The Dark Ages gave way to age of reason and invention. Artist such as Leonardo DaVinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Jan van Eyck created masterpieces while writers and philosophers like Niccolo Machiavelli, Eramus, and William Shakespeare wrote about extraordinary people, creatures and places. For many in the "hidden" universe, the Renaissance was an ideal time to be extraordinary! World leaders like Elizabeth I and the Medicis promoted those with powers and talents, and their adventures becomes the stories that wowed and inspired ordinary folk.
1500: Ezio Auditore travels to Rome once again to defeat Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo and to liberate Rome from the corrupt influence of the Borgia.
April 22, 1509: Henry VIII becomes king of England. By the time of his death, he would have six wives and three children.
1518: Connor MacLeod is born in Scotland.
1519: Two Spanish idiots arrive in Guatemala ahead of Hernán Cortés. They discover El Dorado, the City of Gold, and trick the natives into thinking they are gods.
1532: Esteban, a young boy raised at Barcelona Cathedral, embarks on a voyage to the New World, having learned that the medallion he wears around his neck is connected to the seven Cities of Gold, one of which is in the Americas. He and an Inca girl named Zia, who wears an identical medallion, subsequently discover that their destiny is inextricably linked to the Cities.
1535: English sailor Christopher Walker, the son of the ship's captain, is the only survivor of an attack by the Singh Brotherhood pirates off the coast of Bengala. He is rescued by the native Bandar tribe, and nursed back to health, and soon after finds the body of his father's killer washed up on the beach. On the skull of his father's murderer, Walker swears the solemn "Oath of the Skull", vowing to eradicate injustice and piracy wherever he finds it, and dons the mask of the first Phantom.
1536: Connor MacLeod is slain by the Kurgan but revives as an immortal. He is banished by the fearful people of his hometown.
January 28, 1547: King Henry VIII dies, and his son, Edward, is named king. Some say that Edward VI was actually a look-a-like peasant boy named Tom Canty, while Edward would roam England.
February 20, 1547: Tom Canty and Edward VI reunite at the coronation, and everything is put right.
September 13–27, 1567: The siege of Inabayama Castle, the final battle in Oda Nobunaga's campaign to conquer Mino Province, began; it culminated in a decisive victory for Nobunaga.