I'm going to be running a Destiny game for my group soon, using a modified version of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars system. It's a bit tricky, so if you've got any ideas for that, lemme know- but that's beside the point.
What I'm here to talk about is how to unfuck the Destiny lore. Because as it stands, shit is thoroughly fucked. There's tons of cool stuff in there, but it's all surrounded by bullshit. I've basically run down what I think the major problems are, and thus what I've tried to solve, or already changed. So you tell me if you think it's shit, or what you'd add, or whatever.
So, the core problem is that in real Destiny there is far too much shooting and far too little actual roleplaying (I.E. using your brain). I believe this stems from two major problems. The first is the fact that everyone in the universe seems to have picked one of two sides in a galaxy-sized war, with little to no room for deviation. The second is that even within those groups, people rarely disagree or conflict, at least to any real degree.
This SEVERELY limits the rad-ass shit you can pull. It means you'll never lie your way into attending a Cabal commitment ceremony in order to steal a precious artifact, or hold a teetering relationship with a Fallen crime lord, or any other number of cool things.
Barring this in mind, these are the changes I've come up with. Not a lot, but better than nothing.
>Guardians can die just like everyone else. Their armor and light do a lot to keep that from happening, but apart from death saves or standard amounts of tabletop character resurrection, you won't be seeing them respawn. This keeps it more in line with the actual lore, where it was a risky move for Rezyl Azzir to intentionally die so he could ambush a Kell.
>Guardians don't all work directly for the Vanguard. Most work through a faction representative, either to facilitate their own interests (New Monarchy), or so the Vanguard can avoid any backlash from working with morally questionable individuals, since technically, they're working for, say, Dead Orbit, and not the Vanguard.
>The Vanguard is basically a security council for The City, setting up expeditions and assignments. There is an elected head for each sect of Guardians (Titans, Warlocks, and Hunters), as well as a representative for The Speaker. If a tie vote is reached on a particular subject, which rarely happens, it's brought before the Cryptarchs.
>The Speaker is not the type of dude who would have casual chats with any Guardian who washed up like in the game. He's basically the pope / the emperor, so he's going to have security. This is a shady guy- I mean, he's a religious leader in a Bungie product for Christ's sake.
>Guardians aren't necessarily "good". All Guardian even means is one able to wield The Traveler's light. It doesn't dictate what they do with it. And this could even be a point of contention among the very few extremist who don't trust The Traveler. Although most Guardians do work for The City in some capacity, it's not a fate shared by all. Some places wouldn't even offer shelter to a Guardian, or allow them into their village, seeing them as a burden and potential danger. So while, yes, there are songs sung of great Titans and all that, the job, on some level, at least to the average person, is thankless.
CONT.
Ian Rogers
>The Last City IS the last city, but it isn't the last town. There are pockets of civilization across the solar system, or at the very least on Earth. Perhaps some trapped researchers on Venus- that kind of thing too.
>The alien factions present have a bit more gray area. Meaning, not all Fallen are going to blow your head off on sight. Some think their brothers have shamed themselves- that they somehow upset The Traveler and have thus fallen from it's graces. To this end, they might try and help humanity in some way, or at least remain exiled from their Fallen house. This would usually mean they end up as a gunrunner, beggar, or information broker in a human village. Mostly illicit shit, as very few people like seeing a Fallen alive, much less prospering. However, in very rare cases, one might, for example, find a Fallen that's become a baron of a human town, having lost an arm defending the villagers from attack, but gained their respect.
>No one actually thinks the Fallen or the Hive were ever bless by The Traveler. They WERE, but nobody, PCs least of all, know that upfront. Perhaps this could lead to a plot point of meeting a Fallen who's able to wield some light, however small, and prove they were once the children of The Traveler too.
>The Hive are a single consciousness apart from royalty. Most Hive don't even have any conscious thought- they simply follow instructions sent by a higher level of the Hive. It's thought that this is simply how they function as a species, but one might eventually learn of their grotesque relationship with the five* Worm Gods (*four, eventually). Basically, all Hive are infested with the larvae of these Worm Gods, driving them to feed off constant conquest and destruction lest the worm grow unsatisfied and consume them instead. The Hive royalty still have worms within them, but it's more of a threat than an iron hand, as the Worm Gods would prefer to keep intelligent beings running their army destruction.
CONT.
Jace Evans
>The Hive are way more like moth people now instead of crusty cicada alien things. It's got those too, don't get me wrong, but the higher up in Hive 'society' you get, the more flare they have. Crota, for example, would look fabulous as shit with big wings, and large antennae tipped with light hairs. This is of course because the less corrupted by the worms one is, the more they look like their true form.
>The Cabal have a secret off-and-on truce with humanity. They'll still let their troops slaughter each other, but they won't actively try to fuck each other over whilst they deal with a more important mutual problem- For example, the Fallen using SIVA. Obviously this would cause an uproar if people actually found out about it, even if it's done with their best interests in mind.
