Warning: Violence and spoilers!
Edward Kenway is ever closer to finding the Khmer Kingdom, the lost city of the first civilization, but not without the Shimazu clan hot on his tail. With every puzzle piece added to his collection, more enemies seem to surface who are also searching for the fabled treasure. Meanwhile, Nao Kim, still being held hostage by Sei Shimazu and the Templars, finds out his ancestors aren’t so cutthroat as Sei had made them out to be. It’s time to make a deal even a pirate could uphold in this next volume of Assassin’s Creed: Forgotten Temple.
A Puzzle Wrapped in Leather
Edward was hard-pressed to locate Hendrik’s journal that recounted his journey to the lost city. Once Hendrik was killed, the journal had been moved out of a bank vault and suspiciously landed in the hands of Macau’s most powerful trading company’s boss, Madam Lee. Kenway was on the move, shadowing one of her many warehouses when, suddenly, ninjas from earlier tracked down the same place, torching it in hopes of drawing out Lee and the journal.
Honor Amongst Thieves
Madam Lee, the leading mogul of commerce in the city of Macau, and Shimazu Saito of the Shimazu clan, and Sei Shimazu’s ancestors. The real question is, why did Kenway refer to the Shimazu ninjas as Wokou pirates? Did he want Lee not to suspect that they, too, were after the treasure, or that they were in league with the Templars who were trying to keep her in check? Perhaps it’s his way of keeping her in the dark because he himself doesn’t have all the answers, particularly as to what their involvement is yet. So far, he’s only managed to convince her that he is not with them, nor are they part of the Assassin’s guild. They’re a separate entity whose strings are being pulled to pull Lee’s strings as well. With her believing him, she ends up becoming a powerful ally against the real common enemy, the Templars.
A Quick History Lesson
The veil over Nao’s eyes about the evil Assassins is slowly unraveling. Sei had been trying to convince Nao that the Assassins guild was nothing more than a bunch of demented thugs who, throughout history, wanted nothing more than chaos and destruction over the Templars’ quest for order. But, with every mission Edward accomplishes, Nao notices how he conducts himself during said missions: sparing lives, putting out fires, as well as the good he provides for the village he’s been hiding out in. Honestly, it didn’t really take too much convincing: Sei being a Templar herself, and she being the one who orchestrated Nao’s kidnapping in the first place, it’s pretty easy to figure out who the real bad guys are by now.
A Wolf Among Us
Kenway made a deal with Madam Lee to get the other trading companies in Macau off her back so that she could, in turn, help him take on the Shimazu clan. His intel uncovered a secret meeting between the Far East Company, Hualian Trading and the Dutch East India Company, all converging on a big business proposal brought by Alan Jacob, the trader who first approached Lee to join their company alliance, and a suspected Templar knight. The clear choice had to have been Jacob, but his blatant stance on corporate greed rather than subjugating the world didn’t immediately make him out to be the prime candidate just yet. Either way, their motives were clear, take out Madam Lee, take complete control of Macau, and further supplant Templar rule, starting by buying off the Dutch navy, which allowed them to attack Lee’s merchant shops and ships in the nearby docks by pirates.
Two Fronts, One Assassin
Madam Lee wanted to save her Macau shops. Still, Kenway chose to stop the pirate attacks at the docks, not just because saving lives was a much higher priority than saving profits, but because he knew he needed information on what the trading companies’ next moves were. He figured if he forced one of the pirate captains to surrender, he could squeeze them at least to find out who hired them. The captain Kenway managed to “persuade” and gave up Master Sun, the Haulian Trading boss, who, in turn, hired other pirates as well, including the Wokou, the Japanese pirates that have been giving both Kenway and Lee a major headache. Next stop, Malacca.
Final Thoughts
We’re not so sure the Templars are even after Kendrik’s journal, nor the lost city of the first civilization. A mysterious item was brought forth at the secret trade meeting that coaxed the traders to increase their attacks on Lee, but it didn’t really reveal the Templar’s true motives. The Shimazu clan claims to be part of the Templar order, but the only member revealing themselves as a Templar is Sei. Her personal goal stemming from the previous volume is to regain her family’s honor, but is she truly acting on Templar commands, or is she acting on her own?
Okay, we get it, the Templars are a very powerful order. We didn’t know that they could just flat out buy off the Dutch navy. ARC needs to bone up on their nautical terms. “Swivel to the left!” Don’t you mean “hard to port”? A little bit of research can go a long way to really sell a story. Lastly, if you’re going to post Wanted Dead or Alive posters around town, maybe adding the reward amount makes it a little more enticing to go after a person of interest, especially an assassin.
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