The Assassin's Creed media franchise, which primarily consists of a series of open-world action-adventure stealth video games published by Ubisoft, features an extensive cast of characters in its historical fiction and science fiction-based narratives. The series also encompasses a wide variety of media outside of video games, including novels, comic books, board games, animated films, a live-action film, and an upcoming Netflix television series. The series features original characters intertwined with real-world historical events and figures, and is centered on a fictional millennia-old struggle for peace between the Assassin Brotherhood, inspired by the real-life Order of Assassins, who fight for peace and free will and embody the concept of chaos; and the Templar Order, inspired by the real-life Knights Templar, who desire peace through control over all of humanity, and embody the concept of order. A convention established by the first game involves the player experiencing the lives of these characters as part of a simulation played by a protagonist from the modern day, using technology known as the Animus developed by Abstergo Industries, a corporate front of the Templar Order in the modern era.