>This is a terrible idea, but maybe The Speaker is one of the original humans who created the Exo. They tried simply making robotic bodies, but the minds of the researchers who tried the transfer had their minds rejected, and subsequently died. So then they gave the Exo the capacity for true though, but that also meant they developed their own personalities. All the researchers, upon 'jacking in', tried to force out these personalities, and failed. Except for The Speaker, who was able to mentally coexist with the Exo personality. And being the complete fucker that he is, he decided to be a total fucking peppet master by acting like (or perhaps even believing) they could speak to The Traveler. And every time people get too pissed about what he's doing, to the point of revolt, he "dies" and simply modifies his voice, and becomes the "new" Speaker.
CONT.
Michael Reyes
THINGS THAT ARE STILL PROBLEMS: >Everything >Not enough different creatures to kill. >Not enough different creatures to talk to, and thus not enough situations to solve either non-violently, or only semi-violently. >Basically, not enough reasons to talk instead of shoot. >Not enough cool fantasy shit, like giant wise frogs or weird beetle men, or one-off creatures and aliens >I literally forgot The Vex even existed until just now >Whatever, it's not like they're good for anything but shooting anyway- they want to LITERALLY END ALL REALITY and have basically no personality. They're pretty straightforward and don't lend themselves to conversation very well.
Grayson Sanchez
alright cool, well, I think we solved a lot today. meet up again tomorrow, team?
Colton Parker
What you wrote down about the fallen is incorrect. Long story short the traveller used to be at their planet and gave them all the stuff that the traveler gave us, and then shit hit the fan, and the traveller bailed.
They followed it here and are now absolutely pissed off at the fact that the traveler chose some other species. It doesn't say if they showed up before or after the collapse, but it does show that the fallen all hate humans for "stealing" the traveller. Btw they praise the traveller as a robot god, that's why they infuse them self with machines so they can become closer to god.
Tyler Lopez
Okay, that's actually kind of dope, but I'm not "wrong". What I said might not be 100% accurate canon, but seeing as the whole point of the thread is fixing the lore to actually work better in a tabletop and roleplaying context, that's sort of the point.
Leo Bailey
I read through most of the grimores. They talk about the origins of the hive and how they came from a planet full of different alien species and the traveler, a giant talking whale, and the how oryx was a girl but became a guy.
How the queen was born already intelligent as fuck and recognizedo the council of nine at birth, "maybe not the 9, but fuck I need them relevent in the story already"
And how rasputin and all the other war minds used all they could for fight back the darkness and halt their advances, but nothing worked, so he just went to sleep and started planning shit, even things like if the traveller was to leave earth. He would fire all weapons at the traveller to stop it from leaving.
And the vex are the most complex of all the bad guys, being that they have had interdimensionalready wars with the hive, we're once organic life, and choose not to fuck up a time line with time shenanigans to make sure everything goes by one path. They are the most peaceful, if they wanted they could destroy everything already, and they even blame the guardian for being the darkness.
Jack Williams
Oh, shit well yea. I can see fallen working with humans, house of judgment though, all the other houses of fallen would rather kill then work with a human. Judgement are kind of forced to work with humans as well. I would see you working with psions more then fallen as the main people you'd talk too. Cabal have nothing against humans, and would do anything to get to a common goal, only if you don't challenge the big guys, you'll be fine.
Dominic Anderson
So aliens you have to work with are awoken, house of judgement, psions (maybe), and xur.
Aaron Jenkins
Awoken aren't really aliens, but I get you.
I actually don't know much Vex lore, all I was saying is that there isn't really much there to draw on plot-wise other than "vex are doing bad thing so stop them" since it's not like you'd ever be able to have a conversation with one.
And I can't believe I forgot to mention the war minds. What a cool fucking idea those are.
Joseph Roberts
Vex are hard for a plot, I mean high level shit comes around and you wanna throw time travel / being wiped straight from existence when someone fails a saving throw sure, can horrify players that way.
The one thing for a minor plot that you could use is that the Vex Operate in networks, they're not lead by a single mind, and all Vex in an area would typically operate under one.
So rather than lead a Crusade against all Vex and locating the BBEG Central Core, just fucking take out a Network head like Sekrion was.
Ian Miller
That's actually pretty good. Plus their overwhelming numbers and the possibility of you literally not existing would make it pretty tense.
Honestly, shit gets really interesting once you push past Jupiter. At that point you're talking about the Nine and the Jovians. Both of which are so fucking vague in the lore at this point (to my knowledge) that you'd (I'd) have to basically make up their intentions, desires, etc, from scratch. Technically if it's to be believed that Jovians were once human, a PC could become one, but would have to give up all Light-based powers. Eh. That's actually probably a stretch- but I digress.
Charles Jackson
Awoken would be like elfs, yaknow. And cabal the orcsame, I guess.,
And what this guys said about the vex, they do have singular consciousness now since we blew up the black heart, and they had it before, but now they are back to the whole individual thing, while the big bosses in the strikes are trying to fix shit.
The best way to involve vex (in my opinion atleast) besides just trying to kill them would be to make a bad guy like skolas do a thing. Being that skolas not only wanted to use the vex as the way of gaining new power and combining all the houses under one house. Heck he did one of those things, so just make them relevant through people trying to use them, or somthing.
