Oryx had gotten what he wanted. What he’d been seeking for a long, long time. In the wake of his victory over Quria, Blade Transform, he finally had the location of the Gift Mast. Soon, he has all of the Hive gather for a major assault. When his sister Savathûn arrives at their staging area, Oryx goes to visit with her. I think the only way to describe Oryx’s mood as he converses with his sister is… giddy!

Oryx brings his clever, deceitful sister a gift: What remains of Quria, Blade Transform after he took it at the end of their battle on the Nicha Thought-ship. Savathûn expresses caution and some dry skepticism, but Oryx seems in too good a mood to let her bring him down. When Savathûn ask Oryx if the Vex is meant explode and kill her or invade her throne like it did his, he just replies that if it does kill her then she deserves to die. This is the now very familiar philosophy of the Hive and their worm gods, and again, Oryx seems almost giddy as he repeats it… but Savathûn is not amused. What she says in reply is very, very interesting:

I don’t have a strict proof yet, you know.” Savathûn strokes the void with one long claw and space-time groans beneath her touch. “This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.

Oryx tries to explain to her that they, the Hive, are that proof. They are so intent on killing everything in the universe that if they succeed then the proof is verified. And even if they fail, whatever kills them must be even more ruthless than them so in a way they still win even if they lose. Basically, Oryx is completely convinced he is in the right no matter what happens. But once again we see that Savathûn isn’t so sure:

I like that,” she says. “That’s elegant.” Although of course she has had this thought before.

That’s very much veiled sarcasm coming from Savathûn. What we’re seeing here is Savathûn realizing that even though her brother is more powerful than she is, he isn’t smarter. Oryx thinks he has it all figured out, but clearly Savathûn has considered the Hive’s reasons for killing everything and has some sort of legitimate doubt about whether what they are doing is actually correct. This is quite the role reversal from how these two siblings were back during their war with the Ammonites. Remember, back then it was Oryx who had grave doubts about the correctness of killing everything!

Soon, the Hive make their move to capture the Gift Mast. We learn that the Gift Mast is an absolutely massive megastructure left behind by the Traveler for a race or group of races called the Harmony. Somehow, at some point, the Harmony’s star died and collapsed into a black hole, but the Traveler seems to have altered the physics of this black hole in order to keep the Harmony safe. We are told that it changed the orbits of the Harmony’s ten planets so that they would orbit the black hole and that it changed the black hole so its accretion disk, the spiral of matter the black hole is sucking in, gave off warm light to those ten worlds. If we ignore the Gift Mast for a moment, what the Traveler did for the Harmony might already be the one of the most impressive acts we’ve yet heard about.

The Gift Mast itself is said to be some sort of hollow structure built within the relativistic jet of the Harmony’s black hole and that it is absolutely massive in scale, so much so that it towers over the Harmony’s star system! If this is to be taken even half way literally, then the Gift Mast might be ten of millions of miles tall! (Also, if you don’t know about black hole jets, do a bit of reading, ‘cause they’re awesome!)

We’re told a couple of times that the Gift Mast “…sings a radio lullaby, made of soothing lies.” What could that mean? Could the Gift Mast simply be reacting to the force of the black hole’s jet streaming around it and through it? Perhaps it is literally emitting soothing sounds at radio frequencies? Or maybe it’s doing something else entirely? Could these “radio lullabies made of soothing lies” be an ongoing communication from the Traveler to the Harmony? Or some sort of ranged extension of the Traveler’s power?

As Xivu Arath’s begins her assault on the Harmony, she utters a few thoughts and warnings about the upcoming battle:

• We learn that the Harmony are somehow able to direct near light speed streams plasma from their life-giving black hole towards their enemies. Could this be what the Gift Mast is really for? Is it part of this extremely powerful weapon that Xivu Arath calls the Harmony Sting?
  
• Xivu Arath mentions other dangers that stand in her way. She mentions the Gift Mast and the Harmony stings then goes on to warn her broods about Oryx and his daughters and how powerful they are.
  
• She also notes that Savathûn will be distracted by the Gift Mast.
  
• We also get what almost seems to be a standard Hive proclamation about what they plan to do to the Traveler. Chase it down, devour its Light, etc, etc.

Then, lastly but nowhere near leastly, Xivu Arath makes mention of “THE DRAGONS”, saying:

Our gods should be ours alone. Their smug freedom is an insult to me. I’d shut them all in cells. Bring them to me!

These final four sentences almost certainly are the key to the most important and far reaching thing we learn from the Hive’s Books of Sorrow…

...so, of course, we’ll take a break here and examine these “dragons” in depth next time! :p

Sources:
XLIV: strict proof eternal
XLV: I’d shut them all in cells.
XLVI: The Gift Mast

Previous: 23: End of Failed Timeline
Next: 25: The Harmony and the Ahamkara

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It was either that or easily cross 2,000 words. These things are supposed to at least pretend to be bite-sized! :)

The black hole stuff, that is. The thing that would kill your people isn't the black hole, which has less gravity than the progenitor star, but the death throes of the star prior to black hole.

