What's your stance on what-if-character-x-was-evil AUs? Asking because when Kassandra showed up before Layla in the flesh my brain went "...and she clearly works for Abstergo."

While I admit I didn’t think Kassandra would be part of Abstergo when I saw her appear at the end of Odyssey’s main game, I do think it would be fun to think about how she would have ended up as a member of Abstergo.

Also, what idea we can throw into the wall into how she would have ended up as part of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order? XD

Hell. I know the Inner Sanctum is the highest members of the Templar Order but I kinda like the idea that Kassandra would be above them, sorta like the true Grand Master and shadow head of the Templar Order.

That would have been a fun twist to explore…

Although, in terms of Odyssey the game, it would have been a twist ending that would have polarized the players and the DLCs have to work hard to make that twist believable.

In fanworks and AU ideas? Go wild, everyone.

Now, let’s talk in a more general way about how we can implement ‘what-if-character-x-was-evil’ AU ideas in Assassin’s Creed:

The easiest way to do this is to make their backstory different (for example: (1) when Desmond left the Farm, Vidic found him early on and became a father figure that manipulated him into hating the Assassins or (2) Al Mualim’s indoctrination of Altaïr dug deeper than it did in AC1 and he grew up completely loyal to Al Mualim to the point of joining the Templar Order himself with his ‘father’ or (3) Arno is raised by Bellec himself so he’s absolutely one hundred percent a willing accomplice to all of Bellec’s plans and hates the Templars for killing his father to the point that he doesn’t believe the Assassins and Templars can co-exist)

A fun way to do this is to corrupt the characters themselves. This could end in two different main categories:

They are corrupted by the POE and this could be (1) full-blown ‘power corrupts even the best of us’ type or (2) 'I will do these unforgivable sins because the alternative pushed by the Calculations will bring about a fate worse than death to the world and those I care about, this is my sin to bear alone' route. (3) There's also a combination of (1) and (2) that I like to call the N-route of "Have I not suffered enough? Do I not deserve my own happiness even if it means the suffering of others?!".

This one is my favorite because I love fucking with Desmond using the Bleeding Effect: it is not the characters who become corrupted but their digital avatar in the Animus. Either because Abstergo skimmed on QA or this is truly a bug in the Animus that they didn’t think would happen because all that reading of the POE’s corruptive powers messed with the Animus itself and that corrupted versions of the Assassins? That’s the one that appears in the Bleeding Effect. Just imagine Desmond having corrupted versions of his ancestors whispering to him, slowly driving him mad all the while giving him the attention and kindness he didn’t receive as a child. And Desmond would be weak to their whispers because he believes he knows them, had relived their lives… and the corrupted versions know they need Desmond on their side.