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The Defeat of the Harmony

We don't know if the Harmony knew about the Hive, or the hundreds of civilizations they'd made extinct. It's possible they saw the Hive coming and prepared as best they could. One day the Harmony must have been at peace, and the next they faced one of the greatest threats the galaxy has ever seen. And to be honest, they did pretty well, all things considered. But then, as we'll see, the Hive weren't fully committed to the fight, and the Harmony... and, well, the Harmony had some special help.

Xivu Arath leads the initial wave of the Hive's assault on the Harmony and their ten worlds. We are told that she fights with strategies and discipline but is held at bay for fifty years. Strangely, it's not the Harmony's Sting superweapon that holds back the Hive's god of war. Instead it is the Harmony's "wishful bishops" who are able to fight Xivu Arath in the ascendant plane by obtaining power from "dragon-wishes." Consider that for a moment. Only four races that we know of at this point have ever made it to the ascendant plane: The worm gods, the Hive (by ingesting the worm gods' larvae), the Vex (because Savathûn tricked Crota into letting them in to Oryx's throne world), and, of course, the Darkness. That the Harmony's bishops were able to enter and fight the Hive there is extraordinary, which means these dragons the Harmony directed their wishes towards must be as well!

With Xivu Arath locked in a stalemate against the Harmony's fleets (and their dragon-wish powered bishops, and their Traveler infused blackhole superweapon) Savathûn move in. But, instead of attacking the Harmony, she and her followers somehow disguise themselves and trick their way onto one of the Harmony's worlds. And instead of spreading disease, or sabotaging the Harmony's defenses, Savathûn moves to study the Harmony's dragons in secret. She doesn't just take scans of them or some such things, she and her followers vivisect them! That is, they experiment on these dragons and cut them open and take them apart while they are still alive!

Vivisection today (in the real world) often requires special procedures to limit the amount of pain experiments cause. It often takes the approval of an entire ethical review before a study involving vivisection can even be started. It seems extremely unlikely that Savathûn and her people were so high minded... Interestingly, we're told that the Hive's worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn's actions, though not why they do so. The apparent joy shown by the Hive's worm gods at Savathûn's actions might have something to do with who or what the Harmony's dragons actually are...

And then, of course, there's Oryx. He and his Court hide and grow within the accretion disc of the Harmony's blackhole. Oryx leaves the traditional combat to Xivu Arath and instead terrorizes the Harmony's worlds by bombarding them with asteroids and comets. He also launches Seeders to grow his forces on the Harmony's worlds much like Crota grew his followers into a powerful fighting force capable of taking on the House of Devils in the Cosmodrome. I can't imagine that Oryx didn't also use his power to Take key members of the Harmony's defense and leadership, but we are not specifically told that he did.

We are told that this is not exactly a hard battle for the Hive. In fact, we are told that the Hive's campaign against the Harmony is merely routine. Yes, they were slowed by the Harmony for a time, but soon enough Xivu Arath and Oryx's forces emerge triumphant and Oryx and his Court tear down the Harmony's Gift Mast. Interestingly, Savathûn is only said to have achieved her secret purpose, but we are not told what that purpose was or if it helped her brother and sister defeat the Harmony. It could be that she helped weaken the Harmony's bishops with her experiments, but we just don't know.

Oryx, by his right as the most powerful of the Hive, divides up the Gift Mast and its Light. He claims he is being generous in only keeping 2/5ths of it for himself, but do the math and you'll see that even though he gives up more than he keeps, neither of his sisters will gain more from the Harmony's defeat individually than he does. In everything he does, Oryx always makes sure that he comes out ahead... and his sisters recognize it.

Soon, Savathûn takes her forces and departs from Oryx and Xivu Arath saying: "Siblings, listen, we must part ways a while, so that we may grow different." While her statement may seem straight forward, I can't imagine that Savathûn is telling the whole truth. Xivu Arath also leaves Oryx, saying: "King Oryx, you take up too much space, your power constrains too many choices. I must go away from you." I think she is being truthful. Xivu Arath's stated plan was to beat Oryx to the Gift Mast and she failed.

The Hive achieved victory over the Harmony, but it is the last of their victories we hear about in the Books of Sorrow, and one can't help but wonder if by going their separate ways the Hive as a whole was significantly weakened.

The Ahamkara

There is another, larger issue here though. That of the true identity of the Harmony's dragons. I think we have enough evidence to make a good guess at who these dragons were, and, if my guess is right, I think the presence of these dragons reveal something very sinister in Destiny's universe. Yeah... more sinister than a race of near immortals who's stated goal is to kill everything so they alone can survive.

First, here's my theory in full:

The Hive's worm gods are just one example of this type of creature in the Destiny universe. The Hive themselves stumbled upon the Harmony's dragons which they immediately recognized as being similar or the same as their worm gods. There is a third known set of these creatures in the Destiny universe: A group of wish granting dragons called the Ahamkara that appeared in Humanity's solar system after the arrival of the Traveler. I propose these three sets of creatures are part of the same vastly ancient race and that they ultimately working towards the same sinister end.

Now, lets break this down:

1. The Hive's worm gods and Harmony's dragons are the same type of creatures pursuing the same goals.

• Xivu Arath clearly recognizes the dragons as the same type of creature as her gods. She is offended by their "smug freedom" and wants them captured and locked away in cells. "Our gods should be ours alone." seems pretty clear cut.
• We soon see that these dragons were working with the Harmony against the Hive. The Harmony's dragons somehow grant the Harmony the ability to fight the Hive on the ascendant plane. As mentioned, this is unprecedented and unique out of all the Hive's wars in the Books of Sorrow.
• The Hive's worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn dissecting the dragons in secret instead of freaking out and demanding the Hive take immediate action to destroy them as they did when the Vex invaded Oryx's throne world. Perhaps this is because not even Oryx has managed to truly kill a worm god. He "killed" Akka to gain the secrets that allowed him to Take enemies, but we are later told that Akka is still somehow alive.

2. The Hive's worm gods are the same type of creatures as Humanity's Ahamkara.

We have several instances of a shared speech pattern between the Hive's worm gods and things said by the Ahamkara remains that Guardians have fashioned into powerful armor:

• In V: Needle and Worm, Sathona's worm familiar says "...listen closely, oh vengeance mine..."
• In VIII: Leviathan, Sathona, who has been listening to the whispers of her dead worm god familiar says: "Let us dive, oh sisters mine."
• In XII: Out of the Deep, a worm god speaking to Xivu Arath as the royal sisters chase Taox across Fundament says: "Reality is a fine flesh, oh generals ours. Let us feast of it."
• In the Kagoor card, Kagoor's worm says: "...this is the shape of joy, oh ruler mine."

Contrast this with Humanity's Ahamkara:

• They appeared on Venus at some point after the Traveler arrived. The Ishtar Collective, including Maya Sundaresh who might be the Exo Stranger, originally traveled to Venus to study the Ahamkara. It was only later that they found the Vex ruins.
• After the collapse, the Ahamkara were somehow still around. They were sought out for power and knowledge and for answers to questions no one had known to ask. Guardians sought them driven by hope, or vengeance, or despair. But the price of this knowledge was somehow too great and The City decided to make the Ahamkara extinct. We aren't told what the price was exactly, but kicking off a "Great Ahamkara Hunt" with the goal of making the creatures extinct must have meant the price was pretty darn high!
• In Ghost Fragment: Legends 3, we hear about the Great Ahamkara hunt. Except we get this disturbing bit at the end:

And thus the Ahamkara were made extinct, their call silenced, their solipsistic flattering erased, their great design - if it ever existed - broken.

Of this you can be assured, oh reader mine

• In Ghost Fragment: Warlock, we see a Warlock telling the story of how he accidentally sent a female Hunter chasing after an Ahamkara but telling her that there was no way she'd be able to kill one. He was showing off and was sure he'd sent her to her death. Apparently Ahamkara are quite powerful?
  
  More than that though, we see a chilling key phrase: He calls the Ahamkara "The dragon that made promises"! That is super huge! It links the Ahamkara which had previously been called "parasitic reptilian critters" to the concept of dragons and thus the Harmony and thus the Hive.
• Amusingly, if you were paying attention to the item descriptions, there is a Ahamkara Scale that is a hunter class item which has the description: "And that Warlock thought I couldn't do it. Hah!" :)
• The Ahamkara are also mentioned in relation the Osiris in that one of his flaws or slights was chasing after Ahamkara lore. They are also clearly, if indirectly, mentioned in the card Ocean of Storms 2:

The tunnels were geologic in nature, or had to be. That's what we thought until twelve hours into the second sub-lunar expedition, when we found the bones. A single long rib cage, the size of an aircraft fuselage.

The living creatures themselves, we found a hundred meters down. They might have been worms, if worms had scales and teeth and moved more quickly than a man could run.

This would seem to be a transcript or log perhaps from a Guardian just before the Hive and Crota killed thousands on the Moon. That long rib cage the size of an aircraft fuselage? We've seen something very similar! In the area where we have to kill Crota's crystal! It has a vaguely dragon-shaped skull and the bones of its body stretches along the right edge of the room? Is that the remains of an Ahamkara?!

Beyond these things, we have multiple examples of gear that various Guardians fashioned out of Ahamkara parts speaking to the Guardians in the same way that the worm gods often spoke to the Hive:

• Claws of Ahamkara: "Look at all this life, oh bearer mine. There is so much left to burn."
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps: "Plating the Ahamkara bones in silver helps to quiet the auditory hallucinations... oh bearer mine."
• Skull of Dire Ahamkara: "Reality is the finest flesh, oh bearer mine. And are you not... hungry?" (Almost word for word what the worm god said back on Fundament hundreds of thousands or millions of years before!)
• Young Ahamkara's Spine "Give me your arm, oh bearer mine. Let me help you fill the world with teeth."

We also have a couple of pieces of armor that don't directly speak as a worm god / Ahamkara but seem related nonetheless:

• Voidfang Vestments: "YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE" (This relates to Oryx's dream of himself and his father where he saw nothing but his teeth in the reflection of his father's goggles.)
• Long Tomorrow 9G: "Some of 'em survived. I know a fellow says he saw a wish dragon on Jupiter a ways back." (Again, linking the Ahamkara to the ideas of dragons that grant wishes!)

I love all these things because like with the weapons named after the Iron Lords, most of these have been around since Destiny's launch or were added in The Taken King and when linked together with all the other information paint a cool bit of backstory that is hard to uncover at first.

3. Despite being separated by thousands or millions of years, the Hive's worm gods / Harmony's wish dragons / Humanity's Ahamkara act very similar and are possibly pursuing the same goal:

• In all three cases, these creatures seem to put themselves in a position where they can make terrible, costly bargains in exchange for helping address other creatures' desires for hope, vengeance, or despair. That is, they grant wishes, but at a very high cost.
• In the Hive's case, their motives seem fairly clear. By having the Hive ingest their larvae, these worm gods grant the Hive near immortality and fantastic powers, but they also feed upon the destruction the Hive cause. And they don't just feed, their hunger expands faster than the destruction they consume so that ultimately the Hive are forced to implement a massive pyramid scheme of tribute that flows upward.
• In the Harmony's case, we don't learn anything about what they traded to their dragons in exchange for the power to hold the entire Hive in a 150 year deadlock, but it does seem that the Harmony only turned to their dragons in a time of despair.
• In Humanity's case, we are told directly that Guardians sought out the Ahamkara for the same reasons, but that the knowledge and power that the Ahamkara offered came at such high a price that The City eventually decided that they needed to be completely exterminated.
• It is an Ahamkara itself, it seems, that taunts at us over the results of The City's "Great Ahamkara Hunt." It seems to be suggesting that even being hunted down and killed by the Guardians did nothing to stop the Ahamkara's grand design. This would be consistent with Oryx's inability to kill Akka. Not only that, but we have evidence that at least one Ahamkara survived on Jupiter.

My best guess is that the Ahamkara are playing a similar long game to the one they sold to the Hive, but they are playing it better by playing all sides. They think that the Darkness will be victorious, but they themselves do not have the power or skills to oppose it. They fear allying themselves with a single race only to see some cataclysm or foe destroy that race and them along with it. So they spread themselves out all across the galaxy and seem to have been following closely on the heels of the Traveler. In each case we see the Ahamkara we also see that the Traveler either was nearby at the time (as with the Hive and Humanity) or had certainly been around at some point (as with the Harmony and their massive Gift Mast.)

Is there some other possibility? Could the Ahamkara be present all over the galaxy after some great war between Light and Darkness, and the Traveler in doing its space magic terraforming is accidentally waking them up? All except the Hive's worm gods who were trapped in Fundament's core?

It's clear we don't have the whole story regarding what went on with these Hive worm gods / Harmony Dragons / Humanity's Ahamkara, but I fully believe that they are actually a huge part of Destiny's past and will play a large role its future. I think that the Fallen, and Vex, and Cabal, and Hive, and Humans are merely pawns in a much bigger ongoing war between the Light and Darkness. Hopefully, with Destiny 2, we'll begin to see a bit more of that hidden war.

Oh, and there's one last weapon description that I think is very relevant to this whole discussion of the Ahamkara:

Cryptic Dragon:

Those who doubt the existence of dragons are always the first devoured.

Sources:
All over the Grimoire. Several are listed above. If you have questions just ask. (AKA: It'd take another hour or two just to properly link everything!)

First we see (Oryx's?) Hive restate their belief in the form of an open letter to the things they plan to kill. It's the same basic thing where they say that building safe spaces for cooperation is a fatal lie because the universe only offers two paths: Being ruthless or being extinct.

Next, we see Oryx musing a little about where he is now. How his Hive and Crota keep him and his worm sated with rich tribute. And how he is now using his power to learn more about the Deep. Oryx briefly wonders about his sisters and has come to suspect that they might be hiding secrets and power from him since they went their separate ways, but as is typical Oryx is fine with that because "the only meaningful relationship is the attempt to destroy." He also states that the Deep dosen't want everything to be the same, but rather it was strong life that can live forever. This seems to have a few logical flaws, like what happens when there are only two forms of life left, but Oryx seems committed to his way of thinking now...

Then, we see Oryx thinking about his past and about returning to Fundament. But he concludes there is no point because he knows what happened to everything on that gas giant. He became that world's ultimate descendant and learned the answer to the questions about the universe his people had been asking. We also see that Oryx is actually aware enough to know that he doesn't yet fully understand the natures of the Deep and the Traveler, but he does want to learn.

And finally, Oryx considers all he has done. He thinks of his goals as to become so closely associated with death that if the universe ends he will survive as a part of the nothingness the universe becomes. He also relates the Hive's philosophy in perhaps the most understandable terms yet:

Far better to have a savage universe with a happy end than a happy universe with no hope.

Oryx himself goes on to think through the process something would have to go through to defeat him. He reasons that someone would need to kill his echoes, defeat him in the material world, defeat his count, and then confront him in his throne world. He realizes that while he is vastly powerful, a lot of that power is now derived from the tribute flowing from his daughters, and Crota, and his court, and if all of those are defeated he would no longer be able to feed his worm god.

As cruel and destructive as Oryx is, he still acknowledges that if something is able to defeat his Hive and his court and his children and him then that thing deserves to win. As bad as Oryx is, he is at least honest about the whole thing.

We know he was honest when he wrote this final Book of Sorrow because if we track forward to the time of our Guardians we take this exact path to killing Oryx. We first killed Crota, then we eliminated the key players of Oryx's court (namely the Warpriest, then Golgoroth, then Oryx's daughters) and finally we cut Oryx off from the tribute of corrupted Light he has stored up. As Oryx said, if all these things were to happen, if he was to fail, then let him become wormfood. And so he did.

Of course, as all great villains, Oryx's isn't quite done. Even in defeat he is confident that whoever defeated him will ultimately be forced to carry on his work. He believes that no matter what happens, he, in the form of his ideas and his cruelty, will live on forever. And so far, we don't have much to prove him wrong!

But, just as Oryx came to an end, so too has our in depth look at the Books of Sorrow! We've come a long long way!

• We tracked the heroic exploits of the three brave sisters who should have been heirs to the Osmium Court.
  
• We watched as the Hive, a race of short lived krill people entangled themselves with a group of evil worm gods and used destruction to rise above the lives they had lived for millions of years.
  
• We watched as Oryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath laid waste to hundreds if not thousands of powerful civilizations.
  
• Here at the end, we've see that the Hive fractured as its three masters went their separate ways based on differences of ideology as raw destructive might.

We'll eventually revisit the Hive and their exploits as we explore their attempts to conquer Humanity and defeat the Guardians of The City. But first we have some new and exciting topics to cover, starting with:

I hope you'll join me as I attempt to trace a proud race as they are forced from the heights of their Golden Age down to becoming scavengers on the edge of extinction.

The Fallen are ruthless scavengers. Brutal and uncaring, they arrived on their massive Ketches in the wake of the Collapse to loot and pillage our devastated worlds.

There are hints of ancient nobility to the Fallen Houses - the scars of lost grandeur. The Kells of their scattered Houses still claim to be royalty. But they leave only grief and wreckage in their wake.

- The Fallen

By the time Destiny's story ends, it is clear that the Fallen have it the worst out of all the races we've met. Once the combined forces of the City and the Reef, not to mention the Vex, Hive, and Cabal, are done with the Fallen, it's fair to wonder how many of them are even left in our system and how many of their ancient Houses are still intact.

But this race of pirates and scavengers humanity derides as Fallen was once something much more. Though some of their people have come to embrace the term Fallen, they actually call themselves Eliksni much as we call ourselves humans or humanity. And once, long ago, the Eliksni, like us, were visited by the Traveler.

The image clears of dirt and dust as a hand wipes the lens clean. A figure holds the Ghost up, looking into the lens. Harsh light from an unfamiliar sun backlights the four-armed creature, making it impossible to see its face. Its massive head turns, and a clicking and chittering voice can be heard speaking to something off-screen. While the noises themselves are harsh, the tone and content seem almost gentle. A curious creature, not a violent or angry one.

The lens refocuses beyond the creature's head as it talks, and a startling landscape climbs to the horizon. It's a paradise. Carefully tended lakes and rivers, water everywhere, wind their way between fields of lush iridescent crops and into groves of starkly colored trees. Every inch of the land seems engineered, brushed by a sculptor's hand for form and function both.

The sky is a light pink, spotted with clouds and crowded with ships. Thick lanes of aerial traffic soar through the air, tightly managed and seemingly endless.

And beyond it all, above the clouds, hangs a perfect alabaster sphere. The image wobbles, shaking, flickering as if the Ghost is blinking. And the fragment ends.

- Mystery: The Vault of Glass

The first image we get of the Eliskni comes to us through the strange, time-bent perception of a Ghost within the Vex's Vault of Glass. This brief glimpse of an Eliksni world shows us that not only were they perhaps equals to Humanity in the height of our Golden Age, it's even possible that they were our betters! Their lanes of air traffic speaks to a civilization bustling with technological prowess, while their paradise of perfectly engineered lakes, rivers, farm lands, and forests suggests that perhaps they have already long past the age of expansion, colonization, and struggle Humanity was in before its Golden Age came crashing down.

Skolas, the eventual Fallen leader of the House of Wolves, had this to say about the Eliksni's Golden Age:

Remember the age before the Whirlwind, when ether ran free, when we ruled ourselves and our futures as kings. We wanted more than glimmer and glints and herealways.

- Ghost Fragment: Fallen 3

Unfortunately, while the Eliksni's Golden Age may have lasted a good deal longer than Humanity's, it did not last.

First, the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope. Judgment not
enough. Cannot keep Wolves from Kings, Scar from Winter. Fell to fighting. Fell to hate.

Judgment gone. Others slaughtered, slain. Death and docking. "Keep Eliksni together," lost to pride and rage.

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

Found the Light. Too bright in Darkness to hide.

- Variks, The Loyal

Something powerful and terrible attacked the Eliksni. Something so overwhelming they were forced to flee their home world and chase after what they called the Great Machine until they found it damaged and unmoving hanging low above the beginnings of what would years or maybe decades later become the City on Earth.

Destiny's story might have been very different if the Eliksni that had survived their Whirlwind acted as a unified force. They might have come out the heroes. At the very least they might have been far and away the dominant rules of our solar system with far more might than the Hive, Vex, Cabal or the Awoken of the Reef. But, instead of working together to preserve what remained of their race after the Whirlwind, the Eliksni almost immediately fell into infighting if not outright civil war.

While we don't know much about this possible Eliksni's civil war, we do know that the House Judgment, which seems to have helped settle disputes and keep order among the other Houses, was destroyed. House Judgement may very well have been one of the last Houses to fall due to the effects of the Whirlwind, but there were surely many others that were wiped out in, or because of, the Eliksni's version of our Collapse. The most interesting of these Houses has to be the House of Rain.

Throughout Destiny, the Fallen repeatedly take bold but foolish risks. Their infighting and the way they throw themselves into the meat grinders of the City's Guardians and the Reef's Awoken is a tragic theme we see over and over. But, in Destiny, and in the Grimoire especially, there is a second theme that permeates the Fallen's story. It is a promise of renewed unity and perhaps even redemption as all the Fallen Houses gather under the leadership of one Eliksni who will eventually be known as the Kell of Kells. If a Kell is the leader of a Fallen House, this individual will be the leader of all the Fallen Houses.

One of the most interesting things about this Kell of Kells is that their eventual existence was predicted by the House of Rain before it was destroyed in the Whirlwind:

Petra: What about this House of Rain, the Prophecy you keep quoting?

Variks: House Rain lost in Whirlwind. No survivors, but I keep their prophecies. You think many claim to be Kell of Kells, but none have. House Judgment closest thing to peace the Fallen ever know.

Petra: Heh. Maybe you are the Kell of Kells.

- The Kell of Kells

And the prophecies Variks spoke of?

What Whirlwind whisked away will be rewrought, and every kell and ketch will kneel to the Kell of Kells." —Prophecy, House of Rain

- The Hunt for Skolas

The Great Machine will marvel, moved by might, and come to crown him Kell of Kells." —Prophecy, House of Rain

- The Kell of Kells

Before him, foes will flee or fall. But he will heal the houses, make them whole." —Prophecy, House of Rain

- Gone to Ground

That even the Traveler would recognize this Kell of Kells seems completely unprecedented with what we've seen so far in Destiny... so I really we see these prophecies come true!

Like the story of the Hive we covered last time, the story of the Fallen Eliksni is one filled with hope and despair, with battles and betrayals, and maybe with even a hint or two about to expect from our favorite four-armed race in Destiny 2. I had a blast exploring the Grimoire last time for the Books of Sorrow, and so I hope you'll join me again over the next several weeks as I trace the path of the Eliksni.

Before we really begin, I thought it might be interesting to explore some oddities of Eliksni biology, and take a quick look at two of the key individuals we'll see driving the Eliksni's fate before and during the events of Destiny.

Skolas the Rabid:

The incredibly difficult Fallen Kell many of us faced in the Prison of Elders was once merely one of multiple captains serving the previous House of Wolves Kell before the Reef Wars. We ultimately killed him to earn treasure from the Queen of the Reef, but did you realize that Skolas had been caught by the Awoken once before? And that it was Xur, or some other Agent of the Nine, who released him and set him on his (ultimately failed) quest to become the prophesied Kell of Kells?

Take a quick look:

He looks up. At the tiny hooded shape before him. The cell's mist is clearing. He can see.

"I believe that I am here," the creature says. To Skolas' ears it has a strange voice, a strange accent. It speaks his language. "I have a clear purpose. I cannot explain it. Forgive me."

From beneath its hood, tiny fingers of shadow probe the air.

Skolas rises up to smash it, to show his strength, because the alternative to violence is waiting for violence to come from a universe that has neither respect nor compassion. But he checks himself. His ambitions have brought him here, to this cell in this strange place... only it's not so strange, is it? It's the hold of a Ketch. "The Queen," he says to the thing. "You work for the Queen."

"The Nine made me aware of my purpose," the creature says. "If am here, then it is because the Queen sent you to the Nine, and they wish you sent back."

-Mystery: Fate of Skolas

Whoever or whatever the Nine are, they sure had it out for the Awoken!

Variks The Loyal:

Throughout all the wars and battles the Eliksni have undertaken in our solar system, and despite all the powerful leaders that have risen up in opposition to the various pockets of Humanity, Variks, a lowly scribe from the Eliksni House of Judgment may yet be the most influential Eliksni of all. We'll get to his story in a bit, but first I wanted to point out something interesting that he revealed to us with his own words:

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

-Variks The Loyal

Did you see that?! Variks claims to have been alive before the Eliksni found our star system!