Furthermore, no accretion disk would occur, as there would be nothing to fall into the black hole. Theoretically, in a binary system, the second star could accrete, but they would have to be very close. If life developed on planets where the stars were so big they could be far enough out that they basically orbit the two suns as one (which I don't think is possible in a stable way, but I know nothing about orbits so cannot claim that for sure), then the loss of more than half (because the bigger the star, the sooner it dies) of their radiation cannot be made up by one star being accreted. It only has so much energy. If they orbited the stars in a figure 8, the accretion disk of one sun into the other would destroy the planets.

And that's even discounting the supernova. A supernova is so energetic it outshines the entire galaxy, usually for some weeks. I was doing some imaging of M82, a bright galaxy easily findable with a telescope, a couple years back, and there was a supernova in it. I took the opportunity to try to find the galaxy with binoculars now that the spot was there and was brighter than the rest of the galaxy. I could see it with my binocs, but not its home galaxy.

So imagine the power of a hundred billion stars. How could they survive that?

Space magic is a solid answer to one of these questions, but by trying to explain exactly what the space magic is doing, it kills it IMO.

Yeah. The energy that the black hole is radiating to keep the Harmony's ten planets warm is probably straight up space magic stuff. I'm curious, even in space magic terms, what the sequence of events was, though. Did the Traveler move the ten planets away from a dying star to orbit a black hole? Did it create a black hole beside the Harmony's star? Did it accelerate the Harmony's star to black hole form skipping any nasty side effects along the way?

Creating a black hole next to a star in a late stage of life would be a pretty good way to keep it from destroying the system with a nova. Of course, if you have the ability to do that, you can probably do it with a lot less hassle.

Now I need to catch up on some reading.

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As much as I love Beorn (and this site wouldn't be a tenth as functional without him), he played no part in Raga's saga.

128103

Never mind! :)

It would appear that Claude and I had the same idea at the same time, but went about it in completely different ways. :)

Anyway, I removed the sticky post in lieu of using Claude's (much fancier) BSB Page.

The BSB page has a couple of non-listed features.

If you load it directly:

http://destiny.bungie.org/bsb/

you get all of the installments, in chronological order.

If you load it with an 'ep':

http://destiny.bungie.org/bsb/ep/12

you get one specific installment.

If you load it with 'sa':

http://destiny.bungie.org/bsb/sa/12

You get all of the installments, STARTING AT the one you list. (So that link lists every bsb, starting at #12.)

If further features are needed, just let me know. (I won't guarantee I'll add them ("ANIMATE THE INSTALLMENT!"), but I'll consider it. :) )

The only question I have at the moments is how would making a revision to one or two or all of the articles work?

The black hole stuff, that is. The thing that would kill your people isn't the black hole, which has less gravity than the progenitor star, but the death throes of the star prior to black hole.

Furthermore, no accretion disk would occur, as there would be nothing to fall into the black hole. Theoretically, in a binary system, the second star could accrete, but they would have to be very close. If life developed on planets where the stars were so big they could be far enough out that they basically orbit the two suns as one (which I don't think is possible in a stable way, but I know nothing about orbits so cannot claim that for sure), then the loss of more than half (because the bigger the star, the sooner it dies) of their radiation cannot be made up by one star being accreted. It only has so much energy. If they orbited the stars in a figure 8, the accretion disk of one sun into the other would destroy the planets.

And that's even discounting the supernova. A supernova is so energetic it outshines the entire galaxy, usually for some weeks. I was doing some imaging of M82, a bright galaxy easily findable with a telescope, a couple years back, and there was a supernova in it. I took the opportunity to try to find the galaxy with binoculars now that the spot was there and was brighter than the rest of the galaxy. I could see it with my binocs, but not its home galaxy.

So imagine the power of a hundred billion stars. How could they survive that?

Space magic is a solid answer to one of these questions, but by trying to explain exactly what the space magic is doing, it kills it IMO.

IIRC it's implied that the Traveler moved the ten Harmony worlds into orbit around the (already existing) black hole, did whatever was necessary to get an accretion disc going (if there wasn't one already), and configured the disc to work as a primary.

Whatever the Traveler did was apparently pretty good for Ana-Harmony.

The only question I have at the moments is how would making a revision to one or two or all of the articles work?

Good question. If this archive didn't exist, how would you do it? (If it's just a matter of reposting here, I can do the same thing I did the first time through; copy-and-paste (with some minor html cleanup).)

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HARMONY. When the Traveler passed across Harmony, it lied to the orbits of ten worlds. Now they orbit the black hole. The Traveler lied to the accretion disc, so that it would give warm light to these worlds.

Normally the friction of the materials in the disk as they accelerate down the gravity well would cause them to heat up, and that heat would radiate outwards. Somehow, the Traveler has modified this so that the emission also now includes a gentile light as well. so the disk acts as a flattened sun, a solar donut around the black hole. So long as there is material falling into the disk, it will remain lit and provide heat and light for the 10 planets around it.

That isn't to far fetched, from a scientific view point.

I see it now. Well, problem solved.

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"ANY change" is a bit too high of a bar. In the past I've worked with the mods to slip in small grammar or clarity fixes and on rare occasion to fix a minor inaccuracy or two. For instance, I once listed the Hive siblings by age but got the order wrong. I had that fixed a few days later but it wasn't critical to understanding the events going on at that time so there was no notice or editorial notes.

I will post a note if I find I got something important wrong, or if I find a better interpretation of some event, or if we get new information that sheds light on or changes our understanding of something.