on one hand it doesn't seem super realistic he'd sit on that for centuries, on the other hand I don't know if I want it to be this public fact about him

it's not even the worst background he could have! Plenty of Summoned have killed plenty of people, but he doesn't love the idea of Professional Killer attached to him like nbd. Especially since he's become aware that other people define "assassin" very different from him

(he's still very snitty about that)

diana just gets outed as a god the whole time, altair's is much more complicated

He definitely thinks so!

I'm probably gonna say it's not public that he was An Assassin but probably more people are aware that the mapmaker thing was bullshit and he was a dangerous man in his homeland. Just leaving the pseudo cult out of it.

I honestly went through this with the Targaryen thing -- I think this sounds like a pretty good compromise for Altaïr. "Dangerous" but not in what specific way.

(Jon just is not getting the Targaryen reveal through this event. I don't ever want to do it unless it has a cool dramatic payoff. The ingredients for that aren't there right now.)

detectivefiction: ty, I will def go with that. And yeah totally makes sense to not jump on the Targ thing for this plot.