With Rise of Iron, we learned that the Iron Lords were at the height of their power some 500 years before Destiny's present day, and that some Iron Lords were fighting Fallen well before that. If Variks' quote above is to be believed, he and a good number of other Eliksni might have been present during the Whirlwind. Even if he was born much later, it certainly seems he might have braved the part of the journey to our solar system in search of the Traveler. That would mean that Variks, and many other Eliksni, might very well be over 500 years old!

There are two other interesting things we know about the Eliksni and their biology. First, they have the ability to regrow limbs:

Dregs cling to the lowest rung of Fallen society. Docked of their lower arms in a ritual of humiliation and obedience, Dregs seek to prove their worth. Only a few will survive to gain promotion and regrow their limbs. Their suicidal bravery is fueled by ambition and shame.

-Dreg

Interesting, then, that Variks has at least one robotic arm... but we'll get to that...

And second is the ability for Eliksni to literally grow in size when they are able to feed on large amounts of Ether:

The Guards are handpicked from birth, stuffed full of Ether to make them strong and brainwashing to make them unthinkingly loyal to the Kell.

-WANTED: Wolve's Guard

Kell uses Ciphers to control the Ether flow. Archons and Barons take deep draughts, grow tall. Dregs with tiny sips stay small.

-The Elder Cipher

It's kinda neat to get even the smallest confirmation that, yes, Eliksni really do range in size from the small Dregs to the impressively large Kells. It seems likely that this Ether fueled growth is fairly slow, but we don't know that for sure.

Oh, and about ether, and the way it releases from an Eliksni's body upon a successful headshot? Some Guardians talk as if the Eliksni really do have souls that escape when the body they are in is killed:

Those Fallen in the Ishtar Sink on Venus...story is they raided the Prison of Elders in the Reef. Got an Archon Priest. The Queen's bounty is high so we know it's powerful. We need to hunt this thing down before they fully restore its soul. -Cayde-6

-Winter's Run

The Fallen will continue to claw at the walls of our City, unless we strike them down. Beneath the ruins of the Cosmodrome, in the shadow of an old colony ship, we've located the House of Devils' Lair - and the High Servitor feeding them their strength. We must destroy this machine god...and send their souls screaming back to hell. -Commander Zavala

-Devil's Lair

I have devised a technique to liberate the soul from the flesh. It works very reliably on Fallen.

-The Calming

But someone out there, perhaps an Eliksni, has this to say on the subject:

The gas is no soul. An ethereal lifeblood, maybe, but a soul? I think not.

-Kellbreaker's Gloves

Who's right? In a universe where Hive undo their own deaths by surviving in alternate dimensions, and where our Guardians are brought back to life some five hundreds years after the devestating defeat at the end of our Golden Age... who can really say!?

Up next? I think I'll just post all the cards relating to the Iron Lords in their proper order and expect you to read them straight through from beginning to end. The story of the Iron Lords is pretty awesome, and some of those cards talk a little about early Eliksni activity, so... it's all good! Right?

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

"Guardian Down!" Lord Saladin's ghost informed him as a barrage of arc missiles streaked across the outskirts of the town turned battleground. The excited clicks and grunts of the alien pirates echoed above the fighting. They were winning!

The hundred or so Fallen advancing on the town were a problem, but in truth they weren't much more than a screen for the spider-shaped walker standing on the ridge behind them. Saladin knew he had to get up there, somehow, and put an end to that threat, but Ragashingo had already show a solo charge through the Dregs and Shanks would not be enough.

"Up and over, not through!" Efrideet's said from her place beside him, her voice as young and cheerful as always. "Me or you?" she asked.

"Me," Saladin growled in replied.

Together, they sprinted at the Fallen hoard, Saladin's shield of arc energy deflecting what small arms fire came their way. At the critical moment, Efrideet increased her pace and then, gripping Saladin tightly, launched them both into the air. As her catapult gave out, Efrideet surged forward with a burst of speed and a crackle of lightning as she propelled her fellow Guardian forward with all her might.

Saladin flew towards the walker straight as an arrow, flaming ax now in his hands. With one final burst of lift and one mighty slash of his ax, he severed the robotic tank's cameras and sensors from its body and guns.

With the walker dead, Ghosts were free to relight their Guardian's embers, and what had been a dwindling defense quickly reversed into a thundering attack, as cheers for Efrideet and Saladin rose above even the scavengers' calls for retreat.

Ok, that's not actually a Grimoire Card, but it's what I imagine might have happened when I read this small section of Efrideet's:

In the tales of the Iron Lords, Lady Efrideet was one of the most prominent characters. She once threw Saladin like a javelin into a Fallen Walker—a City favorite retold for centuries.
...

-Lady Efrideet

The Iron Lords originally formed to put an end to human warlords who were using their gifts of Light and Ghosts to rule and terrorize populations who somehow survived the collapse. It was only later than the Eliksni arrived and began scavenging and killing. The focus of the Iron Lords quickly shifted to fighting this new alien threat and completing the walls of the City.

While there's not any cohesive timeline to be found, there are some great stories for this time period. Stories like:

The plan Lady Skori comes up with to ambush a group of Fallen while her fellow Iron Lords are pestering her about spending too much time writing the Iron Song:

"...
A lot of people are relying on us, Skorri. If you don't think you're up for—"

"Hunters up top, 11 o'clock on the ridge. Two shots to the Servitor, draw their attention up. I come in with Radiance, Dregs are blinded, Jolder's powered up, she rushes in, splits 'em in half. You hopefully don't trip over your cloak like you did back at the Flood Zone, but I'm not optimistic. The rest come out of the cave, take out the Captain, Felwinter finishes off the south group with a Bomb, everything else is candy."
...

The epic stands Lord Silimar made defending the same location against the Fallen again and again:

...
As the Fallen charged, Silimar refused to abandon what he'd built, though others retreated to a stronger position. "Go," he told them. "Save yourselves. I'll slow them down."

The enemy came in overwhelming force. A breaking wave of blades and firepower and death. Atop the structure's central bulwark, Lord Silimar held his ground.

"Take it if you can, you bastards!" He shouted at the swarming enemy.

He leapt upon the great edifice and there put up a final stand as the enemy engulfed him. He died with his dagger in the guts of an Archon while the great structure shook with explosions and rained stones down upon the land.
Later that night, when Lord Silimar rose again from the ashes, he found Lord Saladin already there and waiting, standing near the place where he'd made his final stand.
...

Lord Timur's Stormtrance defeating hundreds of Shanks and their Vandal keepers in an unusual way:

...
Lord Felwinter, I know what you are. And you are no Warmind or even one of its puppets. Come. You must see this." He makes a gesture like he's casting a spell over the sand. "Follow my footfalls; this area's rigged with dirty Fallen nonsense."

They struggle up the dunes. Felwinter glides ahead. As he lands, a sandstorm rises to meet him. More shanks. Hundreds of them. Behind them, a lone Vandal sniper lays down covering fire.

Felwinter, realizing his mistake, runs back toward Timur, shielding himself in the Light of suns.

Timur continues forward, grasps the brass familiar around his neck, and closes his eyes. A slight hum rises and his trance takes him deep into the sea of shanks, his trusted Lash raised and tearing his path through the darkness. Felwinter is slow to follow, but fast enough to witness Timur's focus turn shanks by the pack against their Vandal keeper, chasing him back toward the sea.
...

And Rezyl Azzir who, while not an Iron Lord, existed as a figurative and literal Titan of the City around that same time. His defeat of a Fallen Kell is the stuff of legends!

...
A massive blast cratered the ground a few feet from the Titan. The Ketch had turned its guns on Rezyl.

Another blast impacted to Rezyl's left and he stumbled. A third exploded directly in his path...

...and Rezyl fell.

From the treeline, his Ghost watched as the Fallen celebrated and a Skiff drifted down from the Ketch above.

The circle around Rezyl's body parted and the imposing figure of their Kell stepped forward to admire his prize.

The chittering excitement quieted to a steady drone as the Kell lifted Rezyl's limp body by the neck.

A chorus rose among the crew, growing louder as the Kell hefted Rezyl over his head for all to see.

Rezyl's Ghost darted low through the crowd. He didn't like Rezyl's plan, but now he understood it.

Distracted by their Kell's triumph, the Ghost's presence went unnoticed until a beam of light swept over Rezyl's body.

The mood shifted instantly, cheers turning to ravenous shouts.

The Kell's gaze fell to the Ghost as the beam faded.

The circle began to collapse — the Fallen set to pounce.

As the Kell moved to toss Rezyl aside, cold steel met the underside of the alien marauder's jaw, followed by a red flash as Rezyl pulled his cannon's trigger.

Ether spewed in an angry geyser and the Kell's grip loosened. Rezyl hit the ground and unloaded five more rounds into the Fallen leader's torso. The monster dropped.

Frenzied, the Kell's crew closed in like a flood.

Rezyl's Ghost lifted above the fray, frantic, "Now! Now! Now!"

In one motion, Rezyl rose from a crouch, his fists clenched and raised high as a storm of Arc Light built within him, his full might raining down on the Kell's chest. The shockwave of Rezyl's attack hit like a meteor, shattering the Kell's body and any Fallen within the Havoc storm's radius.
...

You'll note almost all of the quotes above are just smaller sections of each story. The stories of the Iron Lords are fantastic, especially when you put them together which is why we'll loop around and revisit them someday. But for now, I hope you can see that the Iron Lords and their contemporaries like Zavala and Rezyl did a lot to safeguard humanity during the early years of the Eliksni's incursion into our solar system.

But as much as they did, it was a distant Noble Queen who saved us.

When the Eliksni came to our system, the various houses did what they always did. As Variks says:

House Winter, attack. House Devils, plot. House Kings, plan. House Wolves circle. House Judgment... wait.

- Variks The Loyal

The attacks the House of Winter performed are referred to in Draksis, Winter Kell:

Kell of the Wintership Simiks-fel, has been an elusive target for the Vanguards. After his countless raids on jumpship reclamation convoys, Cayde-6 personally upped the bounty on him. With confirmed sightings of the Kell in the Ishtar Sink, the time to strike is now.

The result of which is seen in Ghost Fragment: Hunter:

She leaves the rifle and walks across the naked obsidian into the swarm firing from the hip as she goes, each kick of the old revolver a word, Draksis, Draksis, Kell of Winter, Kell of hate, lord of the kingdom of her vendetta. Her jaw aches. She used to imagine biting out his throat with armored teeth.

The stone smokes around her where the arc fire lashes it and the shrapnel guns throw up leaves of obsidian like glass butterflies. She shoots her bandoliers dry and a team of Vandals in glassy stealth leap up to rush her with knives but she raises her hand and burns them down with the golden gun, laughing, crying out Draksis, Draksis, I am come!

She kills them all and takes the next ridge, high above the Cinders. She can see the blue-green pools and the cave mouths where the Vex lights dance. And there among them, gowned in smoke and ash, is the long shark shape of a Ketch, a Wintership, the Kell's ship, come down to nest.

Which eventually leads to us boarding Simiks-fel and killing Draksis ourselves in Destiny. We get to see a lot of the House of Devils plotting firsthand as well. They try to capture Rasputin in Destiny and they eventually try to take control of SIVA in Rise of Iron.

The House of Kings we see very little of. There's that one meeting between the House of Wolves and House of Kings that we break up. The one deep in the Cosmodrome around that hologram of the Traveler. But other than that, the Kings are very cautious and generally do not stick their necks out.

Now, the House of Wolves? At some point after the Eliksni fight their long running skirmishes against the Iron Lords, and after the establishment of the City, all the Eliksni houses put their heads together and plan a massive attack. The House of Wolves is apparently intended to be the muscle:

The transmission was broadcasted on all Fallen frequencies. Lacking, at the time, the ability to crack Fallen encryptions, the Master of Crows could discern only that the Fallen Houses were all talking to each other. That was a thing that had never happened before.

Then the Techeuns looked Earthward—and saw the Fallen there becoming bolder. Tactics suggested they were planning a massive attack. We had no interplanetary arrays—no way to warn Earth. We thought we would be able to do nothing but watch.

But then the Wolves arrived from the Jovians. Their army was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions strong: a dark wave that washed over the Reef, rushing toward the Earth. As soon as we saw them it was clear that if the Wolves reached Earth, the City would fall.

- WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells

So, while some houses like the Devils essentially parked themselves right on top of the homeworld of the immortal, unkillable Guardians, the Wolves had been somewhere far away past Mars and past even the asteroid belt. Arriving from the Jovians means that the House of Wolves had taken up residence on or near Jupiter's moons.

We're also told in Vestian Outpost, Queen's Bay that:

the Reef's sunward side, the Vestian Outpost marks the flightpath any Guardian must take to access the Queen's realm. Beyond it lies the Vestian Web, the heart of the Reef built around the asteroid 4 Vesta.

That would put the Reef here some 2.5AU (21 light minutes) from the Sun:

(Click to embiggen)

By contrast, Ceres is a little farther out at roughly 2.7AU.

(Click to embiggen)

But, of course, these two asteroids are in constant motion and depending on exactly when Destiny takes place they might be closer together or on opposite sides of the sun from each other.

The WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells Grimoire Card then continues with:

Seemingly oblivious to our existence, the bulk of the Wolf fleet stopped to regroup at Ceres. The Queen's decision was this: attack the House of Wolves, thereby saving Earth but revealing the Reef's presence to any and all enemies in the quadrant; or remain silent, preserving the Reef's invisibility but allowing the City to perish.

Her Harbingers ripped into Ceres, destroying the asteroid and killing Virixas, Kell of Wolves and more than half his House.

That a pretty bold move by Queen Mara Sov, but we actually have a more detailed look at it in Ghost Fragment: Fallen 4. This is one of my favorite scenes in all of the Grimoire so I'm going to post it in its entirety:

This happens long ago, but not too long to matter.

Ceres rules the Asteroid Belt. Ceres is the white queen of this space, four hundred million kilometers from the Sun. Ceres is round. Round means power, out here: nothing else in the Belt is big enough to crush itself into a sphere with its own gravity. Ceres has its own chemical stars. Shavings of salt and ice that glint in orbit. Like a crown.

There are other lights, newer stars, newer crowns. Warship engines. Another queen is coming to conquer Ceres, because Ceres is full of warrens and shipyards and habitats, because Ceres is round and lucky as a Servitor. Because Ceres is full of the Wolves she wants to rule.

Shark-fierce ships gather in squadrons and tribes. Skiffs. Ketches. The Kell of Wolves has a fleet gathered here. The Kell of Wolves heard the call, and summoned the House of Wolves to prepare for the great battle on Earth. The salvation of the Kell's people depends on their ability to shatter the City. It's a matter of survival.

Now the Wolf fleet turns to meet the Queen.

See the squadrons of Skiffs wrapping themselves in stealth, cold and transparent, knifing out invisible and brave? See the Ketches like broad blades, the bright thoughts of a Servitor guiding them to battle? See them turning, accelerating, waking up their jammers and their arc guns? All doomed. The Kell of Wolves will never make it to the Twilight Gap. The Kell of Wolves put all that strength in one place, and now the Queen of the Reef is coming to break it.

Out there, coming out of the dark, are the Awoken. Not so great a fleet, is it? Little fighters scattered around like four-pointed thorns. Destroyers and frigates and salvaged hulls pulled out of the Reef. And right at the front, at the speartip, flies the Queen.

The Wolf Kell, practical, brave, tallies strength of metal and equipment. The Kell considers the chance that the Awoken have some secret weapon, something gleaned from hulks in the Reef or whispered up by the witches, and sets that chance aside. The Kell thinks the House of Wolves can win decisively. So the Kell sends challenge and warning. I AM LORD OF WOLVES, the Kell sends. YOU ARE AN EMPTY THING WITH TWO DEAD SOULS. THIS IS MY HOUSE. THESE ARE MY TERMS. SURRENDER AND I WILL ONLY TAKE YOUR SHIPS.

The Awoken fleet cuts their engines. Drifts. Wolf strike elements, torpedo-armed Skiffs hidden under jamming and camouflage, find their firing solutions.

The Queen's ship broadcasts. I AM NOBLE TOO, she says, OH LORD OF WOLVES.

The Kell doesn't mind a little banter before the kill. It gives the Wolf ships longer to draw the battle away from Ceres. The Kell replies. YOU HAVE NO LINE. YOU HAVE NO POWER. Captains and Barons signal their readiness, Skolas and Pirsis and Irxis, Drevis, Peekis, Parixas, all of them bound by fear and loyalty, all ready for war.

STARLIGHT WAS MY MOTHER. The Queen's ship whispers in eerie erratic radio bursts. Servitors begin to report a strange taste in the void. AND MY FATHER WAS THE DARK.

Here, at last, too late, the Kell begins to feel fear. CALL ON THEM, THEN, the Kell sends, one last mocking signal before death and ruin, AND SEE WHAT HELP THEY OFFER.

So the Queen calls, as only she can. Every Servitor in every Ketch hears it. Every Captain and Baron roars at their underlings as sensors go blind, as firing solutions falter, as reactors stutter and power systems hum with induction. Stealth fails. Space warps. The House of Wolves shouts in spikes of war-code, maneuvers wild, fires blind.

Behind the Queen's ship, the Harbingers awaken.

The Queen's line there "I am noble too, oh Lord of Wolves. Starlight was my mother; and my father was the dark." gives me chills each time I read it. We don't really know what that means yet, but clearly the Queen is not nobody! Cayde-6 once said of her:

And who's the best at cutthroat politics? That's right, her Majesty, the Queen of the Reef.

...

Whatever happens— I want you to remember that she knows, more than anyone else I've met, how to set one foe against another.

- Prison of Elders, The Reef

So, what happens next?

Her Harbingers ripped into Ceres, destroying the asteroid and killing Virixas, Kell of Wolves and more than half his House. The remaining Wolves scattered, burrowing deep into the Belt for cover. There, new claimants to the Kellship quickly arose: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid.

- WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells

The Awoken win a decisive victory here, but, as we'll soon see, the conflicts that the Queen just kicked off aren't called the Reef Wars for nothing!

As the House of Wolves scattered and splintered among the many planetoids of the asteroid belt, the House of Devils lead the other Houses against the City.

In some ways, the City had unfortunately set its self up for such an attack. What started as settlements underneath the Traveler slowly grew into a metropolis protected by high walls, artillery equipped towers, and scores of nearly immortal Guardians. After establishing itself, the City began to expand outward but those new outer sections were not as well defended and gave the Eliksni a weak point to attack.

This lookout station at the edge of the City's borders was decommissioned in the face of increasing Fallen attacks shortly before the Battle of Twilight Gap.

- Frontier

As the City learned to walk again, it found a world overrun by alien menace. It faced disaster and defeat. Even in recent years, as Guardians begin to venture back to the Moon and the inner planets, the City's territory has withdrawn - outer sections abandoned and converted into fortifications in the wake of the Battle of Twilight Gap.

- The City Age

During the battle, the combined forces of the Eliksni houses, except, of course, the House of Wolves, managed to breach at least some of the City's defenses. Eliksni walkers traded shells with the City's guns while other Eliksni forces worked on swarming those gun positions. Despite the City's defenses being lead by the Iron Lord Saladin Forge, the Eliksni even managed to fight their way onto (and possibly into?) the City's main defensive walls. Things weren't looking good!

"Kei-Ying. Gave his last full measure at Twilight Gap." —The Last Stands of First Pillars

- Murvaux Type 0

At the desperate battle of Twilight Gap, Warlocks worked in concert to shatter the enemy. It was not quite enough.

- Mystic Drain

The House of Wolves and the Awoken tore the Reef apart trying to get a tactical advantage. All the while, we were desperately trying to hold the Walls against the Devils, Kings, and Winter. It was one of the darkest chapters in the City's history." —Zavala

- Kell Rising

But, ultimately, the City's walls held, thanks in large part to both the Guardians who died defending it and the legends who finally drove back the Elkisni's advance.

Lord Shaxx is one of the heroes of the Battle of the Twilight Gap, having led the counterattack that pushed the Fallen from the City walls. Fearing that another full-scale assault would be more than the City could repel, Shaxx chose to stay in the City to mentor Guardians in the Crucible.

One day Shaxx vows to return to the war beyond the City, but only after he is confident the fires of the Crucible have forged a new generation of warriors.

- Crucible Handler

A hero to the City and a legend in his own right, Saladin Forge led the City's defense during the Battle for the Twilight Gap. His protégés, Commander Zavala and Lord Shaxx, now lead the Tower's Vanguard and the Crucible, respectively.

- Iron Banner Rep

You want another story about the Twlight Gap? Ana Bray, the Hunter. We all dug deep that day. We all touched the Light in ways we never thought we could. Or should. Ana, though. When she fired the Gun, where her Golden blasts hit home, she left behind the pools of light. Like splashes of sunlight that burned and burned." —Lord Shaxx

- Talk to Lakshmi-2

He could feel his light draining. He pulled all of it into one last hope.

He reeled back and bam!

His helm found purchase, breaking through just above the Kell's eyes. The Ether screamed from his head and together they fell to the ground.

The Exo Guardian rose, staggering back. He couldn't take his eyes off the Kell's body. He'd never seen any Fallen withstand a skull puncture, but this was no ordinary Fallen. He waited...and waited.

"Ghost?" The words barely audible. He heard her flash in, but had a hard time pinning her down. She was buzzing about, surveying the Fallen Kell.

"He's dead alright. So that's it, we are done now?"

He removed his helm, tossed it aside, and dropped to his knees.

The Devils without a Kell. This war was over, at last. They could finally go home.

- Legend: Saint-14

Because of the Reef's intervention in attacking the House of Wolves as they approached Earth, what should have been a great, if perhaps costly, victory for the Elkisni instead turned into a major defeat. In all likelihood, the Battle of Twilight Gap ended their chances of reclaiming the Traveler through conventional warfare.

The near defeat at Twilight Gap changed things for the City as well. Outlying districts were abandoned or converted into fortifications. Lord Shaxx began the Crucible as a method of training Guardians to fight foes just as dangerous as themselves, and Lord Saladin, who had an even better understanding of what it meant to face an unwinnable battle, instituted the Iron Banner to challenge Guardians to fight with the full strength of their Light without the concept of fair play helping or hindering them.

Oh! And of course one other very famous thing resulted from the Battle of Twilight Gap:

" If there is beauty in destruction, why not also in its delivery? - Feizel Crux

The Gjallarhorn shoulder-mounted rocket system was forged from the armor of Guardians who fell at the Twilight Gap. Gifted to the survivors of that terrible battle, the Gjallarhorn is seen as a symbol of honor and survival.

- Gjallarhorn

Amusingly, not everyone working on the famed rocket launcher saw it Crux's way, and that included his gunsmith partner Victor Lomar!

This commission is a commemoration! They deserve something dependable. These men and women did not survive the Gap so that you could make art!

- Beauty in Destruction

After the Awoken smashed their fleet and their leadership at Ceres, the House of Wolves splintered into a variety of groups vying for control. As we saw last time, the three primary contenders for the Kellship were three of Virixas' lieutenants: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid.

The first order of business for these three claimants was to gather their forces and, critically it seems, take command of as many servitors as they could. Servitors are still somewhat mysterious to us. The basics are as follows:

Servitors are living relics of the once-mighty Fallen civilization. Packed with ultra-sophisticated machinery, they process matter and energy into the Ether that the Fallen depend on for life. In battle they support the Fallen with defensive systems and their own powerful energy weapons. Outside, they anchor Fallen comms and provide vital technological acumen.

Servitors have complex relationships with each other and with their Fallen crews. Servitors are attached to a Prime, a massive Servitor which exists in unclear symbiosis with a Fallen Archon. The Archon conveys the Kell's wishes to the Prime Servitor, and exerts some measure of control. Recent developments suggest that Prime Servitors are more than a focus of worship and logistical activity. They may play a key role in Fallen star flight.

- Servitor

We quickly see this "complex relationship" servitors have. Skolas and Parixas fight over control of the Kaliks line of servitors, but Irxis somehow knew that the Orbiks servitors had at least some control over the Kaliks line of servitors and used that advantage to deal heavy blows to her rivals.

