Assassin's Creed Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Assassin's Creed Wiki

Callum "Cal" Lynch (born 1979) is a modern day member of the Assassin Brotherhood and a descendant of the 15th century Spanish Assassin Aguilar de Nerha as well as the 18th-century French-Austrian Assassin Arno Dorian.[2]

In 2016, as the last surviving member of de Nerha's bloodline, Callum was sought out by Abstergo as part of a Templar plot to locate a specific Apple of Eden wielded by de Nerha. Captured and interred in their Madrid facility, Callum was forced into the new Animus 4.3 to relive his ancestors memories. After months at their mercy, Callum and a handful of other Assassins would escape from the Madrid facility and would later go on to retrieve the Apple from the Templars at their Grand Hall in London and assassinate the CEO of Abstergo Industries, Alan Rikkin, landing a heavy blow to the organization.

Biography[]

Early years[]

Callum Lynch was born to Joseph and Mary Lynch on 21 October 1979, both members of the Assassin Order, in Alcalde, New Mexico. At the age of seven, when the family lived in Baja California, Mexico, he returned home after a day of joyful bike-riding to find his mother dead at his father's hands. Joseph told him to run and Callum witnessed his father's subsequent capture by Templar agents led by Alan Rikkin. Growing up, Callum spent a lot of time in various foster homes and juvenile detention centers but managed to avoid both the Assassins and Templars, until his eventual arrest for the murder of a pimp.[3] He also used to shoplift Animus software with the intention of selling them to kids who had too much wealth.[4]

"Execution" and imprisonment[]

Callumandthepriest

Callum talking with Father Raymond

On 21 October 2016, on the date Lynch was to be publicly executed by the State of Texas, he was visited by a priest in his cell for last rites. Uninterested in the biblical philosophy, Callum instead requested the priest recite the poem "After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost, his mother's favorite. The guards then arrived and took him to the execution chamber, and after being injected with a powerful sedative, he later learned that is execution had been staged with the help of the Abstergo Foundation, a Templar run initiative led by Dr. Sofia Rikkin.[3]

Assassin's Creed (film) 01

Callum waking up after his apparent execution

Sofia Rikkin informed Callum that he had been brought to her facility in Madrid, Spain, in order to help Abstergo find the "cure to violence" inherently present in mankind—and more specifically, the numerous descendants of historical Assassins. In order to do so, he would need to locate an artifact known as the "Apple of Eden", which was last known to be in the possession of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha, a 15th century Spanish Assassin.[3]

Callum was hooked up the Animus and equipped with Aguilar's Hidden Blades, which had previously been retrieved from the dead Assassin's burial site. Inside the machine, he was forced to relive the genetic memories of his ancestor, before being suddenly pulled out. Whilst collapsed on the floor, Callum began to see images of Aguilar in the modern day.[3]

ACMovie Callum hallucinates

Callum 'encouters' Aguilar

The next day Callum was introduced to the wider population at the facility, including Moussa, a descendant of the 18th century Haitian Assassin Baptiste. During a confusing encounter for Callum, he learned that the Assassins had protected, and continued to protect, the Apple from the Templars. Upon returning to his cell, Callum was once again greeted by a vision of Aguilar, and this time engaged in combat with the vivid image. It was at this moment that his cell was entered by a multitude of guards on the insistent orders of Dr. Alan Rikkin, who was under pressure to locate the Apple in a timely fashion. Still under the effects of the Bleeding Effects, Callum began fighting them downing three before being restrained. Dragging him out, they stopped in front of the facility's head of security, McGowen. Callum suffered another episode when he started singing "Crazy" by Willie Nelson, imprinted in his subconscious from the day of his mother's apparent murder.[3]

This time, Callum's Animus session ended violently when he rapidly desynchronized from Aguilar, following the latter's Leap of Faith within the Animus. Any cerebral damage from the rapid desynchronization was quickly prevented by Sophia's medical team, though Callum was briefly forced into a wheelchair due to the onset of a temporary paralysis.[3]

Reunion[]

The next day, Callum was greeted by Sofia's father, Alan Rikkin, who in an attempt to coerce Callum into willingly entering the Animus, informed him that his father was also present at the facility. Alan correctly assumed that Callum, rather than wanting to come to terms with his past, wished to destroy it. Presented with his father's Hidden Blade, Callum confronted his father. Joseph informed Callum that his mother's death had been necessary in order to keep the Templars from placing her in the Animus and locating the Apple. Though Callum was unwilling to kill his father in cold blood, he promised to aid the Templars in locating the Apple, so that they might use it to destroy the Assassins in the modern day. Callum once more returned to the Animus, this time willingly, in order to locate the Apple through Aguilar's memories. This time he was confronted by McGowen, who gave Callum a brief history of the Assassins. McGowen admitted that while he is not an Assassin himself, he respected the Assassins' integrity and commitment to a cause, comparing Callum unfavorably against them.[3]

Assassin's Creed (film) 15

Callum in the Animus

Inside the Animus, Callum witnessed the betrayal of the Templars, when Aguilar's companion, Maria, was murdered by Ojeda in order to regain the Apple. As Aguilar, in the past, escaped his Templar pursuers, Callum remained fully synchronized enough the successfully perform a Leap of Faith. Landing forcefully on the ground, the Animus arm attached to Callum jerked violently and broke, though he remained connected long enough for those present to witness Aguilar handing the Apple to Christopher Columbus. Having successfully located the Apple in Columbus' tomb in the Seville Cathedral, Sofia and Alan Rikkin were forced to evacuate the facility due to a revolt led by Moussa and his fellow Assassin inmates.[3]

