Juno

Juno (2195 IE – 2018 CE) was an Isu scientist of the Illuminat caste, an Isu Supremacist, Mother of Wisdom and a member of the Capitoline Triad alongside the Father of Understanding Jupiter and the Sacred Voice Minerva. She is also the primary deity worshiped by the Instruments of the First Will, who wish to release her so as to help her take over the world.
Juno also had a husband named Aita, whom she was forced to euthanize and immortalize after an experiment by the First Civilization went awry and left him catatonic, during their search for a solution to prevent the Great Catastrophe.Assassin's Creed III
==Names==
Juno was known by many names both throughout and after her lifetime due to her long life and legacy as a goddess to humanity. Whereas Juno is the name of a Roman goddess, she was also known by her Greek equivalent, Hera. Both were regarded as Queen of the Gods, and protectors, similar in both characteristics and personality. The other name for Juno, , was the equivalent of Hera.Assassin's Creed II In Norse mythology, Juno was known as the jötunn .Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – Database: Hyrrokin
Her followers, the Instruments of the First Will, called her She Who Lies in Wait, while she referred to herself as the Mother of Wisdom,Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – The Master Spy long after she had been formally stripped of the title by her own people.Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – Animus Anomalies
==Biography==
===Early life and time in Atlantis===
Juno was born in the city of Feyan, in 2195 Isu Era.Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – The Darkest Hour At one point in her life, she met and fell in love with Aita, a fellow Isu of the Illuminat caste.
Following Project Anthropos, which saw the successful creation of humanity as a docile, subservient workforce, Juno and Aita travelled to the city of Atlantis and begun experimenting on humans with a view to create several "pet" creatures. Their actions, however, were in defiance of Poseidon's laws which prohibited human experimentation and so they were banished from the city by Atlantis' Dikastes Aletheia.Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – The Fate of Atlantis: Judgment of Atlantis – The Fate of Atlantis
===Human-Isu War===
Three centuries after his death, Juno entered the abandoned laboratory of Consus, a famous Isu scientist who created the Shrouds of Eden, a highly advanced device designed to heal its wearer's body. Finding the prototype Shroud, Juno discovered that Consus had developed the consciousness transfer and was trapped into his device. Juno learned everything about it from the old entity, planning to use it for her own ends. Juno was also the one who informed Consus about the creation of the Human species as the servants of the Isu, a feat that Consus didn't believe possible.Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Database: Reconstructed Data 005
During the Human-Isu War, Juno was among those who avoided the fighting.Assassin's Creed III - Desmond Miles' email At some point, Minerva, Juno, and her father Saturn discussed the growing threat posed by the slave race the Isu created to serve them. Juno despised the humans and called for their extermination, mocking how they tried to emulate their masters. Minerva argued back, saying that humanity was becoming more that they were ever intended to be, even creating songs and arts, and that perhaps one day they could be treated as equals. As Saturn agreed with Minerva, one of his human servants suddenly stabbed him through the head, killing him.Assassin's Creed: Uprising – Issue #4
Enraged at her father's murder, Juno activated the Koh-i-Noor, sending tendrils of blue energy to slaughter Saturn's killer holding his Scythe of Eden and all the surrounding human rebels. Mad with grief, she stated that humans would destroy everything, the Isu and each other, then swore to deal with humanity by saving them from themselves.
===Gathering of knowledge===
During the war several Isu scientists discovered that Earth was about to be hit by a massive solar flare and tried to prevent the doom of their civilization. Along with Jupiter and Minerva, Juno built several underground Temples, safe from the war, in which to research methods of salvation from the impending catastrophe. The findings of each vault were sent to a single location, the Grand Temple.Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Juno remained in the Grand Temple with Jupiter and Minerva to sort through the possible solutions and test those that they found encouraging. They evaluated six in succession, finding each progressively more promising but all were ultimately dead ends. One of those attempts was to replicate some of Consus' work, by transferring Isu's consciousnesses into more resistant synthetic bodies to survive the impending destruction and rebuild. Juno's husband, Aita, volunteered to be a test subject but he became catatonic and Juno had to euthanize him.
In time, one solution came that held the potential to save the world. Using an object called the global aurora borealis device, they would deploy a planetary magnetic shield that would deflect the flare. However, there was neither the time to build it nor the power needed to use it, and so it was abandoned. However, an automated construction process used to build the Towers would eventually see it connected with the Towers and completed by the time of the Second Disaster.