The next major battle to take place in the Reef Wars was an important battle called the Eos Clash. One way or another, Peekis, one of Skolas' subordinates, managed to pin Irxis' forces in or near the orbit of the 64 mile wide asteroid 221 Eos. Unfortunately, this wasn't a brilliant strategic move on Peekis' part but one of desperation even though he had overwhelming numbers. Reading a bit between the lines, could it be that Skolas forces were being severely harmed by Irxis' partial control over the Kaliks servitors?

In any case, this large scale battle of Wolves on Wolves ended with Irxis dead and both fleets in ruins.

Though technically a victory for Skolas, the Eos Clash came at a terrible cost for him. He docked Peekis' arms and demoted him to Dreg as punishment for his recklessness.

- WANTED: Peekis, the Disavowed

At this point, we are told Skolas changed his strategy. How did he change it? Cayde-6 has the answer for us:

The Awoken will tell you that a long time ago the Queen conquered the House of Wolves. What they won't say, because they are very serious important people, is that the House of Wolves did a lot of the job for them. After the Queen killed the Wolf Kell, the Fallen started competing for the throne. One of the first battles was called the Eos Clash and I wasn't anywhere near it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not making this up. A Fallen named Skolas wiped out one of his rivals in the Eos Clash. But the battle cost him so much he got to thinking: if the Reef killed my boss, and gave me a chance at the throne, maybe I can use the Reef to kill all my rivals too!

- Prison of Elders, The Reef

The first, and maybe best example of Skolas' new strategy can be seen with the Silent Fang's attacks and trickery at Amethyst and Iris.

The Fang used to do hit-and-run attacks against civilian targets during the worst days of the Reef Wars. I'm not sure, but I think that's what made Variks turn against Skolas. Assassins unleashed on miners, on teachers. That's a long way to fall." - Petra

- Talk to Petra

In order to defeat his challenger for leadership of the House of Wolves, Skolas had Drevis, the leader of the Silent Fang assassins, personally lead an attack on a civilian station of Awoken called Amethyst. The Silent Fang killed everyone there, including Petra's sisters, one of which, Pinar Venj, was the leader of Amethyst. This massacre becomes one of the biggest driving forces in Petra Venj's life, as she later noted in a letter to her Queen:

It was your service that kept me from sorrow after Amethyst was razed. The loss of my sisters, my whole life, as our station burned... it took something from me.

By your will, it was given back to me.

Promoting me to the Corsairs, allowing me to strike back at the Wolves. Letting my fury find purchase in defense, in support, and in glorious battle. I know, as I'm sure you did, that without focus my heart would have grown toxic.

- Petra Venj, Queen's Wrath

In response, the Reef's Paladin Abra Zire lead a fleet chasing after Drevis in the direction of the bright, reflective asteroid Iris. Her response had come too late to protect Amethyst, but she wasn't going to let anything stop her from punishing those responsible.

Except, at the same time, Grayor, who was likely another leader among the Silent Fang, led an attack against one of Skolas' remaining Eliksni rivals. They hit Parixas' ketch then fled so that Parixas would chase after them towards... the bright reflective asteroid Iris.

7 Iris is an asteroid about about 2.3AU from our sun, is about 200km across, and is very bright:

Iris's bright surface and small distance from the Sun make it the fourth-brightest object in the asteroid belt after Vesta, Ceres, and Pallas. It has a mean opposition magnitude of +7.8, comparable to that of Neptune, and can easily be seen with binoculars at most oppositions.

- Wikipedia

Through a combination the glare coming off Iris and the Eliksni's jamming and cloaking we're all fairly familiar with, the two members of the Silent Fang slipped away leaving Paladin Zire's forces to clash with Parixas'! By the time the battle was over, the Reef's forces were victorious... but so was Skolas! Not only had his forces badly bloodied the Reef's nose, he had also managed to use their response to further his own ambitions!

Unfortunately for Drevis, the Reef's reach was quite long. As we'll see next, she was soon captured, but instead of an easy victory, her capture would spark the largest and longest series of battles in the Reef Wars.

Since before the Reef Wars, the Awoken could only ever tell that the Eliksni were communicating, but what exactly the aliens were saying to one another had always been lost in the pulsed static or rapid beeps and tones of encryption. It seems likely that the Awoken's communications were almost certainly just as unreadable to the Eliksni, but then it was the Eliksni who were lashing out at Awoken colonies and murdering entire Awoken populations. For months or perhaps even years, the Awoken had been on the defensive. All they could really do was react, to Skolas' next aggression.

Finally, though, after the attack on Amethyst, Prince Uldren and his Crows managed to break the House of Wolves' encryption. Now, they could listen in on Skolas and his lieutenants and they strike back at his forces. The first of the Reef's counter attacks came against Drevis, who if you'll remembered, committed major atrocities on Amethyst.

Sometimes we think of space navigation as a solved thing. Even in our modern, real life age we can land rovers on Mars or send probes to take spectacular pictures of the planet Pluto. But really, we're so good at those things because we have had years and decades to observe and perfect orbital models. Just recently a big-ish asteroid passed near Earth and the news stories were saying that there was a chances it would hit us when its orbit brought it back around in a few decades time. But, with only one short observation, doing the calculations to tell us for sure was apparently impossible. Even with our fancy technology, we'll have to wait for the asteroid to pass us by once or maybe twice more before we'll have any idea if it will hit us.

That's how it must have been for Drevis' crew and Pilot Servitors for the asteroid 324 Bamberga. Orbiting a little beyond Mars, Bamberga is roughly 230km wide, and the Eliksni, in their haste harass and attack the Reef, miscalculated its orbit. The Awoken however, who had likely been observing and charting Bamberga's movements for multiple hundreds of years, knew exactly where it would be, and used that knowledge to drive Drevis into a trap.

We don't have any account of exactly how Armada Paladin Imogen Rife's forces drove Drevis' ketch into the path of Bamberga. I'd like to imagine it was a running series of quick clashes, picket actions, and larger feints that kept Drevis on the run until Bamberga ran into her. Drevis' ketch was utterly destroyed in the collision, and both she and her most prized servitor, Kaliks-4, were captured.

After the Reef's defeats and humiliations at Amethyst and Iris, this must have seemed quite the victory, but remember, the Kaliks line of servitors were very important to the House of Wolves. So, instead of a uneventful voyage back to Vesta, where Paladin Rife would have presented Drevis to her Queen, the Awoken fleet was instead attacked by Pirsis, one of Skolas' few top remaining lieutenants. Pirsis cornered Rife's forces at the large asteroid of 2 Pallas and set up a siege.

2 Pallas is the third largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and is only a little smaller than Vesta, the asteroid that the bulk of the Reef is built around. At roughly 550km across, Pallas is almost twice as big as Bamberga, and is home to a sizable population of Awoken.

Pirsis didn't just trap Paladin Rife at Pallas, she amassed a fleet of what must have been hundred of Eliksni ships, enough ships to lay siege to Pallas and cut it off from the rest of the Reef not just for weeks or months, but for years! The House of Wolves clearly had the superior position and overwhelming firepower, but they refused to press their advantage, because doing so would have meant the certain death of Drevis and destruction of Kaliks-4.

The last time the Wolves had amassed such a huge force, the Awoken had smashed it with Mara Sov and her Harbingers leading the way. But this time, that wasn't so easy. With the Wolves besieging a major population center, the use of Harbingers would have lead to a massive number of deaths on both sides! In desperation, Mara Sov sent Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior to search for Skolas among the Hildian Asteroids, but they were unsuccessful in their missions due to the cleverness of Skolas' chief tactician, Beltrik, the Veiled.

The siege of Pallas finally began to crumble when a Dreg named Weksis the Meek launched an unsanctioned attack on the Athens Hull, which I'm guessing is the name of Imogen Rife's flagship. Weksis and his small group of followers were able to blast their way into the Athens Hull in an attempt to rescue Drevis and Kaliks-4 from imprisonment, but the timely intervention of Commander Hallam Fen stopped them in their tracks and saw the would be rescuers imprisoned beside those they had been trying to rescue.

Unfortunately, this attack spurred Pirsis, who by now had been dubbed "Pallas-Bane", to launch a more major attack of her own. Her larger, more able strike team fought their way through the breach that Weksis had opened and managed to free Kaliks-4. We're told that Pirsis might have gotten away with the important Prime Servitor, but she instead tried to free Drevis as well. This lead to a face to face clash between the Awoken and Eliksni leaders in charge of their respective sides of the siege.

Perhaps Pirsis and Paladin Imogen Rife had seen each other during negotiations over the previous few years, but they probably never met in person. Now though,they fought one another gun vs gun and blade vs blade! Paladin Rife was forced to destroy Kaliks-4 in order to prevent its escape, but she, in turn, was cut down in battle by Pirsis!

Ultimately, Pirsis attack was a second failure, but her siege of Pallas might have continued if not for the efforts and quick thinking of Awoken Commander Hallam Fen. He somehow managed to get through what must have been intense jamming from Pirsis' fleet and, with quick thinking, coordinated with the Queen's Crows and Techeuns to create an enormous illusion of approaching Harbingers. Pirsis' forces went mad. They still remembered the battle that took place at Ceres before the Scatter. Remembered how their ships had been disabled or destroyed by the thousands by the intense power of the Queen's Harbingers. And so, they broke ranks and fled in complete disarray.

In the confusion that followed Commander Fen's bluff, he along with Paladins Leona Bryl and Kamala Rior pounced on the Wolves. They managed to force most of them to retreat, and even more importantly, they managed to capture Pirsis, Pallas-Bane! In return for his service and innovative thinking, Queen Mara Sov allowed Hallam Fen to succeed his mentor, the late Imogen Rife, in the role of one of the Reef's four Armada Paladins.

For those who are curious, the Reef's forces are headed by seven Royal Paladins:

Royal Armada Paladins:

• Abra Zire
• Kamala Rior
• Leona Bryl
• Previously Imogen Rife, now replaced by Hallam Fen

Royal Army Paladins:

• Pavel Nolg
• Devi Cassl

Royal Awoken Guard Paladin:

• Yasmin Eld

Following the failure of the long siege at Pallas, Skolas' forces were again forced to move into the open in an effort to seek a new advantage over the Reef. The end of the siege of Pallas would come to mark the beginning of the end of the Reef Wars. In the few remaining battles, the Awoken would demonstrate that they had learned well from their previous clashes with the Eliksni, and before long Skolas himself would be betrayed!

Sources:
WANTED: Drevis, Wolf Baroness
WANTED: Weksis, the Meek
WANTED: Pirsis, Pallas-Bane
The Royal Awoken Guard

The Hildian Campaign

There's one segment of the Reef Wars we just don't know a whole lot about. During the long siege of Pallas occurred what was a perhaps an almost equally long search for Skolas called The Hildian Campaign. Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior were sent into the Hildian asteroid field to try and find Skolas and his chief strategist Beltrik, the Veiled, but this campaign was largely a failure. While there may have been small scrapes and skirmishes, for the most part the Reef's forces came up empty in their search.

The Hildians are a dense group of over 1,000 asteroids and smaller objects that share an odd orbital arrangement with Jupiter. They orbit the sun a little slower than Jupiter so at times they are on opposite sides of the solar system as the gas giant while at other times they come close to approaching it. At their closest point, however, the Hildians never quite reach Jupiter's orbit and soon they are back on their way away from Jupiter again. This animation from Wikipedia shows the orbits pretty well:

The brief description of the Hildian Seeker Jumpship says:

Nimble starfighters designed by the Reef to navigate dense asteroid fields.

So we know the Reef's forces considered the Hildians a dense, trickle place to maneuver through. One would think that the Reef's pilots would be experts with flying through tight space, what with the Reef's confusing layout and all, so this must have been quite difficult indeed. It's no wonder they weren't able to find Skolas or Beltrik, in that case!

While the Reef's forces failed to find their targets during the Hildian Campaign, it can't really be said that the campaign was a total failure. Two things happened there that would become decisive towards the end of the Reef Wars.

First, Paladin Abra Zire had time to work out her anger over the Battle of False Tidings. We don't have any confirmation of what this battle was, but my guess is it is a another name for the razing of Amethyst and the battle against Parixas that Paladin Zire was tricked into. The months or years of searching for Skolas among the Hildian asteroids are said to have cooled Zire's anger into an icy resolve.

Second, Petra Venj, whose family had been killed when the Wolves attacked Amethyst, seems to have first cut her teeth as a Corsair serving under Paladin Zire during the Hildian Campaign. We'll be talking about Petra a lot both now and in the future.

Fortuna Plummet

After the Reef defeated Pirsis and freed Pallas from its long siege, Skolas' forces were likely starting to run thin. Likewise, hiding out in the Hildians for what could have been multiple years seems to have depleted the supplies of his chief strategist Beltrik, the Veiled.

Beltrik moves his forces out of the dense Hildians and forms a defensive screen around the large, 225km wide asteroid 19 Fortuna. There, he moves his ships one at a time into a resupply position where they mine ether while the other ships hold their positions in a formation that we are lead to believe made them fairly impervious to attack. By this point it seems pretty clear that the Wolves have a pretty large advantage in numbers and firepower over the Reef, and the Reef has only won battles because of things things like the Queen's Harbingers or luring the Wolves into bad positions.

Unfortunately for Beltrik, his opponent was Paladin Zire. This time, she refused to be led into any sort of trap, and instead devised a way to break through Beltrik's defensive deployment. After the earlier success of luring Drevis' Ketch into the path of 324 Bamberga, the Reef began looking for a way to repeat that smashing success, and at some point during the long siege of Pallas they developed Carybdis, a gravity weapon capable of pushing asteroids off course.

After apparently proving herself during the Hildian Campaign, Petra Venj was given command of a significant portion of Paladin Zire's fleet and ordered to harass Beltrik's entrenched position in an effort to make it look like she was attacking without actually suffering the massive losses that a true attack against that kind of defensive positioning would entail. Petra's main goal was to serve as a distraction while Paladin Zire stealthily moved the remainder of her forces to the much smaller 21km wide asteroid 687 Tinette. You can see the actual orders sent by Paladin Zire in Ghost Fragment: The Reef 3

It turns out that Tinette was apparently on a natural close approach with Fortuna at the time, so Beltrik's forces were probably expecting it to slide on by as they continued their resupply operations. What they didn't expect was Abra Zire's forces to use their new Carybdis weapon to alter Tinette's orbit, causing it to crash through their defensive screen and directly into Fortuna. The massive collision that resulted shattered both asteroids and caused massive damage to Beltrik's fleet. Beltrik was easily captured in the ensuing confusion, and for the first time in the Reef Wars, Skolas was deprived of his brilliant strategist. This entire battle, as well as the remains of the two asteroids would soon become known as the Fortuna Plummet.

Not long after this, we're told that Prince Uldren's Crows, which seem to be his mysterious force of pilots and spies, receive a message from an Eliksni named Variks who claims to be from the House of Judgment. The contents of this message would lead to the final battle of the Reef Wars and the defeat of Skolas and the House of Wolves...

...but there's a lot to unpack there, so we'll look at it next time. :)

When the Awoken captured Beltrik the Veiled at the Fortuna Plummet, Skolas knew he was running out of options. With no brilliant strategist on his side anymore, Skolas falls back on brute force. For a whole year, Drevis had managed to form an effective blockade of Pallas using only a portion of the fractured House of Wolves. Maybe Skolas figured he could do the same?

For his target, Skolas choose the Awoken "military fortress" of Cybele. Attacking an actual military target might be more difficult, but Skolas was desperate. Maybe he planed to strike a blow at the Awoken's military power and embarrass all at the same time? A successful siege or defeat of a major Awoken fortification would seem to do the trick. Unfortunately for Skolas, his time had run out. Not because he choose a poor target now, in the present, but because of what he had done in the past.

When Skolas started attacking civilian targets like the Awoken colony of Amethyst, he set off a chain reaction that he did not expect. An Eliksni named Variks who served alongside Skolas as a scribe from the House of Judgement had finally seen enough. As Variks later put it:

Skolas wins control of House Wolves. Attack, attack, attack. Place of learning, place of healing, put to the burn. Then Siege of Pallas. Year of cruelty. Held the line to rescue butchers, murderers, Servitor. Ends with Wolf fleet scattered.

New tactics. Detonations. Blasts in civilian areas. Take the fight to them, he said. Cannot abide the hate. Uprising, they called it. Uprising on Cybele.

(Variks, The Loyal)

So, in order to put a stop to the senseless killing, Variks contacts the Awoken, and alerts them to Skolas' plan. When Skolas' forces arrive at Cybele, instead of achieving the element of surprise or even facing an even fight, they are instead immediately flanked and outmaneuvered by all four of the Awoken's Armada Paladins. Skolas' forces immediately collapse with some, such as the Kaliks-12 High Servitor, trying to flee. While some probably did manage to slip away, it sounds like the Awoken had Skolas right where they wanted him. By the time the battle was over, Skolas and most of his followers were captured or dead and, aside from a few minor skirmishes, the Reef Wars were finally over.

By betraying Skolas, Variks quite possibly saved the lives of many Eliksni and Awoken. Saving his own people is certainly the primary reason Variks stepped in as doing so was entirely consistent with his status as a member of the Eliksni House of Judgement. Across the Grimoire, we get little peaks at House Judgement's function within the greater Eliksni society:

"The House of Judgment shall have no ketch, but it will live among the other Houses to guide the kells and keep their secrets." —Eliksni Pact

(Gone To Ground)

Variks the Loyal remembers an ancient time, and an ancient name: the House of Judgment, when grudges and status fights were worked out in a safe place. When the berserk and the vengeance-crazed were kept somewhere harmless, and there were fewer rivals to plot around.

(Prison of Elders)

I hear. House of Judgment always hears. No choice. Has to. To keep Houses together. Had to.

First , the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope. Judgment not enough. Cannot keep Wolves from Kings, Scar from Winter. Fell to fighting. Fell to hate.

Judgment gone. Others slaughtered, slain. Death and docking. "Keep Eliksni together," lost to pride and rage.

(Variks, the Loyal)

So, it seems that instead of the House of Judgement being a full Eliksni house like the Wolves or Devils, they were instead more of an cross-house group of peacekeepers and advisors. Variks himself is said to have traveled with multiple different houses in the time period after the Eliksni's civilization was destroyed in the Whirlwind. His role as a trusted advisor would also explain how he learned of Skolas' planned attack on Cybele far enough ahead of time to warn the Awoken.

But beyond that, beyond upholding his role as perhaps the very last member of the House of Judgement (The Art of Destiny 2 lists Variks as such...), Variks may have had a much more personal reason to oust Skolas. Jump into Destiny 1 and stand in front of Variks on the Vestian Outpost and you'll eventually hear him say things like:

Are you staring at my arms, Guardian? Where Skolas cut me? Look away.

Skolas once told me to stand still. Then he cut off my arms.

You think you hate Wolves? I promise my hate is sharper.

Look closely at Variks. He has all four arms like a Vandal or Captain, but his upper arms are actually mechanical! Now... we know that Dreg can regrow their docked lower arms and that docking is used as a punishment / method of control across the Eliksni houses around the time of Destiny 1... but can an Eliksni's upper arms grow back? Did Skolas maim Variks for life? And, if so, when did that happen? None of these questions have good answers, but I like to imagine that the reason that the Awoken Crows found Variks cowering was because Skolas realized he had been betrayed and decided to exact a severe punishment on Variks before they were defeated and captured at Cybele.

As we know, Variks went on to become an advisor to Queen Mara Sov. He proclaimed her as the new Kell of the House of Wolves, and for a time that actually held. As for Skolas, Mara Sov sent him to The Nine as a prize or gift, to celebrate their mutual victory (over the House of Wolves?)

We'll see Skolas again, eventually, but next we're going to take a look at the House of Devils on Earth. They found something very interesting at the beginning of Destiny 1. Something that in the past had, and in the future may very well again, cause great problems for the Guardians of The City.

Oh! Before we go, there was one final battle at the end of the Reef Wars that occurred after Skolas had been captured. I found this one to be pretty amusing.

"After Skolas's capture at the Cybele Uprising, Veliniks named himself the new Kell. Didn't work out great for him." —Petra

(Veliniks, the Ravenous)

With two crushing defeats, one at Twilight Gap at the hands of The Last City and another at Cybele at the hands of the Awoken, the Eliksni found themselves being driven back once again. Since the Dark Age they had raided and pillaged the scattered settlements and cities of Earth mostly unchecked. But now, the Awoken had set up colonies and industry and a military presence within the Reef, and the Last Safe City beneath the Traveler had built great walls and was defended by seemingly unkillable Guardians. It's around this point that our Ghost finds us on the outskirts of the Cosmodrome and from then on things go from bad to worse for the various Fallen Houses:

The House of Devils:

The Fallen will continue to claw at the walls of our City, unless we strike them down. Beneath the ruins of the Cosmodrome, in the shadow of an old colony ship, we've located the House of Devils' Lair - and the High Servitor feeding them their strength. We must destroy this machine god...and send their souls screaming back to hell.

The House of Devils will go on to become one of our greatest rivals in the story of Destiny. In fact, when we first encounter them, they are on the verge of making a major discovery. They have been looting and studying the remains of our Golden Age in the Cosmodrome for decades and have finally found something they think can change their fortunes.

Our first clue to what the Devils found is the Guardian jump ship we find crashed in the Cosmodrome. They are one of the first to report on strange signals coming from Old Russia. Later, after we escape to the Tower and return to the Cosmodrome, we discover that the Devils have been trying to steal data from some source buried within the old spaceport. We hear old Russian opera. Our Ghost stops the Devil's data taps. And by the time we reactivate the large communications array we are sure we have found the Warmind Rasputin! Without our help, the Fallen might have been able to compromise the Warmind's systems and possibly gain control of the powerful Warsats orbiting overhead.

But that's not all the Devils found... Their attempts to locate and crack Rasputin saw them discover perhaps an even bigger prize: SIVA. When we killed Sepiks Prime, we greatly hobbled the House of Devils. Without their large High Servitor to process and distribute live sustaining Ether, the house would have scattered. But with the discovery of SIVA, radical factions of the House of Devils including Archon Priest Aksis and the Devil Spicers take over and force the Eliksni house down a path of abandoning Ether in exchange for relying on SIVA for sustenance and survival. For a time, the House of Devils becomes powerful enough to even threaten The City, but with the destruction of the SIVA replication chamber and the deaths of Aksis and Vosik, their newfound power is ripped away from them.

House of Winter

After the Eliksni's collective defeat at Twilight Gap, the House of Winter retreated back to Venus where their Kell, Draksis, ruled over his house from a hidden position near the ruins of the Ishtar Collective. Draksis became notorious for his raids on human settlements while his house sought out new knowledge among the Vex and Human ruins near the Ishtar Sink. Eventually, after rising to the attention of the Vanguard (Cayde-6 once sent one of his Hunters to Venus to the Cinders to search for Winter's Kell...), our Guardian finds Draksis' Ketch and puts an end to him. Seeing as the House of Winter had already lost its Prime Servitor, this was something of a fatal blow to the Eliksni on Venus.

House of Exiles

The House of Exiles was not formally an Eliksni house. It had no Prime Servitor and no Kell. Mostly, it was a collection of Eliksni who had either been banished from their own houses but who had been separated from their house but who had refused to lay down and die. Like all of the Eliksni, the Exiles keep their distance from the other Houses. Seeing as Earth, Venus, and Mars were already occupied (with Mars being somewhat closed off to the Eliksni thanks to the heavy Cabal presence) the Exiles took refuge on Earth's Moon... near the Hive. The Hellmouth was not exactly the safest place... but with Crota's initial and eventual ultimate defeat, the Hive there were not the threat they had once been.

The House of Exiles is most notable for harboring the Eliksni mercenary Taniks. But beyond that, and a few suicidally daring raids down into the Hellmouth, we don't ever hear much from the House of Exiles.

House of Wolves

After several years of conflict, the House of Wolves eventually knelt down to Mara Sov and her Awoken. With the help of Variks, the House of Wolves worked and fought alongside the Awoken for a time. Many Wolves did in fact truly regard Mara Sov as their new Kell and followed her orders with honest devotion. It was only when Skolas returned proclaiming himself to be the Kell of Kells and seemingly having the power to defy the Awoken that the House of Wolves rebelled. That rebellion was short lived, of course, as a vengeful Mara Sov sought the aid of the Guardians of The City. Within a short period of time... months at most... Skolas had been defeated and recaptured. He would eventually meet his end at the hand of some group of Guardians as nothing more than a mere play thing in Variks' Prison of Elders.

