stuff means this Actually Happened. altair really did just constantly loiter in malik's bureau for literally no reason and got roasted to a crisp for it every time. and he kept coming back for extra servings anyway...

[arsuf]

Assassin’s Creed Gifs  ▪  81/?

[arsuf]

Assassin’s Creed Gifs  ▪  78/?

[greenlaut]

confession

trembling lips pressed against bony fingers. something burns inside yusuf; an undulating pit of tar in his stomach. he knows the name of this feeling—envy.

my acsona yusuf and oc john

[thefellomen]

Assassin’s Creed 1 | Revisited [4/?]

Jerusalem is a city located in the hills of the Judean Mountains, in between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea.

[autiacorart]

altaïr... has some zuko qualities, I feel he would also be a fire bender that has to learn that fire is not only passionate and destructive but with peace and patience it gives life and protection

[autiacorart]

i started crying guys

[gattobamboom]

oh, Malik, why are you so cute

[fellshish]

repeating “canon is the mind-killer. canon is the little death that brings total obliteration. i will face my canon. i will permit it to pass over me and through me. and when it has gone past me i will turn to see canon’s path. where the canon has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain”

[ariadnes-fate]

historically many of the Assassins' hits took months and often years to plan and carry out, and most of them were done in teams of 3 (for your "average" target) to 10 (for Saladin and other major notables with the power to possibly exterminate them) so honestly Altaïr killing nine highly prominent figures - by himself! - within the span of late July to September is actually pretty damn wild. he is the Master Assassin.

like yeah that legitimately makes perfect sense as a way to go from completely disgraced novice back to highest-ranked Master Assassin in the Order. Al Mualim gave Altaïr the medieval Nizari equivalent of Heracles' twelve labors and the man delivered.

[ariadnes-fate]

I made Altaïr and Malik in Crusader Kings 3 again and they look much better this time. Malik gives a hell of a stink eye.

[ariadnes-fate]

this may be a hot take but I think a lot of Altaïr's story post-AC1 is kinda lame. goes to Mongolia, fails his mission, comes back to Masyaf, gets exiled, goes to Alamut, eventually returns to Masyaf again. okay. but why did you go off to Mongolia in the first place. I know the story reason, I just don't find it compelling.

[ariadnes-fate]

just saw your alamut/ac1 comparision, although i didnt read it because i want to read alamut still - do you recommend it? is it worth it?

I genuinely really like Alamut, but it's not the easiest read, and it's certainly.... written by a Slovene author in 1938, let's say. I'd suggest that, if you're in the US and your library doesn't carry it, you ask them to get a copy of it for you via the Interlibrary Loan system if you're worried about spending money on a book you don't like.

you do have to accept that it is a book written in 1938; it was written as a critique of fascism that would, just a year after the book was written, result in the start of WW2, but it does have some... weird and problematic shit that thankfully aren't major focuses of the book, but are definitely still there:

basically the most problematic parts are the author's treatment of the Black characters. this is mercifully pretty brief; he writes them as intelligent as everyone else, but hypersexual. so yeah. definitely Not Great. there are some other things- there's an explicitly sexual lesbian relationship that is weird precisely because the author (and his wider society at the time) did not recognize lesbian sex as actually being a thing? which... ?????? I personally never knew what to make of that tbh. I am going to throw in a suicide warning as well, though I feel that one should be pretty obvious given the content.

the reasons I like Alamut: while it uses the prevalent myths about the Assassins ie the drugs and paradise trick, it explores what that would actually look like to pull off, and what kind of person Hasan would have to be to do it. and that's the interesting part. it also follows the girls in the garden and what it'd be like for them to live there any have to play a part like this. the focus of the story switches between the garden girls, the fedayeen, and Hasan himself, and the commanders of Alamut to a lesser extent. also, given this book is by a Slovene author in 1938, the history and cultural elements of medieval Persia are shockingly good? not everything, of course, but it's no Aladdin, either.

I can't include too much because I'm going to go to bed, but I've written out the first three paragraphs of the book so maybe you can decide if it's something you want to read.

In mid-spring of the year 1092 a good-sized caravan was wending it sway along the old military trail that leads from Samarkand and Bukhara through northern Khorasan and then meanders through the foothills of the Elburz Mountains. It had left Bukhara as the snow started to melt, and had been underway for several weeks. The drivers brandished their whips, shouting hoarsely at the caravan's draft animals, which were already on the verge of exhaustion. One after the other in a long procession stepped Arabian dromedaries, mules, and two-humped camels from Turkestan, submissively carrying their freight. An armed escort rode short, shaggy horses, glancing in equal measures of boredom and longing at the long chain of mountains that had begun to emerge on the horizon. They were tired of the slow ride and could barely wait to arrive at their destination. They drew closer and closer to the snow-covered cone of Mount Demavend, until it was blocked out by the foothills that absorbed the trail. Fresh mountain air started to blow, reviving the people and livestock by day. But the nights were ice cold, and both escorts and drivers stood around their campfires, grumbling and rubbing their hands.