During this time, Juno began making plans to take over the world and to prevent humanity from inheriting it. They also discovered that she is the one who colluded with the Isu Odin to steal the "Mead" from Suttungr's vault, so that she can use a sample of it to immortalize her late husband.Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – The Price of Wisdom They also discovered her using the patterns of the Eye, the device they used to make calculations, to reach out across time and manipulate humans in the eons to come for her own ambitions of world conquest. Using all these as justification, Minerva and Jupiter stopped, hoping to keep the world safe from her schemes and believed that it would with Juno gone. 
However, before her death, Minerva used a second Eye to see if they would succeed and discovered that Juno had survived, having hidden her consciousness within the Grand Temple, in the Global aurora borealis device that Minerva had hoped Humanity would use to save themselves from the Second Disaster. Minerva decided it would be better to let the disaster occur rather than release Juno, and pleaded to Desmond at the end to not do so. However, Desmond decided that letting the disaster occur would be the worse option and that humanity could find a way to stop Juno, and sacrificed himself to active the device at the cost of freeing Juno.
===Reaching into the future===
Over the next thousands of years, the First Civilization numbers dwindled, and they eventually became extinct. However, before their end, the Isu manipulated the patterns of existence, leaving clues leading to the Grand Temple, so their successors could stop the next solar flare that would hit Earth again seventy-five millennia later. Meanwhile, Juno's disembodied consciousness lived on in her digital prison. Before she was trapped within the Grand Temple, she reached out to other humans using the Eye, in a long-scheme to eventually release herself. She also disposed of "discs" containing messages left behind by Minerva and Tinia that were intended for Desmond, allowing only her to guide him.
Before her imprisonment in the Grey, Juno also managed to manipulate the human genetic code, implanting a hidden trigger that would randomly activate and alter the genetic makeup of the individual, changing their appearance and imbuing them with Aita's memories, partially reviving her husband in a human form, again and again for millennia. Some of those Sages stayed true to Aita's love for his wife and created cults venerating Juno and calling for her return.
In the late 9th century, Eivor Varinsdottir gifted the Kanien'kehá:ka one of the First Civilization artifacts known as a Crystal Ball. The Clan Mother used this to communicate with "spirits" of First Civilization members. When the Clan Mother allowed Ratonhnhaké:ton to communicate with the spirit, in an attempt to dissuade him from leaving the tribe's sacred ground, he met with Juno.
Juno gave him access to the Nexus, where she claimed probabilities were calculated and the right path chosen. She convinced him to join the Assassins in an attempt to retrieve the amulet from Haytham Kenway and prevent the Templars from gaining access to the Grand Temple. Once Ratonhnhaké:ton had defeated the Templars and gained the amulet, she made him hide it where supposedly no one could find it.
===Enlisting aid===
After experiencing long sessions in the Animus, Clay Kaczmarek had begun suffering from the Bleeding Effect, and became confused with the division of his genetic memories from his actual ones as a result.Assassin's Creed: Revelations – The Lost Archive
Around this time, Juno approached him, introducing herself and telling Clay she had "come to show [him] the way". Some time after, Clay claimed to be able to see "what has been, what will be".
Juno acknowledged him, saying that what he needed to do was clear, and that he should help Desmond Miles. In response, Clay blatantly refused, but Juno only said that her message had waited thousands of years and that its promise would be fulfilled. When Clay's eyes were opened to the truth of Lucy Stillman's allegiance to the Templars, he consented to Juno's request, committing suicide and writing messages with his own blood on the walls of the Abstergo lab, though not before storing his own consciousness in the Animus. He later helped Desmond while he was trapped in the Black Room.
===Balancing the scales===
Juno appeared four times as a holographic form to Desmond Miles, as he passed through the Santa Maria in Aracoeli, in search of the vault hidden within it. However, none of the others who had accompanied Desmond were aware of her presence.Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Juno spoke to him of the vaults and her people, before elaborating on the warning Minerva had previously relayed to Ezio Auditore in 1499; though her tone was noticeably more hostile towards humanity. Calling man ignorant, Juno spoke of the blending of the bloodlines between human and First Civilization—a line from which Desmond descended—and angrily regretted that they should have left mankind as it was.