The House of Wolves did not die immediately, however. Its remnants somehow managed to hide among the sprawling Cabal fortifications on Mars. They even rebuilt their Prime Servitor, Orbiks Prime, and for a short time where a thorn in the side of the Awoken and Cabal alike... until a Guardian discovered their hidden base of operations and lay wasted to Orbiks Prime once more.

House of Kings

The Kings rarely lowered themselves to squabble in Eliksni politics or power grabs. They regarded themselves as rulers... and the other Eliksni houses seemed to have a great deal of respect for them. Even when the house of Devils was at its height, it seldom interfered with the House of Kings. The Devils and Kings were even neighbors in the Cosmodrome yet somehow managed to stay out of each other's way.

In the end the House of Kings met with the Awoken Prince, Uldren Sov, and they alongside the House of Devils on Earth, the house of Winter on Venus, the House of Wolves on Mars, and the House of Exiles on Earth's Moon... left.

The Fallen are abandoning the Cosmodrome.

Hawk fly-overs confirm. The House of Devils forces are simply not there anymore. They've been disorganized for the last few years, but there's never been a shortage of ground troops whenever we staged a significant sortie.

Intel source GREENRAVEN was right. And, for the moment, it's worth assuming their report on the House of Exiles, House of Winter, and House of Wolves are also accurate. We're fact-checking against independent fireteam reports from the field.

The kid all the SRL fans talk about — Marcus? He was in one of the fireteams out at the Cosmodrome. He pulled me aside, and said it to me straight: the Fallen Houses are gone. The siege is broken. The stalemate we've had with the Eliksni for what, a hundred years? It's over. We won.

Commander, I'm not even sure they're flying the banners anymore. The teams found huge mounds of burnt cloth and armor, ceremonial piles, in several of the most hardcore Fallen holdouts.

What's changed? Where have the Fallen gone? Why have they burned their banners?

That final question was posed by a Guardian named Sloane... who we eventually meet on Titan. So what did change? In short, Prince Uldren and the Scorn.

But that's a story for a later time. We'll check back in on the Eliksni in a bit, but for now we are mostly caught up to the start of Forsaken. There are still some finer points to explore such as what the Devils were trying to accomplish with SIVA or the grand significance of Skolas trying to force his way into the fabled position of Kell of Kells, but I'd like to visit those too at a later date.

Why the little rush past some interesting stuff? Well... because with Forsaken's release, Bungie's writing team has delivered the largest and most far reaching selection of lore since the Book of Sorrows detailed the rise of the three brave sisters who eventually spawned the terrifying Hive. Because of that, I am thrilled and excited to begin detailing:

The Awoken have been a strange puzzle ever since we first visited the Reef back in Destiny 1. We met the Awoken Queen and her brother, but we didn't even learn their names until Petra Venj called upon the Guardians of The City to hunt down Skolas in the House of Wolves expansion. For all of Destiny 1, the Awoken were a culture and a power whose extent was frustratingly difficult to discern. Did they have cities? Or a military? Or Guardian-like powers? Even when we arrived at the Vestian Outpost, we didn't learn all that much about the Awoken.

Our best look at the Awoken, until now, was their response to the House of Wolves during the Reef Wars as seen in the book The Maraid. But even then, we didn't learn a lot. Queen Mara Sov was shown to be uniquely powerful and able to destroy a Fallen fleet seemingly singlehandedly. The Awoken were revealed to have cities and stations like Amethyst that the Fallen attacked and in some cases destroyed. And that's roughly all we've known about the Awoken... until now.

The history of the Awoken is laid out for us across multiple in-game books that you'll earn piece by piece while playing Forsaken. The first of these books is Marasenna. Like before, I'm going to attempt to walk you through the contents of these books, like I did for the Book of Sorrows, but I highly encourage anyone following along with me to read the full text of these book chapters as we get to them. They are well written and mysterious and half the experience and fun of this is reading this history as it was written.

So... where to start? How about with Mara Sov? Almost from the beginning, we learn that Mara did not start out as a Queen or ruler. Instead, when we first meet her, she is a nineteen year old young woman of no particular race or ancestry serving as an Auturge 3rd Class on the Golden Age colony ship Yang Liwei which is named after the first Chinese astronaut to be sent into space. An Auturge is something of a troubleshooting mechanic whose job it is to fix problems as they spring up on the ship as it makes its way out of our solar system.

The other thing we very quickly find out about Mara Sov, is that she has a streak of independence the likes of which we have only rarely seen in Destiny. For one thing, instead of following the normal chain of command, where an Auturge 3rd Class usually reports to Auturge 2nd Class to find out their work assignments, Mara just shows up at areas of the ship that have malfunctioned and fixes things before leaving, usually without even talking to anyone. A ship like the Yang Liwei need to be run with tight organization, but Mara is apparently skilled enough to subvert all that regulation and do her own thing. Her actions eventually take on an almost magical quality. Something breaks, she appears, it is soon fixed without fuss or red tape, and then she is gone. We're told that Mara enjoys this hushed awe that her actions cause amount the population of the Yang Liwei. But being mysterious is the least of her boldness...

Our first glimpse of her is not fixing a pipe or patching a circuit. Instead, we find her in a skin-tight environment suit sitting on the outer hull of the Yang Liwei looking down towards the ship's main engines at its rear. Apparently, she prefers to live out there. Outside the ship. In space. We're told that she stays outside because she wants to taste the blueshift of the surrounding starlight as the Yang Liwei accelerates out of our solar system.

In this instance, though, Mara does even more daring than that. She doesn't just cling to the hull of the colony ship. Instead, during a period when the ship has halted its acceleration to perform another long check of its engines, she kicks off the hull and drifts ahead, away from the Yang Liwei's large forward umbrella-like shield with only a thin tether wire to keep her from drifting away completely. She doesn't just drift a few meters, or even a few hundred. Instead she drifts ten kilometers ahead of the ship. It must have taken hours for her to coast that far after simply kicking herself forward. It must have been breathtaking to watch the colony ship, which so large that it is described as its own traveling fleet, slowly shrink into the black of space. It might have still been visible, far in the distance, but Mara would have also been surrounded by the stars... and when she was, she did something even more incredible. And terrifying!

Mara activates the controls on her suit that order the external cytogel layer to pull completely away and retract into storage mode! Though she was wearing an undersuit, the cytogel was the only thing actually separating her from the vacuum of space! The effects of vacuum exposure begin immediately. The moisture on her skin boils. Her face begins to discolor and turn a sickly blue due to a lack of oxygen. Her body begins to swell due to an imbalance of internal and external pressure. Out there, among the stars, Mara is letting herself die. And she records it all, every view, every gasp, and every little sensation down to the neural level on her sensorium... before reengaging her protective suit, returning her size and color and breathing to normal. Those sensorium recordings, she knows, will fetch a high price once she makes her way back inside the ship.

Interestingly, as Destiny players, we hear of sensorium recordings within Forsaken, too. When we rescue one of the Techeuns from The Corrupted strike, she sometimes says it would be impossible to describe the experience of being Taken without the use of a full sensorium.

I imagine it only takes Mara a pull or two on her thin tether to start her long drift back to the Yang Liwei. Once she does gets back inside, we'll get the chance to meet some of the other key people in her life.

Chapters Referenced:
Brephos I
Brephos II
(Brephos means something along the lines of an unborn or newborn child...)

As Mara heads inside, we get to learn a little more about her and those around her. For Mara, we learn that she was previously some sort of Extra Vehicular Activity tech near Jupiter. It was, in fact, a shocking experience on one of her maintenance EVAs that caused her to insist that she and her family leave the solar system. Mara and an unnamed man were outside in their space suits repairing a radiator fin of maybe a spaceship or space colony when something whipped in at high speed and smashed straight through the man's faceplate. It would later be determined that his death was a tragic accident. Somewhere else in the solar system there was a cargo spill, and a frozen rabbit embryo made what must have been a months or years long journey around the sun to cross through the point the man's face was occupying.

We're told that Mara has always been good at figuring out the meanings behind things, a skill that she prefers to keep somewhat secret, and she saw this accident as an omen that she, and humanity, were vulnerable as long as they just stayed in our solar system. So, somehow, Mara persuaded her mother Osana and her brother Uldwyn that they should join Project Amrita: the launch of a soon to be departing colony ship. Note that Amrita means immortality, and in Hinduism it is a drink similar to the Ambrosia of the Geek gods.

Inside the Yang Liwei, Mara first comes across her younger brother, Uldwyn, Mara watches from the crowd as her brother and a bulked up woman woman from Gravity Ops have something of a zero-g cage match in some equipment storage area. Mara's appearance delights Uldwyn... leaving him open for a devastating uppercut to the face. He goes tumbling. The larger woman who had her genes altered to bulk up her muscles pushes off the wall sending them both for a devastating impact on the floor a good ways below. We're told that Uldwyn doesn't have a chance against this woman, and that he knew that before he entered the fight, but that he likes to measure himself by his bravery and by seeing just how bad of a loss he can survive.

On their way down, Uldwyn manages to shift around and put the larger woman in a choke hold. He successfully chokes her unconscious... but there's nothing he can do about their momentum. They smack into the floor, with Uldwyn on the bottom. Uldwyn loses. But he's still delighted to see his sister back inside. One of my faviorite bits of the story is where the woman rolls off of Uldwyn and says, "oh hi mara."

Uldwyn and Mara sort of talk past each other, each not openly answering each others questions. We're told that Mara likes it that way. She likes knowing her brother well enough that they can communicate in half answers that mean so much more coming from each other than they would mean coming from anyone else. Ultimately, Mara asks Uldwyn to distribute her sensorium captures in exchange for more parts to continue her little roaming repair mission. Uldwyn agrees. He likes the hustle and bustle of it all, but he warns Mara that their mother is going to die of worry if she keeps pushing so far off the ship like she just did.

We cut to Mara and her mother Osana walking rapidly down one of the Yang Liwei's corridors. We find that Mara and her mother have something of a special mother-daughter relationship, in that they, for the most part, don't have one. Some time ago, several years before when Mara was young, Mara insisted that her mother treat her like an adult. And Osana agreed, but with the stipulation that if she was going to treat Mara like an adult she wouldn't be able to protect her like a mother would a daughter. And that she would live her own life and make her own choices as more of a friend than a mother. I like this relationship between Osana and Mara because it shows an independence on both sides. But even though they have apparently lived their lives somewhat independently, Mara and Osana still do the mother daughter thing every once in a while. Like now, where Osana is dragging Mara to face Alice Li, the captain of the Yang Liwei.

Mara, for her part think that her mother only exists to embarrass her. Osana, however, is hauling her daughter to off to see the ship's captain because Mara will be punished by the ship's Behavior department sooner or later. So, Osana is using someone else to talk some sense into her daughter, but you can also see the love there, that Osana is protecting Mara while still maintaining the independence they both agreed on. At one point, Mara tries to shift some of the blame to Uldwyn. It's only here that Osana involves herself directly. She spins on Mara as they stride down the hall and chastises her daughter. Not for her daring activities outside the ship or for breaking regulations in her ongoing unordered repairs, but for pretending that she doesn't hold sway over people like her brother or those who are in awe of her skill and activities. Mara is sure she can come up with a clever retort, but before she does, she and her mother arrive at Captain Alice Li's wardroom.

The position of Captain, we're told, is something Mara would like for herself someday. But right now? That's not who she is. Fortunately, Captain Li is more understanding that Mara thought she would be. She starts by offering Mara tea from an old tea set that was made some hundreds of years ago, before the Traveler arrived in our solar system. This tea set will be important later. (Seriously.) I laughed though, because Captain Li mixes her tea with milk from the "Cow Thing" on this ship's bio deck. Apparently the Yang Liwei is large enough to have one or more bioengineered creatures that aren't exactly cows.

Once all three have their tea, Osana explains the situation to Captain Li. She says that her daughter has, through her actions, set herself up as something of a minor divinity among the ship's crew. There's a great line where Osana says that Mara has become such a big celebrity that people have started drawing fan art of her! We come to find out that Alice Li knows about everything and has even bought and experienced some of Mara's death defying sensorium captures. But that doesn't mean Captain Li is a Mara fangirl. She challenges Mara, saying that Mara has to understand her emotional place among the crew of the Yang Liwei. She explains that if Mara were to die on one of her spacewalks she would harm not just herself, but the ship as a whole. The key line, which is also seriously important, is:

What people make of you, what they create of you—even without your consent—becomes a kind of responsibility.

This takes Mara aback. Makes her, if only for a moment, reconsider her actions and the little cult of fans she has been building up around herself. It's not like Mara is going to stop, but Captain Li was unexpectedly insightful and at least gives Mara something new to think about.

Li then asks about Uldwyn, noting that he has been to medical far more than any of the other unsanctioned, underground fighters. It seems that Captain Li keeps a good close track of what happens on her ship. She mentions that she does so because she is keeping an eye out for curious personalities that might be better suited to not go into cryo while the Yang Liwei makes its long journey to its destination among the stars. What that probably means is that the Yang Liwei is not a sleeper ship that runs on auto pilot, but more of a generation ship where at least some part of the population remains awake during the ship's journey. And Alice Li has tagged Mara and maybe the rest of her family as some of the ones she thinks are well suited to that kind of life. Perhaps Mara is destined to become Captain one day after all...

...except she is not going to get the chance to rise to that rank. Because something, some unknown vessel, is tracking the Yang Liwei.

Chapters Referenced:
Brephos I
Brephos II
Brephos III
(Brephos means something along the lines of an unborn or newborn child...)

After her meeting with Alice Li, Mara likely returns to her normal routine. She makes timely, unscheduled repairs. She disappears for days at a time as she basks in the starlight shining on the Yang Liwei's outer hull. And she continues to perform spectacular, death defying acts so she can spread those sensations among the colony ship's crew. I get the sense that nothing and no one onboard the Yang Liwei could make Mara do something she did not want to do... though, perhaps Captain Li's observations of her actions and their consequences have lead Mara to tone down things just a bit? We'll never know, because some days or weeks later, something is detected shadowing the Yang Liwei as it continues its acceleration out of the Sol System.

The Yang Liwei detects another ship of some kind stalking it from 12.5 light minutes ahead. To put that in perspective, the Earth is only about 8.32 light minutes from the sun, so this ship is very far away at first. Over and over again, across an eighteen hour period, the Yang Liwei requests the other vessel identify itself, but the distant contact remains silent as it slips in and out of detection. Finally, Captain Li has had enough. She cuts power to her ship's engines and orders the launch a distributed antenna swarm. This is an antenna made of many different drones that broadcast from multiple points at the same time. She intents to scare whoever is approaching them with a big, blinding "fusion powered" radar snapshot. Perhaps the Yang Liwei cut power to its engines to divert more power to what would essentially be a powerful "sonar ping" in space.

As an aside, its interesting that the Yang Liwei doesn't identify itself as "Yang Liwei" but instead uses the callsign "Exodus Green". This is pretty cool since we've heard about a few other Exodus colony ships during the course of Destiny:

• Exodus Black, the colony ship we know best, suffered massive, physics defying navigational errors (probably as the Darkness attacked) and crashed on the planetoid Nessus in the outer solar system.
  
• Exodus Red was preparing to launch when the Darkness attacked. Its AI sent repeating distress calls as it mused about its role and the likelihood of its impending destruction.
  
• Exodus Blue attempted to launch but was either shot down directly or, perhaps more likely, it too was unable to navigate when the Darkness attacked and, like the Exodus Black, it simply crashed. (This was a Destiny 1 Crucible map.)

But before all the preparations can be made for the launch of their sensor drone swarm, the Yang Liwei's communication officer relays some deeply unsettling news. The officer has picked up a transmission consisting of a tight beam of faster than light neutrinos focused solely on the Yang Liwei. It's a message from Rasputin declaring a CARRHAE WHITE state of emergency. If we dig back into some of Destiny's earliest lore we quickly find Ghost Fragment: Darkness. This is a report from Rasputin as he declares CARRHAE WHITE and takes command of Humanity's defenses. Reading through that report from Rasputin is a bit tricky, but there's a pair of old posts by INSANEdrive and myself that sheds some insight on what was going on. And, indeed, our speculations from more that four years ago are now proven right, as the comm operator tells Captain Li that Rasputin has declared a SKYSHOCK event meaning that Rasputin detected a hostile race arriving from outside our solar system, that the entire system is now under Warmind control, and that the Yang Liwei is being conscripted into a military role!

It turns out that Rasputin has ordered the Yang Liwei to do an about face and run its engines at full power until they explode. Rasputin's plan is for the Yang Liwei to coast back into the solar system and use its big kinetic weapons as ultra long range artillery. Apparently previous Exodus colony ships had mysteriously vanished on their outward journey so, as the newest, largest, and most advanced colony ship yet, the Yang Liwei was outfitted with heavy weapons to defend itself in case anyone (anything?) tried to attack it. Now those weapons have become a small part of Rasputin's plan to defend the solar system.

Captain Li orders that the distributed antenna swarm they were launching be scaled up and for telescope drones be added to the mix. Telescopes would have had a tough time getting a visual image of a silent, unknown ship millions of miles away, but will be very useful to see what is happening back at the planets of our solar system. Soon, the Yang Liwei's various sensors and telescopes give them a distant view of humanity's battle against the Darkness. And it's not going well. At all. Humanity, at the height of its Golden Age, is losing. Badly. The last sightings of the Traveler show it to be at Earth... and there are high-yield weapon discharges all over the place.

As all this happens, Captain Li makes an important decision. Instead of following Rasputin's orders without question, she decides to put the Yang Liwei's next course of action to a vote. They can either follow orders, turn around, and dive into what looks to be an unwinnable battle that will lead to the extinction of the human race, or they can run for the stars and hope to carry on somewhere else.

Outside the ship, Mara and her brother go on another spacewalk. They push off and drift down the length of the ship as they talk. Well... mostly its Uldwyn doing the talking. Ultimately, he concludes that they should run. That they don't owe the rest of humanity their lives or dreams. Mara, however, seems to want to go back. She's heavily conflicted, its not an easy decision for her, but she feels like a coward running away. She barely says anything at all as she heads back inside the ship, but Uldwyn can tell what her vote will be.

In the meantime, the ghost-like contact that had been shadowing the Yang Liwei has decided to make itself known and has begun to bear down. Somehow, without warning, the Yang Liwei is utterly cut off from the rest of humanity as the space around it is enveloped in a terrifying darkness. The colony ship and its crew experience strange distortions of time and space. The guidance computers can't make any sense of what is going on. The Yang Liwei's navigation thrusters fire almost at random as they try to steer a ship that can't sense up from down. The crew are also experiencing very worrying effects. They can feel themselves being stretched and compressed by weird gravity waves whose origin they can only guess at. But this is not just an odd weapon being fired at them or some effect the phantom ship is accidentally having on them... No, it's something much worse:

Alice Li has the distinct sense that something ancient and malevolent is operating upon them: a trillion-fingered hand reaching in to caress the very atoms of their being, setting protons a-spin, strumming nerves like guitar strings. A tongue with ten billion slithering forks tasting the surface of their brains. The sense of imminent doom crescendos. She knows, absolutely and utterly, that what is about to happen to her and to her crew is far worse than death. The darkness knows them now. The thing that has come to kill Humanity has their taste.

It's here that Alice Li does the only thing she can think of. She tries to broadcast a plea of neutrality to the ship/thing attacking them. It's not even clear that the Yang Liwei can broadcast into the darkness surrounding it, but they try to tell the approaching ship that they left Humanity and the Traveler and they don't wish any part of the conflict that is going on behind them. Nothing changes. The gravity distortions continue to get worse. So, with what is to be her final act, Mara goes back outside the Yang Liwei. She wishes to die in starlight... but there are no stars to be seen...

Chapters Referenced:
Cosmogyre I
Cosmogyre II
Cosmogyre III

Physics no longer work quite right outside the Yang Liwei, where Mara Sov went to die. When Mara pushes off the ship's hull the strange, life threatening gravity waves being produced by the mysterious alien ship push and pull on her, yanking her first one way and then the other. She pushed off with some 50km of super thin tether, but her progress away from the ship is uneven. Eventually, though, Mara does drift some distance into the darkness, away from the Yang Liwei, only to feel vibration on the line connecting her back to the ship. It is Uldwyn coming after her. Their suit radios don't function while trapped within the darkened space, but since Uldwyn has come out and attached himself to the same tether as his sister, they can communicate through the tether's hardwired circuits.

Like Captain Li, Mara has some sense that the surrounding Darkness is not indifferent:

Mara's tether trembles with Uldwyn's progress. She holds it in one hand and reaches out with the other, gripping the emptiness, feeling how the tides of broken space pull at her fingertips. She senses that the nothingness around her is not indifferent; that it is aware of all purposes, and that its own purpose encompasses them. It is infinitely hostile because it must be.

Over the hardwired com link, Mara can hear Captain Li attempting to broadcast a statement of neutrality, but we don't even know if the other ship hear it. Then, all of a sudden, a beam of Light pierces the Darkness. Far back at Earth, the Traveler has done whatever it did to save us from the Darkness. But it did more than that, it also focused a beam of its Light all the way out to the Yang Liwei! Similar to the Darkness, Mara senses that the Light too seems to have a purpose:

It sings. It chatters. It speaks in a voice older than suns. She feels that she could Fourier the voice for a century and never decompose it into its parts. It is awesome and appalling and piercingly true.

These two powerful forces battle it out around the Yang Liwei. Close to earth it seems fair to say the Traver and the Light... won. Or at least, the Traveler was successful in completely dispelling the Darkness that had attacked humanity. But as far out as the Yang Liwei is, the neither the Light nor the Darkness have an advantage. Instead, these two powerful forces struggle and the area of space around the Yang Liwei is completely overwhelmed. Near the Yang Liwei, space itself gives way and a strange black hole is formed by the overabundance of the two energies competing with one another.

Mara has always been good at figuring things out. Somehow she knows that this isn't the end. Uldwyn is yelling for her to pull back, but Mara does the opposite. And this next part is one of the most important things in all of Destiny's lore:

She fires the detach command into the tether.

Gravity seizes her. She falls forward in space and time, into the future, into the mystery. Yang Liwei is behind her. Uldwyn is behind her. She wants to be the first.

But, strangely, out of the 40,000+ passengers and crew of the Yang Liwei, it is not Mara that thinks the next thoughts. It is Alice Li. She is formless and it takes time and effort for her to define herself, beginning with her name. Through a thought process of cuts and infinities, Alice Li redefines herself as Alis Li. With that done she moves on to defining reality for herself. She remembers the Amrita Charter and that she was to be an explorer. She lets this thought and memory help her create a new, fantastic world:

I am Alis Li, the power that seeks new worlds. I have a crew. I had... a ship. I wanted to bring them to a place like—

(A paradise world: twin-ringed, impossible beauty, and a sky milk-bright with stars. She makes it real with a thought, and in that thought she falls herself, undoes her transient divinity, binds herself and all those after her into the law. The omniscient cannot explore. The omnipotent cannot struggle. She refuses that God-trap.)

—this.

This is how Alice Li awakens.

Next, second, we see Mara go through a similar process of defining her own name and then defining her physical self, but when Mara awakens, Alis Li is already there, standing over her. From all appearances, it seems Mara's efforts to be first did not succeed. Alis leads Mara outside the building they are in and shows her the world she created with her own thoughts:

It is a world that grows, a world that thrives. The stone is rich with veins of platinum, and Mara tastes tingling inclusions of transuranic elements in a fingertip of earth. Silver rivers flow in fractal deltas to lakes as still and bright as coolant pools. Acres of forests all woven at the root into a single tree. There is life of such variety and energy that each new crawling thing they see must be its own species. Or species do not mean anything at all here, and all that lives may intermingle.

Interestingly, the Yang Liwei is here in this new world. It is resting, partly embedded into a mountain, but it is intact and accessable. Alis leads Mara inside and when Mara asks about the others, there should be thousands of others, Alis tells her that they have to make them real. Then, Alis wonders out loud why Mara was the second to awaken from among the thousands of people aboard the Yang Liwei.

"Why were you the second? Why you in particular?"

"I don't know," Mara lies. It is the first lie ever told, the first secret kept.