Nathaniel Ross
these are more specific story points, and less lore points, but I figured I'd toss em out if anyone wants to give feedback anyway:
I thought about having a lower level hive- not a mob, but definitely not royalty- reach singular consciousness by somehow being cut off from the Hive. Which is very disconcerting for everyone, since it was thought that lower hive didn't even have the capacity for thought. And he (and the PCs) don't know if the worm inside him is simply inert, or if the Worm Gods are doing this intentionally, but everyone involved is very confused as to not only how this happened, but also why it hasn't been corrected by the worm. Since I'm an unoriginal shit, he'd take the name Nemo (for "nobody", since he doesn't know who he is without the hive). I don't actually have the reasons why this would happen since I've only thought about it for like three minutes now.
I also think it'd be dope to explore The Speaker being a shady little shit. You could be shoved out the door on an emergency mission to recover a deceased Guardian's powerful blade, since maybe the Fallen scavenging parties are closing in on where he died, to which the obvious question would be "why didn't we just get it sooner?" The answer being, "because nobody was supposed to know he died. He was just MIA until now", to which, again, you'd ask "why?". Anyway, yada yada, They find the guy in a sealed room, having bled out long ago, but the room is a fucking mess. There's blood everywhere. Why would there be blood everywhere if he sealed himself in this room? And this Titan's body is slumped over a table, one hand clutching the sword you came for, the other clutching a ghost. HIS ghost. Why would somebody destroy their own ghost, thereby dooming themselves?
CONT.
Charles Thompson
Well, what the PCs would eventually realize is the blood and small tears of fabric across the room are from The old Speakers guard, from long ago. This Titan had realized The Speaker can't actually talk to The Traveler, and his Ghost lead the guard right to him, leading to a big fight, which he won, but was gravely wounded in. Being an Exo, he knew that once he died, his Ghost would simply revive him, and he wouldn't remember The Speaker's treachery. So he chose instead to kill his companion, and die with some dignity. After that, the Guards ghosts showed up to remove the bodies and quickly seal the hatch.
Anyway, sorry about shitty formatting. I'm on a phone.
Zachary Gonzalez
Yeah, it does seem like the Fallen's thing to abuse technology. I guess I don't know why the Vex would bother listening to them, but that's easy enough to explain away. Plus it's a good reason to involve the Cabal in an enemy-of-my-enemy capacity.
Matthew Gomez
Suggestion here. One of the most overlooked aspects of Destiny's lore is where Guardians come from. As I recall, they're long-dead humans who have been called back up, so to speak. (This is why I headcanon that, because the player character in Destiny is revived near Baikonur Cosmodrome, the player character is actually Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, or some other Soviet-era cosmonaut.) At any rate, this could give you a lot of potential background stories for your players to play around with, becuase you could be literally anyone from human history.
Owen Morales
That's absolutely killer, and I hadn't even thought about it. I was always focused more on the "why" of 'why do Guardians have to be zombies', which already brings up interesting questions, but this makes it way more personal to the PCs instead of just saying "I don't know, you woke up."
Julian Ward
what the hell happened to the Seven Seraphs faction?
Eli Walker
They got rid of it. For whatever reason. They sounded cool.
Jacob Taylor
>s Actually there's now evidence that the Fallen showed up before the collapse. In the mission where you steal the stealth codes from Rasputin, there's an interactable that has Cayde mention that they were testing Fallen tech there, evidently before the Collapse.
Dominic Cook
>The hive have a single conciousness.
No, the Hive are each a separate individual. Thrall are just dumb as shit and usually die before becoming anything, but you always start as one. From the Malok Grimoire entry.
>Your Thrall strength now is Acolyte strength >Your Acolyte strength now is Knight strength >Your thieving pride is known and fed
>Guardians are not necessarily good
This has been confirmed by new grimoire stuff. Before the City, the people that Ghost resurrected were all sorts. You had people that wanted to help, people that wanted to be left alone, and some people who just became warlords.
Jace Green
The Cabal aren't really orcs, in the same way the Fallen aren't really orcs.
They're not like the Hive/Vex in that they have wants and needs like people, but their culture and general outlook is so alien as to be totally opposed.
Of course, with the Fallen there's less guarantee. Variks seems pretty chill, if pragmatic, and there's hintings that there might have been/might be Fallen guardians.
Connor Torres
The queen being "born" is kind of misleading. Mara Sov was evidently some high level person in the mass exodus from the inner system during the collapse, and when she "born" as an awoken she still had her adult smarts and some of the knowledge.
Anthony Reed
From what it sounds like, they might be somehow related to the three original astro/cosmonauts that made initial contact with the Traveller on Mars.
John Foster
... Didn't Yuri die in the 60's? How would he be on Mars like two hundred years later?
Maybe I have my dates messed up.
Isaac Rodriguez
That's kinda silly. Especially because who they were before they were Guardians is usually left to be totally unimportant. No one remembers who they were, and there's not even evidence their faces stay the same. Exos can sometimes go rooting in their old memories because of how they were built, but humans and awoken get no such luxury because their brains completely rot or something.