Fastened between the humps of one of the camels was a small shelter resembling a cage. From time to time a small hand drew the curtain aside from its window, and the face of a frightened little girl looked out. Her large eyes, red from crying, looked at the strangers surrounding her as if seeking an answer to the difficult question that had tormented her for the entire journey: where were they taking her, and what did they plan to do with her? But no one noticed aside from the caravan leader, a stern man of about fifty in a loose Arab cloak and an imposing white turban, who would blink in disapproval when he caught sight of her through the opening. At those moments she would quickly pull the curtain shut and retreat inside the cage. Ever since she had been bought from her master in Bukhara, she had been living in a combination of mortal fear and thrilling curiosity about the fate that was awaiting her.

One day, as they neared the end of their journey, a band of horsemen raced down the hillside to their right and blocked their path. The animals at the head of the caravan stopped on their own. The leader and escort reached for their heavy, curved savers and assumed positions for a charge. A man on a short brown horse separated from the attackers and came close enough to the caravan that his voice was audible. He called out a password and received a response from the caravan leader. The two men galloped towards each other and exchanged courteous greetings, and then the new troop took over leadership. The caravan turned off the trail and headed into the brush, traveling this way until well into the night. Eventually they made camp on the floor of a small valley, from where they could hear the distant drumming of a mountain torrent. They built fires, ate hastily, and then fell asleep like the dead.

[autiacorart]

giovanni: "ezio, find my secret room and take everything from the chest inside. the clothes are important too, they're for aurafarming"

[autiacorart]

it's even funnier because in ac2 there's nothing like you have to wear robes of the brotherhood to be a part of it, you can be like regular civilian and it's fine. So the robes are only for aurafarming

[ariadnes-fate]

it's not required of them as part of the brotherhood, but aurafarming is required as part of being italian.

[ariadnes-fate]

"AC Black Flag remake!!!" meanwhile AC1 is turning 20 next year.

[ariadnes-fate]

the tragedy of Assassin's Creed for me is that I really genuinely love history, so I love the setting of the games and hate the overarching connecting plot with all my heart. I like the idea of the Animus, I love Desmond as a character, I'm fine with Apple of Eden being a precursor artifact. all well and good. but I hate the 'ancient conspiracy organizations having a secret shadow war' plot and everything about it.

I wouldn't mind it as much if it didn't butcher the history of both the Templars and the Assassins by making them secular. it'd have been fine if Ubisoft had wholesale invented two shadowy ancient rival organizations - which is what they ended up doing with the Hidden Ones and Order of the Ancients - but using the Assassins and Templars and having the shadowy rival secular organizations grow out of them one, makes it really difficult for me to write overly indulgent historical fanfic, and two, erases the existence of the Nizari religion/community?? the fuck you mean Altaïr disbanded the Assassins and had them 'retreat to the shadows' and work across the world with members of various religions?? he can't do that he can't dismantle a religious community. and they didn't disband, they got subjected to genocide by the Mongols. but even today, they're still around! I literally pass a Nizari credit union every week when I do errands. like c'mon man.

like all I want. is to write the Assassins as actually religious. I want to write them as Nizaris and I want to write some fun history. but Ubisoft secularizing them makes that really difficult.

Ubisoft also did the Templars unforgivably dirty but it's less of a big deal for me because I can write it off as Robert de Sable's splinter group being just a bunch of exceptionally weird little freaks because Ubisoft didn't erase the existence of Catholics. >_>

[ariadnes-fate]

Also ftr. Ubisoft didn't come up with this but they did definitely popularize it even more than Alamut did but the whole 'nothing is true, everything is permitted' thing? yeah that's a historical smear used against the Nizaris by people who did not like them and were both/either very confused about Nizari apophatic theology and/or wanted to portray Nizaris as godless materialist heathens. like the beginning of AC1 where Altaïr acts like the maxim means he can do whatever he wants? yeah, that's because that's what that phrase actually means. Because it's a smear and not an actual theological maxim used by the Nizaris. it's also why it never really makes sense or feels very consistent or deep, even though subsequent games spend a lot of time and effort trying to make it such.

Basically Ubisoft erased the Nizari faith and replaced it with Nietzsche's weirdo secular übermensh interpretation of what is originally just a racist libel. so there are a lot of problems there.

unfortunately, as many problems as it has, I still love AC1. I love the characters, the setting, the story, the fact that the game portrays some of my favorite historical groups who are usually forgotten by most media nowadays. Ubisoft absolutely did them dirty though and I needed to complain about it.

[autiacorart]

be not afraid