I love these two pages where Alis and Mara define themselves back into existence. Not only because we get to see how the Awoken awakened, but because the writing itself is so beautiful. I'd quote both pages in their entirety if I though our board would let a post be that long. I very strongly encourage anyone that is interested in this stuff to read Ecstasiate I and Ecstasiate II. Not for the lore, but for the way that the first two Awoken defined themselves by cutting and shaping their own names. It is something very different from all the rest of Destiny's lore.

Next time, we'll begin explore who the Awoken are as a people once the rest of them return from the formless existence that the conflict between the Light and the Darkness left them in. But, there's also something secret that Mara knows and Alis Li does not. The question "Why you in particular?" has an actual answer, but it will be some time before we get to it.

Still, the more immediate stuff coming up is fascinating and important not just for the Awoken, but ultimately for the rest of the Destiny universe as well. The origin and Awakening of Mara Sov is just the beginning!

Chapters Referenced:
Cosmogyre IV
Ecstasiate I
Ecstasiate II

After Alis Li takes Mara on a tour of their new world, the two work together to begin calling the rest of the Awoken back from the void:

Two became four, and the four called out, and so the four became eight. In this manner, conjured forth by their doubling, the sleepers did awaken. In time the awoken spilled across the face of the world, and their number was forty thousand eight hundred ninety one. They drank of the sweet rain, and they ate of the fruit of the forest, and the starlight pooled as clear oil on their skin. First of their tongues was Speech, and the first of their hunting weapons was the bow.

We also learn some specifics about the Yan Liwei. The colony ship carried a total of 40,891 crew and colonists. An interesting thing happened when the ship fell into the blackhole created by the opposing powers of Light and Darkness. 40,000 of the ship's compliment don't remember anything about their past lives seemingly because they were in cryosleep when the Traveler rescued the Yang Liwei. But the other 891 do remember at least some of where they came from. These 891 seem to be treated as just a little bit more special.

It's also kinda fun to see bows mentioned since the new bow class weapons played such a nice role in Destiny. They'll even come up in the Awoken's story in some fun, unexpected ways later.

So, after a time of branching out and exploring their new world, the Awoken, or at least their various leaders, come together for a great council to try and work some things out. There's a lot that comes out of this council:

First is a census. We know there are initially 40,891 Awoken, but now they classify themselves into three categories: 30,111 women, 10,295 men, and 485 other. We've always had very strong hints that the Awoken of the Reef were a matriarchal society. Recall that in the Reef, the Awoken were lead by a Queen. The liaison to the Guardians was Petra Venj. Most of the Paladins (the commanders of their military forces) were women. Now we begin to see why.

Second, we have three main speakers at the council. Alis Li speaks first saying:

We were granted this world by a covenant with high powers, and in that covenant, we yielded our claim to our history. We abandoned what came before, but in doing so, we cast off all our debts. Look forward! Let us explore this infant cosmos, and revel in its glories!

Next comes an Awoken named Owome An who represents the 40,000 who do not remember their past. She come at things from a different point of view:

We are alien here. We must climb up our worldline, back to the place from which we came. I call for a vote.

The third speaker, Mara Sov, did not actually speak in public. But, in private meetings organized by her brother, she offered up her own interpretation of things:

I think that we came here as safe harbor, and we cannot forever remain. I remember the danger was appalling. I remember we were born in death. I think we must gather ourselves carefully until the time is right.

From these three viewpoints you can kinda see how the council came up with its next nine verdicts. I'm going to list each one and offer a bit of commentary on a few of them as we go.

• 1st, that the people were Awoken, and they were immortal.
  
  I wonder a bit how they figured out they were immortal. How long does it take to determine that you aren't aging?
  
  
• 2nd, that this world was Tributary of another, but that it was forbidden to seek any way to rejoin the mother stream. For this reason, it would be called the Distributary, for that was the proper name for a river that branches from the mother and does not return.
  
  The name Distributary will come up in the future. Remember it.
  
  
• 3rd, that the Awoken should multiply in wombs of flesh and machine, but only after the most careful forecast of population and ecology, and only under the supervision of those who knew the good technology; for each new child would be immortal.
  
  We see later that the Yang Liwei, which the Awoken now call the Shipspire, has the ability to brith and or possibly clone animals. Presumably, the Awoken also use the former starship's facilities early on to bolster their numbers more quickly than would have otherwise been possible.
  
  
• 4th, that those wise in the good technology should be heralded and heeded, so that the eu-technology could be preserved. They would be eutechs.
  
  Is it the 891 that remembered the good technology? Or did the 40,000 retain knowledge of their jobs and advanced skills, just not their pasts? If one or the other of those is true it could have been an interesting mix up in the political power dynamic.
  
  
• 5th, that the women should hold care and protection of the men and the others until more could be born. This is how we get a mostly female military and government in the Reef.
  
  
• 6th, that the purpose of the Awoken should be to know and love the cosmos.
  
  
• 7th, that the Awoken were created out of covenant with Light and Darkness, but the covenant was complete, and no further debt would ever be called, except the duty of the Second Verdict to remain on the Distributary.
  
  Sure sounds like Alis Li wrote this one, doesn't it?
  
  
• 8th, that the Awoken were whole in themselves, and they existed in balance.
  
  
• 9th, Ninth, that there would be no vote, but instead Alis Li would be recognized as Queen. Her first pronunciation was that there would be no secrets among Awoken.

The final ninth verdict was a critical one. It seems somewhat natural that Alis Li became Queen. She was the first to wake. She more or less created the planet the Awoken now live on. And she was, in her former life, a competent, insightful leader. But that part about secrets is also important, as we're told:

For Alis knew of the quiet council around Mara, and although she was neither jealous nor afraid, she remembered it carefully as a spark that might catch.

That spark does catch. And it leads to a civil war... that we'll cover next time. There's a lot going on with the Awoken politically and I want to make sure every bit gets the attention that it deserves. But until then, look back at what we've already learned! The origin and creation of the Awoken, one of Destiny's great mysteries, is now known to us!

Oh yeah, one more thing. There were Nine Verdicts and there is The Nine we keep hearing about. Any relation? I'm not sure. The Emissaries of The Nine seem Awoken-ish. And I saw a neat theory the other day that we'll get to eventually. But for now, at least, I don't believe there is any definitive proof linking these Nine Verdicts to The Nine.

Chapters Referenced:
Ecstasiate III

40: The Awakening of the Awoken

After the Awoken have their great council, they set out to truly explore and understand their new world. Some travel the land making maps and discoveries as the go. Others build ships and chart the oceans and coastlines. And others turn their eyes to that sky that it so full of starts it is milk white in some places. Meanwhile, Alis Li works to help the Awoken rediscover things like proper agriculture and the advanced technologies found aboard the Shipspire.

It's an interesting situation the Awoken are in. Very advanced Golden Age technology exists within the Shipspire, but it seems pretty clear there isn't a manual laying around telling them how to reproduce those technologies, so in large part they are starting at the beginning and rediscovering things year after year, decade after decade. Some Awoken, notably the 891, seem to have inklings and memories of how things work, so the Awoken aren't totally in the dark in terms of technology and invention like human civilization originally was. They probably advance far faster than humanity did the first time, but it must still take decades or centuries.

Eventually though, the Awoken start to build cities. Some Awoken, like Alis Li want to continue to advance their technologies and knowledge. But there are other Awoken who enjoy their lives of adventure and freedom in the forests and on the seas. They don't want to work in cities. They probably care less about achieving new things and advancing the state of the art. These Awoken slowly form into tribes that live outside the cities. We're not looking at civilization vs savages by any means, but there is at least some split between the interests and priorities of the Awoken as a whole. Interestingly, Mara and her brother and mother live among the tribes. Mara, specifically lives alone on some distant mountain top. She has her reasons, and we'll get to them, but for the moment, no one really knows why she wishes to be so far removed from the rest of the Awoken.

Another part of the division between these two groups of Awoken are two different ideas relating to how the Awoken were created:

In the tribes of the forests and the sea, there was the belief that the Awoken had been made out of a friction between contesting forces and that one day this conflict would need to be resolved. These were the Eccaleists who preached that Awoken owed a debt to the cosmos.

In the cities, however, they lived by the Seventh Verdict under their Queen, and they said the Awoken had been created by cosmic gift and carried neither responsibility nor eschaton. These were the Sanguine, who preached that the Awoken were as stable as an atom of carbon.

Recall, that the Seventh Verdict was:

that the Awoken were created out of covenant with Light and Darkness, but the covenant was complete, and no further debt would ever be called, except the duty of the Second Verdict to remain on the Distributary.

So, we have a group that believes the Awoken owe a debt and a second group who believe that they do not. If that was the only disagreement, things would have likely been fine. There was no immediate proof for either side, after all.

But then an Awoken woman with a radical idea comes to power and popularity within the tribes. This woman, who called herself "the Diasyrm" was one of the 891 Awoken who still remembered some of her Golden Age past. A Diasyrm is a figure of speech expressing disparagement or ridicule. This Diasyrm begins preaching that since Queen Alis Li was the first to awaken, it is therefore Alis Li who took it upon herself to shape the formless power that the Awoken existed as after the clash of Light and Darkness. And, that in shaping the Awoken into a human-like form, even one that is effectively immortal when not counting things like injuries or accidents, she forced them down a path that included things like pain, hardship, suffering, and evil.

The 891 who remember something of the past are an important and well regarded group among the Awoken. And while this new idea is highly controversial, it is coming from one of the 891 so it has more power and prestige than it would have otherwise had. The accusation is not just that the Awoken sometimes have to deal with things like pain or injury in their day to day lives, it's that they have to worry about such concepts at all. There is possibly another layer here where the Diasyrm isn't just saying that Alis Li did this to the Awoken, but that she choose to do it, or that she did it on purpose without giving anyone else a choice.

The outlying tribes get roused up by this. They want to know why Alis Li betrayed them. Why she took it upon herself to prevent them from being gods. At the same time, the peoples of the city are deeply offended at the idea that their Queen, who has lead them impeccably for hundreds of years, would have done something so vile as purposely create a world that included things like pain, suffering and death.

This strong disagreement between the two sides eventually leads to a large scale civil war! This war is termed the Theodicy War, as theodicy is, basically, the attempt to find some explanation or defense as to why there is evil in the world if the world was created by an all powerful god who is good. That is sorta what this war is, the Awoken in the cities defending their ruler against the accusations of those in the forests and seas.

(Theodicy is a complex and interesting subject... and not one I'm going to dip into... if you want to know more you should probably start with the Wikipedia Article.)

For something like fifty years, the Eccaleists who oppose Alis Li, and the Sanguine who support her are locked in battle. Given that the Awoken are still rediscovering much of the technology they lost, it seems likely that this is more of a ground war fought with fairly primitive weapons. There are still some high tech weapons left on the Shipspire, but probably not a lot. In fact, we are told that the war was fought "by spear and bow, by knife and scalpel, by old machine and new invention." And that Alis Li reserved high tech weapons for a select few Paladins who answered to her.

There's another part here. Outside of this war or accidental injury, the Awoken are immortal. Killing each other is seen as a terrible thing. Each death means a life that would have gone on forever is cut off. There's even a little poem about it:

To end a world with a shot or pin eternity on a blade; to see your sisters lost to rot and their undone works decayed.

But not even understanding the tragedy of killing a fellow immortal does much to stop the killing. What it does do is affect those who do the killing and those who lose friends or loved ones to the war. There's a great line that says: "An immortal's grief and murder-guilt, left untended, will never fade." So, this war isn't just reducing the number of Awoken, it is doing great harm to those that are left behind. In part, the war continues because the war started. Grudges and feuds and the need for revenge become significant factors in the war's continuation.

At fifty years and counting, this Theodicy War shows no sign of ending. Alis Li is not some cruel ruler who demands that her side kill the other. If anything, this is a war that is breaking her heart, but is one where her influence is not nearly enough to get either side to stop. But... Alis knows someone who probably does have that kind of influence and power. And so, she sends one of her few VTOL aircraft to pluck Mara Sov from the mountain she lives on. The conversation that ensues, and the promises that are made, and the actions and ideas that end the Theodicy War are all very interesting...

...or they will be. Next time. :)

Chapters Referenced:
Fideicide I
Fideicide II
Fideicide III

Queen Alis Li and the ever enigmatic Mara Sov stand together a kilometer off the ground on a wooden deck the Awoken have built to reach up to one of the Shipspire's airlocks. They are both watching a somber funeral ceremony taking place on the lake far below. Bodies of Awoken killed in the ongoing Theodicy War are being sent out into the lake and set ablaze while friends and loved ones sing songs of grief on the shoreline. For Alis Li, this ceremony is all the sadder because one of the 891 is among the dead, and because the one that killed her did so with a Matter Laser, a weapon that only Alis' own Paladins should have. It seems very possible that one of her most trusted warriors has defected to the Diasyrm.

Alis expresses her deep frustration to Mara. She says that things were not supposed to go this way. She explains that she still has the original Amrita Charter, and that it indicated they were to explore new worlds. That they were never supposed to lose their original bodies, or become gods, or gain new immortal bodies that shine with starlight. To Alis, this whole war is pointless and wrong and based on bad conclusions that should have never been possible to make. She's also saying that she never even should have had the power to make a world or decide on the form the Awoken would take.

Alis then all but accuses Mara of starting the war. She asks if Mara saw the Diasrym on her mountaintop and gave her the idea that the Awoken had been denied godhood. Mara responds that she did not have to provide that idea. In a half answer, Mara explains that Alis Li did that herself. That by being too honest and too open, Alis provided others with too much to use against her. Mara quotes one of Alis Li's old writings back at her as proof:

We were born when a great ship fell into a pearl of shattered space. I awoke first, and in my awakening I collapsed the potential of the void into a form I understood...

"Who can read that truth and not hear arrogance?" Mara asks. In part, Mara is saying that Alis should have kept her creation of the Awoken more secret to prevent a war of ideas like this from happening. But, also, unspoken but implied, is Mara's answer that yes, she helped start this war, but that she was not its only causes and that no, she did not personally instill the ideas that the Diasyrm used to start the war.

"Why do you love lies so much?" Alis asks Mara next.

"Not lies. Secrets." Mara answers. She explains that one truth can be seen many different ways. That those subtruths all fight for attention and often the most controversial and inflammatory subtruth, instead of the truest of those subtruths, wins the fight. Mara suggests that it is perhaps better to keep some secrets to prevent this war of subtruths.

Finally, Queen Alis Li asks the question she summoned Mara for. She asks what she will have to provide Mara for her and her mother's help in ending the war.

Mara smiles graciously and bows her head. "Nothing but a future boon."

Some time later, Osana, Mara's mother, and Uldren, her brother, enter the Diasyrm's camp. Osana has become a famed negotiator having settled many disputes over land and property. And Uldren's skill and beauty and the ever present eagle-crow on his shoulder make him just as famed in other ways.

Osana gives the Diasyrm's followers an offer:

"I come from Mara," said Osana, "whose heart has frozen in her chest. If you will end the killing, she will tell you any secret that you desire."

Uldren comes saying something else:

"Mara remembers how the Queen led us here out of chaos and saved us from the twin blindness of darkness and light. Mara knows what the Queen keeps secret. Mara has seen the strife in our souls, the clash from which we were made. We could not ever have been gods with this flaw in us! Rather, we were made from this schism. For as all life is born from energy gradient, as life in the World Before was born from the gradient between hot proton-rich ventwater and cold seawater, we were born of the shadowline at the edge of Light and Dark. We are tremors in that fault. Forever will that schism lead us.

These two ideas are both important, but they are aimed at accomplishing two very different things. Both are needed to end the Theodicy War.

Uldren's words are meant to undo the rage that the Eccaleists feel towards Alis Li for denying them godhood. In essence, Mara, through Uldren, is saying that the Awoken never had the chance for godhood. That their birth in the contest between Light and Darkness left them wonderfully but hopelessly flawed. It is that flaw that makes them as special as they are, but also that this flaw would have never let them be gods.

The Eccaleists take to this idea and spread it far and wide. Now, instead of Alis Li having gravely wronged them by taking it on herself to choose a physical life over godhood, they see that she only did what she could and what was necessary because godhood was not even an option. With their point of view shifted, there is no longer any reason for them to fight.

Osana's words were meant more specifically for the Diasyrm who is just as heartbroken over the war as Alis Li, but who also wanted to know the real truth. Osana meets with the Diasyrm in private and tells her that there is no simple weregild, no payment, that can make amends for the war, and that instead she would need to devote the rest of her immortality to serving life and enriching others.

We don't really know what the Diasyrm did after that, though. We do know that she craved the secret knowledge that Mara had promised, and that she went to Mara's mountaintop to obtain it. But then she vanished and:

If she was ever known again, it was not by the name Diasyrm.

And so, the war ends since the Eccaleists now have no leader and all the movement's followers now adhere to Mara's third way: That the Awoken were not destined for godhood, but also that the Awoken were not some cosmic gift free to simply learn and explore. Instead, they now believe that they are a beautiful but flawed creation meant for something more.

Two other interesting things happen immediately after the war:

First, Queen Alis Li leads the Awoken into a new age of peace and progress, but then she steps down as she still feels the guilt of the war.

Second, Mara has a very interesting meeting with her mother and brother in the woods near her mountain. Uldren has come into the forest to allow his latest eagle-crow to find its own place to die, and Osana has come along with him to confirm her suspicions about Mara's role in the Theodicy War. The three of them meet at a camp in the woods and Mara cooks for them as they talk.

On one level, Mara is happy to see her family again. She is so very proud of her brother for finally accepting that his prized hunting birds will each grow old and die while he remains the same. It has taken him a long time to do so.

On another level, Mara is guarded. Especially when Osana starts talking about Mara's role in the war. At one point she explains to Uldren why she tagged along. Uldren sorta again asks why Osana is even with them and Osana says:

It's your sister about to admit she's behind it all. Aren't you, Mara?

Hearing these exact set of words cause Mara to very nearly freeze up in shock. The key here is the two words "it all." Mara worries that her mother has figured out her deepest, darkest secret! But then, her mother continues, explaining to Uldren:

"The Eccaleists are her creation," her mother tells her brother. "The Diasyrm was her pawn. She allowed the Theodicy War because she was afraid we'd be too comfortable here—also so Queen Alis would need her help politically. Mara couldn't afford to be the most radical dissident. She had to seem moderate for her beliefs to thrive. Isn't that right, Mara?"

Mara again has to stay guarded, but this time she has to prevent herself from letting out a slumping sigh of relief that no, her mother has not somehow guessed her worst, most precious secret. That's not to say that Osana isn't correct in everything she said, she is, it's just that Mara has something much more important that she wishes to keep from her mother.

Uldren, though, senses all of this so he asks a critical question. He asks why Mara has descended from her mountain and decided to live in the woods like a hermit or heretic. He understood her love of charting the stars but doesn't understand why she stopped and came down.

Mara gives him the most direct answer she has given anyone in quite a while. Though, in her true fashion, it is not a direct answer but an answer designed to let him and only him know her true answer.

"I remember the day I was born," she says. "Do you, Brother?"

He does. He remembers himself being pulled apart as he chased after Mara on her 50km long tether far ahead of him and the Yang Liwei. And, in thinking back to their pasts before the Light and Darkness clashed around them, Uldren comes to realize exactly what it is that Mara is doing, and exactly what her deep, dark secret really is. And he hides it from even his mother.

Eventually, we will talk about Mara's secret directly. At some point in the future she will reveal it directly and fully to someone without hiding behind oblique mysteries. I will say, though, that the necessary information is already all there at this point if you'd like to guess.

As their meal ends, Mara stands and tell her family it's time for them all to go. She has new stars to chart, she says. And new heresies to tend to, she thinks. And, along the way, she hopes to help her brother find a new eagle-crow.

What has really happened here with the Theodicy War and with the new, interesting peace that Mara provoked, is that Mara has completed one step in a grand plan and now she is about to start on another. Mara knows very well that there is power in remove and safety from the belittling politics of temporal power, which reveal the mighty as unforgivably ordinary and petty. But this new step will require her to go to the city and live among the people she avoided for so long.

Oh, and charting stars really will play a big role in the next stage of Mara's plan.

Chapters Referenced:
Fideicide II
Fideicide III
Heresiology - This one is particularly good and well worth reading outright if you have time.

In the years following Queen Alis Li's abdication, the position of Queen still existed, but it became a much more ceremonial role. Where Alis Li had ruled a large majority of the Awoken population, the role of Queen now shrinks to become little more than a guide for the Awoken's artistic and spiritual needs. In the place of a singular Queen, the Awoken people turn to a large group of scholars known as the Gensym Scribes. Officially, these scribes trace their lineage to Kelda Wadj, the Allteacher (who will come up again eventually), but really you should think of them more as a bunch of Asher Mirs each controlling her or his own little areas of interest. We are told that they are:

...scholars who sent their knights on mad quests to test the consistence of reality.

If you need any more proof that this group is maybe just a bit nuts (brilliant, but nuts) read their praise of the Distributary...

It is sweet-watered, and there are no poisons upon it. The temper of the climate is even. Great broad-pawed cats stalk the shallow glades, and brilliant blue flamingos promenade upon the flats. The air is thick and warm, suited for flight, and the wind tastes of forest. No dawn has ever been as glorious as the salt glade dawn, and no dusk has ever moved women to weep as deeply as sunset in the Chriseiads. Corsairs sport upon the open seas, and where they waylay freighters rather than each other, they give rumor and assistance to their prey in proportion to the quality of the chase. Beloved are the stories of young lads and lasses who leap across to the corsair ship for a life of adventure! Beloved also are the terraced farms of the Andalayas, mountains so mighty and so dense with radioactives that they subside year by year into the crust. Most beloved are the fissioneers, who vaulted us to power on a world without petrochemicals. May they forgive the many stories of horror we have told in their memory. May they in particular forgive the lurid stories of the molten lead reactor, and the twelve who were impaled to the ceiling by their control rods, and the Core That Stalked.

Yeah... Now, we know where Asher's rantings all throughout Destiny 2 came from. It's also amusing that the Io destination armor set that Asher gives out is called Gensym Knight armor. :)

So now, instead of a Queen, the Awoken now have a bunch of brilliant but egotistical scientists calling the shots. And, for the most part, the Gensym Scribes take on the Sanguine position that the Distributary and the Awoken themselves are a gift from the universe. It seems at least one of the two views that caused the Theodicy War is still around a good while after the war itself concluded.

But, the Gensym Scribes are not the only holdovers from the Theodicy War. Previously, we saw the Awoken learn that when both you and your enemy are effectively immortal, it is all too easy to hold onto past grievances. Now, in this new age of peace, we see this play itself out again when a tall, physically powerful Awoken woman enters the courts of one of the Gensym Scribes. This warrior is furious and grief stricken, and she is armed with a longbow so large that it can only be strung if she twines it around her body and uses her whole mass to bend it. She calls out:

I am Sjur Eido, and I accuse Mara of the ancient murder of my lady the Diasyrm. In my saddle, I have a weapon with only one death remaining. Take me to Mara, and I will deliver it.

The scribes are mortified. Sjur is one of former Queen Alis Li's Paladins. She is a legendary warrior from the old days and it is clear that she means business. But... well, Mara is Mara. A public feud between the two could kick off a new Awoken civil war, and that cannot be allowed. So, after consulting and debating with each other (the Awoken are now at a technological level at or near our modern day, so this debate is almost certainly accomplished by digital means) they decide to give Sjur Eido all the information they can about Mara's whereabouts and activities... which probably isn't a lot.

We come to learn that Mara and Uldren are out traveling the world. They've started talking to people and are collecting old rumors and portents. It seems likely that they aren't staying in one place long, and it's probably pretty tough to pin them down. Just as there are some Sanguine adherents left, there are also some who used to be Eccaleists. This group seem to think that Mara is gathering up information and favors in order to bring about a day of reckoning where the Awoken will finally be able to finally fulfill their ultimate purpose.

But then, after many decades of the Gensym Scribes running things, Queen Nguya Pin suddenly reverses course and makes moves to retake the power that the position of Queen once held. This isn't an out of the blue decision or a random power grab. Instead, it looks to be a political maneuver by someone else as the queen only does this after being visited by a mysterious woman who hides her identity behind a mask and under a hood. Nguya Pin doesn't just one day start giving commands as a spoiled tyrant. Instead, she shocks the Awoken world when she out and out declares that she is now an Eccaleists, and that she plans to lead the Awoken back to the stars so they can figure out exactly what kind of debt they owe for their salvation.

