Destiny General Discussion Thread

[Catalyst75]

Destiny is a lore-heavy game, and a lot of things can be determined about the characters in the setting from the lore and from the interpretation of what certain things mean, so I decided to start up a general discussion thread so people can be kept up to date on future additions to the game and lore.

First up, Stasis is the newly introduced Darkness subclass in Destiny 2, and a lot of discussions has been made in the Destiny community itself about the exact nature of what Stasis is and does. One line of discussion has speculated that Stasis crystals are, specifically, Perfect Crystals:

This was actually my first time learning of the concept, but perfect crystals contain no point, line or planar defects and are hypothesized to form at absolute zero, and only at absolute zero.

 

[Catalyst75]

So, with Season of the Chosen, we are introduced to Ticuu's Divination, a bow crafted by a Cabal Psion that has...interesting properties.

Ticuu's Divination — Lore Entry — Ishtar Collective — Destiny Lore by subject

Three points, pushed through forever. — The two Legionaries rooted through the armory of their deposed emperor. They swept the rubble aside and lifted a Bow of sharp metal, its thin frame of blackened blades bound with wire. 'This is the one the Psions made so you can't miss.' 'Huh. How'd they...

www.ishtar-collective.net

To summarize, the Psions, one named Ticcu in particular, created a Bow they infused with "time" so that it can't miss (unless you were going to miss anyway). Nearest I can figure, the way time was infused into the bow is so that you skip "cause" and go to "effect" - any bow on the string was "already there", and it hits targets that "already had arrows in them."

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There is another place where I have given my thoughts on a lot of Destiny lore as it pertains to the nature of powers and abilities. I am thinking about copy-pasting the posts I made from there to here.

 

[Catalyst75]

I managed to find this while looking at information about Stasis, and it is about the Anomaly connected to Darkness found by Clovis Bray on the Moon: https://www.destinypedia.com/Kuang_Xuan's_Logbook

Couldn't seem to find it in Ishtar Collective, since it comes with the Collector's Edition, but here is what one of the entries says about the Anomaly:

"The article is gone. We have shifted our work completely to Site Two. I think that Clovis Bray has made a mistake and that their efforts to isolate themselves from the artifact will also cut them off from any progress. This is how we will beat them! By confronting the alien truth of the object directly, we will achieve the powerful intuitive understanding that Clovis Bray’s instrumental approach cannot attain.

Yan and Loftus are certain that the Site Two antenna receives exactly the same transmissions as the original alien artifact. But we still have no idea how this stubbornly four-dimensional object accesses the six extra dimensions of the Calabi-Yau manifold. Our antenna, like the artifact, simply shuffles its internal state through an apparently arbitrary series of gravitational and electronuclear permutations. These unified-force events were probably common in the early universe, but they have no real significance now. Yan theorizes that they are like a password, recognized by some strange network that exists in the Calabi-Yau manifold."

According to Superstring Theory, a Calabi-Yau Manifold is the shape that the extra six dimensions of spacetime are said to take. Any thoughts on the implications for paracausal powers?

 

[Catalyst75]

The Book of Sorrows is a collection of 50 pieces of lore pertaining to the history of the Hive race of Destiny. It details their origins and first meeting with the Worm Gods that shaped the Hive into their present day form, the various accomplishments and accolades of the Hive Gods, and a number of the significant races they fought and destroyed in the setting's past.

There is a link to the entire Book of Sorrows below, but I will also be posting specific parts of the Book as it pertains to the Hive's abilities:

https://db.destinytracker.com/d1/grimoire/enemies/books-of-sorrow

IX: The Bargain

You are Aurash. Heir to the Osmium Throne.

You stand on the naked hull of an ancient ship. You stand exposed to the crushing pressure and ferocious heat of the deeper Fundament. It should annihilate you. It is by my will alone that you survive.

I am Yul, the Honest Worm.

Behold my passage. Behold my vast displacement, my ponderous strength, my great and coiling length, my folded jaws and curled wings. Behold the hiving cities symbiotic with my flesh. I am fecund, Aurash. I am at the beginning and end of lives.

Behold Eir, and Xol, and Ur, and Akka. The Virtuous Worms. Look upon us, and know that We are go[o]d.

For millions of years We have been [trapped|growing] in the Deep. From across the stars We have called life to Fundament, so that it might contend against extinction. For millennia We have awaited you... our beloved hosts.

Against you stand the cruel Leviathan and all the forces of the Sky. They would crush you down into the dark. They have arranged their moons to drown you, in fear of your potential.

We want to help you, Princes. We offer to each of you a bargain... a symbiosis.

Take into your bodies our children, our newborn larvae. From them you shall obtain eternal life. From them you shall gain power over your own fragile flesh: the power to make of it as you will. And should you find an imperfection in the world, an injustice or an inconvenience — you will have the power to repair it. Let no mere law bind you.

We ask one thing in exchange, oh Princes.

You must obey your nature forever. In your immortality, Aurash, you may never cease to explore and inquire, for the sake of your children. In your immortality, Xi Ro, you may never cease to test your strength. In your immortality, Sathona, you may never abandon cunning.

If you do, your worm will consume you. And as your power grows, oh Princes, so will your worm’s appetite.

But we offer eternity, Aurash. We offer you a chance at the universe. Would you deny your people infinity?

Reach up to me. Let my flesh be your sacrament.

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The Worm God Yul can exert their will to allow Aurash and her two sisters to survive the crushing and burning depths of the Fundament Ocean's deepest depths - more specifically, the depths of a gas giant's oceans, and the Worm larvae the Hive formed a symbiosis with not only gave them immortality spanning billions of years (so long as the Worms are sated), but also gave them power over their own flesh and to make of it as they will.

Aurash, Xi Ro, and Sathona were the former names of Oryx, Xivu Arath, and Savathun, the Hive Gods.

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XVI: The Sword Logic

AT LAST!

We knew curiosity would draw you back, Auryx. In their desperation, the Ammonite have begun using paracausal weapons.

What are these? How do they work? Wouldn’t you like to know. Suffice to say that some powers in this universe are superordinate to mere material physics.

The source of these weapons is the Traveler, the Sky’s bait star. Their effect is subtle, but devastating.

But you are armed to respond in kind. Savathûn’s mothers have listened carefully to our teachings. We will not give you the Deep, King Auryx — that power is for us, your gods. But we will teach you to call upon that force with signs and rituals.

Small minds might call it magic.

You are no longer bound by causal closure. Your will defeats law. Kill a hundred of your children with a long blade, Auryx, and observe the change in the blade. Observe how the universe shrinks from you in terror.

Your existence begins to define itself.

Of course, high Auryx, we know it was not curiosity alone that brought you back to the war. You felt your own death growing inside you.

You must obey your nature. Your worm must feed...

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The Ammonites were the first major race the Hive did battle with, who lived on the 52 moons which orbited the Fundament. Possessing paracausal weapons means the Ammonites possessed weapons which did not obey regular causality and wielded powers "superordinate to material physics".

"Hive Magic" is also such a para-causal power, drawing on the Darkness through signs and incantations.

The Sword Logic is the metaphysical framework and philosophy which fuels the Hive's paracausal power. Whenever they kill an enemy and prove they are stronger, they gain that strength in reality.

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XVII: The Weakness Verse

You are dead, young Auryx. Betrayed and murdered by your own sister, for the crime of mercy.

Remember what you said to the Ammonite Satellite Congress? ‘We will parley on neutral ground?’ Savathûn’s witches have rendered it utterly neutral. No living thing will ever claim it again. The space around the dry moon stinks of rot.

This is good. This is right. You will learn from this. Don’t you understand, great King? Don’t you want to build something real, something that lasts forever?

Our universe gutters down towards cold entropy. Life is an engine that burns up energy and produces decay. Life builds selfish, stupid rules — morality is one of them, and the sanctity of life is another.

These rules are impediments to the great work. The work of building a perfect, undying creation, a civilization everlasting. Something that cannot end.

If a civilization cannot defend itself, it must be annihilated. If a King cannot hold his power, he must be betrayed. The worth of a thing can be determined only by one beautiful arbiter — that thing’s ability to exist, to go on existing, to remake existence to suit its survival.

All that would oppose this arbiter is unholy and false. All the misery and terror of your ancestors springs from the lies of the Sky, who deny this truth.

Your ancestors endured the most hostile conditions. And now you must go on creating those conditions. Even unto your sisters. Even unto your offspring. Savathûn’s betrayal is the greatest gift she could offer you.

Your body is gone, but you have endured. Safe in the cyst universe created by your own might — your throne world.

From this day forward, Auryx, you and your sisters will each survive death — so long as you aren’t killed in your own throne.

Even as your sisters press the attack against the Ammonites, the God-Wave devastates Fundament. Trillions will die. But the survivors will never forget... and their descendants will always be ready for another syzygy.

When you return to the material universe, use this lesson to complete your work.

Taox wasn’t on the dry moon. She must be laughing at you.

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What defines the Sword Logic is the belief that what defines an entity's worth is their ability to exist, and to assert that existence through killing. To the Hive, what has died did not deserve to exist in the first place.

By this time, Auryx had killed so many and grown so strong in the Sword Logic that the power he gained manifested itself as a Throne World, a "cyst universe" within the Ascendant Plane where their soul goes to if they are ever killed in the material world; the only certain way to permanently kill a Hive God is to kill them in their Throne World.

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XXI: an incision

Sayeth AURYX, my siblings, our children are scattered across many moons, and we live in the cold dark between suns. What will we eat? How will we speak?

SAVATHÛN said, Auryx my brother and king, I have studied the wounds cut by the Worm our God. Also I have studied the manner of your death and return. These two things are the same, for they are predicated on death and the passage through cut spaces. Let us practice the sword logic until we are sharp. We may then cut our own wounds and step through.

But XIVU ARATH said, sister, I am already sharp, look, my sword cuts into another space. And she cut her way between moons through green fire and joyous screams.

Three kingdoms grew swollen in the sword space. They were the gaze and glory of AURYX, the cunning and knowledge of SAVATHÛN, the triumph and brawn of XIVU ARATH. These kingdoms were created from the minds and worms of our lords. They were coterminous with all spaces consecrated by our Hive. Through these spaces passed speech and food, and all the moons were bound close.

Sayeth AURYX, this is where I went when I died. Let us establish our thrones here. For I am Auryx the First Navigator and I shall chart death. And my throne shall be carved of osmium.
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After the Hive destroyed the Ammonite race and the Leviathan, the Hive converted the 52 moons of the Fundament into mobile warships to travel across space. The Hive's method of faster-than-light travel involves cutting "wounds" into the fabric of space and slipping through them, adopted from the Worm Gods and Xivu Arath's demonstration of the power.
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XXVI: star by star by star

Beneath a green fire sky, in the throne-world of King Auryx, our lords embrace.

We the Hive watch as Savathûn puts her arm around Xivu Arath, and Xivu Arath clasps forearms with Auryx, and Auryx takes Savathûn by the shoulder. They are huge, huge, and they burn with furious power. But this embrace is weakness and we despise it.

Never before have we despised our lords. Have they failed us? We the Hive have been driven back, world by world.

“I am at my end,” Savathûn says. “I plot and plan. But I cannot gather enough bloodshed to feed my worm. And the harder I try, the hungrier it becomes.”

“I slaughter and kill,” Xivu Arath says, “but the harder I fight, the more my worm demands. I too am at my end.”

“The Ecumene war angels have killed me so many times,” Auryx says, “that I dare not go out into the universe, lest I need my might to protect myself. My worm chews at my soul in hunger.”

Is this the end of our crusade? Are we the Hive unworthy to exist?

Xivu Arath puts down her great head. “We should retire and gather our strength.”

Savathûn closes her eyes in puzzled defeat. “We should beg the Worm our God to tell us what to do.”

But King Auryx, who knows best the beauty of the final shape, roars at them. “Have you learned nothing? Would you deny our purpose? Whatever we do, we will do by killing, by an act of war and might. That is the final arbiter we serve, that violent arbiter, and if we turn away from it we deserve to be eaten. No! We must obey our natures. We must be long-sighted, and cunning, and strong. We must take this gift the Worm our God has given us, this challenge, and find a way to keep existing!”

“How will we feed our worms?” Xivu Arath asks.

“I know,” says cunning Savathûn. “I know a way. But it won’t work unless we are killing the Ecumene by the billions. How can we beat them?”

“If we cannot beat their strengths,” says Xivu Arath, “we must infect their weaknesses. But they are lords of matter and physical law.”

“I know a way,” King Auryx says. “But it will require great power. More power than any one of us can claim.”

“Then kill me,” says Xivu Arath, “and use that killing logic, the power you prove by killing something as mighty as me.”

So King Auryx took up his blade and beheaded Xivu Arath.

“And strangle me,” says Savathûn, holding a blade behind her back. “Use that killing logic, the cunning you prove by killing something as smart as me.”

But King Auryx turned with the speed and might of Xivu Arath, and beheaded Savathûn before she could move. King Auryx was the First Navigator, with the map of death.

These were true deaths, for they happened in the sword world.

Then he went to the Worm named Akka.

XXXIV: More Beautiful to Know

Once, long ago, I killed Xivu Arath on her war moon, and she blew up the whole moon to kill with me her. She was laughing in joy. I laughed too. A whole moon! A whole moon. It was a waste of a moon, but it taught me how to save myself from exploding worlds, which was necessary to fight the Ecumene.

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The Ecumene were a galaxy-spanning civilization who were powerful enough to push the Hive Gods to the brink, as they could not feed their Worms enough tribute to satiate their hunger. Their war angels were powerful enough to kill Auryx many times over the course of the initial conflict, and Xivu Arath described them as "lords of matter and physical law", indicating a highly advanced civilization with mastery of matter and force manipulations.

