Assassin's Creed

All of the Assassin's Creed games take place in 2012, featuring the protagonist Desmond Miles, a bartender who is a descendent of a line of Assassins; though raised as an Assassin, he fled his nomadic family to seek out a more common lifestyle. He is initially kidnapped by the megacorporation Abstergo Industries, the modern-day face of the Knights Templar who are aware of Desmond's lineage. Desmond is forced to use the "Animus", a device that allows him to experience his ancestral memories. Abstergo is seeking to discover the location of several artifacts, or "Pieces of Eden", that hold great power, to control mankind and alter its fate, bringing humanity into a single unified group. Desmond is later rescued by a small team of modern-day Assassins and taken to a secure location; agreeing to work with them, Desmond uses their version of the Animus to continue to experience the memories of his ancestors to discover the locations of additional Pieces of Eden so they can be recovered before Abstergo can do so. While experiencing these memories, some of their abilities are genetically leaked into Desmond, known as the Bleeding Effect, giving him some of the Assassin skills of his predecessors at the cost of living with multiple sets of memories and personalities in his mind.

Within the Animus, Desmond experiences the memories of Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad, an Assassin during the Crusades, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Assassin in Italy during the late 15th and early 16th Centuries of the Renaissance, both of whom came into contact with a Piece of Eden known as "The Apple". While following the storyline with Ezio, other Pieces of Eden become known, such as "The Staff" as well as a second apple. Throughout these events, Desmond learns of allusions to the prophetic end of the world in 2012 from a former Animus test subject, Subject 16, as well as from holographic figures of a species pre-dating humanity. These beings, people of "The First Civilization," call themselves Minerva, Juno and Jupiter. They speak directly to Desmond through Ezio's experiences and in turn Ezio comes to discover that he is merely a conduit for Desmond and that centuries later, he is the one who will find answers to the questions that Ezio himself is asking in his own time. The three figures explain that their species created humanity, who then rebelled against them. A massive solar flare nearly wiped both their species from the planet and destroyed their entire civilization, the three failing to prevent it after having potential solutions transferred to their central vault, now hidden in modern day New York, from vaults across the planet.

With their numbers falling, The First Civilization attempted but ultimately failed to interbreed with humanity, leaving bloodlines of First Civilization and human hybrids such as Altaïr's and Ezio's, Desmond himself a unification of the two. These hybrids have access to the 6th sense of knowledge, which presents itself in the games as "Eagle Vision." Through the visions Ezio sees with the pieces of Eden, Desmond is provided with the locations of the hidden vaults and must use the central vault to complete their work and prevent this catastrophe again.