As mentioned above, the Awoken of this age have advanced to the at least to the point of having aircraft and nuclear reactors and ocean going vessels and modern cities. And coffee. Coffee is mentioned specifically. Now, thanks to Nguya Pin, a large portion of the Awoken people devote themselves to mastering the space age. The Queen mollifies the Gensym Scribes, whom she just usurped, by providing them with ample funding and her grand court facilities as a place of research and development. The previously bickering scribes delight at getting all the resources and recognition they could ever want. Soon, they are all working together towards the common goal of spaceflight.

This is an exciting new age for the Awoken. One where it feels like they are finally on a path to fulfilling their destiny... and then, Sjur Eido shows up at the Queen's court in secret. You see, Sjur realizes that out of all the Awoken on the Distributary, only Mara could convince Sanguine Queen Nguya Pin to become an Eccaleists. Over the next few days, Sjur determines that the true identity of the masked and hooded figure is, indeed, Mara Sov. Eventually Sjur finds Mara and follows her back to her laboratory intending to kill her. But, when she finally gets the chance, she doesn't attack.

Sjur is frozen as she watches, perhaps from some distance across a crowded room, as the timeless, elegant, knowledgeable, and beautiful Mara Sov works to perfect some sort of advanced sensor meant to detect gravity waves. Sjur struggles against herself. She carries with her centuries of anger and grief, but the person she was determined to kill is simply too regal and too awesomely splendid to murder. With her heart about to burst at the contradiction, Sjur throws down her Maltech laser in dramatic fashion to make her presence known and then issues a dangerous challenge:

Mara Sov! I cannot live while you live, but I cannot bear to kill you. I challenge you to a duel to the agony. I will fight your most beloved companion to the death and leave you forever maimed or else die in the attempt.

For some reason, Mara agrees to this challenge. Why? Well, we already know that she at least had some role in birthing the Eccaleists movement. We certainly know that she ended it. And while we don't know if she really did kill the Diasyrm or not, surely Mara feels a good deal of responsibility for the Theodicy War, even if it was a part of her plan. So, in her stead, Mara orders her brother Uldren to fight for her. And she does so without any sign of hesitation. We're told that there is a ruthlessness about Mara now that maybe she didn't possess before. Maybe because she is getting nearer to her goal and is not about to let anyone get in her way?

Uldren, being Uldren, gladly carries out his sister's wishes. And, in true melodramatic fashion, he responds to Sjur in this manner:

We cannot put it all upon a single fight. Too much would be left to chance. Such an old grudge deserves to be tested well. I propose we fight with blade, with rifle, and with fifth-generation air superiority fighters.

Heh. This mix of haughtiness and timelessness and out of left field advanced technology is almost the perfect encapsulation of the Awoken as a whole!

Sjur agrees to Uldren's terms, but before they can even prepare for their first match, the entire Distributary begins to figuratively fall apart!

Household turned against household, sister against brother, wife against wife. The whole world clenched her fists.

There's a bunch of things happening at once, all of them bad:

• Queen Nguya Pin is at a loss for how to properly welcome such a renowned warrior such as Sjur Eido. But, Sjur's unannounced arrival is seen as a major slight against the Queen and her followers.
  
  
• Sjur is known to historians as a fearsome warrior, but also as one of Queen Alis Li's Paladins who defected to the Eccaleists cause. (Could Sjur have been the person Alis Li was so upset at during the funeral at the Shipspire? Was it Sjur who killed one of the 891 with a matter laser?!)
  
  
• The Gensym Scribes, who gave their hushed approval for Sjur to murder Mara, are terrified that their secret will soon be revealed. They quickly depart in fear that Mara's death will be on their heads.
  
  
• The great industry of cooperation and advancement that had taken hold of the Awoken for the past several decades almost immediately begins to collapse as the Gensym Scribes and various cooperations, contractors, and suppliers all begin pulling out of Queen Nguya Pin's reach for space. Once again, the queen and her follower are furious and see this as a betrayal by the Sanguine.

Finally, as the entire Awoken world holds it breath, Uldren Sov and Sjur Eido face each other. Depending on who wins, the Awoken might again crumble into civil war and Mara's might be forced to flee her homeward with her plans in ruins...

...so, of course, we'll cover the contest between these two champions next time.

Chapters Referenced:
Imponent I
Imponent II
Imponent III

With the world watching, Uldren Sov and Sjur Eido take their places for their first potentially deadly contest. Somehow or other, it has been decided that their blade duel will take place near one of Queen Nguya Pin's nuclear reactors. The actual stage for this fight is to be a netting made of woody lianas vines woven into a sort of rope that is suspended some distance above a pool of heavy water that is likely being used as part of the reactor's fission or fusion process.

Uldren is dressed in a white armor chest piece on top of a black suit with tassels. I imagine it to be something between his "hunter armor" of Destiny 1 and his robes and poncho of Forsaken. Sjur, is said to be dressed in the contoured pressure armor of an Awoken paladin. Perhaps this is something similar to what the Awoken corsairs wear around the Vestian Outpost in D1?

Before they begin, Sjur pulls away the curtain from the viewing area that has been set up nearby and challenges Mara, asking if she is afraid.

"Are you afraid?" she whispered, half in hatred, half in admiration, all in awe. "Do you sweat? Does your breath come short?"

Mara pressed her hand to Sjur's faceplate and left no stain. She held Sjur's gauntlet to her heart so Sjur could feel her steady pulse and even breath. "You don't care about him?" Sjur pressed her. "It would mean nothing if I maimed him?"

"You ask the right questions," Mara said, "but of the wrong sibling."

I think this shows Mara's confidence in her brother. It also speaks to the way Uldren is willing to suffer any injury to keep his sister and her plans safe. One thing I wondered is if Mara would be willing to do the same. But really, that's a false question that places equal value on Mara and Uldren when they are not actual equals.

The battle begins and the two warriors dance about the wooded netting in the rapid steps and retreats classic to any good knife fight. Two are equally matched, or at least close enough to it that neither can win directly.

In order to try and force the issue, Uldren begins cutting away at sections of the netting. Sjur, in response, rushes Uldren more aggressively until finally both their plans come to fruition. Sjur slams into Uldren, and they both lose their footing and fall into the heavy water pool below. This first match is a tie.

(Just to note, heavy water is considered toxic because its heavier molecular weight does bad things to necessary bodily processes like cell division, but it is not radioactive and you could generally swim a pool of it with no ill effects as long as you didn't start drinking a lot of it.)

The next battle takes place in one of the Distributary's monsoon swept jungles. Instead of being a quick knife fight, this is a very long, drawn out battle fought with rifles, and stealth. Long, in this case, means that Uldren and Sjur stalk each other through the jungle over the course of six tense weeks. Remember, the entire Awoken world is still on edge, but day after day passes by with no word on a victor.

In this contest, one would think Uldren would have the clear advantage. He's the stealthier of the two. He's lived in the jungles for most of his time on the Distributary. He often uses birds of prey to help him in his hunts and in combat. But not only is Sjur not entire out of her element, the Eccaleists who she fought for in the Theodicy War had their camps outside the cities remember, she also understands the underlying natural systems of the jungle just as well as Uldren does. So, what this long, drawn out fight comes down to is who has the superior tactics. And, in this case, that turns out to be Sjur.

Where Uldren is at home in the jungle, and where he walks in silence and is careful not to leave any trail or trace, Sjur spends her time disturbing the animals and disrupting their habitats and killing the prey they usually feed on. Over time, the birds and predators that would have previously ignored Uldren's stealthy patrols or helped him identify Sjur's location now flee loudly from his presence or challenge him and force him away from the paths he knows best.

In the end, Sjur manages to pin Uldren against a lake and lands a shot on him as he attempts to cross it in order to get away from her. Sjur's shot might have even been deadly, but it sounds like she fired from an elevated position and her bullet impacted the water before hitting Uldren. Still, it's a victory, and she now leads the contest 2 to 1.

Between this contest and the next we perhaps see that Mara is not as cold and uncaring as she first appeared.

"Your life is at stake," Mara warned her brother. "Lose this final match, and you will—"

"Am I simple?" he snarled at her. The wound pained him terribly, but he would not risk more than a little analgesic. "Leave me my work, Sister, or you leave me nothing at all."

Uldren does not appreciate her meddling. I think he knows what he is doing and he want her to continue to trust him to do it.

The next contest takes place in the skies and is to be fought over long distances with advanced jet fighters. Sjur chooses a nimble fighter and outfits it with all-aspect, close range, heat seeking missiles. Uldren, however chooses a Dart, one of the Awoken's oldest, most primitive fighter jets. It is slow, has bad targeting, and can only be equipped with poor weapons. The key here though is that Uldren confirms with Sjur that they are allowed to equip their fighters with any weapon they ever sported while in active service.

Sjur Eido told him that one of the Gensym Scribes would provide the aircraft and requested weapons from her personal deterrent stockpile. "Very well," Uldren sniffed. "And we will have access to all the weapons these airframes can equip?"

"Of course," Sjur said. "Those we cannot obtain can be replaced by training simulators." She was certain Uldren's wound would cripple him.

The two expert pilots take off and check in with air controllers and finally turn to start this final fight some 100 kilometers apart. Sjur is sure she has already won. Her fighter is newer, move advanced, more nimble, and better armed. Plus, she isn't suffering from a painful gunshot wound. She knows that if she flies low above hills and treetops the primitive radar in Uldren's Dart might not even be able to properly detect her. But then, Uldren wins with nothing more than a call over their shared radio.

Fox three. Kill. Engagement over.

Sjur is not impressed. She is still in the air, flying towards him. Everything is fine. She think's he's trying to toy with her in some way... but then her instrument panel indicates that she has indeed lost this final match. Uldren's trick here is that he confirmed that they could use simulated weapons if the real versions were not available... and that the Awoken had long since dismantled all their nuclear weapons, including the unguided, air to air nuclear missiles that Darts once flew with back in their prime. Uldren nuked her and everything for kilometers around her with one of these simulated missiles! Sjur never even had a chance.

Back on the tarmac, Sjur throws herself on Mara's mercy. Her goal had been kill someone Mara loved and leave Mara as devastated as she had been when the Diasyrm had vanished, but instead she ended up tying Uldren 2 to 2 in the three round challenge that he lead her into. We're never told directly, but I suspect that maybe that was his or, rather, Mara's plan all along.

Mara does indeed show Sjur mercy:

"Rise, Sjur Eido," said Mara. "Let us take the stars together."

With Sjur at her side side, Mara now has another powerful warrior in her service, but, as we'll see next time, Sjur is worth a good deal more to Mara, both in a political sense, and in ways far more personal.

Chapters Referenced:
Imponent III
Imponent IV

In the years after Uldren's victory over Sjur, the Awoken have returned to working on their ambitious dream of space flight. And this time, instead of living on a distant mountain top or remaining hidden in the woods, Mara Sov is out in the open, at the forefront of it all. And Sjur and Uldren are there with her.

In Uldren, Mara had an enforcer who could win battles and put down opposition with his skill, his determination, and even with his good looks.

In Sjur, Mara gained two things:

• First, New political legitimacy. She is now welcomed openly in the courts of Queen Nguya Pin and has the support of the legendary Paladin Sjur Eido. We readers know that Mara helped create and guide Eccaleism. With Sjur, one of the most famous Eccaleist, at her side, Mara is now the de facto, unquestionable head of Eccaleism. In practice, this would make Mara Sov one of the most powerful leaders on the Distributary. Her power probably rivals or even exceeds that of Nguya Pin.
  
  
• Second, Complete political dominance over the Gensym Scribes. Remember, after Alis Li resigned, the political office of Queen waned and for a long time and the Gensym Scribes ran things. Nguya Pin did a lot to restore the office of Queen to power, but even then, the Scribes were major players in her courts. (Probably because of the technological knowledge and influence they wielded.) But also remember, it was the Gensym Scribes who gave Sjur all their knowledge of Mara's whereabouts and gave her permission to kill Mara. They had wanted to avoid another Awoken civil war. But now, with Sjur and Mara on the same side, they can do nothing to oppose Mara's plans, because if they try, she would share with all the Awoken that the Gensym Scribes had conspired to allow her murder.
  
  For the next several decades, the Awoken work together as closely as they ever have until they do indeed achieve spaceflight. Throughout it all, Mara has been pulling strings, influencing corporate mergers and buyouts, and probably causing unwanted deals and lines of thinking to collapse. With her leadership, the Awoken deploy satellites and space elevators and orbital habitats and build advanced detection facilities on the ground all for the purpose of learning more about their place in the universe. We next catch up with Mara as she and Queen Nguya Pin are watching the launch of a final observatory satellite that Mara designed.

As Mara watches the launch she has a curious thought as she considers the beauty and powerful of the rocket soaring into the sky:

The Awoken could have been angels. Instead, they are flesh.

That's pretty interesting considering Mara now leads the political movement that believes the Awoken could have never been gods.

Once the launch concludes, something else interesting happens. Queen Nguya Pin abdicates the throne. She's not stupid. She knows Mara has been the real leader of the Awoken for many many years. She went along with Mara for the sake of the Awoken people and the sake of the monarchy, but now she has had enough of Mara's manipulations. She basically tells Mara off and ends her little tirade with... not a threat exactly, but with the intention of getting to the bottom of why Mara has done all the things she has done.

I am going to find Alis Li, wherever she's gone, and ask her all my questions about you. I'm very interested to know the answers.

Mara, who can easily afford to be gracious, tells Nguya that she has been a wonderful queen, and that no one could replace her. At the same time, of course, Mara is already considering influencing things so that someone named Devna Tel will become the next queen. Devna Tel apparently is at odds with the Gensym Scribes, something that Mara still finds very useful.

Later, Mara meets up with Sjur and they fly off to some new destination to continue Mara's work. Here we learn that Mara is exceedingly lonely despite the fact that she is approaching the completion of another one of her long term goals. For instance, Mara can't help but think back to her mother who she probably has not seen in decades. Sjur notices Mara's forlorn expression, and at first attempts to console Mara, but she quickly changes the subject, knowing Mara well enough now to know that she will not talk about her feelings.

But this time, Mara does something unexpected. Instead of stewing alone in silence, she moves over and, with a glance, she makes room for Sjur to sit beside her.

"Don't say anything," Mara warns her. "Not a word." And so they pass the flight in silence, but not alone.

For the next thirty years, Mara and her followers listen to all the instruments Mara has had built on the ground and record massive amounts of data from all the satellites she has placed in the sky. The Awoken people know this. They know that Mara is studying and cataloging. Maybe there's even an announcement or discovery made every few years from the companies and scientists that Mara ultimately has control over, but for the most part, nothing is said, and the Awoken of the Distributary are left to wait and wonder until one day Mara schedules herself for a worldwide televised broadcast to detail her findings.

What Mara has found, really what she has always known but has now used science to prove, has drastic implications for the Awoken. It may, will, also have some major implications going forward past the main story of Forsaken. This is one of those pivotal moments in Destiny's lore that changes things forever, so instead of summarizing Mara's broadcast or commenting on it line by line, I'd like to present it to you all here in its entirety:

Mara looks into the camera and lets the fire in her eyes speak.

They are waiting on her, the Distributary's millions, her Awoken people. She has stoked their curiosity with thirty years of painstaking analysis. When they look up at the night sky, they see the stars of her observatories among the crowded bands of habitats, the spindly orbital factories, towering elevator counterweights, the burning roads of matter streams.

"Let me tell you of our world," she says.

There are the facts of tectonics and atmosphere, of water and climate: the parameters of the sun that feeds them. "No infants died last year. No child went unfed. No youth came of age illiterate, no one suffered illness who might have been treated. We have long surpassed the eutech gathered from Shipspire; yet we have grown carefully and cleanly. We have eluded pollution, eradicated plague, and chosen peace. No maltech weapon has been discharged in centuries. Our atomic weapons were dismantled before they could ever be used. We are our own triumph."

She has elected not to use graphics or theater. She would rather they remember her face.

"You know yourselves," she says. "Let me tell you of your cosmos. We live in a spatially infinite, isotropic universe 12.1 billion years old. Its metallicity is ideal for life and for the spread of technological civilizations. In time, the distance between all points in the universe will contract to zero, and the cosmos will collapse into a singularity, to be reborn in fire. There will be no end to eternity here."

She pauses. She waits. The whole world is out there, begging for the answer to the question.

"Our world is a gift. And we must refuse it."

They are Awoken. They love secrets. They will wait for her to explain.

"We have detected a pattern that was imprinted into our universe by its ancestor: a fingerprint of the initial conditions into which existence was born. From this information, we have confirmed the most primordial of Awoken myths. Our universe is a subset of another. We live within a singularity, a knot in space-time, that orbits a star in another world.

"Conventional relativity would suggest that time outside an event horizon passes quickly compared to a clock within, but our universe has a peculiar relationship with its mother. Thousands of years have passed for us on the Distributary. Outside? Centuries, at most. We are a swift eddy in a slow river.

"These ideas may not surprise you after centuries of theorizing and philosophy. But we have decrypted new data from the cosmic microwave and neutrino background signals. We have discovered voices... the voices of distress calls. They tell a story of bravery, of war, and of desperate loss.

"We were not always immortal. We did not earn this utopia by covenant with any cosmic power, or by attaining an enlightened moral condition. We are refugees. We fled from an apocalyptic clash between our ancestors' civilization and an invading power." She lowers her eyes. "The signals we have retrieved tell us that our ancestors were on the edge of defeat. Perhaps extinction."

"It is time that we accept our debt. The Distributary is a refuge, not a birthright; a base to rebuild our strength, not a garden to tend. I ask you, Awoken, to join me in the hardest and most worthy task a people has ever faced. We must leave our heaven, return to the world of our ancestors, and take up the works they abandoned. If some of them survive, we must offer aid. If they have enemies, we must share our strength. We must go back to the war we fled and face our enemies there."

She lets them dangle a moment before she drives it home. "We have also determined that our birthright, our immortality, is tied to the fundamental traits of this universe. Once we leave, we will begin to age again. In time, we will all die.

"Will you join me, Awoken? Will you answer my call? All I offer you is hardship and death. All I ask is everything you can offer. But you will see an older starlight. You will walk in a deeper dark than this world has ever known."

Out of all the Destiny lore there is, I think this piece come the closest to hitting on that latin phrase Bungie used back before and during Destiny 1. Per Audacia Ad Astra means, roughly, "Through Boldness To The Stars". Wow.

There are a couple of key things to consider here:

• First, this is the culmination of Mara's grand plan. She has been working all along to prove to the Awoken that they must go back and help humanity. She has lied, and manipulated, and she even sparked a devastating civil war all to fulfill a duty that not many others really believed in. But, in her plea for the Awoken to follower her back even though it will mean all of their deaths, she has also shown herself to be one of the most noble Destiny characters we know of.
  
• Second, because of the way time works in this pocket universe that the Awoken exist in, only a few hundred years has passed for humanity while a few thousand have passed for the Awoken. We have at least some reason to believe that the Iron Lords first began protecting Earth about 500 years after the Traveler sacrificed itself to defeat the Darkness. That would place Awoken like Mara at somewhere around 5,000 years old. Or maybe more, given that not even Mara can tell exactly how much slower time is passing for the Awoken.
  
  This accelerated passage of time also has serious implications for the what's left of Humanity and the Awoken post-Forsaken. Perhaps we'll get to it in more detail someday, but the basics of it are that Savathûn, the craftiest of the Hive's top level leadership, is possibly the one keeping the Dreaming City in its three week loop as she searches for a way to invade and conquer the Distributary. With the faster flow of time she would be able to advance and grow her armies ten times faster than anywhere within our universe and would become completely unstoppable!

That's all for now. We're almost at the end of this part of the Awoken's history, but there's still a little more to go. Next time, Mara will have a long chat with Alis Li where she reveals to the former queen that one all important secret that she has been hiding.

Chapters Referenced:
Imponent V
Katabasis

"You're the devil," Alis Li whispers. "I remember... in one of the old tongues, Mara means death."

"You realize," Alis Li says, breathing hard, "that this is the worst thing ever done. Worse than stealing a few thousand people from heaven. Worse than that thing we fled, before we were Awoken—"

The words above, spoken by Alis Li to Mara Sov, are completely serious. Not a single one is rhetorical or played up. Alis Li is as furious and as serious about them as she has been about anything in either of her two lives. But how did we get here? It must have taken something extremely extraordinary to provoke the normally staid first queen of the Awoken to lash out with such hatred. Let's rewind just a bit and find out.

Things have been moving rapidly forward since Mara's broadcast. Undoubtedly, all of Mara's teams and companies and hosts of engineers and experts are now hard at work on the technologies and ships needed to leave the Distributary and its pocket universe. Given how much Mara put in personally to the development of new technologies back before Sjur confronted her, it seems likely that she would be right there working along side them. But on this particular day, Mara has taken leave of her work and journeyed with Sjur out to the beautiful Pearl Groves that contain the Sanctuary of Former Queens.

...she looks out across mazes of channel and tidal pond to the compounds of ancient silver-white stone beyond. Two-ton oysters glitter in the shallows, their shells jeweled with mineral inclusions. Seabirds peck and fret along narrow white beaches.

They touch down some two kilometers from the retreat, and, after ignoring a warning from Uldren to not go alone, Mara walks that distance through the heat, dressed in black no less, with nothing but a small parasol to shield her from the sun. Up in the sky, Mara thinks she can just make out the glittering specks of her hulls, advanced starships...

built under eutech supervision to the specifications of radically post-conscious AI that will one day fly between worlds.

This is the first we've heard of AIs that did not originate in Humanity's Golden Age or the Eliksni in the form of their Servitors. I wonder if anything became of them... (There's a chance this question is actually playing out in Forsaken's Dreaming City right now... and its answer might be: "yes!")

Finally, after walking for quite a while, Mara reaches the place Alis Li has been living for the past several hundred years ever since she gave up the position of Queen. From its description, it sounds like it might be the structure Mara first woke up in a few thousand years before. Alis and Mara sit down for tea served from that same tea service that Captain Alice Li of the Yang Liwei once used to serve tea to Mara and her mother a very long time ago.

The two sit and drink their tea and converse. It's not a friendly conversation, really, but Mara and Alis are at least respectful of each other. As they talk, we learn that Mara did indeed get Devna Tel elected as the new Queen, but also that Queen Tel took that authority and then decided not to support Mara's expedition back to earth.

Alis kinda rubs this in Mara's face. She sorta mocks Mara by pretending to be surprised that Queen Tel doesn't want thousands of Awoken ripped away from their home on the Distributary.

Mara argues that she isn't ripping anyone away because all of her people are volunteers. In reply, Alis reminds Mara of what her mother told her during that meeting on the Yang Liwei way back then: "....that it is one thing for you to have a particular power over people, but another thing entirely to deny that you are using it."

Mara snipes back, quoting Alis' own words back at her:

"You once told me," Mara counters, "that I had to consider the symbol people made out of me, and that if it were good, then I had to be that symbol for them. I had to perform as they required. I have done so. I have been the best thing I can think to be."

Alis' reply?

Is this the best thing you could think to be?

For a while, the two drink in silence. Then, finally, Alis gets to the important matters. She first asks about the Diasyrm and the Theodicy War and demands to know if Mara arranged it all. Mara admits she nurtured the Eccaleist and made sure she always had a group of Awoken who were not satisfied with the heaven they lived in so that she would have people willing to follow her back. But Mara denies that she arranged it all. Which we're told is a lie.

Alis, growing more furious, wants to know why Mara is asking so many to sacrifice so much. She wants to know why Mara is asking these people to die for a home that was doomed. She wants to know why Mara wants to go back and try to save Earth when 891 members of the Yang Liwei's crew voted to abandon it. Alis reminds Mara of the Amrita charter and how it directed them to explore new worlds and how it was that same charter that Alis used to shape the creation of the Awoken and the Distributary.

Mara agrees, that the first one to awaken was the one who got to set the rules. This satisfies Alis for a moment. She sort of releases her anger and sits back in her chair and asks why Mara really came out to see her.

"To ask you for that boon you owe me." Mara says.

Alis knew this must be coming. Certainly she suspected Mara would call in her favor after her worldwide broadcast. Alis speculates aloud, saying she is sure that Mara has come to her to ask her to endorse the expedition to earth. It all makes sense to Alis. Devna Tel turned Mara down, but if Mara can get Alis' backing, the backing of the first Awoken queen, well that would be far more powerful that having the support of the Awoken's newest queen. All in all, Alis is sure this is just more political gamesmanship from Mara. Except, Mara says no. The real reason she has come to see Alis Li is something Alis probably never expected.