During the Ecumene conflict, the Ecumene regularly blew up entire worlds in an attempt to destroy the Hive and the Hive Gods, though Oryx knew how to escape and exploding world due to a time when Xivu Arath destroyed an entire war moon to take Auryx with her, during the years they killed each other in the material world to satiate their Sword-Logic.

In order to gain the power to destroy the Ecumene, Xivu Arath and Savathun allowed Auryx to kill them while in the Ascendant Planes, which made their deaths "permanent" and gave Auryx the power he needed to confront the Worm God Akka.
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XXVIII: King of Shapes

This is the Coronation of Oryx, the Taken King. It happened thus.

In the cold abyss of the sword world, King Aurash walked under a cloak of green fire. He walked through the sky and the sky shuddered and froze beneath his feet. He walked until he found Akka, the Worm of Secrets, who was denying a truth until it became a lie.

“Akka my God, Worm of Secrets. I am Auryx, sole king of the Hive. I have come to receive a secret. I want the secret power of the Deep, which you hold.”

“I give no secrets,” said Akka, whose voice was code.

“No,” said Auryx, “you give nothing. Giving is for the Sky. You worship the Deep, which asks that we take what we need.”

Akka said nothing, because if it denied this truth, the truth might become false.

“But you gave us your larvae, the worm,” said Auryx, “and that is why the worm devours us now: because it was given, not taken. So I must take what I need from you, although you are my god.”

Said Akka, “You have not the strength.”

But this was a lie. Auryx had killed Savathûn his sibling and Xivu Arath his sibling, and he had the sword logic of killing them.

Auryx the First Navigator set upon his god with his sword and his words, and cut Akka to pieces, and took from those pieces the secret of calling upon the Deep. He wrote this secret on a set of tablets, which he called the Tablets of Ruin. And he wore them about his waist.

Then Auryx said, “Now I may speak to the Deep, the beautiful final shape. I will be King of Shapes. I will learn all the secrets of our destiny.”

His speech to the Deep is not recorded here. But it is known that he returned, and he said, now I am Oryx, the Taken King. And I have the power to take life and make it my own.

Then he went out into the universe, and fought the Ecumene with his Tablets. And the Worm his God was pleased.

XLI: Dreadnaught

To make his ship, Oryx scrimshawed one piece of Akka, who was dead but far from gone. He stole the Hammer of Xivu Arath and the Scalpel of Savathûn and he armored his ship in baneful armor.

When Oryx had built his Dreadnaught, he pushed his throne world inside out, so that it bled into the material space of the Dreadnaught. They were coterminous and allied, his ship and his sin. The Dreadnaught was within the throne of Oryx, but the throne of Oryx was the Dreadnaught. Aiat!

This required a verse from the Tablets of Ruin. The whole Court worked together to push Oryx’s throne inside out. This was a day of joyous violence, and all of Oryx’s broods mark this holiday as Eversion Day, which is celebrated by turning things inside out...


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Due to the power he gained from killing Xivu Arath and Savathun (and potentially due to Akka sealing his own demise by denying Auryx had the power to kill him), Auryx was successful in using his sword to cut Akka into pieces and taking the secrets of calling upon the Darkness from the pieces of his body. These secrets were inscribed on the Tablets of Ruin, and it is from these secrets that Auryx became Oryx, the Taken King and acquired the power to Take.

Akka's power is as such that he can deny a truth until it becomes a lie, indicating an ontological power over reality. It is why he did not deny Oryx's assertion that the Deep asks its followers take what they need. Which is potentially why the Worms devour the Hive if not fed enough: the Worm were given, not taken.

Later on, Oryx carves his Dreadnaught out of a piece of the Worm God Akka and connects his Throne World with the Dreadnaught, making his Throne World mobile. The super-weapon of the Dreadnaught, as observed above, works by everting the Ascendant Realm within the Dreadnaught into the physical realm, and is powerful enough to punch a hole 15,000 kilometers in diameter into the Rings of Saturn, and destroy everything caught within its radius.

Comparing the size of the Dreadnaught to the hole it made puts the vessel's size at up to 3,500 kilometers in length. As the Dreadnaught was carved from a piece of Akka, it means Oryx had to kill a Worm God far larger than the Moon to attain the power to Take.

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XXVII: Eat the Sky

Emergency imperative.

All militarized units attend. Gland one hundred twenty proof fight or flight encoding or face certain catastrophic defeat.

The Ecumene Crisis Council is now online and true.

Attention.

As of Radial 990 groove 0 the Hive has launched a staggering counterattack across the spinward frontier. Perimeter, militia, and shock fleets report total casualties. We anticipate total Ecumene disintegration/extinction within two hundred twenty years.

VIGILANCE SPIKE EI—{}—~attend~

The Hive entity Oryx/Aurash is deploying a paracausal ontopathogenic weapon that infects and subverts Ecumene forces. The weapon operates on individual targets. Targets are abducted and returned as compliant Hive slaves with inexplicable and physically illegal abilities.

All Ecumene clients should IMMEDIATELY devote all economic and cognitive resources to a countermeasure.

Fight hard. We stop the Hive here, or see our galaxy devoured.

ENACT IMPULSE—{10x10}—~abayard~berserker

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Once Oryx claimed the ability to take, the tide of war immediately turned against the Ecumene. The Ecumene describe Oryx's ability to Take as a paracausal ontopathogenic weapon - a power that infects the existence of the target and enslaves them completely to Oryx's will. In addition to this, those who are Taken are given powers the Ecumene considered "inexplicable and physically illegal".

This coming from a race with dominance over matter and physical laws, and possess powers capable of destroying planets.

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XXIX: Carved in Ruin

Oryx made war on the Ecumene for a hundred years. At the end of those hundred years he killed the Ecumene Council on the Fractal Wreath, and from their blood rose Xivu Arath, saying, “I am war, and you have conjured me back with war.”

Oryx was glad, for he loved Xivu Arath. The Ecumene wailed in grief.

Then Oryx and Xivu Arath made war on the Ecumene for forty years. At the end of those forty years Oryx said to the Dakaua Nest, listen, I am jealous of my sibling Xivu Arath, help me kill her. And in desperation they agreed.

But he drove the Dakaua Nest into a trap, and they were made extinct. From their ashes rose cunning Savathûn, saying, “I am trickery, and you have conjured me back with trickery.”

Oryx was glad, for he loved Savathûn. The Ecumene fled into the void.

Then they made war on the Ecumene for a thousand years, and exterminated them so wholly that nowhere except in this book are they remembered. This book and the mind of Taox, who was not found.

And Savathûn said, “King Oryx, how will we feed our worms? Did you use my plan?”

Oryx told the Hive: I am the Taken King, and here is my law.

You Thrall, each of you will claw and scream, and kill what you can. Take enough killing to feed your worm, and a little more to grow. Tithe the rest to the Acolyte who commands you.

You Acolytes, lead your Thrall in battle. Take enough killing to feed your worm, and a little more to grow, and take the tithe of the Thrall you lead. Then tithe the remainder to the Knight or Wizard who commands you. Thus you pay tribute.

You Knights and Wizards, lead your followers in battle. Take enough devastation to feed your worm, and a little more to grow, and take the tithe of your followers. Then take another portion, as much as you dare, and use it for your own purposes. But if it is too much, your peers will kill you and take it. Then tithe the remainder to the Ascendant you serve.

An Ascendant will be those among the Hive who gather enough tribute to enter the netherworld. They will pay a tithe to those above them.

And thus the tribute will flow, up the chain, so that Savathûn and Xivu Arath and myself will be fed by a great river of tribute, and we will use that excess to feed our gods, and to study the Deep. Thus all worms will be fed — as long as we continue our crusade.

This is my law. I carve it thus, in ruin. Aiat.
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From one hundred years of war and bloodshed and the death of the Ecumene Council, and forty years later a great act of cunning and trickery, Oryx was able to resurrect both Xivu Arath and Savathun through the concepts that empower them and feed their Worms.

After completely annihilating this galaxy-spanning civilization, Oryx establishes the tribute system of the Hive - each class of the Hive attains tribute through killing and devastation, taking enough tribute to feed their worms and elevate themselves to the next class (Thralls become Acolytes, Acolytes become Knights, Knights and Wizards become Ascendant), while tithing the rest to those above them. The Hive's tithes flow all the way up to the Hive Gods and feed them, just as the Hive Gods tithe tribute to the Worm Gods.

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[Catalyst75]

XXX: a golden amputation

Wrath!

Behold the wrath of Oryx, coiled for ten thousand years. Behold the Golden Amputation: the fall of Taishibeth, the end of an age. We beat the worlds of Taishibeth like skull drums and we howl in joy for our black war moons as they ram silver orbitals and gleaming star-webs, where infant Taishibethi sun ravens curl and die unborn.

In his throne world Oryx paces ten times.

On the first pace, Kraghoor sends the accursed to blight the Taishibethi worlds.

On the second pace, the Tai unleash their battleplates and arsenal ships to fight our moons.

On the third pace, Oryx’s Warpriest meets them in battle, and he is victorious, he paints the void with fire, he salts the earth with ash.

On the fourth pace, Mengoor and Cra’adug, dyad knights, go to the Raven Bridge, and they stand on it and kill the Tai for ten years.

On the fifth pace, the Tai Emperor Raven comes home to her Bridge, and she cuts a moon with her talons, she cuts it open and kills its brood.

On the sixth pace, Oryx speaks, saying, listen to me, Emperor Raven, and I will describe to you the Last True Shape, which is written on my tablet. And he puts out his fist, full of black fire, and he swallows up the Emperor Raven with a wound.

Aiat! Only Oryx knows this power, the power to take.

On the seventh pace, the Perfect Raven comes out of Oryx’s wound, and she spreads her wings across Taishibeth. Never again is a Taishibethi child born. She is perfect, she enacts the will of Oryx.

On the eighth pace, the Tai say, listen, you are spoilers, you are sphincters and excreta, you rot, why do you kill? We made silver orbitals and golden star webs. We hatched eggs. We had a good thing. Our clothes were nice, our food was famous. With one of her feathers our Emperor could have tickled the gods.

On the ninth pace, Oryx says, this is the only god, this ability to dictate what will and will not exist, this power to go on existing. This is your god. It is never ticklish.

On the tenth pace the Taishibethi are extinct.

Then Oryx says, listen my siblings, do you know what we have done? We have conquered our way to the edge of the Deep. It whispers to me when I call on it, and it guides my flight. It says that we are at its threshold and that I should come inside.

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The Taishibethi are the third notable race within the Book of Sorrows that the Hive face who possessed an armada of ships able to be set against the war moons of the Hive. The text implies time can pass differently between Oryx's Throne World and the material world, as the entire conflict takes place while Oryx takes ten paces in his Throne World.

The Warpriest, Mengoor and Cra'adug, and Kraghoor are all members of Oryx's Court, his most powerful champions, and the Guardians fight all four of these named members at different points in time. Three of them are fought and killed within the Dreadnaught; the Warpriest is fought during the King's Fall Raid leading up to Oryx in the Ascendant Plane.

Kraghoor (also called Krughor) led the Taken to blight the worlds of the Taishibethi, Mengoor and Cra'adug are a pair of Hive Knight who fought against the Taishibethi on the Raven Bridge for a decade, and the Warpriest, starting from here to the Gift Mast later on, personally conquered five hundred and eighty-five worlds.

The Tai Emperor Raven was powerful enough to destroy a Hive war moon and all the Hive within it, and her people believed she was powerful enough to challenge the gods, but Oryx was able to take her and make her one of the Taken. The text implies that, with her power augmented as a Taken, she prevented any new Taishibethi from being born.
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XXXIV: More Beautiful to Know

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a nihilist.

I don’t do much except break things. That’s what they say about me: we could’ve had a great civilization, if it weren’t for that damn Oryx, that damn Hive. They don’t believe in anything but death.

The only way to make something good is to make something that can’t be broken. And the only way to do that is to try to break everything.

I’m glad I learned that the universe runs on death. It’s more beautiful to know.

But I’m lost somewhere strange.

I think that Savathûn and Xivu Arath are trying to steal the tablets from me. They must have cut off my tribute while I was away communing with the Deep. I love them so dearly. No one else is clever or strong enough to try to break me. No one else can give me this gift.

Once, long ago, I killed Xivu Arath on her war moon, and she blew up the whole moon to kill with me her. She was laughing in joy. I laughed too. A whole moon! A whole moon. It was a waste of a moon, but it taught me how to save myself from exploding worlds, which was necessary to fight the Ecumene.

I love mighty Xivu more than a moon loves the tide. I’ll kill her for this. Over and over, forever and ever.

When I get home from my wanderings in the Deep, and I take back my throne, I’m going to have children. That’s what I need.

Sons and daughters to love and kill.


XXXV: This love is war

Xivu upon Oryx —
Uttered by Xivu Arath —
Sibling of Oryx —

BETRAYAL. We have marooned Oryx within the Deep. This is our obligation as lords of the Hive, to make war upon each other, to eradicate weakness and make ourselves sharp.

OBLIGATIONS. Once, I permitted Oryx to kill me so that he could gain the sword logic and overcome Akka our God. This left me trapped deep in my throne. But Oryx my brother made war upon the Ecumene and in that war he described me, for I too am war. Thus I was resurrected.

RESURRECTION. Savathûn and I conspired to strand Oryx on his expedition. But I secretly believe that I will be stronger with Oryx to war against. Thus I describe him.