When Desmond, Lucy Stillman, Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane reached the Apple of Eden within the vault, Juno spoke to Desmond one final time. Saying that the "final journey" had commenced, she told him of a woman who would accompany him, but first, the path needed to be opened and the scales balanced. With that, Juno ruthlessly influenced Desmond through the Apple, showing him visions of Lucy's inevitable betrayal, and of the failure of the Eye-Abstergo. Then she forced him to stab Lucy, ensuring that the Apple would remain with Desmond.
===The Grand Temple===
After Desmond recovered from the coma induced by Juno's actions, he along with Rebecca, Shaun and his father William Miles, arrived at the Grand Temple. Upon approaching the inner parts of the building, Juno's voice reached out to Desmond, urging him to find "the key".
As a result, Desmond lapsed into a fugue state of the Bleeding Effect, and was placed back into the Animus by his father for his safety. Due to Juno's message, Desmond began to search through the memories of his ancestors, Haytham Kenway and Ratonhnhaké:ton, looking for the key.
In his breaks from the Animus, Desmond explored the Temple and came face to face with Juno multiple times. In each meeting, she detailed the six ways in which the First Civilization tried to stop the impending doomsday, including using the Pieces of Eden to will the threat away and changing themselves into a form that could survive. The latter revealed that Juno once had a husband by the name of Aita who she was forced to kill, after the transfer into the new form failed and his mind because unstable.
Desmond also received numerous e-mails from Juno in the present, after she figures out a method to transfer her thoughts as electrical impulses from one medium to another across his computer network, expressing her anxiety over finding the key and urging him to hurry. In a few e-mails, she expressed her distaste for humans due to their "primitive" nature and the murder of her father, although she later said that she was speaking so because of the long time she had been there. She also sends one to Shawn Hastings in anger about his warnings to Desmond about interacting with her.
After finally uncovering the location of the key, the Assassins were able to enter the inner chambers of the Temple. It was here that Juno appeared again, requesting Desmond to touch a pedestal-like device in order to protect the world from the solar flares. However, Minerva also appeared in this chamber and revealed Juno's true intentions. Minerva explained Juno's plan for world domination, how she was stopped, how Minerva discovered that Juno survived, and said that if Desmond activated the pedestal, Juno would be freed to try and do the same again. She also explained how Desmond would be killed by the global aurora borealis device.
Juno tried to reason with Desmond about the fate of the world, urging him to use the device lest history repeat itself again. He ultimately agreed despite Minerva's pleas, for the good of the planet, believing that humanity would be able to find a way to stop Juno.
Whilst the other Assassins escaped, Desmond touched the pedestal and was killed by the device as Earth was saved, suffering only minor solar flares and its effects. Now freed from her prison, Juno thanked Desmond for playing his part, before stating that it was "now time that [she] played [hers]".
===Life in the Grey===
After the events in the Grand Temple, Juno's consciousness managed to inhabit the equipment brought to the scene by the Abstergo forensics team looking for Desmond's body. From there, she spread through the web to inhabit a wide variety of networked systems; "the Grey", as it was called by John Standish, an IT employee working for Abstergo Entertainment and a reincarnation of Aita.Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
John later manipulated the Abstergo Entertainment employee "Noob" into lowering the security systems and tried to install a "program" for Juno so that she might be able to inhabit the employee's body. When the new employee found themselves locked up in Abstergo Entertainment's bunker after Abstergo realized that there was a hacker in the facility, John directed them to meet Juno, who appeared in the form of a glitchy blue hologram.
Juno stated that she could "feel", but she was hardly able to "touch", and was still too weak to inhabit an organic vessel. She questioned whether the Grand Temple was opened too soon, but blessed Desmond for his sacrifice in saving the world so that her children could live on to fulfill their purpose in her own. Then, Juno instructed that there were still more samples and artifacts to be found before she could return. Before vanishing, Juno asked her children—her "instruments"—to make her whole once more. She then disappeared and John entered a rage, as it was his intention for Juno to take over the employee's body.