"The boon I ask is your forgiveness."

Then she explains the truth. She tells Alis Li what she did: about the choice Alis Li would have made, if Mara had not made her own first. It's only an extension of what Alis has already deduced.

When she's finished, her ancient captain's jaw trembles. Her hands shake. A keen slips between her clamped teeth. The oldest woman in the world conjures up all the grief she has ever felt, and still it is not enough to match Mara's crime.

"You're the devil," Alis Li whispers. "I remember... in one of the old tongues, Mara means death. Oh, that's too perfect. That's too much."

She laughs for a while. Mara closes her eyes and waits.

"You realize," Alis Li says, breathing hard, "that this is the worst thing ever done. Worse than stealing a few thousand people from heaven. Worse than that thing we fled, before we were Awoken—"

"Please," Mara begs. "Please don't say that."

There it is! There is Mara's biggest darkest secret? Did you catch it? I'll highlight it again for you:

She tells Alis Li what she did: about the choice Alis Li would have made, if Mara had not made her own first.

Alis Li has lived for thousands of years thinking she was the first Awoken. She remembers defining her own name and her own existence. She remembers creating the Distributary and restoring herself to a physical body. She remembers being there when she pulled Mara back from the void. But now Mara is telling Alis that yes, she did make those choices. She did all of those things, but that she was only able to make those choices because Mara made her own choices first. That in reality, Mara was the first Awoken, and that she kept that fact secret from everyone, including Alis.

We've been leading up to this for a while. Think back to the times Mara has protected or revealed some important, unspoken secret:

• When the Light and Darkness clashed and formed the strange black hole near the Yang Liwei it was Mara who detached from her fifty kilometer tether and purposely fell into that black hole before Uldwyn, the Yang Liwei, or Alice Li and the rest of the colony ship's crew.
  
• When Alis Li pulled Mara back from the void she wondered aloud why Mara in particular was second, to which Mara lied, saying she didn't know.
  
• When Mara's mother met her in the forest and accused her of being behind "it all" Mara flinched, thinking her mother had somehow figured out her secret. It turned out the "it all" Mara's mother was referring to was merely the atrocity of the Theodicy War, where the "it all" Mara flinched at was truly "it all."
  
• When Mara let her brother in on the secret during that same campfire meeting, she did so by reminding him of the Yang Liwei and the tether and that she went in to the black hole ahead of him.

So, what exactly is Mara asking forgiveness for? Well, now we know that it was Mara who set the very initial ground rules of existence for everyone, including Alis Li. She set it up so that Alis Li would remember the Amrita Charter and create a world and a people to the best of her ability. But, knowing that a creator who stole godhood away from the Awoken would be seen as evil by many, Mara hid that knowledge from everyone and instead arranged it so that Alis Li would be the one to take the blame. Mara manipulated Alis so that everyone, even Alis herself, believed that Alis was the one who allowed suffering and death into their perfect world. Mara even arranged a war among her peaceful planet of immortals to further her own agenda and she again set Alis up as the one to take the blame.

Maybe, in the end, it turns out that Mara did all this to help save Humanity and fight The Darkness, but what she did to Alis Li is one hell of a thing to ask forgiveness for. And, maybe rightly so, Alis does not forgive Mara. Not in the slightest!

Alis Li rises from her chair. "I'll support your fleet," she says. "I'll use every favor and connection I have to get your Hulls completed and through the gateway—and I will do it so that I can hasten your departure from this world. I will do it out of hate for you; I will do it so that every good and great thing we achieve here will ever after be denied to you, you snake. No forgiveness. Do you understand me? It is unforgivable. Go. Go!"

"I'd be very glad if you didn't tell my mother," Mara says.

Alis Li hurls the pitcher of blackberry tea over Mara, turns, and goes inside, leaving her to trudge, wet and sticky but unbowed, back to her ship. She leaves her tea-stained parasol on the deck, but when she remembers it and looks back, it is already gone.

So now there are two people who know Mara's secret. Her brother Uldren, and her sort of rival, former queen Alis Li. Uldren accepted the secret and its implications but has such faith in his sister that he buried it away from everyone. Alis Li called Mara the devil and promised to do everything in her power to send Mara far away where she will die.

But what about Sjur? She doesn't know. And she is someone who switched sides during the Theodicy War because she believed punishing Alis Li for denying the Awoken their godhood was more important than any other loyalty or responsibility she had to her Queen or her people. She fought and killed and was prepared to murder Mara or Uldren all for that belief. What will she do if she ever learns Mara's secret?

The answer is actually out there. We'll explore it eventually, but next time, we'll close out this first book of Awoken history and get a hint at what's to come.

Chapters Referenced:
Nigh I
Nigh II
(And the rest of the Marasenna)

When we next see Mara Sov, she is far from former Queen Alis Li's retreat and far above the perfect Awoken world that has been her home for the past several thousand years. Mara, and all that have chosen to take up her call to return to earth, are aboard the massive starships Mara spent millennia working towards.

Embedded in her sensorium, all Mara has to do is think and the systems built into all the ships in her fleet respond to her whims. With nothing but a thought of the banyan trees far below her, Mara opens a channel to the rest of the fleet and starts a final systems check. This plays out much like our rocket launches of today, where Mara as the Flight Controller queries each team leader and gets a go or no go from them. FIDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), Guidance, INCO (Integrated Communications Officer), GEOD (ground tracking?), BIO (life support systems?), Sensors, and Weapons all report go for launch.

With everything ready, Mara takes one last look at the perfect world she is leading her people away from. Through the virtual, all encompassing point of view that the sensors and cameras of her sensorium provide her, Mara gazes back at the Distributary:

There it is. The world of her rebirth, shining water-blue and beautiful, wrapped like a gyroscope in its twin rings. World of laughing Corsairs, world of breathless forest hunts, world of mountains flickering with pale Cherenkov fire, world of sweet berry-stained lips and mathematical insight pure as a rhodium chime. She will never see it again.

And then, Mara thinks of her mother, and we learn that Osana decided not to go with her daughter on this new journey. For a moment, Mara finds herself caught up in the memory of the night her mother told her.

The two had shared a late night of drinks and conversation at Osana's ranch, but as the sun began to come up, Mara's mother broke the bad news. To Mara, it was like a nightmare come true. She never really considered carrying out her plan without her mother somewhere close by. When Mara asks why, her mother replies that Uldren isn't speaking to her anymore.

"Because I already told him I wasn't coming with you. I'm happy here."

"Mom," Mara says, with rising anger, "I'm happy here too. That's not the point—" A conversation that did not so much end as beat itself to an unsustainable emotional pulp, hours later. No catharsis. No closure.

And so, after what seems to have been a long, painful argument, Mara and her mother are left hanging and disconnected from one another as Mara sets off to fulfill her plan.

Back in the present, Sjur's urgent voice comes over the comms.

"Flight, Sensor," Sjur Eido calls. "I have anomalous starfield occlusions, bearing—"

"Intercept!" Mara shouts. "They're missiles!" It had to happen. Someone had to try to stop the departure, someone good and Paladin-pure who believes they are saving tens of thousands of Awoken from madness and doom.

Uldren, who is in charge of the fleet's weapons warns Mara that they won't be able to shoot down all the missiles. This forces Mara to make a painful choice. She orders Uldren to redirect their defensive fire to target the missiles aimed at the gateway that will take their ships back to our normal universe. It means that they will lose ship and hundreds if not thousands of brave Awoken who volunteered to go Mara's mission, but it is either that or have the gateway destroyed and the mission stopped before it can even start.

With her next thought, Mara sends a command to the fleet ordering all of her ships to abort from the planned countdown and skip directly to launch. Mara's fleet strains as it accelerates towards the gateway they built above the Distributary. Some of the ship are hit, damaged, maybe even destroyed, but the gateway remains undamaged by the attack.

We don't get to see the implications or consequences of this new wave of Awoken on Awoken violence. Someone decided to attack Mara Sov, the most powerful figure in Awoken society. They killed hundreds of their own kind and I can only imagine what sorts of justifications and accusations will play out back on the Distributary once Mara is gone. Maybe this attack is smoothed over and the Awoken in their pocket universe go on about their peaceful lives? Or, maybe this violent act shatters Awoken society once more and the Distributary descends into a new civil war? We just don't know.

Back on her ship, Mara braces against the hard acceleration. Her final thoughts, before her ship reenters the singularity that brought her to this strange hidden dimension, center on her mother. In response, her sensorium tries to open a channel to Osana, and the last thing Mara sees is the error:

No connection. No connection. No connection. Cannot connect to Osana.

And with that, Mara Sov and her Awoken are on their way back to our universe and our solar system. We'll catch back up with Mara, her brother Uldren, and the rest of her Awoken very soon in:

Chapters Referenced:
Palingenesis I

The transit through the portal back to our normal universe all but trashes the specialized ships Mara and her Awoken had designed for the voyage. The advanced materials making up their ships' hulls were stretched, and warped, and torn away by the passage through the micro singularity, not to mention the five ships that had suffered missile impacts and still survived the journey. Perhaps even worse, transitioning between realities devastated many of the Awoken's electronics. From AI's Mara's Awoken made it back to our solar system, yes, but they did not arrive with a powerful post-Golden Age fleet. Instead, they limped to our asteroid belt in search of resources and shelter.

The first ship they find is an old, Golden Age, AI controlled "habitat tender". That is, it's a forest ship! During our Golden Age, this ship went out, snagged a comet, then built a domed forest on its surface. It would have been the perfect starting point for the Awoken if its forest had not caught fire some time before. Still, the ship had reactor power and gravity and was even continuing to support life in the form of insects and rats. I love this section because it is a reference back to one of the more cryptic original Destiny 1 Grimoire Cards "Ghost Fragment: Awoken".

Soon, Uldren's scouting flights find a large collection, a Reef, of other ships that had tried to congregate together for survival during the Collapse. Mara orders that they strip what remained of the Awoken's battered Hulls in order to fix up this reef of still partially functional ghost ships. Once they restore gravity and power, the Awoken will be able to start building habitats and industry and start having children. Remember, the Awoken in our solar system number in the tens of thousands at most, and have no warships and few weapons. They do have some powerful personal and ship-based maltech weapons from the Distributary, but most of those are far to powerful to be used within the confines of delicate starships adrift in space.

Mara, being Mara, is serious about the whole thing, but Sjur is giddy. She's already thinking about forging bladed weapons since they don't have the spare resources to build firearms, and she is considering how to get ship to ship communications and sensors up and running without any spare fuel to launch satellites. It's then that she starts talking excitedly about launching things into orbit around their ships and asteroids and even the sun without using rockets or explosives.

Amusingly, Sjur's excitement is contagious and even gets Mara into the spirit of things. Even with serious work to be done, Mara can't help but think of the sight of her partner straining mightily against her bow and launching communication satellites off the surface of their ships. Sjur is having the same thoughts:

I'll be the first woman in the universe to place a comsat in heliocentric orbit with a longbow.

"You're absurd," Mara tells her, but even she is looking forward to exploring and rebuilding this new Reef with Sjur at her side. Somehow, even though Mara is outwardly calm, Sjur picks up on and comments on her excitement. Normally, this would just be a sign of two people knowing each other very well and picking up on subtle signs, but Mara responds with an odd question:

Sjur, can you hear what I'm thinking?

At first, Sjur begins to deny it. As special as the Awoken are, and as close as she and Mara have become, they cannot read each other's minds... but then, Sjur gasps mid-sentence and scolds Mara playfully for something that Mara apparently just thought at her. One can only imagine what could cause that sort of reaction in Sjur.

As the Awoken start the long work of making the Reef habitable, they also begin experiencing strange, almost life-like visions. Faces and images of people they know or knew appear to them as they work and as they sleep. Some of these seem so real that they even drape shrouds over their statues to prevent the real, physical works of art from being mistaken for visions. All the Awoken feel a strange new hum of energy in their bodies, as if they are connected to something new and different than they were before. And many of these vision concern Mara.

Around this time, two amazing discoveries are brought to Mara's attention:

The first comes from Kelda Wadj, the head of Mara's Techeuns. "We're all a bit magic now," she tells Mara. She and her fellow thinkers and scientists have found evidence that the Awoken now have a small but measurable amount of acausal power. This limited ability for the Awoken to violate the laws of physics seems to be tied to their thoughts and emotions. This slight acausality will eventually be the reason that the Awoken persist and remember each cycle of the Dreaming City when a normal human or alien would have been reset each time the city goes through its loops.

As usual, Mara seems to have some greater insight to this new power, but she says very little about it. Mara briefly mentions that this magic likely comes from the Traveler and possibly the Darkness or the mixing of the two, but she keeps whatever else she knows to herself. Kelda Wadj is more interested in how they will classify this new magic. Do they try to describe it in terms of physics? Do they just accept that it is space magic? But if this power can be influenced by thoughts, how exactly does one teach it or explain it? Kelda is like a scholar trying to decide how to explain the newest mystery they have fund.

At one point during their conversation, Kelda Wadj calls Mara "your majesty" to which Mara recoils. Mara says that she doesn't wish to be called that. She insist that the Awoken are now part of a democracy. Sjur, Kelda Wadj, and the others around her all roll their eyes. After all, it was Mara's multi-thousand year plan of cunning and ruthlessness and compassion that brought them all back to our solar system.But Mara still seems to seriously want to treat her fellow Awoken as equals. This will have some serious, disastrous implications within days or weeks. But first, the other amazing discovery barges into the room in the form of Mara's brother.

Uldren has just returned from a scouting mission to Earth, and shockingly, he has a serious slash wound across he neck! But this is Uldren we're talking about. Stubborn and adventurous. He's holding a makeshift bandage of cytogel to his bleeding neck while grinning an excited grin.

"Aliens!" he rasped. "I found aliens, and one of them cut my throat!"

Chapters Referenced:

Palingenesis III
Revanche I
Ghost Fragment: Awoken

All night, following Uldren's return, Mara isolated herself from her brother. From her advisors. From even Sjur. What Uldren's scouting mission had discovered was both inspiring and devastating, and it left Mara with a weighty decision to make. By morning, Mara had made up her mind, but now she had to tell her people. And it wasn't going to be easy.

Mara called together the elected representatives of her people to the Sacred Fire, one of the largest ships they had salvaged from the Golden Age reef. Set up in a large room with a holo projector, Mara and her brother present what they have found.

"We've found Humanity," she tells them. "We've found our ancestors."

Uldren snaps his fingers and a holographic recording from his ship lights up the room. The disorienting view plunges down through the clouds then skims the terrain until it comes across the beginnings of The City and, above it, the battered remains of the Traveler. The Awoken in the room gasp and marvel. This is something out of their fairy tale storybooks, out of their ancient history they weren't complete sure was real. And now it is real. But, for Mara, this thrilling scene is dangerous. She knows what her people will want to do, and she knows what she will have to tell them.

One of the Awoken in the gathered crowd, the historian Sila, voices that danger:

"What are we waiting for?" she calls. "That's everything we came to find! They need us, and that's where we belong!"

With a look from his sister, Uldren continues the playback from his fighter's cameras. From somewhere nearby, the trees rumble and a red-brown aircraft shaped like a fat, wingless, furiously angry dragonfly bursts from cover and climbs to intercept. It launches a swarm of missiles at Uldren and he has to pull a tight, high-g turn to evade.

"Those are Fallen," Uldren says. "They're a species of interstellar scavengers and subsistence pirates. They've been here for a long time, and they've sacked most of the large settlements that survived the original fall of Humanity. There may be more Fallen than there are Humans left on Earth." He lifts his chin to bare the pale scar across his throat. "I landed and went looking for prisoners. I was ready when he pulled two knives on me, but it turned out he had an extra set of arms."

Mara steps in to further emphasize the point. Not only are there likely more Fallen in the solar system than there are Humans, they aren't the only threat. Mara tells her people about the Cabal occupying Mars and about Mercury lost the to Vex, an enemy that Humanity had encountered back during its Golden Age.

Elisa speaks up again:

"So they need our help, don't they? We have to go to them! Our ships, our technology—we could make all the difference."

Now comes the part Mara struggled with. The part she had been dreading the previous night. She stands there and tells Elisa and the rest of her people "no." Mara explains to them that while it's true they could provide some assistance, that doing so would leave them vulnerable. It would allow the Fallen to track their ships back to the Reef. It would see their expedition destroyed before they could really accomplish their goal to save Humanity.

Elisa responds from the crowd once more:

"Mara, with all my respect, all my genuine gratitude for bringing us here," Esila sighs, "who died and made you Queen?"

Although she doesn't speak it, Mara knows the answer to that question. All of them died and made her queen. But, remember last time? Mara is not trying to be a queen to her Awoken. She is treating them like equals. She and her brother right now are standing before a crowd of elected representatives. And, right now, those representatives and the public opinion they represent are all trending against Mara.

After the conclusion of the gathering, Mara meets with her brother and Sjur in private. Sjur is busy patching up more of the wounds Uldren suffered during his scouting mission. She and Mara hold a conversation as she does so. Things are bad, Sjur confirms. Almost a full third of the Awoken have indicated they want to split off from the Reef and head to earth. And worse, among the highly influential Awoken that hail back to the 891 who were reborn remembering their past, that number rises to almost 80%.

What this all means is that Mara has a significant political problem. Maybe her first in the thousands of years that have passed since she awoke on the Distributary. If a third of her people split away, it will leave the Reef with a shortage of technical skills and will diminish their somewhat fragile gene pool. That alone would do great harm to Mara's mission. If, in heading to earth, her people alert the Fallen to their location, it could destroy everything. Sjur, certainly thinks that it will.

"I know," Sjur says, heavily. "That's when I'm going to die."

Mara, of course, declares that unacceptable, but Sjur figures her death is inevitable. And she predicts that it will be when the Fallen soon come for them. After all, she is the Queen's body guard. If she is going to die at all, it will be in a moment of great heroism. Mara objects, reminding Sjur that she has not taken the position of queen. But, to Sjur, Mara denying her own position is part of what is causing her so many political problems in the first place. And Sjur says so.

We don't get a real response from Mara on that political point, but to Sjur Mara responds:

You won't die. I won't allow it.

Chapters Referenced:

Revanche II
Revanche III

The Awoken's political troubles have finally come to a head. Those Awoken that had been threatening to leave in order help the people of earth actually carry out their threats. Despite the best efforts of Mara and Sjur, the first ship of those who wish to break away manages to depart the reef. Mara even tries to send a shutdown command to the ship in a similar way she had absolute control over the Hulls that took her people away from the Distributary, only to find out that it will not respond to her commands. It is one from Humanity's golden age, not one based on the Hulls Mara's people brought from the Distributary so her overrides have no power over it.

Once the first ship breaks away, Mara recognizes that the worst that can happen has happened, and that trying to prevent the other ships from leaving will just cause unnecessary deaths. So, Mara orders Sjur to broadcast to the other rioters that they will be allowed to leave peacefully as long as they go now. Again, we see some of the special magic possessed by the Awoken and by Mara in particular. Sjur replies that there is no need to tell them because she and all the rest of the Awoken heard Mara's proclamation directly!

We take a little look ahead here, a little extended look at what these Awoken accomplish after the split away from Mara's group. We're told that they go down to the earth with a level of technology and knowledge that save thousands of lives even in just the first year. These Awoken are seen almost like angels with their glowing skin and impossible tech and strong desire to help. For the first time in years or decades, the people of Earth are able to look up into the stars and know that there's more than just doom up there. Over the next few centuries these Awoken integrate into what's left of human society and over time their attachment to the Distributary and the Reef and Mara fade. But, we're told they always have a little connection to Mara, some little tie that they can still feel. I think there's still a bit of Awoken magic linking them back to Mara Sov.

This split of Mara's Awoken into two peoples has some immediate implications for the Reef. For one, Mara finally listens to the advice and criticism everyone around her has been dumping on her. She stops trying to treat her people as equals and finally takes her place as the Queen of the Awoken. Following the example set by Alis Li so many thousands of years ago, Mara designates the Techeuns, a group of scientists and thinkers, to explore the mysteries of the universe, and a group of Paladins who will lead the Awoken's security and defense.

And then the Fallen attack! A single Ketch spotted the earthbound Awoken and tracked their course back to the asteroid belt. The Reef spots the large warship coming and makes it's power known by gutting it in an instant using some of their limited supply of weapons they brought from the Distributary. But, it turns out that the Fallen are just a bit smarter than that. The Ketch didn't just fly in confident of a sure victory. Instead, its Baron pre-deployed all his dropships so even though his ketch is destroyed in an instant, his attack force is still largely intact.

Mara, freshly crowned Queen that morning, takes to the personal defense of her people. We're told that Sjur is encased in a full combat suit, but that Mara fights in the open. She knows that her people need to be able to spot her and be able to see her vulnerable so that they will rally to her side. And it works. With Sjur handling the larger threats, and Mara serving as a rallying force, and Uldren watching his sister's back, the Awoken of the Reef once again put aside their differences and come together as a people.

While Mara and her brother are busy inside, Sjur is busy outside engaging the Fallen Baron and his forces in zero-g combat near the exterior of the Sacred Fire. The Fallen had attached a Spider Tank to Awoken's largest habitat ship and it was up to Sjur to stop them. I'd love to see this scene rendered by cutscene studio Blur or someone. Sjur and a large Fallen Baron leaping among asteroids and debris. The Baron and his spider tank trying to pin Sjur down. Sjur finally ending the Baron with a single well aimed arrow through the throat. But, even with the Baron dead, Sjur still has to stop the tank from destroying the Sacred Fire.

It's here that Sjur knows she is going to die. Remember, she told Mara that her death would be doing something incontrovertibly heroic. Her only chance to save thousands of her sisters and brothers is to hastily place an explosive charge down the tank's main gun. When it fires next, it will detonate in a devastating backfire that Sjur knows she will be unable to get clear of. And it does. And Sjur is engulfed in the blast. And Sjur is... not killed. She's not even harmed! How is that possible?!

Earlier, before the Fallen attack, before Mara became Queen, her lead researcher had revealed more about the research they have been doing into the Awoken's special form of magic. Not only can every Awoken subtly affect outcomes, Mara herself seems to be the source and concentration of that power. And those subtle effects seen in other Awoken are massively increased for Mara. Simulations show that Mara's subtle magic is so powerful that even things like weapons and bombs don't work properly around her. The fundamental physics that would normally control a trigger mechanism of a gun or bomb are literally thousands of times less likely to function correctly if triggered near Mara Sov.

This is what saved Sjur. Mara focused her power and instead of dying, Sjur is thrown safely clear of the blast. As Sjur wonders what happened she see's Mara's face projected into her mind and she knows who saved her.

Next time, we'll look at some of the more obscure connection to past Destiny lore and reach the end of the Reef's beginning.

Chapters Referenced:
Revanche IV
Revanche V

Once the dust settled and the fires of the Fallen attack were put out, Mara takes stock of her Awoken. One in three of them are gone, either killed in the Fallen's attack or else they left and have gone to try and aid the Humans on earth.

For the Awoken that remain on their ships with Mara near the large asteroid Vesta, new work begins. As Mara says to Uldren,

...never again can I allow my people to be divided. We must offer them more than shielding ice and cold habitat cylinders and the warrens of Vesta. We must make a culture, a thread that binds us all in pride and wonder at the mystery of ourselves. Nowhere does culture flourish better than in a city.

But do the Awoken have the population or spare resources to build a city? Perhaps not. Even before the mutiny, Mara was insistent that the Awoken's first goals were to restart their industry and grow their population. Now, with a third of her people gone and their fleet even more smashed by the Fallen attack, the Mara's Awoken are stuck in a venerable position. Uldren is quick to voice this, nothing that gathering in one place, like a city, will just make them a target.

That when Mara gives one of her most fateful orders of all time. An order that will lead to her own death and the death of her brother. An order that will trap her Awoken in an endlessly repeating cycle of heartbreak and carnage. An order that we still have not yet seen all the implications of. She says:

Go forth and find me a power unknown to all the other powers of this world. Return it to me, and I shall make of it the cornerstone of my new city, where the Awoken shall dream of all they have been and all that is yet to come.

Uldren does so, and when he returns, he has with him a tiny lizard-like creature barely bigger than his hand. He say to his sister:

Behold, Sister, the lie that makes itself true. This is an Ahamkara.