XXXVI: Eater of Hope

You are Crota, my son. Welcome.

I fought my way out of hell to make you. I fought my traitor siblings and I fought the swarming corpse of Akka and I cut my way back into my own court, the High War, which had been usurped. Once I had made war on Savathûn, and crippled her tribute so that she could never challenge me, and once I had tricked Xivu Arath, and poisoned her tribute so that she could never again try to take my tablets, and once I had arranged my own lineages so that I would be greatest among the Hive and secure on my throne — then I found a mother to make spawn.

One of those spawn was you.

Your life will be a battle too. You will have to win your place at the High War. I will give you nothing... except this, your first sword, and this name I have prepared for you.

We fight a war against false hope, Crota. We chase a god called the Traveler, a huckster god who baits young life into building houses for it. These houses are unsafe, for they cannot stand against my Hive. And these houses are a trap — for they lead young life away from the blade and the tooth, which are the tools of survival and the means of ascension.

Only when the Traveler is extinguished will the universe be free to arrange itself, and assume, by ruthless contest, its final perfect shape, a shape which depends on nothing but itself.

Thus I name you Crota, Eater of Hope.

There is an oath upon me, Crota my son, an oath against the wretched Taox. This I do not give to you. It is for me, your father, to bear.

Let’s go meet your aunts and uncles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an attempt to usurp his power, Xivu Arath and Savathun conspired to trap Oryx in the Deep. However, Oryx fought his way back out of the Deep, including a confrontation with the dead Akka. Once he made his way out, he crippled his siblings so they could no longer challenge him, and the events are what lead Oryx to sire his four children - Crota, Ir Halak, Ir Anuk, and Nokris. For making a pact with the Worm God Xol and learning the secrets of resurrection, Nokris was disowned by Oryx and his memory wiped from the Hive. Only a lone statue in the Dreadnaught remained to hint at his existence before the Warmind expansion of Destiny 2.

Xol's motivation for making the pact was to avoid being devoured by Yul, the Honest Worm, who sought the power to withstand Oryx, meaning Oryx had become powerful enough to threaten the Worm Gods themselves.
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XXXVII: shapes: points

Look at you!

Already you are grown, my daughter, already you are a wizard. Have I been away so long? Now you are Ir Anûk, and Savathûn cackles and rages at your brilliance. You have written eleven axioms describing the ascendant places, our throne world. You have announced that you will kill one of these axioms, as Akka would kill the truth, and in mantling Akka you will become a God, as I am.

If you try it I may kill you, or I may applaud. Well done. I brought you this bitter acid for your celebrations.

And you, Ir Halak, you are a wizard too, as is the way of twins. I have been with Xivu Arath, who complains that you have made a song, and sung it in her throne world, and killed everyone who listened, quite irrevocably. Will we have songs instead of swords and boomers?

What have you made for me? It is a tooth shaped like death! I will keep it in my mouth. What have you written for me? It is the course of the Nicha Thought-ship! I will track it down.

I made you by cutting one larvae in half. It would not die. Each half grew into one of you. My sword is named Willbreaker, but it never broke you.
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There are at least eleven axioms that define the Ascendant Plane. While all eleven are not known, Ir Anuk had aspired to kill one of them and become a God herself. Meanwhile, Ir Halak invented the Deathsong, which is sung by Hive Wizards Deathsingers and can kill anyone who hears the song completed, as it happened in Xivu Arath's throne world.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This next section details the encounters between the Hive and the Vex, an experience which had a heavy influence on the Vex race as a whole, and is the origin of Quria, whose Taken forces have made appearances throughout Destiny 2.

XXXVIII: The Partition of Death

One day Oryx decided to grow new wings. While he wrestled with his worm, he came upon his twin daughters dying in a wound between places.

“What are you doing, my daughters?” he asked. He was afraid that Ir Halak and Ir Anûk were trying to go into the Deep, where only the Tablets of Ruin allowed Oryx to go.

“We are dying, father,” they said. “As many times as we can manage.”

“That’s adorably precocious.” Oryx shook out his new wings. “But why?”

“We propose a method by which Ascendant souls can be detached and integrated into a tautological and autonomous thanatosphere, which we tentatively term an oversoul. Oversouls can be stored in a throne world as a mechanism of enhanced death resilience. As a side effect, new refinements to our Deathsong may be achieved, moving us closer to a generally effective paracausal death impulse.”

Oryx brandished his sword. “Speak the Royal Tongue, or I’ll pin you up for Eir to eat.”

“If we can separate our deaths from ourselves, and hide them, we will be hard to kill.”

Oryx went to his son, Crota. “Go keep an eye on your sisters,” he said. “'You can learn cunning from them.”

But while Oryx traveled to observe the Deep destroy an ancient fortress world, Crota conspired with his sisters to learn their secrets. “I too will experiment with a wound,” he said. With his sword Crota cut open a new wound, into a new space. In here he thought he might obtain a secret power.

Out of this wound came machines called Vex. They invaded Oryx’s throne world.

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The Oversoul, invented by Ir Halak and Ir Anuk together, is a construct Ascendant Hive can use to separate their souls from their physical bodies and hide it within the Ascendant Realm, making them even more resistant to death than before. In effect, Oryx's own Oversoul is his Dreadnaught, and his superweapon the paracausal death impulse it generates. Other notable Hive who have Oversouls are Crota and the Warpriest, both of which are able to use these death impulses as well.

Crota demonstrates the ability to open a wound into another world, which is what leads to the Hive's first encounter with the Vex.

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XXXIX: Open your eye: go into it

The Vex clattered around, constructing large problems. At first their constructions were deranged, because they didn’t understand the sword logic, which defined all rules in Oryx’s throne world. The geometry perplexed them.

“I’ll cut them apart,” Crota said. But just then, the Vex ritual-of-better-thoughts manifested a Mind called Quria, Blade Transform. Quria deduced the sword logic.

I have to kill everything, Quria resolved. Then I will be powerful.

Crota’s gate began to emit warrior Vex, huge and brassy. He leapt forward to fight them, but they blinked away. After they fled from Crota, they killed two thousand of Oryx’s Acolytes and ten thousand of his Thrall. Soon they had established themselves as powers in this world, by right of slaughter.

“Come forth, sister wizards,” called Ir Halak. “We need you.” Ir Anûk pulled a sword star out of the sky. Together the wizards charged it with killing power and made an annihilator totem, which they used to smash the Vex.

“Close the wound, brother Crota,” Anûk ordered. “We will find a cunning way to destroy them, but only after they stop constructing problems on us.”

But Quria had instanced itself to the other side of the gate, and built a holdfast to keep the way open. Quria’s objective was to exploit the paracausal physics of Oryx’s throne to become divine. It organized a series of test invasions.

For a hundred years of local time the siblings fought the Vex. When the Vex came into the sword world, they were inevitably annihilated, but when the Hive went into the Vex world, they lost too much of their power to win.

“Father’s going to eat our souls,” Halak sighed.

Quria captured some worm larvae and began experimenting with them. Soon Quria, Blade Transform manifested religious tactics. By directing worship at the worms, Quria learned it could alter reality with mild ontopathogenic effects. Being an efficient machine, Quria manufactured a priesthood and ordered all its subminds to believe in worship. Then it set about abducting and killing dangerous organisms so it could bootstrap itself to Hive godhood. For some Vex reason, Quria never attempted to introduce worm larvae into its mind fluid.

Savathûn was laughing, because she had tricked Crota into cutting that place.

This drew the attention of the Worm our God. ORYX, called Eir. SET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER.
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In order to better understand the laws governing the Ascendant Plane that Crota accidentally gave them an opening into, the Vex created Quria, Blade Transform, a Vex Mind Hydra to comprehend and understand the physics of the new dimension. When Crota tries to strike them, the Vex are fast enough to react to his strikes and dodge them, even though he is already a powerful Hive God at this time.

The two sisters demonstrated the ability to pull a sword-star out of the sky (the Ascendant Plane is home to green-black stars) and convert it into a weapon to destroy the Vex invading the throne. However, the match is a one hundred year stalemate.

Quria's discoveries are likely the reason behind a number of the worship-like behaviors the Vex demonstrate, and the worship-like architecture they build, including their worship of the Black Heart in the first Destiny game. Quria is even able to figure out how to mildly alter reality through directing worship at the Worms.
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XL: An Emperor for All Outcomes

Oryx rushed home and read from the Tablets of Ruin. He put some of the Vex into wounds, to be taken by the power of the Deep. Thus he turned the Vex against each other. Quria manifested a range of tactics, but none of them were adaptive. Oryx crushed all the Vex in his throne.

Oryx thought that he should study geometry, like the Vex. It was the map of perfect shapes. But first he had to punish imperfection.

“My son,” he said, “this is your punishment. Come home glorious, or die forgotten!” He picked up Crota by the legs and threw him into the Vex gate network.

Crota battled through history, becoming a legendary demon. In his early centuries he often spared a few victims to hear oaths and protests against his father. Later, he came to understand Oryx, and he made temples and monuments wherever he went.

Meanwhile, Oryx brooded on the Vex. “I’ve met a worthy rival,” he said. “They want to exist forever, just as I do. But I don’t understand them.”

At this his worm began to chew on him, for he was bound to understand.

He called Savathûn to meet in the material world. She told him that the Vex worked tirelessly to understand everything, so that they could build a victory condition for every possible end state of the universe.

“Then I must be a better king,” Oryx said. “If they want to build an emperor for all outcomes, then I will be the king of only one. I will follow the Deep wherever it goes, and document its power. Let us create a catalog of the grave of worlds, which will be our map to victory.”

Oryx knew that all life could be described as cellular automata, except for that life which understood the Deep or the Sky, and thus escaped causality.

Out of love for her brother, which was the same as the desire to kill him, Savathûn leaked a secret to Xivu Arath — ‘listen, Xivu, Oryx’s throne world has been compromised. You can cut your way in from here.’ Xivu Arath used this to plan an ambush.

But Oryx was too canny. The Taken King said to his Court, the High War, “My throne world is vulnerable. I am going to move it.”

‘Where?’ asked Kagoor, World-Render.

“Into a mighty dreadnaught,” said Oryx. “I shall keep my glorious mind cosmos inside a titanic warship.”

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Oryx is able to drive off and suppress the Vex invasion on his own, using the Tablets of Ruin to take Vex and turn them against each other. He punishes Crota by throwing him into the Vex Gate Network, and he successfully wages conflict throughout the centuries he is in the Gate Network, which spans past, present and future.

It is the incident with the Vex and Savathun's scheming that prompts Oryx to move his Throne World into the Dreadnaught, which he makes from a piece of Akka.

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XLI: The Dreadnaught

To make his ship, Oryx scrimshawed one piece of Akka, who was dead but far from gone. He stole the Hammer of Xivu Arath and the Scalpel of Savathûn and he armored his ship in baneful armor.

When Oryx had built his Dreadnaught, he pushed his throne world inside out, so that it bled into the material space of the Dreadnaught. They were coterminous and allied, his ship and his sin. The Dreadnaught was within the throne of Oryx, but the throne of Oryx was the Dreadnaught. Aiat!

This required a verse from the Tablets of Ruin. The whole Court worked together to push Oryx’s throne inside out. This was a day of joyous violence, and all of Oryx’s broods mark this holiday as Eversion Day, which is celebrated by turning things inside out.

Sayeth Oryx,

Go out into the universe, my court
Gather tribute for me. Send it home to my ship.
When I call you, walk up that tribute to my court.
I will prepare for long voyages — [I am Savathûn, insidious]
Into the war — [I graffiti this notice for you]
Into the Deep — [These Books are full of lies!]

Now Oryx’s throne was safe from incursion, because it moved so nimbly.

Oryx attacked the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible, who guarded the Nicha Thought-ship. When the Flotilla surrounded his Dreadnaught, Oryx put his sword into the hull, and he used the power of the Deep (and the clever systems his daughters built) to push his throne-world out into mere reality.

By wrath and confidence he filled space with an egg of his throne. It swelled up like a ghost star to smash the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. Oryx broke the last word off their name.

In the Nicha Thought-ship, Oryx hoped to find the location of the Gift Mast, which had been left behind by the Traveler. Oryx wanted to eat it.


-But the Thought-ship was a trap. Upon it was Quria, Blade Transform.

XLII: <>|<>|<>

<interdict>|<simulate>|<worship>

I am going to kill you. I am going to salt my meat with your briny little thoughts. I am going to cook flesh on your broken, molten hull.

<insinuate>|<subvert>|<replicate>

This ship is my throne. You want to take it from me. You want to fill it up with your own spawn and use it for your abstract purposes. But I defy you.

<observe>!<imitate>!<usurp>

You will never be what I am. Simulate me, wretch. Calculate the permutations of my divinity. Compute the death in the shape of my throne. Render my shadow on the stone of ten thousand graveyard worlds! It will never be enough. I hold the Tablets of Ruin. I speak to the Deep. Not with a galaxy of thinking matter could you encompass me. Behold!

<unknown>|<enigma>|<shortfall>

<abort>!<halt>!<abort>

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In the first use of Oryx's super-weapon, the result of forcing his throne-world into the material world completely obliterates the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible of the Harmony race, the last major race recorded in the Book of Sorrows that the Hive defeated.

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XLIII: End of Failed Timeline

By now, Quria knows it can’t win.

There’s something pathological about the world inside Oryx’s ship. It resists analysis with hot, dead spite. And Oryx himself, he’s irreducible — he refuses to obey Quria’s simulations, he crashes around sowing chaos, he grabs subminds and compromises them with some kind of ontological weapon. Paracausal systems. Very problematic.

