[English] ASSASSIN'S CREED SPECTRE (1530 - 1545 AD)

16th century. Diego de Almagro and the brothers Hernando and Francisco Pizarro command the Spanish troops during the conquest of Peru. Along their unstoppable march, the Pizarros and Almagro submit the different peoples of the Inca Empire by iron and fire.

Our story begins with Anka de Nerja, Aguilar de Nerja’s grandson. Anka is a mestizo: half Inca, half Spanish.

As Aguilar himself, Anka’s father Alonso de Nerja was a Master Assassin. However, when Anka was still a child, the Templar Inquisition annihilated Spanish Assassin Brotherhood. Anka’s father never returned home, and his mother would soon die of smallpox. Alone and helpless, Anka would become a child of the streets. Ten years later, already an adult, Anka has turned into a mercenary of dubious morality.

Francisco Pizarro, the Templar.

Anka spends the little gold he earns at the taverns of the Spanish settlements in the Caribbean. He dreams of nothing but more gold, more wine, and more women. But his dissolute life is hard to finance. Desperate for a real salary, Anca gets a contract to serve the wealthy Pizarro family.
 

The Pizarros are one of the most influential families belonging to the Order of the Knights Templar. Their most ambitious member, Francisco Pizarro, is determined to find Viracocha’s armor, a precursor artifact of great power hidden at the legendary Isu city of El Dorado.

As a mercenary serving the Templars, Anka fights against the Incas during the conquest of Cuzco. However, he gets severely injured in the battle and is taken prisoner by a group of Inca warriors.

Anca doesn’t get to see how Francisco Pizarro finally submits Cuzco. The conquistador makes Emperor Atahualpa his prisoner. Pizarro wants Atahualpa to reveal the location of El Dorado. However, the Emperor keeps the secret as all his ancestors have.

Jaguar-like Assassin outfit

Days later, Anka wakes up at the monumental city of Vilcabamba, secret home of the Inca Assassin Brotherhood. It was precisely Alonso de Nerja, Anka’s father, who brought the Assassin’s Creed to the Inca lands. The Creed blended perfectly with the doctrine of the Inca Cult of Supay, god of death and the invisible. For centuries, the so-called Spectres of Supay have protected the city of El Dorado, or Paititi, as they call it, from the greed and cruelty of those in power.

Alonso de Nerja died protecting the Incas from the first Spanish/Templar raids. Now, Urubamba, the old and wise master of the Spectres/Assassins, initiates Anka in the Creed: through an ayahuasca vision, Anka manages to forgive his father’s absence and embraces his Assassin lineage.

Now, Anka is a member of the Spectres of Supay. Anka wears a jaguar-pelt armor and wields the serrated swords and maces of the Specters. He carries his father’s hidden blade, which in turn belonged to Aguilar.

It is time for Anka to help the different peoples of the Empire to fight Pizarro and Almagro’s armies back.

Three years pass while Anka liberates the Incan regions as an apprentice Assassin. During this time, Pizarro has kept Emperor Atahualpa prisoner. But Atahualpa will not reveal the location of El Dorado. Sick of lies and deceptions, Pizarro orders Atahualpa’s execution and installs seventeen-year-old Manco Inca as the new Inca Emperor. The Templars expect Manco Inca to be but a puppet, but the new Emperor secretly plans a rebellion.

During one of his nocturnal raids, Anka gets to fight Diego de Almagro II, Almagro’s young and ambitious son. Diego wins the fight, and Anka gets imprisoned in Cuzco's dungeons. However, Anka is secretly liberated by Cura Olcollo, the astonishingly beautiful new wife of the Emperor.

Cura knows of the existence of the Spectres and asks Anka for help: Manco Inca must be freed from the Templars’ vigilance so that he can reunite his warriors and initiate his revolt.

Machu Picchu, Assassin fortress.

Anka escorts Cura and Manco out of Cuzco, and so the rebellion begins. Manco's rebels surround Cuzco, while his general Quizo Yupanqui attacks Lima.

The Incas are successful initially: they manage to take back a great part of their territories. The Assassins turn the hidden Machu Picchu into a fortress where they allocate refugees and train an army.

But the power of the Templars has no match: Manco's rebellion is brutally suffocated by new troops coming from Spain. What is more, the Pizarro brothers get to control the whole Peru: Hernando Pizarro humiliates and executes Diego de Almagro, Francisco Pizarro’s companion. Now, the Pizarro family alone controls the whole Inca Empire.

Machu Picchu is sieged, and the rebels must flee to Vilcabamba, the secret home of the Spectres/Assassins. Everything seems to be lost: despite Atahualpa's silence, Francisco Pizarro’s spies find the precursor site of El Dorado and Viracocha’s armor. Francisco Pizarro is now invincible.
  
Pizarro attacks and sacks Vilcabamba. Manco Inca and Anka de Nerja manage to escape, but Francisco Pizarro executes Manco's wife, Cura Olcollo. Now the Spectres have no sanctuary and are prosecuted by the Spaniards.

Before the Incas and Tiahuanaco, before all humans in America...
there were the Precursors.

However, the actions of the Pizarro family are to be punished. Diego de Almagro II, son of the old governor Almagro, lost everything when his father was betrayed by the Pizarros. He seeks to avenge his father’s death, so he offers to help the Assassins reach Francisco Pizarro. This is the opportunity Anka was looking for. Disguised as a Spanish conqueror, he infiltrates Pizarro’s palace in Lima. His loyal Spectres and Diego de Almagro II follow him.

Francisco Pizarro wakes up surrounded by Assassins. He manages to kill two of them, but while he’s struggling to get Viracocha’s breastplate on, he gets stabbed in the throat by Anka. Francisco falls to the floor, makes a Templar cross with his own blood, and begs pardon to the Father of Understanding for having failed.

Pre Columbian ruins, a lost city of the Isu.

Anka returns Viracocha’s armor to El Dorado, where he contacts the Precursors and has a vision concerning the future of the New World: the Incan Empire is already lost. The last Incas will assemble again, fight, and die, in Vilcabamba.


But there’s still much to do: during the next three centuries, the Spectres will help fight slavery and colonial abuse of power. Spectres will spread north and south teaching the Assassin’s Creed to the native peoples and welcoming new branches of their continental brothers. Ah Tabai, future leader of the Mayan Assassin Brotherhood in Central America and mentor of the great Edward Kenway, is actually a descendant of Anka de Nerja.

The story of Anka de Nerja is the story of the rise of the Assassin’s Creed in the Americas.

Thank you for reading. If you liked it, please, leave a comment in the comment section or just share the Assassin's Creed Spectre project in your social networks. But please, remember to credit my writing: I am Guillermo Lance, a Spanish teacher and writer, and a great Assassin's Creed fan.

Gmail: guillermolance.write@gmail.com
Twitter: @GuillermoLance_
Instagram: @GuillermoLance_

See you in the Animus!