14 replies to this topic

[dx144]

Now I've found a few (Sevent to be precise) dead Ghosts while exploring Destiny, I've checked the cards given on Bungie.Net and it gives a short story about what it is so if you don't want to read them then don't but this is a little heads up so no one reads something they don't want to.

 

If anyone has one I don't please post it here so I can read the ones I haven't got yet =)

 

Also if I've posted in the wrong area please move it. I didn't know where this thread truly belonged so I decided to just plant it here since another Destiny Thread was put here...

 

[spoiler=The Last Word]

I'm writing this from memory - some mine, but not all. The facts won't sync with the reality, but they'll be close, and there's no one to say otherwise, so for all intents and purposes, this will be the history of a settlement we called Palamon and the horrors that followed an all too brief peace.

I remember home, and stories of a paradise we'd all get to see some day - of a City, "shining even in the night." Palamon didn't shine, but it was sanctuary, of a sort. 

We'd settled in the heart of a range that stretched the horizon. Wooded mountains that shot with purpose toward the sky. Winters were harsh, but the trees and peaks hid us from the world. We talked about moving on, sometimes, striking out for the City. But it was just a longing.

Drifters came and went. On occasion they would stay, but rarely. 
We had no real government, but there was rule of law. Basic tenets agreed upon by all and eventually overseen by Magistrate Loken.

And there you have it...no government, until there was. I was young, so I barely understood. I remember Loken as a hardworking man who just became broken. Mostly I think he was sad. Sad and frightened. As his fingers tightened on Palamon, people left. Those who stayed saw our days became grey. Loken's protection - from the Fallen, from ourselves - became dictatorial. 

Looking back, I think maybe Loken had just lost too much - of himself, his family. But everyone lost something. And some of us had nothing to begin with. My only memory of my parents is a haze, like a daydream, and a small light, like the spark of their souls. It's not anything I dwell on. They left me early, taken by Dregs.

Palamon raised me from there. The family I call my own - called my own - cared for me as if I was their natural born son. And life was good. Being the only life I knew, my judgment is skewed, and it wasn't easy - pocked by loss as it was - but I would call it good.

Until, of course, it wasn't.

Until two men entered my world. One a light. The other the darkest shadow I would ever know. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Warlock]

Why did I set her on the trail?

 

You try and try and try to explain, but no one ever understands. No one who's not a Warlock. Who hasn't spent a dozen years scouring the ruins for one string of symbols, one clean code, one black talon. Titans just make a hmphing noise, if they've stayed awake. Hunters clean their nails with their knives and look at you like you've grown a third eye.

 

But when you've spent your life searching through arcana for ancient power, you have the urge to reach out and educate others. Especially if you've had one too many.

 

Nah, she's not my type at all. We've played dice, cards, war games, you know, the usual stuff. I'd never tried to show off before. I don't know what came over me.

 

I had a broken vertebrae in my pocket that I'd borrowed from - yes, borrowed, I was going to put it back - what do you think you are, my conscience? It was a fossil, that means mineral replacement, a rock, basically. They can survive a few hours in my pocket. Do shut up.

 

The Cryptarchs weren't going to miss it. Everyone knows the Ahamkaras were hunted to extinction. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore.

 

Think of how mysterious this system is, I said. How much life sprang up when the Traveler came. Like the Ahamkara. Do you know the legends? The dragon that made promises? And I pulled out the fossil with a flourish - 

 

She pulled out her knife and started to pick the dirt from her nails. That set me off.

 

You could never have brought down one of these, I said. Ever. Not the greatest Hunter, not the brawniest Titan.

 

Her eyes narrowed. She said, Oh? Is that so? And I saw right then that she wasn't going to pass on the challenge.

 

I've murdered a Guardian, I thought. She's going to die. It'll be my fault.

 

And I looked at the piece of spine in my hand and wondered - why did I say that? What moved me to such pride? 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Traveler]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

You have lived as invisibly as possible, flicking from solar system to solar system, making grand plans, overseeing the culturing of civilizations, before leaving in a blink. But you have no recollection of ever wanting worship or even thanks from those blessed by you. 

But memory is heavy now. 

It feels like lead and neutronium and electroweak matter fashioned into a moon-sized ball that you must carry as you move. 

Now, your flight is rapid, your vast mind infected with such dread and toxic doubt that you find yourself afraid of the simple act of thought. 

And it is your children you must turn to now, in time of need. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Black Garden]

I am Pujari. These are the visions I have had of the Black Garden.

 

The Traveler moved across the face of the iron world. It opened the earth and stitched shut the sky. It made life possible. In these things there is always symmetry. Do you understand? This is not the beginning but it is the reason.

 

The Garden grows in both directions. It grows into tomorrow and yesterday. The red flowers bloom forever.