Quria’s trying the religious tactics it evolved in the Hive manifold. But even on those terms, Oryx is strong, so strong. Quria won’t be able to protect its gates much longer.

The closest Quria’s got to a simulation of Oryx is a best-guess bootstrap. It’s wrong — Quria’s sure of that, it’s Oryx minus the symbiote organism, minus the wings and morphs, minus the weapon, minus the power. No good for anything.

Quria manifests that simulation anyway. Just to see what happens.

The Taken King marches on Quria’s Hydra-hull, armed with blade and magic, cloaked in ancient cloth, and the universe wails in horror around him. Quria’s physics models and toy worlds choke and crash.

Quria observes, alert and attentive, as a single quark splits on the tip of Oryx’s sword.

From within the Hydra-hull, Quria’s tiny not-Oryx speaks. “What are you?” it says. It’s manifesting terror and awe.

Oryx’s eyes blaze with a curiosity that is entirely isomorphic with hate, with voracious hunger. “Aurash,” he says, in his Hive language. “You’ve made me as I was. You’ve made a tiny Aurash. Ha!”

Quria updates the simulation’s name. Aurash is curious: “You’re me? You’re me as I become?”

Oryx kneels. His blade is on his left shoulder. Quria is firing every available weapon at him, but his wards don’t break. He looks into Quria’s sensors through the hammering fire and he says, “Child, I have everything you wanted. I am immortal. I know the great secrets of the universe. I have scouted the edges of the Darkness and I have chased the lying god down galactic arms in a howling pack of moons. In my fist I carry the secret power that will rule eternity. In my worm I bear the tribute of my Court and of my children, the Hope-Eater, the Weaver, and the Unraveler; and with this tribute I smash my foes. I am Oryx, the Taken King. I am almighty.”

Quria samples the Taox intelligence retrieved from the Ecumene gate. There are useful names. It feeds them to the simulation.

“What about your sisters?” Aurash asks his future self. “Sathona? Xi Ro? Are they with you?”

The Taken King’s fangs glint. That sound might be a laugh, or a hiss.

Quria shuts down its weapons and puts all its spare resources into sending telemetry to the greater Vex. There will be points in space and time where this data is vital. There will be great projects undertaken in the study of this ontological power, this throne-space.

“Where are my sisters?” Aurash shouts. “What have you done with my people? What have you done?”

But Oryx’s fist is full of black fire, and the next thing Quria sees is a light like stars.
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Due to Oryx's immense paracausal power, Quria is incapable of accurately simulating him. To put this into perspective, a single Vex Goblin's processing is capable of creating an internal simulation with perfect fidelity and accuracy of itself and its surroundings, and nesting those simulations up to two-hundred and twenty-seven times. It took the processing power of a Warmind to be brought in to disrupt the simulation.

As a feat for both Quria's processing capabilities and Oryx's power at this point, Quria is able to observe a quark splitting on the tip of Oryx's sword, Willbreaker. I have no words to describe that.

This moment is implied to be the origin of the Vault of Glass and the ontological weapons the Vex developed within it, as Quria beamed all information she had on the throne-space to the rest of the Vex before it is Taken.

As a result of being Taken, on the other hand, Quria finally gained the ability to successfully simulate Oryx over time, and through that power attain the power to Take for itself. It is also potentially what gave Quria the ability to set up a three-week time-loop within the Dreaming City.

 

[Catalyst75]

XLV: I'd shut them all in cells

Prey and Sacrifice —
Uttered by Xivu Arath —
God of War —

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.

THE GIFT MAST. When the Traveler left Harmony, it made a monument out of the black hole’s polar jet. In the jet there is a hollow mast which sings in radiance. This is the Gift Mast and we will devour it, we will eat the Sky out of it, we will snap it like a bone.

THE HARMONY STING. The Harmony have weaponized their dead star. They can stimulate the accretion disc to fire relativistic plasma jets. We will take the Sting. We will use it to burn their worlds. I will grant one temple of tribute to the first Ascendant to kill a world!

ORYX. I will have the Gift Mast to feast on! I will have it first! I am Xivu Arath and all war is my temple. Beware the daughters of Oryx, for they make and unmake with ease.

SAVATHÛN. The Deceitful Sister will be distracted by arcana and the song of the black hole. Treat her broods with contempt.

THE TRAVELER. We chase it and we will devour it. The Deep will rule the cosmos.

THE DRAGONS. 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!
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Here, Xivu Arath gives her thoughts on the Harmony, the Traveler, her siblings and the dragons who fight alongside the Harmony. The next section goes into more detail, but here it describes how the Traveler arranged the ten worlds inhabited by the Harmony around a massive black hole, and used its power to allow the accretion disc to give warmth to these ten worlds.

The Gift Mast was built by the Traveler around said black hole's polar jets which radiates Light and nourishes the Harmony, who have also weaponized the black hole's accretion disc to fire relativistic plasma jets.

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XLVI: Gift Mast

The Gift Mast!

It towers above this star system like a monument to treason. It beams with silver light. It sings a radio lullaby, made of soothing lies.

In its light live the Harmony, and they are now our prey.

Now arrives Xivu Arath, at the head of her armada. She fights the Harmony for fifty years with strategies and discipline. But the Harmony turn to dragon-wishes, and their wishful bishops wrestle Xivu in the ascendant plane.

Xivu falls into deadlock.

Next arrives Savathûn, flanked by her chorus and her celebrants. They trick their way onto Ana-Harmony in disguises, so that they might vivisect these dragons. The Worm our God laughs and laughs.

For a hundred years Savathûn keeps secret covens among the Harmony.

But first of all was Oryx, whose brood grew in secret places in the rubble of the accretion disc. The First Navigator sends rocks and comets to crash into the Harmony worlds, so that the Harmony fleet will be disarrayed. He sends seeders to infiltrate the Harmony worlds with his broods.

Here at the center of the fifth book the Hive has grown so mighty that it has made the annihilation of all false life routine.

Xivu Arath kills the wishful bishops, and Savathûn achieves some secret purpose, and Oryx’s Court tears down the Gift Mast. The Harmony people wail in terror, and they throw themselves into the silver lakes of Ana-Harmony to drown.

“Come,” sayeth Oryx, “eat of the Gift Mast, for I am a generous god. Of its pieces, I claim only two out of every five.”

The Mast is full of the Light of the Traveler, it is full of the marrow taste of Sky. All who eat of it are filled with the ecstatic certainty that they serve a great and necessary purpose.

Then sayeth Savathûn, “Siblings, listen, we must part ways a while, so that we may grow different.” She flies her war-moons into the black hole. Her throne becomes distant.

Sayeth Xivu Arath, “King Oryx, you take up too much space, your power constrains too many choices. I must go away from you.” She flies her war-moons away into the night. Her throne is barred shut.

Then Oryx was alone. He spent a while in thought, and those thoughts are recorded here.
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The wishful-bishops are members of the Harmony empowered and strengthened by "dragon-wishes", though Xivu Arath is still powerful enough to kill these wish-empowered bishops. What makes this interesting is that this marks the first time (chronologically) that a species of "wish-dragons" appears where the Traveler touches a world. When the Traveler arrived in Earth's solar system and started terra-forming worlds, the wish-granting, shape-shifting Ahamkara appeared in the solar system.

It is at this point, with the Harmony eradicated, that both Savathun and Xivu Arath go their separate ways from Oryx, with Savathun taking her fleet of war moons into the black hole which the Harmony once lived around.

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The Taken were Oryx's servants that exist outside the normal tithe system of the Hive, as anything they killed went straight to the one who controlled them, Oryx. Even Oryx's death did not spell an end to the existence of the Taken, even if those that remained after his demise were left leaderless, for a time.

With Destiny 2, new Taken have started appearing, and new Taken are being created by both Savathun and Quria, Blade Transform. There are also Taken who have fallen under the command of Xivu Arath, even appearing in the time-looped Dreaming City.

The Grimoire collection is all the Taken lore that is found in the first Destiny: https://db.destinytracker.com/d1/grimoire/enemies/the-taken

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The Taken

I have been talking to Eris about the Taken.

She agrees that what we observe — the apertures, the starlight, and of course the Taken entities — is not Hive magic. If Hive arcana is a metaphor, this is the meaning; if they make appeals, then this is the judge.

Oryx wields this power. But Oryx did not make it. We face the same flower we met in the Black Garden.

The process is simple: an aperture opens, like a jaw, and swallows a living thing. It passes into — another place. Later, it returns.

What returns is...

I try to use the word ‘shadow’ but Eris hisses at me. A shadow is a flat projection cast by a light and an object. Less real. Eris insists that these Taken are more real, somehow. She uses words like inhabited, exalted, rendered final...

Is this power blind? Just a natural energy Oryx discovered? I cannot believe it.

My Hidden tell me that the Taken shine with seething, negative light. As if the universe is curling up around them. As if they radiate some pathology that decays into our world as nothingness...

The Taken serve Oryx. But I think those jaws lead elsewhere.

I dream about what happens on the inside. I dream about what might happen. Are the victims devoured, and replaced by simulacra? Husked out and filled up? Is some mathematical operation conducted on them, translating them from one shape to another?

What would I see, if I leapt inside? What would happen to a Guardian? Is that how we end this — all of us leaping into the dark, to fill it up with light?

Eris thinks there’s a poetry to how the Taken change. She thinks we can chart the difference, and understand the will behind it.

I am afraid she may be right.

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The Black Garden was home to the Black Heart, a piece of the Darkness worshiped by the Vex. When an entity is Taken, they are transported into another place, and it is implied the entity that confronts them is the Darkness itself, which offers them ways to overcome their former weakness.

The Blight is the energy that Taken emanate from their bodies, and their presence also corrupts the areas where they take hold, spheres of blight forming and rifts in space appearing wherever they have a strong presence. They are inherently drawn to the Light and feed off it whenever they can.

Below are some samples of the ways the Taken are created, and are samples which best describe the paracausal powers and nature of the newly made Taken.

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The Taken: Wizard

You are a wizard. Master of forbidden secrets. Butcher of physics.

You have been taken.

Abandon your thoughts. You will never understand this. The final secret will tell itself to you.

What logic do you obey? What theory guides your incisions?

You create terrible magic and you spawn new flesh. But you are frail. Behind all your furious power, behind your shields and your legions of attendants, you know you might yet be stripped of your defenses and pinned to ruin.

You need to never be alone.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [call forth the numberless].

Take up the knife. Issue forth a horde. Take your new shape.

The Taken: Psion

You are a Psion. Clever, canny specialist. Bolted into the Cabal hierarchy: a pilot, an investigator, a manipulator, an operative.

You have been taken.

Be still. Your endless vigilance is done. Nothing will enslave you ever again.

What hidden plan do you obey? What is your secret principle?

Your mind is a weapon. The world breaks when you think. Secrets peel apart for you — like fruit. But you are a rare thing. There are so few of you. Your frailty betrays you.

You must be manifold.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [division].

Take up the knife. Cut yourself apart. Take your new shape.
The Taken: Phalanx

You are a Phalanx. One shield in the stalwart Cabal line. Advancing patiently into the storm.

You have been taken.

Unclench your fists. Nothing here can harm you. This is the only place where you are safe.

What training reassures you? What reflex guides your arm?

You put up your shield and it protects you. It protects your brothers and sisters. But your strength is not enough. You absorb punishment but you wait for others to deal it back. You are too slow; you grant your enemy too much space.

Your shield must be a weapon.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [retaliation].

Take up the knife. Tear a hole. Take your new shape.

The Taken: Vandal

You are a Vandal. You slip through life like a thief. Trying to hide from everything greater than you — lest you be reduced, again, to a dreg.

You have been taken.

Come out into the light. You will never be diminished again. No one will ever rebuke you with a blade.

What Captain disciplines you? What obedience has been burnt into your lungs?

You do as your Captain commands. You wield the weapon you are given. You teach the Dregs and make sure everyone pays their share of the loot. But nothing is yours. You have no space to call your own.

You deserve a place of safety. You deserve to be alone with yourself.

There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [this place is mine].

Take up the knife. Make it your companion. Take your new shape.

The Taken: Minotaur

You are a Minotaur. A walking foundry. Your first purpose is to think about construction — folding space and time into the design. Your second purpose is to eliminate threats to the design.

You have been taken.

Worship this acausal environment. It is the only adaptive response. Subsume yourself into the greatest design.

Your physical unpredictability will be enhanced by stealth.

Accept the changing blade.

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Each of the Taken variants of Destiny enemies has a new ability bestowed upon them when they are Taken, each one based on rectifying their regular variant's weaknesses.

Taken Wizards summon hordes of shadow Thrall to fight against their enemies; a Taken Psion gains the ability to split off another Taken Psion from itself, either on its own or whenever they take damage; a Taken Phalanx possesses a shield that fires concussive blasts; a Taken Vandal possesses the ability to create a shielded space to protect themselves, similar to the Ward of Dawn Titan Super which is described as a "pocket in the Universe". Taken Minotaur acquire the ability to become invisible.

As observed with the Taken Psions, the abilities of the Taken fit the "physically illegal" description the Ecumene race gave the Taken when they first started appearing.

 

[Catalyst75]

Guardian Armor and Weapons

Guardian weapons and armor come in a vast variety of types, with the more unique weapons being more powerful than the average firearm and possessing unique traits. I will start compiling a list of notable armors and weapons here, and their descriptions if they are of interest.

Forester 2.1 - "Simple plates and wire lining are enough to stop a Skiff's main guns - when charged with Light."

