Templar Rite

A Templar Rite, otherwise known as a Rite of the Templar Order and collectively known as the Outer Temple of the Templar Order, is a regional, usually country-specific branch of the Templars and collectively a separate governing structure from the Inner Sanctum, the Outer Temple has no given access to the entire plan of the Order. As the Order spread across the globe, Rites were established in virtually every country. All Rites are led by a single Grand Master or, in the absence of one, a Master Templar.Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide – Chapter 5 
The regional administration of a Rite mirrors that of its counterpart in the Assassin Order, with Rite leaders being the supreme authority of the branch and overseeing all of the Rite's activities from a main headquarters, while their subordinates typically operate in an assigned district or administrative division. These subordinates are directly answerable to the Rite's leader and oversee the Templar facilities in their assigned district to ensure the Order can efficiently maintain control over the local population. Over the centuries, these facilities have varied from towers, dens taken from the Assassins, gang headquarters, and even public and military offices.
Since at least the 17th century, following the creation of the Inner Sanctum and the Council of Elders, the entire collective of Rites became the Outer Temple and were not given access to the complete plans of the Templar Order going forward. With the creation of the Black Cross, their service in the Outer Temple shifted to combating corruption and searching for Pieces of Eden while securing the Inner Sanctum's plans and maintaining the Order's integrityAssassin's Creed: Templars by enforcing the Templar principles within the various Rites' governing structures.
==Structure==
===Authority===
A Grand Master controls a specific geographic region and their Rite is named after it. Under their leadership was the ability to appoint a Lieutenant as their second-in-command,Assassin's Creed: Unity (novel) – 5 October 1789Assassin's Creed: Unity – A Cautious Alliance as well as promote any Templar serving under them through the Order's ranks, up to and including the position of Master Templar. In the absence of a Grand Master, a Master Templar holds the authority to oversee a Rite as its de facto leader on behalf of another Rite's Grand Master.
Despite holding the highest attainable rank within their Rite, a Grand Master is not all-powerful and is dependent on the support of their fellow Templars and other Rites around the world. Nevertheless, their duties are essential to the proper functioning of the Templar Order as a whole, so Grand Masters may elect to have bodyguards to protect them at all times, as were the cases with Frederick Weatherall for the de la Serre family, and El Tiburón for Laureano de Torres y Ayala.Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag With the Grand Master themselves being the ruling authority for their own Rite's plans, all members required their superior's approval to enact any changes.Assassin's Creed II – Birds of a FeatherAssassin's Creed III – The Braddock Expedition (memory)
====Districts====
During the Renaissance, the local influence of the Roman Rite in the were mainly through the Houses of Nobility, such as House of Pazzi in Florence and House of Barbarigo in Venice, the latter House being charge of Venice's San Polo district, and later ruling with a of Venice with access to the Arsenal and the Rite had several Templar lairs with their wealth.Assassin's Creed II The House of Borgia, in the city of Rome, having taken control of the Vatican Papal , the Rite established Borgia towers that were fortified Guard towers and overseen by a Borgia captain, who effectively ruled over the surrounding district. Within the districts of Rome, there were Lair of Romulus lead by Followers of Romulus, more Lairs with wealth,Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood a Crows headquarter with their own Borgia captain,Assassin's Creed: Identity several Templar agents operatingAssassin's Creed: Project Legacy and areas were various war machines were developed.