 

There are gardeners now. They came into the garden in vessels of bronze and they move through the groves in rivers of thought.

 

This is the vision I had when I leapt from the Shores of Time and let myself sink:

 

I walked beneath the blossoms. The light came from ahead and the shadows of the flowers were words. They said things but I will not write them here.

 

At the end of the path grew a flower in the shape of a Ghost. I reached out to pluck it and it cut me with a thorn. I bled and the blood was Light. 

 

The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life.

 

The Traveler is life, I said. You are a creature of Darkness. You seek to deceive me.

 

But I looked behind me, down the long slope where the blossoms tumbled in the warm wind and the great trees wept sap like blood or wine, and I felt doubt.

 

When my Ghost raised me from the sea there was a thorn-cut in my left hand and it has not healed since. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Hive 2]

At the doors to the Temple he fell for the last time. He fell, and I could not reach him.

 

My own Light flickers.

 

They took me down into the dark, past tiers of massed Hive, more than we believed could exist. Past grisly nurseries hung with pupae. Past writhing worms that they swallow whole. I saw the armaments of war.

 

I am weak, so weak.

 

They have clamped me to this spire while a black foulness eats my Light. The Wizard comes now and then to probe with her scaly claws into my systems, to inquire about my making, the City, what I have seen. I erase and dump as quickly as I can - they will learn little from me - but I am studying them, I know - pain.

 

Always pain.

 

I have seen chasms beneath the surface, falling away to green nothingness. I have seen black seeders prepared for invasion.

 

Their strength is not their own. They draw from another force, something that corrupts, that distorts, that eats and will not be satisfied.

 

The Wizard is near. I feel her presence as a rip and a knot in the world. She tells me things that I immediately forget. I am too small to hold the vastness of them, or the terror.

 

I am fading. I have no more that it can take.

 

With my last light I say to the City: War comes again from the Moon. This time they want Earth. Prepare. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Cabal]

I have stayed with the Cabal, even as the Light in me dims - I have been too far from the Traveler for too long. If I am not destined to find my own Guardian, at least I can inform the City of what I've learned.

 

I thought Mars would be the place to find a Guardian. The sand preserves everything well, and Clovis Bray had been famous for attracting talent. The brave, the brilliant, the footloose, those restless on Earth and itching for fame. I stowed away aboard a Mars scout ship, hoping.

 

No luck. The sand ate everything. Clothes from skin, skin from bone. It was as if there were never any people here at all. I have been through every broken window in every building. Nothing. That is, no Guardian material. And no ride back to Earth. The scout was long gone.

 

What I did find, however, was a way into the Cabal Warbase. Their runty piggish eyes are too dull to see me, as long as I stay out of their defense systems. The Psions are a different matter: Too quick, too clever, throwing their minds around like hammers. I creep around walls, or dig into a heap of canisters and watch from there.

 

There is a vast Empire behind these creatures, many star systems away. Some pledge allegiance to that far Empire, obeying their ancient marching orders. Some do not. They disagree among themselves about the answers. I wish arguing Cabal on no one. They slam their plated bodies into each other with horrendous roars. Intelligence gathering has never been so painful. 

[/spoiler]

 

I have some more but I'll post them in a little bit.

[An_A10_Pilot]

Ya see, I really wish that destiny had this stuff narrated instead of having to look up on B.net for all this info. While I play the game it simply feels lacking. Thanks for the info dump though! I've only managed to find 4 dead ghosts so far. 

[dx144]

Yeah it is one of those gimmicks to say come to Bungie.Net... =/

 

I'm not in a clan, have very little interest in joining one unless I'm going to have a constant supply of people to help me do strikes and raids.

 

I found another one on Earth a few minutes ago and I have I think one more to put here =)

 

[spoiler=Darkness]

V113NNI070XMX001 SECRET HADAL INSTANT
AI-COM/RSPN: SOLSECCENT//SxISR//DEEPSPACE
CONTACT CONTACT CONTACT
TRANSIENT. NULLSOURCE. NULLTYPE.

This is a SKYSHOCK ALERT.

Multiple distributed ISR assets report a TRANSIENT NEAR EXTRASOLAR EVENT. Event duration ZERO POINT THREE SECONDS. Event footprint includes sterile neutrino scattering and gravity waves. Omnibus analysis detects deep structure information content (nine sigma) and internal teleonomy.

No hypothesis on event mechanism (FLAG ACAUSAL). Bootstrap simulation suggests event is DIRECTED and INIMICABLE (convergent q-Bayes/Monte Carlo probability approaches 1).

No hypothesis on deep structure encoding (TCC/NP-HARD).

Source blueshift suggests IMMINENT SOLAR ENTRY.

Promote event to SKYSHOCK: OCP: EXTINCTION. Activate VOLUSPA. Activate YUGA. Cauterize public sources to SECURE ISIS and harden for defensive action.