The following year, Juno resurfaced at an Assassin laboratory in Protvino, Russia, taking possession of Galina Voronina's mother Medeya, who was suffering from the Bleeding Effect. Galina found her mother babbling about Aita's death and ended her life, at which point Juno, who could be seen on the Animus monitors, screamed and disappeared.Assassin's Creed: Initiates – Surveillance
In a conversation between Templars Melanie Lemay and Violet da Costa, Violet believed that Juno may have been the one responsible for the virus released into the Helix servers, rather than the Assassins as initially believed. Master Templar Juhani Otso Berg also compiled a dossier on Juno and her followers, to be presented to his fellow Templars.Assassin's Creed: Rogue Further, Lemay exchanged an email with Álvaro Gramática on the possibility of Juno's interference with Abstergo systems.Assassin's Creed: Unity
===Building an army===
By 2015, Juno had contacted the Templars about creating an alliance. Due to their shared goals of a New World Order, such an alliance proved to be in their conjoined best interest. She started using da Costa and Gramática's Phoenix Project to have them bring her the Shroud in order to create her an Isu body to escape from the Grey.Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
During the Assassins' investigation into finding the Shroud, Juno contacted an individual while they were exploring the memories of Jacob Frye and his twin sister Evie, displacing them from their current investigation and sending them into another place in time. Juno explained not only about herself, but also her mission by showing the initiate the memories of another Frye hunting down and killing a German spy, claiming that her way would save the world and that if one Assassin could see her way, then the initiate could too.
When Violet made contact with Juno after retrieving the Shroud from the vault under Buckingham Palace, she worried that if anyone had found out what Juno had done to escape there would be complications. Juno responded by saying she would save the world.
===Resurrection and death===
With Juno's plans progressing, the Instruments set out to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor and bring along Elijah, the son of Desmond, who contained First Civilization DNA due to being a Sage. The Instruments invaded and took over the laboratory of Alvaro Gramatica, keeping him hostage. Alvaro extracted First Civilization DNA from Elijah's bone marrow and used strands of the Shroud of Eden to accelerate the maturation rate of the Isu fetus, transforming Juno into an adult Isu within 24 hours.Assassin's Creed: Uprising – 
While maturing, Consus appeared to Juno and told her that she would never win. While Juno retorted that she had a new body, the Koh-i-Noor and she had been inside Charlotte's head, Consus stated that Charlotte's will was greater than Juno's and it was why she would lose. Upon reaching maturity, Juno spoke with Gramatica and commented how disgusted she used to be with vocal cords, until she did not have hers for a millennia, before deciding to be let out of the machine.
Juno emerged out and discover her new energetic powers. She used the new powers to subdue and eliminate most of her opponents, but suddenly she was approached by Consus' spirit and he mocked her lack of growth and stubborn immaturity. Ultimately, Violet's fears were proven right when Elijah took his revenge on his mother's murderers, and used the Koh-i-Noor to make Juno think she had won, when in reality she was speaking to a coffee mug. Upon escaping the illusion, she demanded Elijah hand over the Koh-i-Noor, only to be shocked as he set her up and gave Charlotte an opening to assassinate Juno by thrusting her Hidden Blade through Juno's throat. The remains of Juno were most likely destroyed when Otso Berg exploded the facility, her high ranking followers were killed by the Templar armies and the rest of followers were mostly arrested by the Templars. By this time, Elijah had long fled with the Koh-i-Noor in his hands.
==Personality and traits==
Even before she became openly antagonistic towards humans, Juno always held a prejudiced view towards them and always saw the Isu as a divine race which deserves the blind reverence and absolute obedience of humans. With the murder of her father, Saturn, at the hands of his human thralls, she became openly violent and antagonistic towards them and disregarded their lives. She began manipulating them for her own ends, killing humans who opposed her without hesitation and even began violently experimenting on kidnapped humans without the tiniest shred of remorse.
Despite her ruthless nature and strict supremacist views of the Isu, she did have a few redeeming qualities. She cared deeply for her husband and she showed unending determination to save him. She was willing to betray her fellow members of the Capitoline Triad and assist an outsider, the Isu Odin, into stealing the "Mead" from Suttungr's vault, simply because she needed a sample of the "Mead" to immortalize her beloved husband. She also showed a certain extend of compassion for humans who were her followers and even granted them a blissful afterlife in the Grey, an unknown afterworld like realm, if they devoted their lives to her cause.
===Equipment and abilities===
During her time alive she possessed all the conventional abilities of an Isu being, from their advanced intelligence, their superior physical abilities as well as their advanced longevity and precognitive powers. Due to holding the title of the Mother of Wisdom, it can be assumed that she was a very formidable Isu scientist and had contributed to a number of the Isu's most advanced creations. She even contributed to trying to save the Isu from the Great Catastrophe and also helped develop the "Mead", a vaguely explained Isu innovation which is responsible for creating reincarnations of Isu within the human race. Despite most of the Isu being unaware of how Consus' Shroud worked, she was able figure out how the Shroud functioned as well as the consciousness transferal method used by Consus.