In the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Templars that returned to Constantinople fought the Ottoman Assassins for control of the latter's dens and, by the 1510s, managed to capture most of them, allowing them to rule over the districts each den was situated in.Assassin's Creed: Revelations – A Warm Welcome
During the Seven Years' War, the Colonial Assassins had established gang headquarters that were also bureaus, these had an Assassin gang leader that was a bureau leader, in charge of their own district. Once these were taken over by the Colonial Rite, they became the local headquarters of the Colonial Rite and the British Empire and were managed by the Assassin-turned-Templar, Shay Cormac, using taxes to renovate neglected infrastructure.Assassin's Creed: Rogue – The Color of Right And began taking over forts from the French Empire in the River ValleyAssassin's Creed: Rogue – Circumstances and the Atlantic OceanAssassin's Creed: Rogue to secure of their region,Assassin's Creed: Rogue – The Storm Fortress for local farmers to prosper. Additionally, Shay also created a fleet under his command and served as its treasurer, while also using his Templar flagship, the Morrigan, to maintain local control of the areas at sea.Assassin's Creed: Rogue – BravadoAssassin's Creed: Rogue – Cold Fire In all these local areas across the region, Shay also intercepted assassinations by the Colonial Assassins
Assassin's Creed: Rogue – Assassin Interception (Scott Lawson)Assassin's Creed: Rogue – Assassin Interception (Randall Gordon)Assassin's Creed: Rogue – Assassin Interception (Philippe Beaubien)
During the American Revolution, the Colonial Rite had reorganised the local management of the region on land and sea that was established by Master Templar Shay Cormac. In Boston and New York City, the local districts were reorganised to three districts, thereby also centralising districts, decentralising to local leaders and relocating the former six headquarters taken over in New York by Shay while handing over the leadership to six local Templars combined, with three in each separate city, leading a district of their own.Assassin's Creed III – Hoarding ProvisionsAssassin's Creed III – Gangs of Boston And local control of the coastal areas was handed to the Templar Nicholas Biddle, their Captain of the Continental Navy, using his flagship, theUSS Randolph.Assassin's Creed III – Biddle's Hideout And with other Templar agents being assigned to various campaigns across the colonies,Assassin's Creed III – Contracts (Colonial Brotherhood) with the Louisiana Templar, Officer Davidson being sent to assist in New York.Assassin's Creed III: Liberation – A Fool's Errand
During the mid-19th century in London during the Industrial Revolution, the British Rite had established gang headquarters in all seven of London's major boroughs, each lead by a Templar gang leader. From their gang, the Blighters, wereAssassin's Creed: Syndicate – Gang War (Whitechapel) used to protect the Templar industries such as Starrick Industries and its subsidiaries to other corporations it collaborated with and engaged inAssassin's Creed: Syndicate gang wars to maintain their local control and by 1868 had managed to reduce their gang opposition to a handful of Clinkers remain in Whitechapel.
==History==
The establishment of a Templar Rite varies from region to region. The oldest organized Templar branch is the British Rite, which was founded around 878 CE by King Alfred of Wessex following the destruction of the Order of the Ancients. Seeking to reform the Order into an organization that more closely followed his Christian beliefs, Alfred slowly built it up over the next several years by recruiting members from all walks of life and of all religions, who were united by a common desire to seek the betterment of humanity through the establishment of a New World Order.Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – The Poor Fellow-Soldier
While Alfred's new Order adopted the name of the Templars by the late 10th century and spread its influence across Europe,Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – Layla Hassan's personal files: "Session Report: SHastings" it is unknown at which exact moment in time the individual Rites began to take shape. During the public era of the organization between the 12th and 14th centuries, the Templars took advantage of the Crusades to spread their reach to Asia, beginning with the Levant, where the Levantine Rite was established by the late 12th century.Assassin's Creed
Posing as a knightly order with headquarters in both Jerusalem and on Cyprus,Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines the Levantine Rite secretly comprised both Crusaders and Saracens and was led by a Grand Master, whose primary goal was acquiring an Apple of Eden that would allow the Templars to realize their vision of a New World Order by brainwashing all of humanity. However, their efforts were opposed by the Levantine Assassins, eventually resulting in the Order losing their influence in the Levant by the early 13th century.Assassin's Creed: Revelations
In 1241, the Mongolian Rite was established by Möngke Khan, future ruler of the Mongol Empire, after he learned about and came to embrace the Templar ideals thanks to a knight captured during the Battle of Legnica. After Möngke became Great Khan of the Mongol Empire a decade later, he began recruiting members of the imperial guard, the Kheshigs, into the Mongolian Rite.Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Tomb of the Khan
When the Templars were driven underground following their public persecution in the early 14th century,Assassin's Creed: Unity – The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay Rites became the main organizatory form of the Order as it continued to conduct its operations in secret. The Renaissance period saw the rise of numerous country-specific Rites, most prominently the Roman Rite in Italy led by the House of Borgia, and the Byzantine Rite in the Byzantine and later the Ottoman Empire. However, in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the Roman Rite became corrupted by the actions of two of its Grand Masters, Rodrigo Borgia and his son Cesare, who were more interested in accumlating power than furthering the Templar cause; this caused future generations of Templars to look down on the Borgia's rule over the Roman Rite, regarding it as the "Dark Age of the Order".Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia During the liberation of Rome by the Italian Assassins in the early 1500s, Ezio Auditore destroyed all twelve Borgia towers scattered around Rome and assassinated its captains, severely weakening the Templars' control over the city.
Meanwhile, the Byzantine Rite was met with a streak of defeats, beginning with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, which forced the Templars to abandon the city and establish a secret base of operations in Derinkuyu, Cappadocia. Following the Roman Rite's defeat by the Italian Assassins in the early 16th century, the Byzantine Templars became the foremost Rite in Europe and plotted to restore their former power, but faced opposition from both the Ottoman Assassins and Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the Mentor of the Italian Brotherhood, culminating in the Byzantine Rite's destruction by 1512 and Ezio helped the Ottoman Assassins reclaim all of their lost dens, effectively forcing the Byzantine Templars out of the city once more.