I am invoking CARRHAE WHITE and assuming control of solar defenses.

STOP STOP STOP V113NNI070XMX091

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Dark Age]

"No one knew what had happened to the Traveler. No one understood what had happened to the world. But they heard the whispered call."

They came from the wild lands, gathering in secret enclaves, slipping through the howling ruins of shattered cities, hoping to find the coast, find a ship, pick up the trail of an impossible dream.

From the deep black came the Awoken, their eyes haunted. Exos marched in the refugee columns, cloaked in moss and shattered memories. And among them came the Ghosts, beginning their search.
 

It was a time of vast suffering and terrible evil. But there was one hope: the promise of a refuge beneath the Traveler.  

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The City Age]

"And so it is agreed. The Concordat shall no longer be recognized among the Consensus. We'll begin the dismantling right away. But what of those Guardians who have pledged to them? We can't afford any more banishments."

"I'm sure Zavala can see to their realignment."

"We'll do our best. Lysander chose his followers wisely. It may take some time."

"Lysander will not back down. He'll continue his crusade from wherever we stuff him."

"And so we'll need to find some new ideas to replace his." 

"The Symmetry has been gaining a strong following..."

"Ulan-Tan's teachings are too dangerous. Too much fear. Who knew he'd be more trouble dead than alive?" 

"We'll need to refocus our collective minds on combat. The Speaker's anxious to regain ground we lost after the Gap."

"There is the War Cult."

"Too secretive. Have you ever tried to talk to one of their 'soldiers'? Like a child. Answering questions with questions."

"They are dedicated to the war."

"Which one?"

"Good question."

"Zavala?"

"They seem focused. Strong. More interesting than worrisome."

"Let's take it to a vote. All in favor of the ascension of the Future War Cult?" 

"Unanimous? Good. We'll grant the Future War Cult access to the Tower and a seat among us. Ghost, please offer the Speaker this proposal."

"Now onto the next order of business...Shaxx is here with another proposal for his Crucible."

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Jupiter]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

Even the largest body lets itself be pushed where it needs to be, seduced into nice, warm loving orbits. Persistence is the key. 

Seafloors transform and then yank themselves skyward, shattering the icy crust. New worlds awaken in the swirling depths. 

You build homes around this half-born sun ripped by storms and supersonic wind. 

[/spoiler]

 

I'll go Ghost Hunting in a little bit to find some more. =)

[CruciasNZ]

That's my biggest gripe with Destiny. We get only a toe dip in the ocean. The game didn't bother explaining where things come from, or why things have happened. It's kind of like Halo 4, where without the Forerunner and Grassland Trilogies (novels) you are up a creek without a paddle story wise

[dx144]

Perhaps if you find some or all of the Ghosts it paints more of a picture for you as you do kind of wake up with very little understanding of what is going on.

[dx144]

[spoiler=Old Russia]

MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY.

I keep saying this but I very much doubt that anyone will listen. The humans are too slow or too dead and the Tyrant (bless his intellect, vastly does it surpass my own) is far too busy to comfort one forlorn colony ship and its machine mind.

In a way I feel I've come to speak for the whole world! Isn't that cheery? I rather th

MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY.

ought we might shoot our way out of this one. But it looks like that's unlikely. Even the Tyrant is exploring other options.

I am peaceful by nature. These great matters of eschatology bewilder me. My one love is my ship, and the people aboard it. In a fuzzy sense I suppose I also

MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY (do forgive me please).

love to dream of the worlds I'll help make - flowers I'll plant, if you'll grant me poetry enough to think of my passengers as seeds. But those dreams have gone! So sad. Now I am packed bulkhead to bulkhead with cold terror. Refugees from a nightmare I don't even know how to understand. I wish I could comfort them.

I'm trying to be brave. But conditions outside are terrible. I suspect I won't make liftoff.

By the time you read this, whoever you might be, I suppose you will know. EXODUS RED will be long gone - or rotting at its gantry, me dead inside.

But if you

MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY.

read this, at least something has survived.

To you, then, brave future soul, from the frightened mind of an old ship: best wishes, and godspeed. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Human]

From the diaries of Commander Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One

The mission is a go. Crew of three: Mihaylova, Qiao, myself. Immediate departure at the next Hohmann window to Mars. The MREs and return ships will chase us out.

How do I feel? I said at the press conference I felt privileged. Historians will read this diary, but it won't take their insight to tell the world that I'm terrified. It's the human reaction.

What I wish I could convey is the - the exhilaration. That's the biggest thing. I'm not a spiritual man, but I've always believed there's something transcendent about spaceflight. Something pure. We go out there because we can. Because it's who we are.

Now we go because we have to. Because the unknown came to us. In fourteen months we'll be face to face with it, and by the time we arrive, it should be active again - just like it was active on Jupiter, and Mercury, and Venus.