Also, not everyone has to die to become a Guardian. I believe it's mentioned somewhere that Ghosts scan living people while looking for their Guardian.
Connor Hughes
Apparently there's still rugged individualists living outside the city, but it's not that many. The first ones awoken by the Ghosts became Warlords, but eventually the Iron Lords stepped in to beat them all down and establish the Last City, and after the Iron Lords fell, the revived characters became the Guardians.
John Cook
Most of them became Guardians. There's a collective of pacifist guardians living somewhere in the System, Osiris and his group are a thing. I don't see why there couldn't be some more.
The Iron Lords became the first group of unified people who were all carrying the Light, but there's no evidence that they were everyone.
Colton Torres
The Cabal had a pretty open truce. Fuck off from Mars and we'll leave you alone for now.
But that was just the small scouting force that it's in the system, because they probably realized pretty early on they just stepped in shit that was way above their pay grade.
Aiden Brown
>This is a terrible idea, but maybe The Speaker is one of the original humans who created the Exo. This is a terrible idea. Why would you even bring that up.
>Hive were ever bless by The Traveler. They weren't.
Jose Thompson
That's wrong too though.
Only a single living person has ever been able to use any kind of light. And he didn't get his own ghost. He had to take one from a dead guy.
Ryder Wood
Hey I said it was shit
I'm just saying there needs to be something to The Speaker other than "he's kind shifty I guess"
Cameron Howard
Might have been a different Yuri? It's been stated that the origins of the Guardians would be explored later, but there does seem to be an echo of that in Destiny lore already. One of the guys on the Destiny team gave a series of extensive interviews (or one long interview?) that went over a whole lot of Destiny lore.
True. There's a whole lot of splinter factions, and while the Iron Lords might have held sway for a good while, they weren't the only faction out there. Numerous splinter factions rose, fell, or were too rebellious and got killed by the others. Eventually you are left with New Monarchy, Dead Orbit, and Future War Cult who enter into an uneasy and distrustful truce to keep the City stable, even though they have their own divergent goals and philosophies. And, of course, there's other factions that have cropped up after or have been around in the background.
Jack Cruz
Yeah, there are factions that we simply haven't interacted with but are mentioned to still exist. I believe there's a mention of Seven Seraphs on one of the PA announcements, and you could just fluff out some new ones, using the existing three just as a template for ideas.
He's a construct of the Traveller. Like a big ghost that doesn't need a person. Or, he is the First Guardian, directly linked to the Traveller.
Also, I'd like to say that I am totally against the Traveller being a baddie. Maybe it's not as clean cut good as we're told, but it's still the correct path. —The Sky is the harder way. But it is kinder.—
Colton Anderson
Seven Seraphs sounds like a play on Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven, others like that. A common theme that Seven warriors form a band and kick some ass together. It's possible their story follows something like that, and we might see some new relics for them like we're seeing with the Iron Lords.
Could be the Traveller is just scared. It's diminished and fleeing the Darkness in a bid to survive. It's implied that Rasputin might have caused the big hole in it to keep it from escaping, and its last ditch efforts to save itself were to release a wave of Light to destroy the Darkness and release the Ghosts to start reviving dead warriors in the hopes they would protect it, or Guard it. After that it's been dormant, probably from the damage and exertion.
Consider the Speaker loves himself some Motes of Light, which are created by defeating the Darkness and achieving great feats. It's possible he uses those Motes to help feed or repair the Traveller in the hopes it'll have enough Light replenished to become active again. Of course, if that happens, it might try to escape again, or possibly decide it's better off with the Guardians and make its stand, considering the Guardians have defeated Gods to defend it.
Leo Lee
First reply from a tl;dr standpoint. Your first post a shit. You apparently don't know the lore as you completely skip over almost all the lore. The lore is solid. Read the damn grimoire. Half or more of the items I glanced over are already in the lore.
Bentley Thompson
Well, the Dreams of Alpha Lupi seem to imply that it's made up it's mind about making a stand on Earth after it gets beat the fuck up. It's tired of running.
Also, worth noting, the giant white ball that is the Traveller is actually an artificial body the Light lives in. It's not even particularly comfortable.
Joseph Edwards
Lore's not exactly accessible with Grimoire Cards since it's outside the game. They've said they're putting more in it with Rise of Iron since they're finally understanding how awfully they fucked up the initial release and their promises to the fans.
Still, before you want to start asking for sweeping changes to Destiny Lore, it's probably a good idea to read up on what there is to it.
Hunter Hernandez
Agreed. It's much cleaner if The Traveler is simply out for its own interests. And whether that ends with it running away some more, or making a stand with humanity, it's all the same.
Pretty sure the Seven Seraphs were supposed to be warminds, or heavily related in some way, but you could be right.
Levi Smith
Isn't there also a theory backed up by in game lore snippets that the traveler is actually the darkness and the Fallen are the light, and guardians are agents of the darkness who think they are agents of the light and are just being tricked by the Traveler into thinking they are on the side of the light because the traveler lies and says it's the light?