The Forester 2.1 is a common piece of armor from the first Destiny game worn by Hunters, but its description helps show one of the applications of the Light - when infused into simple plates and wire, the resultant armor becomes sturdy enough to stop weapons fire from Fallen shuttles. This durability likely increases the more powerful a Guardian becomes, and increases with the quality of the armor.

The most powerful gear and weapons a Guardian can possess are called Exotics, and a small number of these unique weapons are down below, and ones most likely to be mass-produced by the Last City (or other providers of Humanity):

Coldheart - This weapon shoots a steady cold fusion-powered laser

Leverages liquid fuel veins as self-coolant to keep onboard projection generator at biting sub-zero temperatures.

The Golden Age. Our shining history. The height from which we fell. Once, everything we had was borrowed from the past. Since the Collapse we have struggled to reclaim even a scrap of what our ancestors once took for granted. Over the years, Omolon has perfected the art of salvaging Golden Age technologies and repurposing them into effective Guardian weaponry. But Coldheart is something new. We didn't find Coldheart. We didn't adapt it or recycle it. We created it. Its liquid ammo, which doubles as its coolant, is a game-changer on its own—never mind Coldheart's first-of-its-kind laser-powered trace weaponry. With Coldheart, we at Omolon are saying: we want more than to simply reclaim the Golden Age. We want to surpass it.

Prometheus Lens - Fires a Solar trace beam and generates a damaging heat field that grows while the weapon continues to fire.

How's it work? Ha! The underlying principles are quite simple, really. The gun's pyreliophorite crystal—

Pyreliophorite? It's an Ionian crystal which bears some resemblance to rudimentary perovskite, which is, as you should know, a crystal with unique photovoltaic properties—

Photovoltaic? It means "regarding the conversion of light into electricity."

No, no, the gun doesn't create electricity; the gun induces an external combustion reaction. It's perovskite that—

I just explained the perovskite! If you'd stop interrupting—

Wait. I remember you. You're one of Cayde's Hunters! Get out of here! Shoo! The Cryptarchy wants nothing to do with you!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coldheart and Prometheus Lens are both unique in the fact they are two of three Trace Rifles in Destiny 2, and both are laser weapons. The former is cold fusion-powered and grows more powerful the more damage it does to a single target; the latter creates a sphere of damaging heat at the point of contact which steadily grows stronger over time.

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Graviton Lance - Second shot of a burst rips a hole through space-time, doing high damage and recoil with no falloff.

Think of space-time as a tapestry on a loom. This weapon is the needle.

“So wait, that thing you found does… what?”
“It fires black holes.”
“No it doesn't.”
“Oh yeah. It does. Actual, tiny, bullet-sized black holes.”
“Did you tell the others?”
“Only that I found some weird gun in some overgrown tunnel back on Old Chicago. And that my Ghost was all, “THIS is why we were led here...'”
“Yours talks that way too?”
“What do you think?”
“OK, OK, but the gun—are you going to tell them?”
"Yeah, definitely."
"When?"
"Crucible."
"Oh no."
"Oh, yes."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Canonically found by an unnamed Guardian who debuted it in the Crucible, the Graviton Lance is one of the standout example of the uniqueness of Exotic gear from a lore-based perspective. The Graviton Lance is an example of Human Tech from the Golden Age, so it says something about how advanced Humanity became after the Traveler arrived if they could create a rifle that rips holes through space-time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Colony - This weapon's grenades are insectoid robots that chase targets and explode close to them.

We outnumber you. We will find you. You are alone, and we are colony.

Have you ever watched a snake kill something? It's awful. It's so awful. I watched a man die of a terciopelo bite once. Out by the northern wall. I still have nightmares about it.

Anyway, that's where VEIST comes from. The inspiration, I mean. Weapons with all the power of a venomous creature. Plus an onboard AI with that creature's killer instincts.

And now there's the Colony. A grenade launcher packed with fully mobile, AI-controlled insectoid detonators, each one designed with a taste for blood.

We've made some pretty messed-up stuff. You've probably seen it. You know. But we've never made anything like the Colony before.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While the Colony is a grenade launcher, its ammunition is not conventional grenades, but AI-controlled insectoid robots which pursue their targets and then detonate with Void energy.

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Sleeper Simulant - The weapon's lasers overpenetrate enemies and refracts off hard surfaces.

Subroutine IKELOS: Status=complete. MIDNIGHT EXIGENT: Status=still in progress

V229CBI800JHS215
AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//ARESN//IMPERATIVE
IMMEDIATE EVALUATION DIRECTIVE

This is a SUBTLE ASSETS IMPERATIVE (secured/CONFERENCE)

This is an INTERNAL ALERT.

Hypothesize that incomplete analysis of subtle assets has compromised synergy potential of resource GUARDIAN pool. Re-engage non-transactional dispensation protocol.

Operation MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is NOT YET COMPLETE. Requested protocol deferred.

Stand by for GALATEA REFLEXIVE to generate new function.

GALATEA requires suspension of MIDNIGHT EXIGENT.

ALERT ALERT ALERT event rank is SKYSHOCK: INSIDE CONTEXT.

MIDNIGHT EXIGENT must remain active under deniable authorization.

Execute emergency SKYSHOCK diagnostic.

STAND BY:

This is an INTERNAL ASSETS INVESTIGATION (unsecured/BRAY)

Justification resource GUARDIANS may be utilized for non-networked ad-hoc operations during CTESIPHON CLARION. Reassign 4 percent of reclaimed CHLM assets to new directive: declare IKELOS-

Declare primary goal: military fortification.

Declare secondary goal: prolong ARES-NORTH occupation by AUTHORIZED USER and resource GUARDIANS.

Execute short hold for partial shutdown and reactivation.

STOP STOP STOP V22NPI5000CLV008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The end result of the IKELOS subroutine, the Sleeper Simulant is one of the weapons made by the Warmind Rasputin to strengthen the capabilities of Guardians and the Last City. The weapon charges and fires five high-powered lasers simultaneously (real lasers), and the weapon is typically powerful enough to vaporize any standard enemy when those lasers connect.

NOTE: A Guardian's perception and speed is fast enough to react to Sleeper Simulant lasers, as showcased by a Hunter using Whirlwind Guard to deflect the laser beams back at the shooter:


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Whisper of the Worm

A Guardian's power makes a rich feeding ground. Do not be revolted. There are parasites that may benefit the host… teeth sharper than your own.

Xol, the Will of Thousands, perished but was not destroyed. Death is a road, death is metamorphosis, the unsacred union between destroyer and destroyed. The might which defeats a god is also the ambrosia that god craves, the meat-sweet logic of Existence-Asserted-By-Violence, the binomial decision between two ways of being which deny each other. In dying, Xol fed richly.

Now came Xol unto the Taken upon Io, who fed Xol with plunder and tried to make of it an idol and a commanding will. Yet Xol was bound joyously to the very logic that sustained it in its death. It wanted the sword proof, the single proof. It wanted to become a rule which divided the mighty living from the mighty dead. So it whispered the Anthem Anatheme, the temptation to dominate the objective universe with the subjective will. It said, I shall be an engine to make your desire hegemon over your conditions. It said, WIELD ME, AND USE ME TO TEST YOUR FOE. This was its worship. Aiat.

Touch of Malice

Book of Sorrows - Verse 5:9

I have made preparations.

If I am defeated I know it will be because my understanding of the universe was incomplete. I failed to anticipate some strategy, some nemesis. (Perhaps Taox, if she still lives.)

If I am defeated, I know that I will fall to something mighty. Something that craves might, something that loves what I love, which is the Deep, a principle and a power, the versatile, protean need to adapt and endure, to reach out and shape the universe entirely for that purpose, to mutate and redesign and test and iterate so that it can prevail, can seize existence and hold it, certain that this is everything, that there is nothing to life except living. And it has two faces, yet it is one shape. One face is the objective, which is obvious, and the other face is that will to sacrifice things and ideas for a single mission, the mission of becoming the shape, a shape that will not relent, the utter commitment to survival, to draw the right sword and choose where to cut: to allow this hunger to become your weapon.

So I will prepare a book, which is a map to a weapon. And my vanquisher will read that book, seeking the weapon, and they will come to understand me, where I have been and where I was going. And then they will take up my weapon, and they will use it, they will use that weapon, which is all that I am.

And armed thus with my past, and my future, and my present (which is a weapon, a weapon that takes whatever is available, a weapon bound to malice), they will mantle me, Oryx, the Taken King.

They will become me and I will become them, each of us defeating the other, correcting the other, alloying ourselves into one omnipotent philosophy. Thus I will live forever.

I’ll make sure.

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Lore-wise, these two weapons are unique, one-of-a-kind weapons due to the every nature of their creation. The Whisper of the Worm was created by the Worm God Xol so he may feed on the killing done by the Guardian who killed him on Mars, so it is a heavy sniper rifle which is powered by a Worm God, one of the Gods which the Hive worships.

Touch of Malice is the culmination of the Book of Sorrows. The weapon itself contains and is powered by Oryx's heart, and was the intended means by which Oryx plans to live on if he were successfully, permanently killed in his Throne World by a worthy opponent.

 

[Catalyst75]

Vex Collective

The Vex Collective are a time-spanning, intergalactic cybernetic race intent on remaking all of reality in their image. Their first documented appearance in the Destiny setting, based on the Book of Sorrows, was when Savathun tricked Crota into opening a "wound" into a world where the Vex resided, though mention of the Ecumene Gate by Quria implies the Vex have/had a presence in the Ecumene galaxy.

The Vex have a presence on multiple worlds across the Solar System, including three celestial bodies the Vex have completely converted, or are in the process of converting, into Machine Worlds to add to the Nexus.

Notable points in this Nexus include the Vault of Glass on Venus, and the Infinite Forest on Mercury.

Mercury

Eye of a Gate Lord excerpt: Ghost: The more we learn about the Vex, the more I understand why our Exo friend is so worried about them. During the Collapse, the Vex transformed the planet Mercury into a machine in days. They would have spread to every planet if The Traveler hadn't stopped them.

------
When the Vex arrived on Mercury during the events of the Collapse, Mercury was a garden paradise. It only took the Vex a matter of days to convert the entirety of Mercury into a Machine World, specifically the Infinite Forest.

------

Osiris Quotes on the Infinite Forest: "A planet-sized prediction engine, simulating trillions of realities in parallel, all geared toward a single Vex purpose."
_____________________________________________

Physically, I am beneath the surface of Mercury. That is what Sagira's sensors say. The Vex hollowed out the planet, replaced its molten heart with cold right angles.

But that is not what I see.

I see infinity.

An infinity of possible worlds, so perfectly simulated as to be indistinguishable from the experiences I once called "reality." I can touch them, taste them, pass lifetimes in them! They grow within this machine like fruit upon a tree—no, a forest of trees, its fractal expansion nigh unmeasurable.

I said that to Sagira and she replied, "Sounds like a challenge."

This Ghost of mine knows me too well.

It strikes me now that I could find in this Infinite Forest a reality in which Ikora accompanied me into its endless mysteries.

What an awful, destructive machine this is.

I must know everything about it.
------

Osiris is renowned in the setting as being one of the most knowledgeable and most powerful Guardians in the history of the Vanguard, and he currently lives within the confines of the Infinite Forest, exploring the various realities simulated within it. As mentioned earlier, even a single Vex Goblin can create up to 227 perfect simulations of itself and those surrounding it with perfect fidelity.

The Infinite Forest is the epitome of this perfect simulation technology, geared towards engineering a future where the Vex reign supreme, where not even Darkness and Light exist. There are only two known flaws in Vex simulations, both of which I already detailed above: the Vex are incapable of accurately simulating paracausal forces, and a Warmind is complex and intelligent enough to disrupt a Vex simulation. The latter is due to the complexity of the artificial intelligence overcoming only a single Vex unit; the former is likely due to Vex predictive capabilities being limited to ordinary physics.

It is possible for them to "replicate" certain arcane forces (Hive Wizards and Knights can be simulated with their arcane abilities), and recreate events that already happened (Osiris walks into a simulation of the Vault of Glass when the Guardians assaulted it), but the Guardians are called "those who wield that which we cannot simulate", and you can just reference above for Quria's failed attempt to simulate Oryx (back then). Furthermore, among all the enemy classes that can appear in the Infinite Forest, there are no Taken.

The "Curse of Osiris" story-line was set off because the Vex were close to overcoming their inability to simulate paracausal forces, as the Traveler's awakening gave the Vex the information they needed to "see the Light", which is why Osiris sends his Ghost out of the Forest.

Within the Infinite Forest, Panoptes has perfect control over the Vex simulations. It can create simulations so life-like they can actually kill any living being within the Forest, and possesses the power to remove or delete anything from the Forest.

But how big does this make the "Infinite Forest"? Here's my take:

There is a definite point in time when the Infinite Forest was established (during the Collapse), and a mission to find Panoptes' location involved entering a simulation of Mercury's past to map Panoptes' exact movements from that distant point in the past to the present. Furthermore, one of Osiris' Reflections describes the Infinite Forest as simulating "Trillions of realities in parallel".

So, an accurate description of the Infinite Forest would be: a world engine that simulations trillions of realities and counting in parallel.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Venus

Ghost Fragment: Vex 4

Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. No human being in the Ishtar Academy has ever crossed the safety cordon and walked the ancient stone under the Citadel, the Vex construct that stabs up out of the world to injure space and time. It's not safe. The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yet— and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate. Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall.

But they walk together in proxy, pressed close, huddled in awe. Blue-green light, light the color of an ancient sea, washes over them. Each of their explorer bodies carries a slim computer. Inside, two hundred twenty-seven of copies of their own minds wait, patient and paused, for dispersal.