In the mid-16th century, a number of European Templars, including Francis Xavier, Alessandro Valignano, Gaspar Vilela and others, took an interest in the largely unexplored regions of the world, primarily Japan. Posing as Jesuit missionaries, these Templars cultivated alliances with the local warlords and clans and used them to spread the Templar ideology in the country, laying the foundations of the Japanese Rite.Assassin's Creed: Memories
In the late 17th century, the West Indies Rite was established by Laureano de Torres y Ayala, a Spanish Templar and Governor of Cuba, who had been tasked by the Council of Elders to locate the Observatory, an Isu surveillance facility hidden in the Caribbean.Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Mister Walpole, I Presume? Over the course of nearly five decades, Torres recruited numerous allies to help him in his search, as well as restore order to the Caribbean amidst the Golden Age of Piracy. However, their efforts were undone in the early 18th century by the West Indies Assassins, in particular Edward Kenway, who eliminated most of the West Indies Rite's high-ranking members,Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag leading to the branch's collapse by 1722.Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Ever a Splinter
The mid-18th century saw the formation of two new Templar Rites: the Louisiana Rite and the Colonial Rite. The former was established in the 1750s by Madeleine de L'Isle at the behest of the Parisian Rite,Assassin's Creed: Rogue – War Letters: "Audition" and was the main Templar branch operating in southern North America, primarily in New Orleans and Chichen Itza, where Madeleine had set up an excavation to locate an Isu artifact known as the Prophecy Disk. However, this Rite would be completely dismantled by 1777 through the actions of the Louisianan Assassin Aveline de Grandpré, Madeleine's stepdaughter.Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Meanwhile, the Colonial Rite was established over the course of multiple years, beginning in 1738, when Lawrence Washington was sent to the Thirteen Colonies by Reginald Birch, Grand Master of the British Rite, to locate the fabled Grand Temple.Assassin's Creed: Rogue – War Letters: "Lawrence of America" By the 1750s, Washington had recruited numerous allies, many of whom were inducted into the Templar Order, including Christopher Gist, William Johnson, Samuel Smith and James Wardrop, and laid the foundations of a Templar network in the New World, though he came no closer to his main objective of finding the Grand Temple.Assassin's Creed: Rogue – War Letters: "Monro"
Following Washington's assassination by the Colonial Assassins in 1752, Wardrop replaced him as de facto leader of the Templars in the Thirteen ColoniesAssassin's Creed: Rogue – We the People while Birch assigned the task of the Grand Temple's discovery to Haytham Kenway.Assassin's Creed III – A Deadly Performance Arriving in the colonies in 1754, Haytham continued Washington and Wardrop's work and officially founded the Colonial Rite as its first Grand Master,Assassin's Creed III leading it for almost three decades, until his death in 1781 at the hands of his Assassin son, Ratonhnhaké:ton.Assassin's Creed III – Lee's Last Stand Shortly after Haytham's death, the Colonial Rite collapsed due to Ratonhnhaké:ton's actions, though it would reform itself several years later as the American Rite, continuing to operate in the newly-established United States.Assassin's Creed: Unity novel
==Known Rites==
*Algerian RiteAssassin's Creed: Revelations – Mediterranean Defense
*American Rite (formerly known as the Colonial Rite)
*Austrian RiteAssassin's Creed: The Engine of History – The Magus Conspiracy
*British Rite
*Canadian RiteAssassin's Creed: Revelations – Discover Your Legacy
*Chinese Rite (also known as the Shanghai Rite)Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
*Egyptian RiteAssassin's Creed – The Hawk Trilogy
*German RiteAssassin's Creed: Conspiracies
*Greek Rite
*Japanese Rite
*Levantine Rite (also known as the Knights Templar)
*Libyian Rite
*Mexican RiteAssassin's Creed comic
*Mongolian Rite
*Parisian RiteAssassin's Creed: Unity
*Portuguese Rite
*Roman Rite
*Russian RiteAssassin's Creed: The Fall
*Spanish RiteAssassin's Creed film
*Swedish RiteAssassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods
*Tunisian Rite
*West Indies Rite (also known as the Caribbean Rite)
===Former Rites===
*Byzantine Rite
*Louisiana Rite (also known as the Templar Order of New Orleans)
==Trivia==
*Although the Templars' predecessors, the Order of the Ancients, also maintained multiple regional branches, it is unknown if these branches were called Rites or if another term was used.
==References==
Category:Templar Order
Category:Templar Rites
Category:Abstergo Industries