Noah Parker
No, not really.
Early concepts had the Traveller being related to the Darkness in some way, but this seems poorly fleshed-out and seems to have been dropped entirely as a story point.
Hints included the Black Garden curving like it was inside a big sphere (hint, hint) and the Traveller's mysterious motivations, but ultimately those don't seem to have ended up in the final game.
Xavier Roberts
I think it was supposed to be that the darkness had infected the Traveller or some such and so we had to break inside it and kill the Darkness.
But yeah, that appears to have been almost totally scrapped.
Ryan Bennett
Better for it. "the religious / AI thing was bad all along" is pretty well worn territory for Bungie.
Having it just be a weird, fucked up mass of light stuffed inside a big uncomfortable ball as it runs away from a truly terrifying threat is way better.
Kevin Parker
That is like saying any other setting with additional multimedia items are inaccessible. You can read the entire Grimoire online without the game.
The complaint about it not being in game ( though a whole lot is if you pay attention) stems in part from the breadth and quality of the Grimoire.
Ryan Garcia
Guardians are able to die just like everyone else. The respawning is due to the Ghost channeling the Traveller's Light to revive you. That is why in darkness zones it either takes more time or you wipe, as the light cannot reach darkness zones. And revives from your fireteam are Ghost-to-Ghost resuscitation.
To kill a Guardian you must kill their Ghost. They aren't Zombies, they're Liches. And they aren't all good as has been discussed. And they aren't all part of the Vanguard. Hell, technically Lord Saladman isn't Vanguard.
In the lore when Guardians die it is either the darkness getting their ghost or carpet bombing.
Benjamin Hall
They hired an actual SciFi writer to write the Grimoire Cards, so they have a consistent narrative to them and a consistent feel that really helps tie them together.
Destiny is unique in that they stuffed a lot of lore into the cards outside the game proper, though much remains. Generally speaking, stuff should be able to stand on its own in its own medium. For example, the Star Wars movies need to stand on their own as movies before you rope in any books, TV shows, or comics. Additional multimedia shouldn't be required for the audience to understand the story's basic structure, even if it does flesh it out more.
Still, I wasn't saying it's completely inaccessible. I've read a good number of the cards, myself. I also agree that they are quite quality pieces of writing, and deserve to be in the game proper.
Colton Thompson
It would be nice for them to be in the game proper. But most folks seem to have glossed over the story that is in the game. There is a lot of it in there. And it is more logical when you play the Taken King questified sequence.
The root storyline is solid, if overly urgent. And the expansions have all broadened and continued plot threads. Combine that with idle chatter and gear flavor text, and you get a pretty damn rich world just with what is in game.
Anthony Cook
Things I didn't really notice in the hresd that you don't have to fuck up existing lore to bring interest:
The Jovians (The Nine, their servants) are very mysterious, and you can take all or none of the possibilities given as plot hooks.
The Ahamkara. After the Great Ahamkara Hunt they were "assumed extinct" but what secrets they may hide given that the Wish Dragons were of great power, oh listener mine.
The lost Warminds: Rasputin chose his slumber after crippling the Traveller. But what truely became of the other Warminds throughout the system?
Angel Sanders
It really isn't rich. It's sparse as fuck.
Unless you're actively seeking out all possible information, the game does absolutely fuck all with even telling you what the fuck is going on. They give you like twenty seconds of info on who you're about to kill, then you kill them, and everyone goes "THIS IS A GREAT VICTORY FOR THE CITY. EVERYONE WILL REMEMBER THIS DAY." or some such nonsense.
Basically anything actually meaningful and cool isn't actually in the game. Like, what, Oryx can take people? Why? Is that a hive power? Oh, it's actually a really fucking cool story about god worms and shit? Well why didn't you TELL me that?
Fucking- The Black Garden? I STILL don't know what the fuck I was supposed to have done by the end of that original story. Who the fuck is The Exo Stranger? "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain"? FuuUUUuUuUuUUck yOOOOOoooOuuuuu.
You can read all the quest text, and listen to all the dialogue in Rise Of Iron, and they STILL don't even tell you what the fuck SIVA is. They don't tell you what the main fucking enemy you're fighting is.
It's nice that at least they tried with Taken King, having actual fucking characters like Cayde and Eris interact and bring up relevant fucking information. And by having a final boss that you at least have context for why he's angry with you. But that shit should be the bare minimum of effort, not worthy of praise.
Fuck me- the closest we ever got to grimoire information in-game was the Bond Brothers strike. I loved hearing about their loyalty and command structure and insane tactics. But the rest of the game is totally devoid of any of that richness.
Brandon Cooper
So no, you didn't pay attention. Some details are limited, but if you didn't understand why you were doing things, that isn't on the game.
The core Vanilla Story is about starting to heal the Traveller. The Heart of the Black Garden was stoping that.
The Exo stranger is tied through the Vex and the cyclic timeline aspects of the plot, but is mostly a hook for later and a guide acknowledging you as special. Because you are The Guardian.