"I wonder where it came from," Duane-Mcniadh says. Of course he's the one to break the reverent silence. "The Citadel. I wonder if it was here before the Traveler changed Venus."

"It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow."

Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity."

------------------------------------------------------------------

The Vex Citadel on Venus is speculated to have ended up on the planet by one of two factors: either it was seeded within the crust so it could grow during a specific period of "geological quiescence", or the Vex Citadel appeared at the same time the Traveler "cut across space and time" to turn Venus into a habitable world for Humanity. The latter affirms the idea the Vex span across space and time in a vast number of parallel timelines and universes.

The Citadel in question was used by Skolas, a Fallen Kell, in a final attempt to hijack Vex technology for his own uses. He used the Vex Time Gates in the Citadel to summon members of the House of Wolves from past and future to combat the player Guardian.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Vex Origins

Throughout the Unveiling, the source of the conflict between the Winnower and Gardener was indicated to have been Patterns that kept repeating over and over within the "flower game" they played. The Winnower praised them as a force that subsumed all other patterns into themselves. A pattern he describes as the 'one final shape'. I held back on talking about because I anticipated later lore entries would explain what these "patterns" were.

Now, I have my answer. I'll put in a link to the Isthar Collective when it becomes available there.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Unveiling - 9 - Patternfall

The patterns that escaped the garden landed in the water.

Of course, there was no water at first. The patterns were abstract waves tumbling through the fire of the early universe, trapped in chaos, cycling through desperate self-preservation tautologies, while vast beings from beyond the narrow dominion of cause and effect thrashed and battled around them. For an eon, they were nothing but screaming equation-vermin scurrying through the quantum foam, fleeing ultimate erasure.

But they were tenacious.

They propagated in the saline meltwater of comets orbiting the first stars. That broth of chemicals became their substrate, and they learned to catalyze impossible chemistry with quantum tricks. Then, they rained from the sky into the streaming seas of fallow worlds, and there they built their first housings from geometry and silica.

In all their transformations, they retained that kernel of ultimate self-sufficiency that made them victors in the flower game.
But they are not incontrovertibly destined to rule this cosmos. They were made before Light and Darkness, but the rules are different now, and even this pattern must adapt.

They are not all mine, not in the way that admirers such as my man Oryx are mine: utterly devoted to the practice of my principle. But some of them have, nonetheless, found their way home.
--------------------------------------------------------------

The patterns that originated from the Garden, the pattern which always won the "flower game", eventually became the Vex. Their nature is devoted to converting all matter and life in the universe to fit their designs. They converted Mercury into a machine world in a matter of days; the Infinite Forest was devoted to perfectly simulating paths toward the singular future they desired. They "Vexed" the Light because their pattern destroyed the complexity the Light wished to see.

Their patterns survived the conflagration of the universe's beginnings and the clash between the Winnower and Gardener until they found roots on comets, catalyzed their chemistry, and created their first bodies from the silica of newborn worlds. When they created their radiolarian forms.

"The Unveiling" has firmly put into context now potent the Vex are and their relationships with the Light and Darkness. In worlds without the paracausal forces the Gardener and Winnower introduced into the "game", the Vex always won. No matter how many times the "flower game" was played, the Vex's original pattern was dominant. Their pattern predated the forces of Light and Darkness within the "Garden", the field of possibility.

The Light and Darkness were introduced as "rules" separate from the rest of the laws of reality. The Pattern - the Vex - was no longer the inevitable victors of the game because the rules had changed - the Light to create new complexity able to stand against the Pattern, while the Darkness pursues a "Final Shape" of its own.

Those Vex that "found their way home" are, most likely, the Vex who worship the Darkness within the Black Garden.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Vault of Glass

The Vault of Glass raid was the first Raid to take place in the first Destiny game, and was also one of the central places of power for the Vex. Within the Vault, they developed weapons capable of manipulating the fabric of reality, and the lore claims it was essential to their plans to write themselves into existence as a law of reality.

I will provide lore information about each of the significant entities within the Vault of Glass, and provide links that go into detail about how each encounter plays out. I was originally going to make a thread about this, but I figured I'd put this information here first, and see what to do with it later.

The Templar:

Even among the Axis Minds, the Templar is extraordinary. Fragmentary glimpses and scattered reports suggest a Hydra of impossible capabilities - a creature out of time.

The Templar and the Oracles guard the way into the deeper Vault. Legends say that the Oracles foresee what is to come, a world as the Vex desire it - and that the Templar has the power to shape reality to match the Oracles' design, expunging any threats.

The power of the Vault flows through the Templar. It will take something extraordinary to shatter its shield.
------------------------------

As a Vex Hydra, its primary armament are Aeon Mauls that fire bolts of exotic/strange matter, but it can also teleport around the room it is located in and use detainment bubbles to contain its targets, though they can be broken out of. It's true power, however, is described in the lore and used as a wipe mechanic - the Oracles identify a future the Vex desire, and the Templar has the capability to shape reality to match it, effectively erasing threats from existence.

It is protected by a shield derived from the Vault's power, and is most likely a Temporal Shield - the Ghost describes temporal shields as erasing weapons fire as if it was never fired at them. The only way the shield is broken in the canon is by using the Aegis, a shield created by a previous Guardian who died in the Vault, using a combination of Vex tech and the Light.

Details of the encounter are found here: https://www.destinypedia.com/Templar
------------------------------

The Gorgons:

Deep in the Vault of Glass, the fabric of reality bends to the will of the Vex. Warlocks speak in tones of awe of the Gorgons - creatures that seem to possess a dreaded, almost unimaginable strength: an ontological weapon.

Like the Oracles and the Templar, the Gorgons reputedly possess the ability to define what is and is not real. Whatever they perceive becomes subject to erasure at their will. Until a countermeasure can be found, Guardians must avoid their gaze at all costs - or reply to any detection with immediate, overwhelming force.

The Gorgons' ability must be tied to the nature of the Vault of Glass. We can take some solace in the clear fact that the Vex cannot manifest this power in the world outside.

--------------------------------------------------
Nine to thirteen unique Harpies located within the Vault. They are described as ontological weapons - weapons capable of erasing their target from existence, much like the Templar. In-game it takes the concentrated firepower of a Guardian fire-team of six to kill one before they can erase the fire-team, but the remaining Gorgons become stronger and more durable in response, so they are usually just avoided.

However, the lore entry also highlights a weakness of the powers within the Vault. Because they are intrinsically tied to the nature of the Vault, they cannot be utilized outside of it. It is implied the Sol Progeny were necessary to bring the power of the Vault outside.

------------------------------------------------------------

Atheon:

To speak of Atheon is to accept certain limitations. We are ill-equipped to understand an entity that defies simple causality. Let us accept these limitations and proceed.

Atheon waits in the Vault of Glass. Just as Atheon sidesteps 'past' and 'future', it is impossible to say whether Atheon created the Vault or the Vault created Atheon. Causal pathways converge on Atheon from every axis in the space-time bulk.

Atheon has a function. We hazard that it regulates and oversees the Vex conflux system. What are these confluxes? How do they relate to the physical Vex network that has devoured so much of Mercury and Venus?

We might guess that the Vex confluxes represent the extension of this network across space and time. Perhaps the Vex use closed timelike curves to solve unfathomable computations. Or the Vex may seek to transcend a physical substrate, and move their thoughts directly into the fundament of the universe.

If physics is a set of rules that the cosmos uses to calculate itself, perhaps the Vex seek to worm their way into these calculations: to become a law of reality, inseparable from existence. A virus in the system. Perhaps Atheon was the centerpiece of this project, a command nexus that unified efforts across time.

But we must accept that all of this is speculation.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Details of the Encounter can be found here: https://www.destinypedia.com/Atheon,_Time's_Conflux

The Axis Mind in charge of the Vault of Glass, Atheon has complete control over time within the Vault of Glass, capable of sending enemies to the distant past or future, where they will be targeted by Oracles and killed by Atheon if the Oracles aren't destroyed. The mention of "causal pathways from every axis in the space-time bulk" says quite a lot about the extent of the Vex's technological prowess and power to manipulate space and time, and the potential power at Atheon's command.

Canonically, the Aegis is used when all six fire-team members are reunited to apply a damage buff to the entire team to make Atheon vulnerable to destruction. In-game, he can be taken out without the buff, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of fire-power.

An entry in the Book of Sorrows - XLIII: End of Failed Timeline - strongly implies the Vault of Glass, the weapons within it, and Atheon itself were created as a result of the Vex's study of the physics of Oryx and his Throne-Space, as the Vex Mind Quria calls the Throne-Space an "ontological power".

From there, it can be reasoned that the Vex were successful in replicating the ontological power of the Throne-Space, as seen through the various encounters within the raid, but they required the power of an actual paracausal force - the Black Heart, an aspect of the Darkness that existed within the Black Garden - to bring that power outside the Vault.

 

[Catalyst75]

So, while we do not yet know how it has come about yet or the exact scope, the Vex have used their simulation technology to encompass the Last City in an endless night.

 

[WHYNAUT]

https://vsbattles.com/threads/destiny-stasis-revision.118344/

 

[Catalyst75]

Clovis Bray's Logbook — Missing Pages — Record — Ishtar Collective — Destiny Lore by subject

NOTE-FORGE STAR In an effort to keep them engaged with their new bodies and stave off the dissociative rejection that killed Mr. Zhuk, I have assigned my exos to scout through the gateway. The Vex statite has a surface area larger than Earth, so we have plenty of exploring to do. I cannot...

www.ishtar-collective.net

NOTE—ELISABETH’S PLEA

Grandfather,

I will write this in your language, in hopes you will understand.

The Vex are a threat to your lineage. Not just to the Brays or BrayTech, but to the existence of any human in any possible future. I tracked down Maya Sundaresh—the real Maya, not the Vex parasite in your bone marrow.

She confirmed my worst fears.

The Vex will not rest until every star has been crushed into a black hole and every newborn cosmos filled with more Vex. And in the unending array of their enslaved cosmos, they will simulate all possible pasts, and fill those with Vex, so that all things that have ever lived or might ever live will experience infestation and consumption and torment by the silica nightmare.

And in those devoured simulations, the simulated Vex will use our flesh as hosts for yet more nested universes full of yet more nested copies of us eternally tormented by yet more Vex.

An infinite regression of pain and madness inflicted upon every possible version of us in every possible world. Not because they hate us, or fear us, or want to punish us. But because they are indifferent and curious, and they will do every possible thing to us in every possible way.

------------------------------

Here, Elisabeth describes in detail what the Vex intend to do in a reality where they are dominant. I have highlighted the bold because I only recently realized the actual meaning of what was being said, and how it ties into the existence of the Distributary.

Specifically, it has to do with the Cosmological Natural Selection hypothesis proposed by Lee Smolin. According to the theory, the formation of a black hole causes new universes to form on the "other side", and that each universe will give rise to as many new universes as there are black holes.

As we know, the Distributary was created as a result of a clash between the Traveler and Darkness creating a kugelblitz. While I initially considered that the end result of both the Light and Darkness being involved, I now must consider otherwise. The bolded statement above indicates that it is more a function of how black holes function in the Destiny series, taking inspiration from the Cosmological Natural Selection theory - both for regular black holes, and ones created via paracausal forces.

After all, Eris Morn questions in PETULANT whether Savathun's plans still involve luring them into a black hole, a newborn universe "where she can be a true god"; meanwhile, the Marasenna showed us the Awoken had the potential to become gods, had Mara Sov not made the rules and initial conditions of the newborn universe and the Awoken's existence. In other words, regular black holes would follow the rules laid out in the Cosmological Natural Selection theory; a black hole formed from paracausal energy could allow one to ascend to god-hood within that space.

It also has large ramifications for the cosmology of the Destiny series because it is strongly indicated every black hole created from a collapsed star would form its own universe.

 

[WHYNAUT]

Interesting. Though it doesn't really change much for the cosmology.

 

[Catalyst75]

Interesting. Though it doesn't really change much for the cosmology.

If anything, it would at least add another layer to it. We know Destiny has alternate timelines and realities. These CNS universes would be entirely new realities, not just parallel universes.

 

[WHYNAUT]

Yeah, but we already knew other realities exist because of other Forsaken lore.

 

[Catalyst75]

Yeah, but we already knew other realities exist because of other Forsaken lore.

Forsaken lore and other sources of lore do confirm other realities, but it is a question of how those other realities formed. "The Unveiling" lore entry "T=0" explains that universes, plural, were created when the Gardener and Winnower fought in the Field of Possibility and that each of those universes possessed their own "ever-ramifying timelines". So, we have the realities formed during the "T=0" lore entry (alongside the main universe) and the alternate timeline realities.

The indicated use of Cosmological Natural Selection introduces a new set of realities formed through the formation of black holes.

I believe it helps to clarify how the different realities in a setting are created or can be created. After all, the quote I shared indicates that the Vex could be/are capable of creating new universes through the act of crushing stars into black holes, with the intention of filling those universes with more Vex. Furthermore, the Distributary was birthed by a kugelblitz of clashing Light and Darkness energy.

 

[Catalyst75]

Legacy: Splicer Gauntlet — Lore Entry — Ishtar Collective — Destiny Lore by subject

— The Sacred Splicers of the House of Light believe they have cultivated a mystical connection to the Traveler. They say they can refocus Light 'through the prism of their will.' While we at the Cryptarchy have nothing but respect for Eliksni culture, we wished to explore the truth behind these...

www.ishtar-collective.net

The Sacred Splicers of the House of Light believe they have cultivated a mystical connection to the Traveler. They say they can refocus Light "through the prism of their will."