ACM Arno Dorian

Callum seeing his ancestors Arno Dorian from the French Revolution

Meanwhile, Callum remained connected to the Animus and was greeted by ghostly visions of several of his Assassin ancestors, from a number of historical periods, including not only Aguilar but Callum's mother and father too. Accepting his place among the Assassins, Callum resolved to escape the facility and retrieve the Apple. Together with Moussa, Nathan, Emir, and Lin, Callum fought his way out of the facility.[3]

Retrieving the Apple[]

ACMovie Callum assassinates Alan

Callum assassinating Alan

Despite the deaths of Nathan and Emir, the Assassins were successful in escaping the facility and tracking Rikkin to the Grand Templar Hall in London, where the Templar Order was meeting en masse to celebrate the retrieval of the Apple. Callum, Moussa, and Lin managed to infiltrate the meeting by breaking down their Hidden Blades into separate parts, before reconstructing them inside.[3]

Callum briefly confronted Sofia who, having become disillusioned with her father's priorities—eliminating the Assassins over eliminating violence in general—did nothing to prevent Callum from retrieving the Apple and killing her father. Escaping the Hall before the authorities arrived, Callum and his allies climbed the city buildings before performing a getaway Leap of Faith.[3]

Personality and traits[]

Affected by the death of his mother, Callum grew up with a disdain for violence against women. On one occasion he killed a pimp, although such an action would lead to his eventual arrest and death sentence. Callum also initially had no interest in the Assassins' fight and opposed them out of spite for his father.[3]

After several sessions in the Animus 4.3, Callum developed the Bleeding Effect and saw his ancestor Aguilar as a hallucinatory phantom. When Callum violently desycnhronized from an Animus session, he was left temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.[3]

Callum's opinion about his father and later, Assassins, changed after he confronted Joseph about Mary's death in which the latter explained that he did what he had to do to prevent the Templars from claiming Aguilar's Apple of Eden (though it was Mary who forced his hand due to his moment of weakness, the same reason he couldn't kill his son). Initially siding with Templars in the search for the Apple of Eden in question, Callum soon understood what Joseph truly felt at the time when relieving the moment his ancestor Aguilar was forced to watch Maria dying during the Templars' betrayal. This, coupled with meeting phantoms of his parents along with those of his parents who inducted him into the Assassins, he eventually embraced his lineage and continued his parents and fellow Assassins' battle against Templars.[3]

Equipment and skills[]

CallumLynchTeaserImage

Callum using a crossbow

As a child, Callum was a proficient BMX-rider and although failed to jump a nearly two-meter gap between shipping containers and dropping a little more than two-meters the boy was mostly unharmed continued riding without difficulty. During his imprisonment in the Huntsville Department of Criminal Justice, Lynch donned a white prison uniform (denoting his status as a death row inmate) which he wore until his faked execution and recruitment into the Abstergo Facility. At Abstergo, he wore something similar being a simple blue uniform with a white under-shirt. After his escape from the facility he wore more Assassin-appropriate robes which were completely black in color for stealth.[3]

Prior to his discovery by Abstergo, Callum was a skilled criminal, stealing Animus technology with the intent of selling it to wealthy kids.[4] Due to the Bleeding Effect, Callum learnt all of Aguilar's skills and abilites, even becoming fluent in Spanish. Lynch could fight efficiently with swords, crossbows and the standard bow. He also extremely proficient in blending and freerunning using those skills to infiltrate the Grand Templar Hall and assassinate Rikkin. His newly-equipped Hidden Blade could also pass undetected through security systems by being split up into multiple parts and reassembled after the checkpoint.[3]

Behind the scenes[]

Callum Lynch is a character created for the 2016 film Assassin's Creed, where he was portrayed as a child by Angus Brown, and as an adult by Michael Fassbender. Fassbender also portrays Lynch's ancestor Aguilar.

"Callum" is a masculine Gaelic name meaning "dove" in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, deriving from late Latin Columba (dove). This continues the trend of Assassin's Creed protagonists having avian-themed names. "Lynch" is a surname of English and Irish origin. In English, it is derived from the Norman-French de Lench and Kentish hlinc (hill), while in Irish it is derived from Ó Loingsigh (descendant of Loingseach), later Anglicized as "Lynch."

In the scene with the bulletin board showing Callum's family tree, the photograph of a young Callum has his name written as "Cal," with the "A" written as the Assassin insignia. Although Callum and his father share their surname with Victor Lynch, a British Templar present in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, it is unknown if they are actually related to him. Callum seems to share some of his ancestry with Sofia Rikkin, as one of his ancestors appearing through the Animus was an Assassin female who was a lookalike of Sofia. Besides Arno and Aguilar, Callum had Assassin ancestors who fought in the English Civil War, American Revolution, American Civil War, World War I and World War II.[4]

Appearances[]

References[]

  1. Assassin's Creed: Into the Animus
  2. "AymarMtl" (21 March, 2017). I am Aymar Azaizia, Head of Content for Assassin's Creed, Ask Me Anything!. Reddit. Retrieved on 23 March 2017. "Taranis-55": Maybe I'm cheating here by asking another question, but here goes. Would it be accurate to assume that Arno is one of Callum Lynch's ancestors, due to his presence in the initiation scene?
    "AymarMtl": :) Usually that's the moment I stand up, grab a pen and start drawing on a board. Simple version is, the more you get into your ancestor lineage, the broader it gets. After 10-20 generations chances are you and I have an ancestor in common :) So... :p"
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 Assassin's Creed film
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization – Chapter 23

Advertisement