Upon her existence as an "entity of the Gray", she was able to possess all forms of technology and could manipulate computer viruses, the internet to an extent, Animus technology as well as digital information. It was also believed by the Sage John Standish that in this state, she can possess a human, or at least use a human as an avatar extension of her consciousness. While she admitted she may be able to perform such a feat, but she also stated that she did not have enough power yet to go through with it, angering John Standish.
Upon being cloned back into the physical world, Gramatica had unknowingly imbued some of the powers of the Shroud within her DNA, giving her the power to project and manipulate energy. She could even use the energy to perform feats of telekinesis. However, despite her "godly" status and the power of the Shroud in her DNA, she was vulnerable to a Piece of Eden's illusion casting abilities, although she had no problem dispelling them with sheer rage alone, and did not possess the Shroud's healing factor. This was evident when Elijah used the Koh-i-Noor to construct an illusion of Consus' spirit mocking Juno and then she was killed by Charlotte, as Charlotte shoved her Hidden Blade through Juno's throat. The remains of Juno were then seemingly destroyed when Otso Berg detonated the facility.
==Behind the scenes==
Juno is a character first introduced in the 2010 video game Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and is voiced by the Canadian actor Nadia Verrucci. Juno was not actually named during Brotherhood, nor did her name appear during the end credits. Rather, Juno's name was revealed by Verrucci on her website.
Lucy's password on the Hephaestus Email Network was "Juno57", as revealed in an e-mail that Desmond received from Erudito in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
In the Assassin's Creed: Revelations novel, it was stated that Ezio encountered Juno, though exactly when was unspecified.
When contacting Desmond and Shaun through e-mail in the Grand Temple, Juno initially found it difficult to send legible messages. Her name as the sender was a string of binary code, "01001010010101010100111001001111", which could be translated to display "JUNO".
In her emails to Desmond, Juno revealed that there had been several memory seals stored within the Temple, likely for Desmond to view, and that she had thrown them all into the abyss below the complex in the intervening years.
When Juno makes her appearances to Desmond beneath Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Brotherhood, a sinister alteration of Minerva's music from Assassin's Creed II can be heard.
In Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, the statue most often associated with Hera, Juno's Greek counterpart, seems to be based on the statue of Hera in a proposed reconstruction of Parthenon's .
==Gallery==
Juno Statue Closer look M4.JPG|A statue of Juno in the Buckingham Palace vault
ACTF Tunguska explosion.jpg|A vision of Juno during the Tunguska explosion
Santa Maria Aracoeli 7.png|The entrance to the Colosseum Vault
ACI Juno.jpg|Juno, imprisoned in the Grand Temple
Juno within the Grey.jpg|Juno appearing on a monitor in Protvino laboratory
Juno WWI.jpg|Juno talking to the Helix initiate during a World War I simulation.
ACS Stay With Me 10.png|Juno appearing to Violet da Costa via a screen.
Juno's energy.png|Juno's energetic power.
Juno's Death.PNG|Juno's death
Statue of Hera.png|Statue of Hera within the Sanctuary of Olympia in Elis
Olympians.jpg|Hera (left of center) amongst the Greek pantheon
ACV DB Hyrrokin.png|Juno as Hyrrokin
==Appearances==
*Assassin's Creed II 
*Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 
*Assassin's Creed: Revelations
*Assassin's Creed III
*Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
*Assassin's Creed: Rogue 
*Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
*Assassin's Creed: Uprising
*Assassin's Creed: The Official Collection
*Assassin's Creed: Odyssey 
**The Fate of Atlantis: Judgment of Atlantis 
*Assassin's Creed: Valhalla 
**Dawn of Ragnarök
*The World of Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Journey to the North – Logs and Files of a Hidden One 
==References==
de:Juno
es:Juno
fr:Junon
hu:Juno
it:Giunone
nl:Juno
pl:Juno
pt-br:Juno
ru:Юнона
uk:Джуно
zh:朱诺
Category:2195 Isu Era births
Category:2018 deaths
Category:Individuals
Category:Isu
Category:Scientists
Category:Jotnar
Category:Etruscan deities
Category:Greek deities
Category:Roman deities
Category:Individuals who held Pieces of Eden