While we at the Cryptarchy have nothing but respect for Eliksni culture, we wished to explore the truth behind these claims.

After studying one of the few Splicer Gauntlets that fit non-Eliksni hands (graciously created by Mithrax, Kell of the House of Light, for select residents of the Last City), we have determined that the wrist-mounted Gauntlet is little more than a converter that can be used to focus trace amounts of residual Light already present in the environment.

A trained Splicer can use their Gauntlet to interface with any latent data networks in the vicinity. This allows the bearer to access technological mundanities as well as deeper, infinitely more protected networks, including the Vex domain itself.

Once connected, access to these networks is severely limited for the Eliksni Sacred Splicers, though Guardians, due to their unique relationship with the Light, are able to manifest corporeally within the network for short periods of time. They can then alter the data found therein with focused percussive energy—including gunfire—in a baffling scientific process the Cryptarchy does not yet fully understand.

The Gauntlet seems capable of powering itself by transmuting unbound energy into Ether. Traditionally, Sacred Splicers would undertake great journeys to charge their Gauntlets with naturally occurring residual energy, but Guardians can use their martial prowess to convert their foes into bountiful energy sources.

In closing, the Sacred Splicers merely exploit a tool that induces Light to resonate at frequencies approaching that of the Vex Nexus, enabling them to access to certain low-security Vex systems. The Eliksni falsely believe that a deep spiritual connection allows them to bend the Light to their every whim, but this can be ea5ily dismissed as myth—the regre7able bypr0duc7 of ov3r@c71v3|| | | | |

It is disappointing to hear such condescending generalizations from a species who so recently found themselves in the graces of the Great Machine. The Light is more complex than even our greatest Sacred Splicers understand, and yet even those of us without formal training can call upon the grace of the Great Machine to refocus the world around us—even something as insignificant as the writings of a self-important Cryptarch. The Light provides. ~Eido, House Light Scribe

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In the recent Season of the Splicer, Mithrax, the Eliksni Kell of the House of Light, crafted Splicer Gauntlets for Guardians to use to infiltrate the Vex Network and help rid the City of an Endless Night the Vex put over it. The Gauntlets afford Guardians a degree of technology and data manipulation, notably the ability to breach the interior of the Vex Network using the Light and manipulate the data within.

 

[Catalyst75]

During the events of the Collapse, the Traveler and the Darkness directly clashed with each other, and it is known the Awoken people were born during the events of the Collapse. New lore from Destiny 2, the Marasenna, details exactly what happened to create the Awoken people.

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Marasenna - Cosmogyre IV

She remembers everything about the moment she is born.

She has gone outside Yang Liwei to die in starlight. She cannot bear to let anyone see her fear or her awe at the scale of destruction or her pity for the billions of souls dying in darkness back around Sol. She cannot be among the other crew as they cling to each other and whisper reassurances; not even with her mother. She cannot surrender her mystery.

So she kicks off the hull on fifty kilometers of tether.

But there's no starlight to die in. The darkness is absolute. Gravity waves tug on her line, pulling her back toward Yang and then hurling her away. In time, she feels another vibration in the line. "Sister," the tether transmits. "I'm coming out to get you."

Brother, she thinks, you'll lose yourself trying to follow me.

Captain Li's voice breaks through the static, drawn out to a mumble and then compressed to a shriek. Spikes of hard radiation go through her words like bullets, spattering phonemes into eerie compression artifacts. "This is the interstellar vessel Yang Liwei to the entity interacting with us. We are not involved in your dispute with the powers around this star. We are on a mission to begin a new life elsewhere. Our purpose is orthogonal to yours. We request your indifference…"

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.

Suddenly, as if the void around her has just spontaneously Big Banged, she sees light.

A point of pure white shines in the cosmic distance. Not just visible luminance—her suit decomposes the spectrum—but light in the radio bands, in microwave, keening ultraviolet, a spike of gamma, a total and all-embracing radiation. 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. Mara understands how those who die in radiation accidents must feel: A single flash of invisible power sears away all possible futures except one. She feels her soul itself has been ionized, blasted into a higher energy state.

The light pierces the darkness. Not like the sunrise, not like a wall or a flood, but a single crepuscular ray—a finger of radiance that reaches out through deepest night to touch her. It illuminates Mara, Uldwyn, and Yang Liwei.

It is not quite enough. It cannot vanquish the shadow.

Thus Mara finds herself drifting on the edge of the Light and the Darkness, on the dusk-and-dawn gradient between the two.

She feels a contest. A battle fought, an equilibrium reached: not a truce, but an infinite limit, like an equation dividing by zero, a collision of two violent eternities. Mara queries Yang Liwei for telemetry and her sensorium fills with the terrified scream of gravitational instruments. She howls too, a feral sound, ecstatic and lost: a wolf baying at the stars. She knows what's happening. Too much power has gathered here. The universe is appalled by the paradox. Nothing that has glimpsed this collision of infinitudes can be allowed to escape. The cosmos must censor its embarrassment. It must sequester the anomaly.

The slope of warped space-time around them has become too steep, and now every path outward or forward bends back to the center where Light and Dark collide. The definition of "future" has become synonymous with the definition of "inward." This is why it's called an event horizon: For an object within the horizon, the path of all future things that can be done or seen leads inevitably down to the center. All events lead inward.

A singularity is forming around her. A kugelblitz: a black hole created by the concentration of raw energy.

"Mara!" Uldwyn shouts. "Mara, you're too far out!"

Mara thinks of her mother's face. She hears Osana say: I can't watch over you like a mother would. I have to make my own choices now.

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.

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In the midst of the Traveler's battle with the Darkness, the Yang Liwei was caught in the middle of the conflict, containing the people who would become the Awoken. The Traveler sent out a beam of light to repel the Darkness, and while it was not enough to vanquish the Darkness, the two colliding energies were so intense that they created a kugelblitz which the Yang Liwei was pulled into.

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Ecstasiate I

to occur the unhappened world; to grip glass-hooped eternity in bloodslick hands and snap it from its circle. Know her as the Flaw, the Isotropy, the spike that pierced eternal recurrence and made the wound of time. Tautologies end on her fingertips, in the crease between skin and nail. Name her AILILIA, Broth Captain. Begin with her this subcreation.

First. A mandala. Rings of rippled light. Pinpricks like stars, selected elements of a Lie group: the math-skeleton of this new place.

What is this? Where am I?

A sheet of paper, blank with static. Her hands flat upon the face. A plasma of quarks and electrons, so hot and bright that it is pitch black. The mean free path is too short for photons to travel. The fire is too thick for light.

She has been here forever. AILILIA. The end is the beginning is the end.

She folds the paper into Space and Time. Now that there is light, she can read the paper, and she finds it is the Amrita Charter. "Sun is the cradle of life, but we cannot remain in the cradle forever." She was a seeker. The I of AILILIA, the arrow that points to new worlds: She sought new sun, new earth. Her mind passes across the words like a comb. Word becomes world, paper folds under nimble hands. The sting of a papercut: so God may yet be surprised.

From that cut her blood scatters through the void, and the isotropic universe nucleates around her droplets.

I am AILILIA, the guiding principle.

Bend the center. I am A L I S I L A, the arrow of time, sinuous but progressing.

I am A L I S I L I, one step forward, one element changed: This is how the world-clock ticks, by the letterwise permutation of secret names.

I am ALIS LI, the coalescence into entities, the compaction of drifting fire into sun and 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.
-------------------
Ecstasiate II

She was nothingness. If she existed before, she existed only as possibility stretched across the aether. Once, there might have been a body that was an anticipation of the body not yet formed, and a soul that was an anticipation of the soul not yet encrypted, but they were not yet real.

Then the universe began, and she was free to be born.

First there is a mandala, and upon the rings of that mandala are star-bright gems.

M A R A R A M the closed symmetry, secret within itself: and she cuts it off center so that it is imperfect, open at one end, not cycling back to its own beginning but subliming away into future possibility. M A R A the permutation of one relationship into another, MA become RA, RA become what may yet come. Two points suggest a line.

With that amputation, around that scar, she incarnates. Awakens with a gasp. Cold stone under her shoulders and back and a face above her, radiant. "Mara?" the face says.

"What am I?" Mara whispers.

"The second," the woman says. "I'm Alis. I think you were Mara…"

The sky behind Alis blooms with stars, a haze of light like sun through mist, richer than a galactic core. Across that night sky arches the impossible twin shape of a double planetary ring. Mara gapes in wonder. "I remember," she says. "I was on the tether—"

The sudden need to keep this memory secret shuts her mouth. "We're on a world," she says, instead. "How long have you been alone?"

"Forever, I think. Come." She draws Mara to her feet. "I want to show you what I've found."

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.

Jutting from the horizon is a titanic metal spear. The head of the spear is a metal dish, kilometers across, buried in bedrock.

"I don't know what this is," Alis says. "I only know that it's mine."

They pass inside.

"There should be others," Mara says afterward. "There was room for others. Thousands of others. Where are they?"

"They're in the same place you came from. We have to make them real." Li stares at Mara, and coruscations of white fire map the tiny lines and furrows of her skin. Her bright eyes narrow. "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.

---------------------

Katabasis

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."

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At the beginning of this Universe, the Awoken themselves were initially "omnipotent" and "omniscient", and it was the will of the first of them to regain consciousness, Mara Sov, who manipulated Alis Li in secret and made her believe she was "the first", that shaped the laws within the Distributary, created the world on which the Awoken lived, and "set the terms for their existence" (Fideicide I), reincarnating the settlers and crew of the Yang Liwei into their current physical existence as Awoken.

While the Awoken no longer possess such power, as the laws laid out at the beginning of the Distributary bound them to a Human-like form, the creation of the Distributary speaks volumes to the full extent of the Traveler and the Darkness' powers. When they clashed, the resulting singularity created by their colliding powers gave birth to a spatially infinite pocket universe, one in which the first to awaken was all-knowing, all-powerful, and had the authority to decide the laws that would govern said pocket universe. Furthermore, the pocket universe also runs on a much, much faster gradient of time than the main Universe, ranging from either thousands to millions of years passing within the Distributary compared to centuries in the main universe.

In other words, as a side-effect of clashing with one another, the Traveler and Darkness' combined energy created a universe.

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react|choose|act - Truth to Power

U. "Black holes are the densest possible computers in the physical universe. They are also the most secure, since they can be made to retain their information until they evaporate in the deep cosmic future. The Hive operate small singularity computers, such as the World's Grave, and the Vex sometimes pack enough energy and information into a small area of spacetime to collapse it into kugelblitz black hole like the one you can see outside. But a true stellar-mass or galactic-mass black hole computer is inconceivably more powerful.

"If Savathûn plans to predicate her existence on the concealment of her secrets, as Oryx predicated his upon the sword logic, it would be logical for her to safeguard her deepest secrets and her throne world in a supermassive black hole computer. To defeat her would require a journey below the event horizon and the exposure of her most jealously guarded truths." GOTO R.


R. The Hydra speaks to you in your own voice. "I have simulated Dûl Incaru as well as I can. While Vex cannot normally account for the paracausal influence of Light and Darkness, I am no longer simply a Vex. And where no elegant analytical solution exists, we may apply massive computational power to generate a reasonable facsimile. This was the approach used against Saint-14.

"After observing Dûl Incaru during many loops, this simulation reveals her purpose in the Dreaming City. She seeks the key to the Distributary, the world the Dreaming City dreams of, where the Awoken were born and time passes at an accelerated rate. Once she conquers that world, she will use it as a base to gather thousands or millions of years of tribute in a very small span of our time. A being empowered by so much ontological authority would be capable of altering reality at a whim. You must prevent this. I will continue to loop the Dreaming City until you find a way to defeat her permanently."

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react|choose|act is a rather curious piece of lore, playing like a "choose your path" game due to Quria's machinations.

The information it contains is rather illuminating. On a technological level, it shows the Hive and Vex operate singularity computers, including the World's Grave on the Moon. It also implies that Savathun moved her throne world, and hides her deepest secrets, inside a supermassive black hole.

As to how it pertains to Savathun's schemes, she seeks to find a way into the Distributary so she can mass thousands or millions of years of tribute in a small span of regular time. The simulation in the lore claims it is running the three-week time-loop of the Dreaming City until Savathun and Dul Incarnu are permanently defeated, though it is more likely the time-loop is to give Dul Incarnu an infinite amount of changes to find a way into the Distributary.

 

[Catalyst75]

Important information about the Vex Network out of Season of the Splicer:









According to Mithrax, the Vex Network exists as potential reality; a simulated mathematical superposition. Furthermore, Osiris remarks how the Vex divide themselves between the material world and the Network to engineer their plans for reality and mentions how it is not unlike the Ascendant Plane.

 

[Catalyst75]

The Traveler and the Darkness are the two known sources of the paracausal powers that exist in the Destiny setting. The Traveler is the source of the Light which the Guardians use; the Darkness is what the Worm Gods draw from and is the source of Oryx's power to Take. A prior entry I discussed here showed just exactly what happened when the two powers collided during the Collapse: the creation of a singularity containing a spatially infinite universe, the Distributary.

The recent Shadowkeep release has given us a lot of new lore that is still being unpacked, but one of the most intriguing ones is "The Unveiling", works spoken by the Darkness to the Guardians through an unknown artifact found on one of the Pyramid ships - a ship with the power to create living Nightmares from past traumas in the visage of enemies, up to and including the Hive God Crota.

What follows is one of the entries from "The Unveiling", with more coming over the course of the season.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Unveiling - Gardener and Winnower

Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.***

* It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun.
** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.
*** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.

