Marquis de Fayet branding a slave.
"...He killed and killed. Enemy or ally. Civilian or soldier. Guilty or innocent. It mattered not... If he perceived one to be an obstacle, they died. He maintained that violence was a more efficient solution. It became his mantra... and it broke my heart."
—Haytham Kenway, lamenting on the cruelty of Edward Braddock, Assassin's Creed III
The Assassin's Creed franchise is well known for its complex morality, with its struggle of Assassin vs. Templar, but several villains have managed to show they are nothing but monsters.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Multimedia
- Discovery & 2016 film: Tomás de Torquemada is a member of the Templar Order and the overseer of The Spanish Inquisition, a brutal event that led to thousands being tortured and killed. Given a list of targets by Rodrigo Borgia to eliminate, Torquemada would also execute those who are not Christian. Torquemada later lays siege to Granada to kill Sultan Muhammad XII, potentially killing hundreds in the city. In the film, Torquemada kidnaps the Sultan's son and holds him hostage in exchange for the Apple of Eden, while making the son watch as he puts most of the Spanish Assassins to the stake to be burned alive.
- Forsaken & Assassin's Creed III: General Edward Braddock, aka "The Bulldog", is a Templar who helped Reginald Birch cover up the Kenway mansion raid. Allying himself with Haytham Kenway during the siege of Bergen op Zoom, Haytham showed disgust when Braddock has a family killed all because a father called him craven. During the Seven Years' War, Braddock oversees the annihilation of countless Native American tribes and French camps, and ignores an offering of truce before ordering his men to slaughter them. He would later leave his men to die while trying to escape an ambush led by Haytham.
Video Games
- Project Legacy/Brotherhood:
- Il Carnefice (''The Executioner") is an executioner in the service of the Borgias who expresses brutality and enthusiasm in his work. Given a list of people to execute by Fiora Cavazza, he tells her a sick joke that she is on the execution list, leaving her horrified; since Il Carnefice is illiterate, he doesn't go over the list and just executes who he wants, regardless of guilt or innocence, displaying the chopped body parts of his numerous victims to the crowds. He would also rape an innocent women before hanging her, and sends his men to kill her grieving husband when he tries to remove her corpse from Il Carnefice's noose.
- Brotherhood novelization, by Oliver Bowden: Cesare Borgia is the sadistic son of Rodrigo Borgia, who manages to surpass him in wicked ambition. After Cesare kills his brother to take his position as Captain General of the Papal Armies, Rome runs rampant with murder, slave trading, and chaos under his watch while he plans to expand his tyranny over all of Italy. Hearing about Rodrigo's defeat by Ezio Auditore, Cesare attacks Monteriggioni, killing hundreds, including Ezio's uncle. Cesare also forces Ezio's friend, Leonardo da Vinci, to build him destructive weapons, which Cesare uses to conquer regions throughout Italy, killing thousands. Cesare later murders his own father before brutalizing his sister to learn about the Apple's whereabouts. Arrested for his crimes, Cesare later kills his most loyal ally after he breaks him out of prison, before commanding a king's army to lay siege to Viana.
- Freedom Cry: Pierre, Marquis de Fayet, the Governor of Port au Prince, has the slaves on territories he rules over subjected to an extremely brutal system of oppression. When the Maroons end up freeing large amounts of slaves, de Fayet orders the slave ships about to be captured to be sunk with the slaves still on board, condemning them to drown while chained up. He then has slaves lined up to be tortured with a branding iron for information, shooting them when they don't comply. When Adéwalé finally has de Fayet at his blade's edge, de Fayet claims that blacks are less than human and he can do with them as he wishes.
- Syndicate: Tobias Jeffers note is a leatherworker responsible for disappearance of several people of Fleet Street. After killing his victims, he sends their flesh to a bakery as meat for pies, grounds their bones into manure, which he sends to a florist shop, and uses their skin as a leather for his products. His most recent victim is Detective Murphy, who was investigating the disappearances; Tobias uses his skin to make a handbag. After deliveryman George become suspicious about the nature of products he was delivering, Jeffers kills him to avoid begin caught. Confronted about his crimes, he gleefully admits them.
- Origins:
- Flavius Metellus, known as The Lion, is the leader of the Order of the Ancients. A ruthless Roman warmonger who manipulates Cleopatra and Julius Caesar into delusions of grandeur, he also has Bayek accidentally kill his own son. Masterminding a conspiracy of murder, Flavius kills Bayek's best friend to take the Apple of Eden before using it to dominating the minds of the people of Egypt, forcing innocents to massacre each other, burn themselves alive or worship him to the exclusion of all else to feed his megalomania, all while styling himself a God proving himself a monstrous predecessor to the worst of the Templar order.
- Man Beast side quest: The Embalmer is an aristocrat of Krokodilopolis who has numerous men, women, and children in the city kidnapped and arranged to be Eaten Alive by crocodiles; there are dozens of body parts found throughout the waters of his secret hideout. He would hold private spectacles for his wealthy acquaintances to watch as the crocodiles devour them, while his prisoners watch and listen to their screams, terrified that they themselves will meet this horrific fate.
