Salem witch trials

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft, in Massachusetts, British America, during the period between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people.
==History==
In February 1692, a young girl, Dorothy Osborne, inexplicably became sick in Salem with an illness no one could explain, having extremely disturbing symptoms. This situation attracted the attention of the Templar Samuel Parris, who believed that the illness was maybe the result of exposure to an unidentified Piece of Eden. For unknown reasons, Parris then pushed his daughter and niece to fake having the same seizures, which started a mass hysteria in the town as other women also became "ill". The Puritan Church declared that the illness was the work of the Devil and witches. Neighbors began accusing each other of witchcraft and people were arrested and tortured, often for something as futile as a wrong look on someone else.
In June, another Templar William Stoughton was appointed as the chief magistrate of the court tasked with judging the individuals accused of being witches. On 10 June, the Assassin Tom Stoddard, who had just arrived in Salem, witnessed the execution of Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the witch trials and the Templars. With Jennifer Querry, a nurse and Assassin present in Salem to gather information on the situation, Stoddard infiltrated the place where the Templar kept the people accused of practicing witchcraft, to discover if one of them had a clue on the location of the Piece of Eden. The two Assassins found the prisoners and Dorothy, who told them that she knew where the artifact was, but they later discovered that there was no artifact and that the young girl was the one with special psychic abilities.
Unfortunately, the arrival of Stoddard had been forseen by the Templars, who planned to use his legendary skills as an artifact hunter, by letting him find the artifact before taking it from him. Stoughton then used the mass hysteria he created with Parris to counter the Assassins, by sending a crowd after Stoddard, by branding him as the Devil in flesh and telling the populace to bring the man back to him.
They eventually caught up to the Assassins in a swamp and Stoughton later tortured the Assassins for information and threatened to hurt the mute boy David, secretly Querry's son. The worried Querry then offered to give them information when Consus once again possessed Dorothy, much to the glee of Stoughton. After he killed Querry who was trying to escape, the Templar threatened Stoddard and revealed that he was planning to experiment on the captured women to create more oracles.
However, Dorothy, hearing Stoughton's words and overcome with guilt, killed herself in the fire. The enraged Stoughton tried to kill Stoddard, blaming him for the loss of his oracle and ranted on that he will find another, even if he would try every woman in the colonies as a witch. Before he could kill the Assassin, his fellow Templar Samuel Parris interfered and shot Stoughton in the shoulder. Parris then freed David and Stoddard as he clearly objected to Stoughton's ways of violence.
==Gallery==
Salem witch trials.jpg|An 1876 illustration of a court proceeding during the trials
==References==
*Assassin's Creed (Titan Comics)
zh:塞勒姆审巫案
Category:Timeline
Category:Templar conspiracies
Category:Assassin-Templar War