And SIVA is a Golden Age nanomachine took for colonization efforts that is under Elinski control and running past their understanding.
That's all provided in game.
Jaxson Sanders
I'll take your word that's it's in the game, but in that case, it was explained VERY fucking poorly. Even Dark Souls, which is told primarily through NPCs laughing at you, and random item descriptions, I had an easy time understanding, without looking shit up online. I found Destiny to be very poorly told.
>The core Vanilla Story is about starting to heal the Traveller. The Heart of the Black Garden was stopping that. Do they ever actually say that? I'm not fighting you on this, I haven't played the vanilla story in a very long time, but I just don't remember them ever actually making it clear. All I remember is going to the reef for no reason, then my character says we need to go to the black garden for some reason, and I killed some vex to do so, then I went there and killed some bigger vex.
>SIVA is a Golden Age nanomachine took for colonization efforts that is under Elinski control and running past their understanding I'm saying what it actually is. Yeah, I get it- it's robo-aids. Big deal. I'm saying in what context would someone have made robo-aids, and why would it be desirable for colonization. More to the point, why would the Iron Lords have wanted it in the first place to go looking.
James Foster
"There is no immortality of soul, thus there is no greater good. Therefore everything is permitted."
Zachary Mitchell
For the healing the Traveller, the shard that you recover from the Hellmouth where the hive was sucking it with darkness is "restored" and then the Speaker talks about it beginning to heal in the final cutscene.
Smart Matter is used throught Glimmer. Engrams. If you can reform materials on the fly, you take blanks for colonization and use it to build from there. This is extrapolation, yes. But that's the implication of it. It's easier to get there and use nano machine fabrication to make the right took than bring the wrong tool and have to ship things again.
I am interested in them furthering plots more than anything though. Like witht how Aluk-Hul and Malok are both threats due to the power vacuum left by killing Oryx.
Lincoln Diaz
Fair enough. But I'm not going to give out any awards for being present. They still do an ass of a job at actually telling their story. Hopefully Destiny 2 is more Taken King and less Vanilla Destiny.
Agreed. I thought the Oryx power vacuum was cool too. >are both threats Don't you mean were? Or did I miss some part where they didn't actually die when I killed them?
Nolan Smith
Not gonna deny that the telling isn't light. Or at least easy to get lost in the shuffle. I like how they've handled both year 2 and 3. That there are improvements in method, now that the core is better established.
I refer to most things in Destiny in the present tense when it is in game activities due to cyclicly experiencing them through different timelines (just like everytime you wipe in a darkness zone your respawn is the universe saying "maybe it didnmt happen like that...") and it is not a habit easily broken.
But given that Sepiks Perfected exists, I guess you can't 100% say they won't come back somehow.
Adam Anderson
The hierarchy of the Hive can only be truly killed when you kill them in their throne worlds (: an alternate dimension they hide their own deaths in). I'm not sure Oryx is dead because I'm not actually sure you kill him in his throne world, and if you didn't kill any of the others in theirs, they might not be dead.
Crota is dead as fuck, though. First you kill his soul before it can be summoned, and then you kill his body in his throne world before it can be reunited with his soul. Or did I get that backwards and you kill his body first?
James Jenkins
Holy shit I want to play a Destiny RPG now. God dammit OP
Aaron Rodriguez
Yes, Oryx is dead. Only ascendant hive have throne world's though. Alak and Malok both has the potential to become ascendant, hence why we had to nip that in the bud.
The Death-Singers are still alive in their realms though IIRC.
Ian Gray
There is an attempt to summon Crota back to our plane, whih we stop. And then in Crota's End we enter his plane to kill him. He is as dead as we understand Hive to get. But with the combination of the Worms, Throne Worlds, and Sword Logic. The functions of the Hive are mysterious.
Josiah Clark
Should have Oops.
I like how many options there are available for campaigns.
Dominic Robinson
What in god's name is a Throne World? And what classifies and "ascendant" Hive?
Nicholas Bell
Pocket dimensions with different physics/laws of existence controlled by sword logic and generated by extremely powerful hive. Being ascendant is tied to having one of these throne world's or vice versa.
Michael Walker
Throne Worlds are dimensions where Hive Ascendants live. It's where they go when they die so they can respawn, and it's also where they can only truly be killed. You have to be very strong in Sword Logic in order to generate one, and need to furnish it with death in order to maintain it.
Sword Logic can be a little tricky, but Quria: Blade Transform sums it up pretty succinctly; "Only when I have destroyed everything will I be powerful." If anyone can be destroyed, they deserved to be because they had weakness and their killer was in the right because they destroyed that weakness. The Hive's greatest expression of love is to kill each other because it destroys their weakness, hence their royal family indulging in regicide like it was a quick match of Super Smash.
Jacob Barnes
Oooooh, so the Hive are Randroids. Gotcha.
Luke Morgan
So. They get more powerful by dying? And they can respawn, but only if their Throne World has death all over it? Which, I assume means, they have to have killed a LOT? And probably BEEN killed a lot?