- Odyssey:
- Chrysis is a priestess of Hera who forbade medical treatment in Argolis, believing it to be sacrilege. She has also kidnapped the Eagle Bearer's younger sibling and turned him and numerous others into human weapons for the Cult of Kosmos by torturing them when they were infants. Chrysis would have a fellow priest's tongue ripped out and ordered a landlord to kill her own son, Dolops, when they witness Chrysis kidnapping the children. When confronted by the Eagle Bearer, Chrysis has the house with a baby inside burned, forcing the Eagle Bearer to choose between saving the baby and chasing Chrysis; should the Eagle Bearer chose the former, Chrysis would later ambush the Eagle Bearer, killing an innocent man along the way.
- Legacy of the First Blade DLC: Pactyas the Huntsman leads the Order of Hunters to pursue Darius, killing his wife and children, with only one surviving. Tracking Darius and his remaining child in Makedonia, Pactyas would massacre numerous villages there, including ordering one's water supply poisoned, and would brainwash wolves to attack people with the Isu bloodline. Learning about the Eagle Bearer's whereabouts in Makedonia, Pactyas would gather soldiers whom the Eagle Bearer had killed, displaying the corpses hanging from a tree to manipulate their family members into attacking the Eagle Bearer; should the Eagle Bearer refuse to kill said family members, Pactyas would kill them himself. Battling the Eagle Bearer, Pactyas would use psychological torment to break them before attempting to kill them.
- Novelization, by Gordon Doherty:
- The Monger is a Korinthian crime boss and a member of the Cult of Kosmos. A sadistic brute of a man, the Monger tortures his victims by melting off their flesh piece-by-piece with a hot iron poker before killing them; the only known person who managed to survive his torture lost both of her eyes. Inside the Cave of Gaia, the Monger tortures a man hired by Cult for blundering his task and then kills him by sawing off his head. In order to find a hideout of Anthousa, the leader of Korinthian hetairai, the Monger tortures a group of prisoners one by one. When the last of them refuses to betray Anthousa, the Monger throws him into a molten cauldron. Managing to capture Kassandra and Brasidas, the Monger declares he will hang Brasidas by the ankles and dip his head in the molten pool, and torture Kassandra until she join the Cult, before burning her thigh with a poker.
- Silanos is the Archon of Paros and a member of the Cult of Cosmos. Wanting to capture Myrrine, Kassandra's mother and the archon of Naxos, Silanos had put the island of Naxos under a naval blockade, with his ships destroying any Naxian ship that tries to break through the blockade. Managing to capture the Naxian Navarchos Euneas, Silanos has him tortured for months by beating, starving, and Flaying Alive. Following an unsuccessful attempt of the Myrinne's last ship to break through, Silanos has his archers shoot at drowning sailors. Silanos personally cuts a captured sailor, and then has him tied to a moving ship and thrown into the sea so sharks would be attracted by his wounds. When Kassandra and Myrinne attack him to break through, he orders his men to take both alive, and tie other survivors to lead ingots and throw them into the sea with ropes long enough they could reach air with fingers but not with their mouths.
- Valhalla's Dawn of Ragnarok DLC:
- Surtr of Muspelheim was a Isu warlord whose fiery wrath brought ruin across the nine realms. Marrying Sinmara for mutual power, Surtr led a campaign of genocide and death, slaughtering the elven realms, butchering countless millions, and enslaving the dwarves of Svartalfheim to work to death. Kidnapping Baldr to get at Odin, Surtr cares nothing for his own family, horrifically abusing his own children and plotting to drown the realms in blood to rule them forever.
- Sinmara is the wife of Surtr and proves to be just as monstrously sadistic as him. Serving as Surtr's right-hand woman, Sinmara would lead Surtr's army to invade Svartalfheim, massacring countless innocence before killing Frigg in front of her lover Odin and imprisoning their son Baldr, who she would torture to death by force feeding Baldr mistletoe. Sinmara would also oversee the enslavement of the dwarves for Surtr, having them work themselves to death and torturing those into compliance, while creating puppet soldiers from the Muspels slain by her enemies or by her own experimentation on them to keep the populace in line. When Odin discovers Baldr's corpse, Sinmara brags about Baldr's suffering before killing her own stepdaughter, Eysa, and killing off several of her own soldiers when battling Odin for the final time.
Other Media
- Trial by Fire: William Stoughton, a member of the Templar Order, is the orchestrator of the Salem Witch Trials, using the hysteria to convince the masses of people into eradicating the Assassin Brotherhood. Because of his machinations, at least 20 innocent people were documented to be executed via hanging, and the undocumented deaths were a result of Stoughton's tortuous experiments where the victims had succumbed to their wounds, all because of his belief that one of them happens to be a Piece of Eden called the oracle. When he learns that fellow Assassin Tom Stoddard and Jennifer Querry know about the oracle's whereabouts he captures them, tortures them for the information, and later shoots the latter In the Back. When Stoughton eventually discovers the oracle's identity, Dorothy Osborne, he sets a fire to kill Tom while admitting to torture Dorothy as well as more innocents so he can copy her powers onto other people creating more oracles; this shocks fellow Templar Samuel Parris. This cause a guilt-ridden Dorothy to throw herself into the fire, which enrages Stoughton only because he had just lost his oracle and will have to start his search all over again. While strangling Tom, he promises to burn entire colonies to the ground during his search for another oracle.