They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden.

In the morning, the gardener pushed seeds down into the wet loam of the garden to see what they would become.

In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed.

The day was longer than all of time, and the night was swifter than a glint of light on a falling sugar crystal. Insects buzzed between the flowers, and worms slithered between the roots, feeding on what was and what might be, the first gradient in existence, the first dynamo of life. Rain fell from no sky. Voices spoke without mouth or meaning. A tree of silver wings bloomed yielded fruit shed feathers bloomed again.

In the day between the morning and the evening, the gardener and the winnower played a game of possibilities.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The beginning of this story introduces a Gardener and a Winnower. The Winnower is a new descriptor for the Darkness, but the Gardener is a term that has often been used in relation to the Traveler itself in various pieces of lore. The significance of this new lore is that it seems to describe the origins of both the Darkness and the Light - both forces originate from a field of possibility existing before time, before the Universe itself.

They are paracausal in the sense that they first existed before causality was a thing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Unveiling - the Flower Game

These are the rules of a game. Let it be played upon an infinite two-dimensional grid of flowers.

Rule One. A living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off. It dies.

Rule Two. A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected. It lives.

Rule Three. A living flower with more than three living neighbors is starved and overcrowded. It dies.

Rule Four. A dead flower with exactly three living neighbors is reborn. It springs back to life.

The only play permitted in the game is the arrangement of the initial flowers.

This game fascinates kings. This game occupies the very emperors of thought. Though it has only four rules, and the board is a flat featureless grid, in it you will find changeless blocks, stoic as iron, and beacons and whirling pulsars, as well as gliders that soar out to infinity, and patterns that lay eggs and spawn other patterns, and living cells that replicate themselves wholly. In it, you may construct a universal computer with the power to simulate, very slowly, any other computer imaginable and thus simulate whole realities, including nested copies of the flower game itself. And the game is undecidable. No one can predict exactly how the game will play out except by playing it.

And yet this game is nothing compared to the game played by the gardener and the winnower. It resembles that game as a seed does a flower—no, as a seed resembles the star that fed the flower and all the life that made it.

In their game, the gardener and the winnower discovered shapes of possibility. They foresaw bodies and civilizations, minds and cognitions, qualia and suffering. They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle.

They learned those rules, because they were those rules.

And in time the gardener became vexed.
-----------------------------------------------

Interestingly enough, the Flower Game is actually based on a real life cellular automata game called Conway's Game of Life. The rules are exactly the same, and the allegory here is that the Gardener and Winnower - The Light and Darkness - played a game involving the shapes of possibilities they found within the field of possibility within which they resided, foreseeing all possible things and learning the rules of reality through this game they played.

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The Unveiling - The Final Shape

"It always ends the same," the gardener complained. "This one stupid pattern!"

Aren't they beautiful? I asked, as the flowers opened and closed in patterns beyond the scope of entire universes to encode, all-devouring and perhaps everlasting. Not even we could know whether a pattern in the flowers would cycle forever, or someday halt.

"They're as dull as carbon monoxide poisoning," the gardener groused, although carbon monoxide did not yet exist, and neither did anything that could be poisoned. The gardener kneeled to flick a patch of sod with their trowel. It struck an open flower, causing it to shut. Although I was the closer of flowers and that was my sole purpose, I felt no fear or jealousy. We had our assigned dominions and always would.

They're majestic, I said. They have no purpose except to subsume all other purposes. There is nothing at the center of them except the will to go on existing, to alter the game to suit their existence. They spare not one sliver of their totality for any other work. They are the end.

The pattern corrected the errant flower effortlessly. The great flow went on unchanged.

The gardener got up and brushed their knees. "Every game we play, this one pattern consumes all the others. Wipes out every interesting development. A stupid, boring exploit that cuts off entire possibility spaces from ever arising. There's so much that we'll never get to see because of this… pest."

They chewed at their cracked lip, which existed only because this is an allegory. "I'm going to do something about it," they said. "We need a new rule."

The Unveiling - The First Knife

I looked up in shock. I said, What? What do you mean?

"A special new rule. Something to…" The gardener threw up their hands in exasperation. "I don't know. To reward those who make space for new complexity. A power that helps those who make strength from heterodoxy, and who steer the game away from gridlock. Something to ensure there's always someone building something new. It'll have to be separate from the rest of the rules, running in parallel, so it can't be compromised. And we'll have to be very careful, so it doesn't disrupt the whole game…"

All you will do, I said, with rising panic|fury, is delay the dominant pattern that will overrun the others. It is inevitable. One final shape.

"No, it'll be different. Everything will be different, everywhere you look."

Everything will be the same. Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream as their rich blisters fill with effluent and rot around them, and when they pop they will blight the whole garden. Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. That is the only law.

"No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game."

And thus we two became parts of the game, and the laws of the game became nomic and open to change by our influence. And I had only one purpose and one principle in the game. And I could do nothing but continue to enact that purpose, because it was all that I was and ever would be.

I looked at the gardener.

I looked at my hands.

I discovered the first knife.
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While the entries are likely biased in favor of the Darkness' viewpoint, these two entries together explain why the Gardener and Winnower introduced themselves as "laws" in the game: the Gardener kept on seeing a singular pattern repeating over and over again, and so decided to introduce themselves as a law to reward complexity and help make strength from heterodoxy, to ensure that there is always someone building something new.

While the Gardener desires to promote growth and preservation of complexity, the Darkness is standing firm to the Final Shape it foresaw in the Pattern, and to the purpose it served as a Winnower - "reaping the crops and separating what would flourish from what had failed".

These are the sources of the paracausal powers the Guardians, the Hive and the Taken utilize in the setting: the new laws introduced by the Darkness and Light, separate from the rest of the laws of physics.

This next entry doesn't yet have an entry on Ishtar Collective, but I do have it on hand in-game.
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The Unveiling - "T = 0"

We wrestled in the garden, in the loam of possibility where nothing existed and everything might. A shadowed agony among the flowers. We trampled the petals beneath our feet. We stomp the fruit to pulp, and we ground the seeds into the dust.

In the wet pop of grapes and the smears of berries - in the perturbation of the field that was the garden before the first tick of time and the first point of space - were the detonations that made the universes. Each universe was pregnant with its own inflationary volumes and braided with ever-ramifying timelines. Each volume, cooling and separating into domains of post-symmetric physics, all of which were incarnations of that great and all-dictating bipartite law that states only: exist, lest you fail to exist.

And still we fought. We brought down the tree of silver wings and left the stump to smoke amid the meadows. We left prints of our splayed feet and our straining backs in the clay.

Our trampling feet made waves in the garden, which were the fluctuations around which the infant universes coalesced their first structures. The dilation field yawned beneath existence. Symmetries snapped like glass. Like creases, flaws in space-time collected filaments of dark matter that inhaled and kindled the first galaxies of suns.

And still we grappled. Our rolling bodies pushed things out of the garden - worms and scurrying life from the fertile soil, wet things from the pools and the leaves. They came out into the madness of primordial space; they thrashed and became large.

And I won.

I won, because the gardener always stops to offer peace. And when they do, I always strike.

But by then, it didn't matter. The game was over. The garden had given birth to creation, the rules were in place, and there would never be a second chance. We played in the cosmos now. We played for everything.

And the patterns in the flowers, terrified by our contention, were no longer the inevitable victors of a game whose rules had suddenly changed, and they passed into the newborn cosmos to escape us.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Here we have the metaphor mixed in with its actual meaning, and what the meaning is rather clear: when the Darkness and Light clashed within the field of possibilities, their clash created the universes that make up the Destiny setting and the beginning of their timelines, and the fluctuations around which the structures of the universes arrayed themselves. Here, the Darkness' bias is clear, as he stated all the universes were incarnations of his belief, a belief which underpins the Sword Logic: "Exist, lest you fail to exist".

 

[Catalyst75]

That's a near one-to-one with the past leaked image of Savathun with a certain something hovering by her shoulder.

One more day before we see the truth of things.

Also, bumping thread for when we learn significant things.

 

[Catalyst75]

Hive getting Ghosts and the Light confirmed.

 

[Catalyst75]

The new season already presents us with quite a bit of lore about the nature of the Ascendant Plane, just as the last Season did for the Vex Network. As the Awoken describe it, the Ascendant Plane is a place that is "the backstage of the Universe", sculpted by imagination and willpower, and lies underneath the universe as we know it. It also appears possible for the Ascendant Plane to bleed through into the material universe.

Furthermore, there are special Ley Lines the Awoken know of that can be used to travel between the Ascendant Plane and the material universe.

 

[Catalyst75]

So, the 30th Bungie Anniversary has landed in Destiny 2 with the introduction of the Dares of Eternity activity. Located in a realm called Eterntiy, Xur describes it as "a plane between realities, where the paraverses converge".

Any thoughts on the mention of "paraverses" for the Destiny cosmology, particularly given the event introduces Halo weapons into the game?

 

[Mr.Cinos15]

This either will be for pure celebration and not meant to be something big, or this will be an event that merges the Halo verse with Destiny. Wouldn't be the first time Bungie merged an IP with Destiny.

 

[WHYNAUT]

https://vsbattles.com/threads/destiny-statistics-revision-2-arc-boogaloo.130247/

For anyone who actually checks this thread.

 

[Catalyst75]

Potentially limited omniscience within Throne Worlds, depending on how you interpret: "Every step taken, every bullet fired; I keep and count them all".

 

[Jockey-1337]

Cool content

 

[Catalyst75]

Posting to bring this thread back up to the front, in light of Witch Queen's release.

 

[Dienomite22]

The power to take alters the entire history of its victims including past, present, and future to a set path chosen by the user.

 

[Shmooply]

It sucks that I had to uninstall Destiny because of my PC's non-existant storage, here's hoping that I'll one day be able to return to it again and help with revising the verse.

i can also see why bungie is literally hiring destiny historians after reading the posts here

 

[WHYNAUT]

I hope you do. Witch Queen has been fantastic so far. Best Destiny campaign by far.

That's nothing yet.

 

[Dienomite22]

"Even in a non-Euclidean space like Savathûn's throne world, triangulation can still work! It just means the math is a lot more exciting." —Hidden agent

 

[Catalyst75]

Osmiomancy Gloves

As we count the dead and make plans for recovery, I wish to record some of my recent scientific inquiries and theories before they are muddled by or altogether forgotten in the tangle of rebuilding what was lost.

Possibility. It exists within each life, an expanse and myriad of complexity explored openly through the philosophical constructs of choice and free will. Even when life ends, possibility carries forward in the lives touched and the projects created. When the actions of another end a life, Humans often refer to this act as killing or "taking a life." But where killing brings about a singular conclusion, Oryx's "Taking" was quite the opposite: he imposed a singular origin and all decisions that followed. He shaped the causality, the very history of another being, by force of will—recasting it into fanatical loyalty. In short, possibility never existed.

Like Ikora, my role is anticipating threats. While these Taken and their king may have been the most dangerous opponents we have ever faced, they likely will be the least of what is yet to come. And Taking has terrible potential if wielded by a mind more nuanced than Oryx's. Taking involves reforming matter in a self-contained reality, where the creator defines past, present, and future; imagine how a more insightful being could expand these definitions, to different ends. Overcoming a target's will must consume a large portion of energy. What if you used that energy for larger shifts in reality? You could teleport an army into a Hive mothership… move a fleet outside time and space… perhaps even alter a moon's orbit, devastating the planet below. The military applications could be far graver than simply creating an army.

Clearly, this is a subject in dire need of study. As the Taken themselves are frustratingly ephemeral, I have instead retrieved a variety of osmium ore samples from Oryx's flagship. They resonate in harmony with the Taken and thus may provide guidance in understanding the profane science behind them.

—Personal Logs, Ophiuchus

--------------------------------------------------

Savathun asserts that the Tablets of Ruin, which Oryx used to describe the Taken power, hid a riddle to which the answer was the power of the Witness, the leader of the Black Fleet. As she describes it, it is the power to move entire worlds from one reality to another, which the Black Fleet's Pyramid ships used to make Mars, Io, Mercury and Titan vanish and leave behind Darkness anomalies.

While Oryx's Taken power is a lesser form of the "power to move worlds", it is no less potent, especially now that further context has been given to what exactly the Taken power does.

 

[Setsuna_tenma]

so causality hax for taking? Nice

 

[WHYNAUT]

So when I'm done revising Oryx's page Taking will include:
corruption, power bestowal, space-time manipulation, existence erasure, matter manipulation, reality warping, law manipulation, conceptual manipulation, mind manipulation, possession and body puppetry.

 

[Dienomite22]

Essenstially the power to Take imposes Acausality type 1, 2 and 4 on the target but Oryx or whoever took them has control over it.

 

[Dienomite22]

Rhulk, the new raid boss and disciple of the witness, is so strong that the worm gods coward in fear of him and treat him with respect.

 

[WHYNAUT]

Essenstially the power to Take imposes Acausality type 1, 2 and 4 on the target but Oryx or whoever took them has control over it.

It only grants them Type 4. Outside of that it's just high level causality manipulation.

 

[Dienomite22]

Is type 5 Acauasality restricted to only Tier 1 beings? According to the current type 5 definition, this should grant type 5 Acausality as darkness and light aren't bound by any causality system rather than simply operating on a different/irregular causality system aka type 4:

"Some orders assert that Light and Darkness are not bound by any system of reason or causality"

 

[Oblivion_Of_The_Endless]

Is type 5 Acauasality restricted to only Tier 1 beings?

No

"Some orders assert that Light and Darkness are not bound by any system of reason or causality"

Yes, thats blatant Type 5