John Hernandez
And remember, the Vault of Glass is a Vex calculated simulation of a Throne World, which is why they write the rules of existence there.
Benjamin Allen
>So. They get more powerful by dying? That's the opposite of sword logic. The strong get more powerful by culling the weak... the weak deserve to die because they hold others back.
Sword logic is essentially "dog eat dog"... it's a bigger moral philosophy that sums to might making right, and violence being justified by the means (if I kill you, then you were destined to die so I did nothing wrong).
Nicholas Brown
Read through all the Books of Sorrow. It explains all of this. There are lots of things we have yet to understand, and we are not entirely sure if Final Death works for those in their Throne World the same way we think of Guardian Final Death. In part with how the passing of ownership functions within Sword Logic.
Jayden Bailey
You wouldn't be wrong. It's Randian philosophy taken beyond mere economics and taken to its logical extreme of murder, except it actually gets you magical powers, unlike real Randian philosophy, which ruins your business and gets you laughed at (see: what happened to Sears).
Yeah. They've killed a whole lot. In the Grimoire Card series "The Book of Sorrow," which details the Hive's history, they actually got to the point where they couldn't physically kill enough to satisfy the hunger of their worms.
Oryx, or Auryx at that point, instituted a tithe system at that point. Each Acolyte takes as much death (or whatever it is) as they need, plus a little more to grow, and tithes the rest up the chain to the Knights. The Knights take what they need and a little more to grow, and tithe that to the Wizards, who take what they need and a little more to grow, and tithe that to their commanders. The commanders (most named characters and ultras) take all that they need and all that they want, and tithe the rest directly to Oryx and his sisters (depending on their army). But if they take too much, the other commanders, or even their patrons like Oryx himself, will step in and kill them for their tithes in order to get more powerful, so it's encouraged to tithe them up the chain.
That way, they don't need to personally kill millions of beings in order to maintain their Throne Worlds.
Kayden Wood
Also consider how Oryx mentions his sword. If someone kills Oryx with Oryx's own sword, he mantles that person and gains his strength, because that person would have had to used Oryx's own Sword Logic to defeat him, and Oryx might as well be a tangible being of Sword Logic at this point.
Mason Cook
Hold the fucking phone.
Are you telling me the Vex can't actually erase people from existence or do any of their crazy time shit, unless it's in the Vault of Glass?
Henry Wilson
Oh, they do all kinds of crazy time shit outside of it. It's just that they have complete control within the Vault. That is why you don't encounter Gorgons or Oracles outside of the Vault. Because they haven't figured out how to sew those features into he fabric of the regular universe. Yet.
Their goal is to become a law of nature. Controlling those laws in pocket dimensions is in a sense step one.
It's interesting most because with he power vacuum we know that The Guardian isn't technically the bearer of the blade which killed Oryx. That is a thread I am interested in seeing play out. Oh Mara Sov, playing the long game.
Aiden Hill
It's why their specialized Banshees have working Ontological weapons that do actually wipe people from existence, but only work in the Vault of Glass.
As says, they're not yet woven into the universe's fabric, they haven't yet solved for their survival in every single possible universal end state, so while they do have a whole lot of power and control over crazy universal forces, they are also still severely limited in their power.
Which is why the Guardians even have a chance at this point. And consider that, for all the Vex's power and ability to control the universe, they still can't solve for the Darkness, which is why they turned to worshipping the fragment they held in the Black Garden.
Andrew Taylor
>It's interesting most because with he power vacuum we know that The Guardian isn't technically the bearer of the blade which killed Oryx.
It's Arthurian myth played out. The one who defeats the king usually takes their place and mantles the position (after playing through their game on their terms), but the Guardian isn't the inheritor nor do they take up that mantle.
What the fuck happens when the cycle is broken at that point? The King is dead... And there is no King. What happens when something intrinsically writes itself into the universe, and then ceases to be without a successor?
Dylan Thompson
I think the real curiosity is whether or not we just haven't met the successor. The Guardian dealt the blow, followed Oryx's rules of challenge and trials to face him. But whose blade did we fell him with? Is the Traveller now the Taken King? Mara Sov? Could it be no one? One of Oryx's sisters?
Bentley Thompson
Isn't Mara Sov dead?
Henry Nelson
Could be there is no King. Could be his sisters will start showing up to take his place, or perhaps rebirthing him as he rebirthed them by sort of evoking his existence through his own practice of Sword Logic. That happened before, when they had Auryx kill them so he could become Oryx and kill the Worm they worshipped. So could it happen in reverse?
Could be the Light won out (through the Guardians as its champions), defeating Sword Logic by both playing out and rejecting its rules, meaning the Hive in and of itself has just been exposed in fundamental universal terms as both flawed and incorrect.
You could view the battle against Oryx as a debate. We played by the guidelines set out by Oryx, but we didn't follow through to his conclusion, nor did we adopt his own logic which would prove him right. We found a new conclusion. So where do we go from here?
Jackson Taylor
>So where do we go from here? The Hive keep fighting to try and prove the Light and its Guardians wrong, I suppose. Like a counter-counter-argument.