The Awoken continue on from this point. They build a great network of cities and stations spread among the asteroid belt. At Mara's command, they put themselves in harms way not once, but twice, in order to save Humanity. And, of course, Mara Sov, Uldren Sov, Sjur Eido, Petra Venj, and Mara's Techeuns continue all the way up to Destiny's present day.

There are still some great stories to tell about the Awoken, but next I'd like to tell perhaps the greatest Destiny story of all. Next I'd like to lead you through the great twists and turns of The Last Word.

Chapters Referenced:
Revanche II
Telic I

Destiny has a lot of lore. There are so many good stories that you can pursue and so many different types to read. Sci-fi, drama, epic fantasy, political intrigue, you can find all these and more, you just gotta pull on the right thread. But one of my favorite stories, and one of Destiny's oldest and longest, has all of the above. I want to tell you the story of The Last Word, an iconic exotic hand cannon that itself has been a huge part of Destiny's gameplay and was, at least at one point, at the top of Destiny's multiplayer meta game. The story of The Last Word begins with a ravaged Earth and a new wave of alien invaders.

In the Dark Age, that time period after the Darkness was driven away by the Traveler but before The City was well and truly established by the victory at the Battle of Six Fronts, much of Humanity was spread across the remains of our world. Some cities, like London, apparently survived the Collapse. Probably they weren't well off, but they were still places people could live. Then the Eliksni came. These "Fallen" aliens were fleeing their own equivalent of our Collapse. They too had barely survived an encounter with The Darkness. They were beaten and bloodied and desperate from decades or centuries of fleeing from their homeworlds all the way to our star system. They were looking for the Traveler which had abandoned them and they were looking for any advantage they could give themselves. No matter the cost. Sentient lives? Plundering the ruins of a civilization in need? The Fallen were far too desperate to give such concerns any attention. We even have some references and reports saying that the Fallen would eat humans when food ran short!

What was left of Humanity was furthered scattered by the Fallen. Cities like London fell to an enemy that still had ready access to starships and high technology. Smaller towns lived in fear, and were often forced to run for their lives when the Fallen found them. But, over time, Ghosts began searching the world for their Guardians. As decades passed, Ghost who had yet to find their Guardians took it upon themselves to help the pockets of humanity they could. A Ghost can fabricate. It can scout. It can deliver food to the hungry. We find one such Ghost assisting a small group of humans on the run.

When this group first sees this Ghost they are wary. To them, it is another alien. But, in time, they come to see it as a helper. They name the Ghost Tiānshǐ, which is Mandarin for Heaven's Messenger. Some even think the Ghost is an actual angel! The Ghost is quick to deny this, but it keeps the name, nonetheless. Along with this small group of Humans, living presumably somewhere in or near China, is a single very young child. The child's mother and father, and the groups as a whole, did their best to care for this baby despite the tough times they found themselves in. And the baby? It had a fascination with the Ghost. After gaining their trust, Tiānshǐ began the long task of leading the group in the directon of the The City, but one day, while hiding in a cave in order to avoid a Fallen Skiff, the worst happened. The group, some thirty strong, had lost two thirds of its members in a recent Fallen attack. And then they lost one more. We not told if the baby was sick, or malnourished, or injured, but it died there in that cave in his mother's arms.

Tiānshǐ, who was outside keeping lookout, heard the mother's and father's cries and turned back and saw something new. This Ghost had been sad for a long time. It had given up fining its Guardian and had turned to help this struggling group of Humans in an effort to do at least some small amount of good. This Ghost had never seen even a hint of the Light it was looking for... until now. Back in the cave, held tightly in the grieving mother's arms, was the Spark Tiānshǐ had never been able to find! This makes sense. Ghost only revive the dead. This child could have been the Ghost's companion all this time but the Tiānshǐ would never have known it.

The Ghost approaches, but hesitates at first. Tiānshǐ wonders what kind of life it will be imposing on a child that was not even old enough to talk. But, quickly, Tiānshǐ remembers that its true purpose is to deliver hope, and almost as a reflex it ignites the dead child's Light. The baby that was lifeless moments before begins crying once more stunning the eight others huddling in the cave. Tiānshǐ is proud of what it did, but the small... enormous... act of reviving the child is not something that will save this group of humans. Not all of them.

Just a few months later Tiānshǐ's group is on the run from the Fallen again. They'd been spotted and soon they were chased down and began to take losses. The reborn child's mother is killed. Then his father. We're told this group had developed a bond tighter than that of a family after having shared so many close encounters, so as a matter of course, others in the group pick up the child as they continue to flee. Tiānshǐ flees with them, but it soon makes a choice. It is all but programmed to protect the child any way it can, so, when there is no other option, Tiānshǐ veers away from the group it had been guiding the last few months and makes itself a target. It successfully leads the Fallen away, but is unable to escape them. Tiānshǐ notes in its final transmission that by this point the Fallen have long learned that killing a Ghost can save many, many of their own lives in the future, so they hunt Tiānshǐ relentlessly!

In Tiānshǐ last moments, it notes that no matter what happens the child will be safe. That he has been adopted by a brave but careful man and woman who will look after him. Tiānshǐ final message, apparently picked up and archived by some other Ghost nearby, is joyous and heartbreaking:

I am not sorry for the choice I made. The child gave hope, though fleeting. What comes next for him is unknown. But there is promise in him, should he find sanctuary. Should he find guidance.

This is not a confession. This is my hope. This is my—

The next time we see this child he is now a boy named Shin Malphur who survived that fateful encounter with the Fallen and who has grown up in a small settlement called Palamon. It's there that he meets two men, one Light, one Dark, who change the destiny of his life.

The story of The Last Word is tied to these two men at least as much as it is tied to Shin. To understand this story we need to take a look at both of these men. So that's what we'll do next time.

References:
Confession of Hope | Part One
Confession of Hope | Part Two
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word

Even though he is the gun's original owner, Jaren Ward is really just a minor character in the story of The Last Word. He came to the town of Palamon nestled in the snowy, tree covered mountains one day like a heroic gunslinger out of an old western. He walks in from the south and everyone stares but no one talks. That is, until someone we recognize, Shin Malphur, the child of light, now a growing boy, breaks free of his adopted father and races out into the street to greet the newcomer.

Jaren is described as a Hunter that wears a racing helmet with thick tinted visor. So, shift your mind from straight western, to something with a little more sci-fi. He silently greets this kid that ran out to him, but also knows there's something special about him. Shin, for his part, looks Jaren over in awe, but his gaze is soon fixed upon Jaren's golden hand cannon. Jaren notices this and instead of chastising the boy or driving him away, he leans down and holds out his gun for this kid to inspect and hold. This is the first time Shin Malphur ever gets to hold The Last Word.

No one really moves after that. You have this sorta high tech western gunslinger with a Ghost floating over his shoulder standing in the street. You have towns people all crowded around waiting for something to happen. You have a young boy in awe, holding a very special gun for the first time. But they're all waiting on someone. On Magistrate Loken. Loken is someone who started like all the other people who founded Palamon. He started out as the town's overseer. He was someone who helped enforce the rules they'd all agreed on. But, over time, Loken became stricter. He began to enforce his will over everyone instead of just maintaining order. We're told he lost people, but unlike most others, unlike Shin who barely remembers his parents and a small spark of Light that he tries not to dwell on, Loken's losses eventually broke him.

As Loken grew more and more dictatorial people left. Palamon shrank. Soon, its people lived under one man's rule... Loken's rule... until Jaren Ward shows up. I don't think we see Jaren and Loken's first meeting, but we do catch up with Jaren Ward after he has done something to set Loken off. I'd like to think Jaren Ward took a few days to understand the situation in Palamon then decided to change it. In response, Loken sends nine men to surround Jaren in a courtyard and then he comes to confront the Hunter himself.

Loken does the classic villain thing. He struts and taunts and threatens Jaren all while Jaren just stands there calmly with his hands on his belt. The exchange ends like this (as recounted by Shin):

"This is our town! My town!" Loken was shouting now. He was going to make a show of Jaren - teach the people of Palamon a lesson in obedience.

Jaren spoke: clear, calm. "Not anymore."

Loken laughed dismissively. He had nine guns on his side. "Those gonna be your last words then, boy?"

The movement was a flash: quick as chain lightning. Jaren Ward spoke as he moved. "Yours. Not mine."

With those words and Jaren's quick movements, Loken falls dead in an instant, and his men back down almost as quickly. From then on, Palamon is a free town. Jaren stays and helps. We don't know a lot about his activities after freeing the town, but we do know two things:

1. He becomes a new father figure to Shin Malphur, watching over him and teaching him for several years.
2. He would sometimes lead hunting parties to track down and kill Fallen who got to close to town.

It's while Jaren Ward is away on one of these hunts, several years later, than a second stranger with his own very special gun strides into Palamon. If Jaren Ward was the embodiment of the Light, this new man is his opposite, someone smothered in Darkness. And nothing good will come of it when these two meet.

Next time, we'll work our way through the long history of the man best known as Dredgen Yor.

References:
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 2
Ghost Fragment: The Dark Age 2
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4

If Jaren Ward was the embodiment of Light and Hope, Dredgen Yor was what you get when that hope dies. You see, long before the Titan we know as Dredgen Yor became perhaps the worst, most corrupted Guardian in history, he was a man known as Rezyl Azzir.

Rezyl was one of the Risen. One of those found by their Ghost before the Iron Lords, or The City, or the concept of Guardians existed. Rezyl, along with legends such as Zavala, Ikora Rey, and Lord Saladin saw to it that The City's great walls were built in the first place. Rezyl was a hero, a bringer of hope. I love this quote about Rezyl Azzir:

The noble man stood. And the people looked to him. For he was a beacon - hope given form, yet still only a man. And within that truth there was great promise. If one man could stand against the night, then so too could anyone - everyone.

There are some great stories of Rezyl's accomplishments. In one, he charges an entire Fallen Ketch on his sparrow knowing he'd be killed in the process. But he has a plan. He had his Ghost hang back. When the Fallen Kell and his troops came out to parade Rezyl's lifeless body as a prize, Rezyl's Ghost slipped into the crowd and quickly revived him. Alive again, Rezyl unloaded on the Kell with his hand cannon Rose and then:

In one motion, Rezyl rose from a crouch, his fists clenched and raised high as a storm of Arc Light built within him, his full might raining down on the Kell's chest. The shockwave of Rezyl's attack hit like a meteor, shattering the Kell's body and any Fallen within the Havoc storm's radius.

Through cleverness and strength, Rezyl had managed to kill a Fallen Kell, one of their highest ranking leaders!

In another story, Rezyl tracks a group of Fallen to a small town nestled in the snowy, tree covered mountains. Although it is not named, the town is almost certainly Palamon. Rezyl saves the town and leads those that are willing back to The City, but some stay behind. This might very well be the event that set Magistrate Loken down his bad path. And for Rezyl, this is yet another time that he does good and saves lives, but only after evil and suffering occur. We learn here that Rezyl is tiring of the endless war and is realizing that the good that he does is never enough.

By this point, Rezyl is a hero known far and wide beyond The City, but there are shadows growing in his mind. Shadows coming from a specific place. From the Moon! There were stories and legends of an evil far worse than the Fallen pirates that Rezyl and other Guardians had been fighting. This is a man who is already slowly losing hope after centuries fighting the Fallen, but Rezyl is also a proud man who is trying to push forward and be the hero he is expected to be despite his fears. So, at some point, Rezyl goes to investigate the strange calling he has been hearing from the moon.

On the moon, Rezyl soon finds and begins to investigate the Hive structures that have long been silent. This is long after the Hive emerged once before and killed thousands of Guardians, and long after Eris Morn and her fireteam managed to kill the Hive god Crota which banished him temporarily from our world. Rezyl's Ghost notes that the Hive are all supposed to be gone. Once they lost Crota they fell silent... and yet the giant doors of the Hive structure Rezyl is investigating creek open for him as soon as he arrives. The Hive have been waiting for him. They have been calling to him. They invite him in.

Rezyl leaves his Ghost behind with instructions for it to run for help if he doesn't return. He then proceeds down and down into the depths of the Hellmouth until he encounters waves of Hive being lead by a Hive Wizard. Rezyl does his best, but even his Rose is not enough to save him... and yet the Wizard and her Hive do not kill him. Instead she taunts him, goads him, and plays upon those fears that have been growing in his mind. She show him that the Hive are preparing to reemerge and that there's nothing he nor The City will be able to do to stop them this time. And then, cruelest of all, she lets him leave.

Two days later, Rezyl emerges back on the lunar surface, but he has been permanently changed by his experience. One of the first things he does do is begin to affix some of the tough, cursed bones of the Hive he fought and killed to his hand cannon Rose. Later, perhaps after warning The City about the reemergence of the Hive, Rezyl spends one last day looking up at the moon while struggling with himself. He was a hero. Someone who spread hope wherever he went. He saved towns and killed alien leaders and helped establish a Last Safe City whose walls now guard millions. And yet, all he can do is look up at the moon in fear of what is coming.

In that cool evening air, as dusk was devoured by night, the noble man ceased to exist. In his place another stood.

Same meat. Same bone. But so very different.

The first and only of his family. The sole forbearer and last descendent of the name Yor.

In his first moments as a new being, he looked down at his Rose and realized for the first time that it held no petals: only the jagged purpose of angry thorns.

And so, the man that was Rezyl Azzir dies, and in his place stands Dredgen Yor. As Yor, Rezyl leaves a gash of death and destruction in his wake. We don't hear a lot about his deeds, one of the few acts we do know about is that he uses his corrupted Rose, now called Thorn, to permanently kill Thalor, a famed Crucible Champion. It is clear from surrounding context in Destiny's lore that Dredgen Yor becomes infamous and feared by even Guardians of The City. After that Crucible match he is likely driven out of The City after which he continues to wander and continues to sow destruction wherever he goes.

Interestingly, Dredgen Yor's Ghost stays with him through everything he does. But, eventually, Yor even sends his Ghost away. We have a transcript of the final conversation between Yor and his Ghost. We learn that his Ghost never even really considered leaving his side, not because it agrees with the terrible things he is now doing, but because, as his Ghost says:

I rekindled your Light, it falls first to me to aid in its survival.

Ultimately, though, Dredgen Yor convinces his Ghost to leave by talking up how he now only inspires hope so he can crush those that have it all the more. "Nothing dies like hope" he is quoted saying. But there is one very interesting thing at the end of this transcript that needs to be pointed out. Something important for the future:

[u.2:5.5] If you cannot let that man go, you will forever taint his legacy. All the good I have ever done will be washed away in the fire of who I have become. (Note: u.2 is Dredgen Yor speaking)
[u.1:5.3] If you care, there is still some promise within you. (Note: u.1 is Dredgen Yor's Ghost speaking.)
[u.2:5.6] If I am being honest, I care only to give hope to the frightened, huddled masses so that when I come upon them they will have more to lose. Their pain will be greater. Their screams more pure.
[u.1:5.4] You...
[u.2:5.7] Nothing dies like hope. I cherish it.
[u.1:5.5] You're a monster.
[u.2:5.8] Finally, you see the truth.
[u.1:5.6] [REDACTED] is truly dead.
[u.2:5.9] So I've said. Long live Dredgen Yor.
[u.1:5.7] This is farewell, but you can only run from your sins so far. In the end, you will die alone.
[u.2:6.0] Maybe so. But I gotta tell ya... I tend to like my odds.
[u.1:5.8] Your tainted "Rose" will not always save you.
[u.2:6.1] Old friend... It already has.

Yes, Dredgen Yor wants to be remembered as the hero Rezyl Azzir for the sole purpose of crushing the hopes of those he next murders, but that one final line, "Old friend... It already has." is very curious. We'll come back to this transcript in a bit. For now, I'll just tease by saying that Dredgen Yor's Ghost was right the first time.

We don't have anything even close to a timeline of what Dredgen Yor does once he and his Ghost part ways, but we do know he eventually returns to Palamon, the town he once saved. By doing so, one of the darkest, most twisted Guardians we have record of will come face to face with Jaren Ward, one of the best and brightest.

Next: The Last Word vs Thorn

References:
Rezyl Azzir - Before These Walls
Rezyl Azzir - War Without End
Heart of Inmost Light
Legends and Mysteries: Rezyl Azzir
Legend: Rezyl Azzir - The Triumphant Fall
Ghost Fragment: Thorn
Mark of Contention
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3

For the next several years Jaren Ward stays at Palamon after freeing it from Magistrate Loken. We know that Shin Malphur thought of him as the town's savior and eventually came to think of Jaren as a friend and father figure.

The Fallen were still a major problem for Palamon, however. It sounds like the town gets hit hard by Fallen raiders again. Jaren Ward and a few of the toughest survivors leave to give chase and possibly to prevent that group of Fallen from coming back. Four days later, someone new comes to what was left of the town. This man is tall and dark and solemn. Shin recalls that there was an intense sadness about him, but that he was polite and took up a room. This is Shin Malphur's first time meeting Dredgen Yor.

Something happens soon after and we find Shin and a few others out in the wilderness having put Palamon's "ash" to their backs. The lines get a bit hard to read between, but we learn that Shin and those with him were seeking vengeance for something. Could just be the fallen attack, but I think there's a strong chance they are hunting Dredgen Yor. We have another transcript featuring the corrupted Guardian being drawn into a loud conversation with some local bandits one of which wants to see his gun, Thorn.

[u.1:0.1] Can I see what you got there?
[silence]
[u.1:0.2] Yer cannon...can I see it?
[beat]
[u.2:0.1] I know you?
[beat]
[u.1:0.3] Not that I can say.
[u.2:0.2] And you wanna hold my piece?
[beat]
[u.1:0.4] Just that I never...seen one like it.
[beat]
[u.2:0.3] No, you haven't.
[u.1:0.5] Looks dangerous.
[u.2:0.4] Seems, maybe, that's the point.
[u.1:0.6] Suppose so.
[u.1:0.7] Can I see it?
[u.2:0.5] Not likely.

Dredgen Yor banters with the leader of this group of four men for a bit and takes it unkindly when the leader states as "fact" that no one has ever been to the moon. The men begin to threaten Dredgen Yor and after warning them off in his own sort of way Yor finally has enough of their tough guy acts and guns three of them down. He saves the leader for last. This man who had wanted a look at Thorn now gets to stare down its barrel as Dredgen Yor explains to him about the nightmares of the Hive and how they will soon be coming for them all. And then the leader, too, is murdered.

Now, there is nothing that directly says this sorta old west bar room "conversation" happened in Palamon, but just nine days after Palamon is reduced to ash Shin Malphur and his group of Palamon survivors encounter Dredgen Yor again. I don't think they were hunting Fallen because Shin notes that they had accidentally wandered into Fallen territory as they tracked the trail of something or someone. Along the way, some of Shin's group are killed, "gunned down", we're told. But, what's left of Shin's group also meet up with Jaren Ward, and together they continue tracking their target. Jaren has an intense confidence that keeps the group going even though hope seems to be lost. But then, everything falls apart late one night.

A crack of gun fire then several more echo through the woods... These shots sound familiar, perhaps even comforting to the group. They've come from Jaren Ward's prized hand cannon, but, tragically, they are not the last word this time, as one sickly, unfamiliar shot answers Jaren's several. Afterward, there is only silence.

Everyone back at Shin's camp knows what has happened. Jaren had gone out alone to engage "the other", the same thing Shin termed Dredgen Yor when he met him, but this time Jaren Ward was not coming back. Those with Shin soon leave fearful for their lives. Shin, though, stays and searches for his mentor. Shin doesn't find Jaren Ward, at least not at first. Instead, he finds Jaren's still very much alive Ghost. The Ghost has something for Shin: Jaren Ward's hand cannon. Dredgen Yor left it for Shin. How do we know? Because Dredgen Yor and Jaren Ward's Ghost have a little conversation after Yor permanently kills Jaren Ward with a single shot from Thorn. The conversation between the two is interesting for a few reasons:

1. Both the Ghost and Dredgen Yor agree that Shin Malphur is special. We know that of course, since we know Shin's history of being revived in the Light by his long lost Ghost when he was nothing more than a baby. But we've also gotten some little indications that Jaren Ward and his Ghost knew Shin was special. We now learn that Dredgen Yor knew, as well.
2. Dredgen Yor tells Jaren Ward's Ghost to give his Guardian's gun to Shin Malphur. Yor calls it a gift. He calls it giving the apprentice his master's sword. The Ghost thinks that Yor is mostly just trying to further anger and sadden Shin.
3. Jaren Ward's Ghost calls Dredgen Yor a monster. Yor responds by alluding back to when his own Ghost called him that before they parted ways.
4. Jaren Ward's Ghost also argues that Dredgen Yor is not just a monster or an evil force of nature, but that he's still a man that can be killed. And Dredgen Yor agrees that, yes, in that there is a sliver of hope.

Now there are two ways to look at this forth point, and I think both are valid. On one hand, Dredgen Yor is someone we have quoted as saying "Nothing dies like hope." He is probably gifting Jaren Ward's gun to Shin Malphur to fuel that hope so he can crush it too.

But, and we'll get into this a whole lot more very soon, Dredgen Yor is also agreeing that there is hope that maybe he still is a man who can be stopped, who can be killed. It will take someone very special to stop him, Dredgen Yor knows, and maybe he thinks he's found that person in Shin Malphur.

Next time I get to take y'all through one of my very favorite encounters in all of Destiny: The Showdown at Dwindler's Ridge!

Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 2
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4

For decades, Shin Malphur hunts the man who killed his friend, mentor, father figure. Shin and Yor finally met atop a place called Dwindler's Ridge. And... this is how it played out. I don't often quote large portions of Grimoire Cards, my goal is to summarize and make available, not to copy and paste, but this showdown is one of my favorite scenes in all of Destiny's lore. It is a scene that deserves to be read:

Now.

We stood silent, the sun high.

Seconds passed, feeling more like hours.

He looked different.

He seemed, now, to be weightless - effortless in an existence that would crush a man burdened by conscience.

My gaze remained locked as I felt a heat rising inside of me.
The other spoke...

"Been awhile."

I gave no reply.

"The gunslinger's sword... his cannon. That was a gift."

My silence held as my thumb caressed the perfectly worn hammer at my hip.

"An offering from me... to you."

The heat grew. Centered in my chest.

I felt like a coward the day Jaren Ward died and for many cycles after.

But here, I felt only the fire of my Light.

The other probed...

"Nothing to say?"

He let the words hang.

"I've been waiting for you. For this day."

His attempt at conversation felt mundane when judged against all that had come before.

"Many times I thought you'd faltered. Given up..."

All I'd lost, all who'd suffered, flashed rapid through my mind, intercut with a dark silhouette walking toward a frightened, weak, coward of a boy.

The fire burned in me.

The other continued...

"But here you are. This is truly an end..."

As his tongue slipped between syllables my gun hand moved as if of its own will.

Reflex and purpose merged with anger, clarity and an overwhelming need for just that... an end.

In step with my motion, the fire within burst into focus - through my shoulder, down my arm - as my finger closed on the trigger of my third father's cannon.

Two shots. Two bullets engulfed in an angry glow.
The other fell.

I walked to his corpse. He never raised his cursed Thorn - the jagged gun with the festering sickness.

I looked down at the dead man who had caused so much death.

My shooter still embraced by the dancing flames of my Light.
A sadness came over me.

I thought back to my earliest days. Of Palamon. Of Jaren.

Leveling my cannon at the dead man's helm, I paid one final tribute to my mentor, my savior, my father and my friend...

"Yours... Not mine."

...as I closed my grip, allowing Jaren's cannon, now my own, to have the last, loud word.

"Yours... Not mine." is easily my favorite quote in all of Destiny. It was already a powerful line, but knowing the history of it, how it was both a confident, forceful statement, and a memorial to a lost friend, makes it so much better. It would make a great ending... but this is not the end of the story of The Last Word!

Unless killed in unusual ways, Guardians are immortal, meaning Shin does not just grow old and die happy. Similarly, the call of the Darkness and the Hive did not go away just because Shin put an end to Dredgen Yor. From here, Shin Malphur takes it upon himself to put a stop to any Guardian who would dare meddle with the powers of Darkness like Dredgen Yor did. And, once he becomes known as a feared boogeyman restlessly and ruthlessly devoted to the Light, Shin goes a step even beyond that...

I hope you'll join me next time as we begin to delve into the frightening Legend and thought provoking truths behind The Man With The Golden Gun.

Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4