Jose Bailey
>Could be the Light won out (through the Guardians as its champions), defeating Sword Logic by both playing out and rejecting its rules, meaning the Hive in and of itself has just been exposed in fundamental universal terms as both flawed and incorrect.
This is the way I see it. We took the light and used it as our sword, and showed the Sword Logic we don't have to play by it's rules. I get the feeling that part of the Sword Logic kind of imploded. Given the way Toland reacts to us killing Oryx and then not taking his place. He seems to be completely dumbfounded, like he doesn't even understand how it was possible.
Daniel Sanders
Toland kind of bought into Sword Logic. His view was that we had to take up the mantle in order to survive as a species, and was counting on the Guardians to do just that to ensure their survival.
Instead the Guardians somehow confounded Sword Logic, which to him is baffling and might well mean we just chose the path of humanity's extinction. We're venturing into unknown territory after confronting a universal equation and subverting its foregone conclusion.
Joshua Baker
That's what I mean. Sword Logic is the proposal of the Dark. Instead, we chose to use the Light to come to our own conclusion.
Toland drank the koolaid, because he thought it was the only thing to drink. We proved that it isn't and that left him scrambling to find answers for it.
Ultimately, I feel like our killing Oryx and breaking the Sword Logic is our first real defeat against the Darkness proper. Not just in a physical strategic sense, but a metaphysical/philosophical sense.
Joseph Ward
Killing Oryx was definitely a solid 'Fuck You' Now we just have to wait for the Darkness' rebuttal
Austin Morris
Well, each faction represents competing ideologies, and their physical conflicts are just debates about methods and ideologies that are grander than them.
I don't much seem to understand the Cabal's position, nor the Fallen's at this point, but it seems the Guardians are asserting unity, and the "other way" Toland asserts where the Three Queens work together, and the Hive are the most stark representation of the Queen of Armies and the philosophy of strength in Sword Logic. The Vex themselves also seem to be searching for answers, and do so by imitation. The Fallen seem to be just doing anything it takes for survival at this point, by any means necessary.
Luis Parker
Is she?
Daniel Flores
Way I see it, the Cabal and the Fallen are more "human" in that they aren't as defined by a overlying metaphysical philosophy. That makes them less dangerous in a mystical sense, but more dangerous in that they can think outside the box. They can do things that we wouldn't expect or that we would be can't defend against. Rather have having a strict set of rules we can abuse, they are basically able to do anything we could. So it comes down to a pure test of skill and strength.
I am of the mind that the Fallen might become our allies in the next game. Given Variks and some of the implications left throughout House of Wolves/Rise of Iron. I also think that Bungie is gonna introduce more enemy factions, so I'm really interested to see where that goes.
Landon Wilson
Well, eye-patch sends us to find any sign of her and the only thing we can bring back is a broach, so maybe? Dead isn't always dead in Destiny, so only time will tell.
The Cabal are definitely a question mark, same with the Fallen's looming Kell of Kings
Brody Walker
I think we can all guess who the Kell of Kells is going to be.
Aiden Miller
The Kell of Kings is different from the Kell of Kells prophecy They're the actual Kell of the House of Kings and so far have been content to stay out of thing, save for some meddling during the House of Wolves clusterfuck, if I remember correctly.
Liam Edwards
True.
I guess they didn't want us to kill every ranking Fallen in the system. Like we did with the Cabal.
Benjamin Wright
>destiny-grimoire.info Just wanted to post a link to the actual Grimoire for anyone who wanted it. It's pretty well written and interesting.
Bentley Cook
Is that a canon image of Zavala's helmet? If so, neat.
Also, does anyone else have names backstories for their Guardians? Because I would definitely carry some of mine over into a table top game.
Chase White
I doubt it. Pretty sure the grimoire states Variks is using the crows to look for the K of K.
Josiah Cruz
I actually really hope we get more on the Cabal
Robert Cooper
Not cannon no, but damn good fan art. Got one of Cayde too.
Zachary Green
Fallen as allies would be amazing.
The Cabal might have an overarching philosophy, probably that of Imperial and centralized rule under Law, as mentioned in Toland's fable of Three Queens. Could the Vex be the ones who build the Tower, and climb it to see the stars?
In that dynamic, the Vex would be the Tower, the Cabal would be Law, and the Hive would be Armies. The Fallen would be the Light betrayed; the Guardians in the absence of light. It's been stated that the Fallen don't have Gods or Patrons, the Traveller abandoned them. As such, they adopt worship of the Darkness, or SIVA, or whatever they can steal. They're the absence of philosophy.
William Williams
Oh we will. Their entire involvement in TTK was foreshadowing. Their entire reason for going to the Dreadnought was to learn how to kill Light. They even managed to send a message back to the Cabal homeworld. Maybe they actually did find out, and now the full Imperial Fleet is coming to make use of it.
Caleb Murphy
That actually makes a decent amount of sense. I think the Cabal are gonna be the big bads of the next game, or at least in the sense that their invasion is gonna be the main plot point.