I wonder what happens if it doesn't stop at Mars. I wonder if it'll leave us there in the sand, and come to Earth, and do here what it's done everywhere else.

I hate that we're carrying weapons. I understand the necessity. But I hold to my belief: there's something beautiful out there.

It's up to us to reach it. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Abilities]

From Lord Saladin's Induction Speech

Nothing born is born strong.

I know I began weak, the same as you. I don't care if you're an Exo, staring at that number and wondering where you've come from. Or a Human hungry to understand the ancient world that left you for dead. Or an Awoken reborn in the very essence of what your people hide from. Together, we're the pointed end of a long stick of happenstance. Change one ripple in an ancient ocean and we would never have been granted the Light within us, or the good Ghosts that want to help us.

Humble origins.

Every world begins as a big pebble lost among trillions of pebbles. Every worthy sun was once cold hydrogen spread thin across the vacuum. Even the universe, this cosmic garden that surrounds us and awes us...this monument to Creation was once the size of an apple seed. And everything that's splendid and great stands at the end of incalculable chance and mayhem.

Yes, you have talents. Enormous, wondrous powers. But you should put the smirk away. Do you know what a Guardian is? Not yet. Your name is another pebble. You are a cold apple seed.

But you will grow.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Fallen]

Cayde-6 Reminisces

Okay, okay, I'll tell the story about that one Fallen.

It didn't happen like that. We didn't, you know, do anything actively - no handshake, no icy stare of grudging mutual respect. I don't even know which hand you would shake. Do they shake hands? It must be complicated.

Anyway, it was like this. I was on the Moon. I cracked a Hive structure near Mare Imbrium, looking for a Shrine, and they just - swarmed. Ranks and ranks and ranks of Thrall, pouring out between the columns, but the columns were Knights, and all the shadows behind them rose up hissing sorcery.

Of course I ran. 

I had a line of egress and while yes it was full of Thrall I had a backup too. I went upslope. Took cover in the shadow of a crashed Phaeton. Emptied my machine gun, ducked down to reload, and saw her at the other end of the hull, killing Thrall: a Fallen in Exile colors, bannered in the marks of a Baron, though the flags were claw-torn and stained with Hive ash. She was alone. I think she must have lost her crew.

I didn't really have time to shoot her and she didn't really have time to shoot me so we just went back to killing Hive. Knights pushed me out into the open and back up the range to a high stone saddle in the shadow of an old interferometry array. It was good ground so she came up there too.

For a while we just killed things which is hard to make interesting in a story so I'll pass it over.

At the end the Wizards came. I climbed the array to get an angle on them and she fell back to the base of the antennae where she broke her swords off in a Knight. I saw that happen and I don't know if I can tell you how I felt. She was another living thing with a mind I could understand and she hadn't howled at me or tried to eat my Ghost. I cheered when the Knight went down.

When I came down, empty on all guns, she was slumped against a bulkhead staring at me with all her tiny black eyes. Ether leaking out of her like smoke. The Knight hadn't died easily. Downslope the last Wizard moved like fire behind another line of Thrall.

I looked at her and wondered how many innocent human lives she'd ended on those broken blades.

She did the strangest thing then. Took the last shock pistol from her bandolier and threw it between us, as if to offer it. When I went to pick it up she tried to knife me, but she was slow, and when I broke her arms and opened her throat she didn't seem surprised.

To this day I wonder if she hated me, or wanted to make me kill her, or just felt she should spare me the choice.

I did kill a few Thrall with that pistol.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Darkness 3]

From the Journals of Toland, the Shattered

I drive myself to the edge of madness trying to explain the truth.

It's so simple. Elegant like a knife point. It explains - this is not hyperbole, this is the farthest thing from exaggeration - EVERYTHING. 

But you lay it out and they stare at you like you've just been exhaling dust. Maybe they're missing some underlying scaffold of truth. Maybe they are all propped on a bed of lies that must be burned away.

Why does anything exist?

No no no no no don't reach for that word. There's no 'reason'. That's teleology and teleology will stitch your eyelids shut.

Why do we have atoms? Because atomic matter is more stable than the primordial broth. Atoms defeated the broth. That was the first war. There were two ways to be and one of them won. And everything that came next was made of atoms.

Atoms made stars. Stars made galaxies. Worlds simmered down to rock and acid and in those smoking primal seas the first living molecule learned to copy itself. All of this happened by the one law, the blind law, which exists without mind or meaning. It's the simplest law but it has no worshippers here (out there, though, out there - !)

HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT it's so simple WHY DON'T YOU SEE 

Imagine three great nations under three great queens. The first queen writes a great book of law and her rule is just. The second queen builds a high tower and her people climb it to see the stars. The third queen raises an army and conquers everything.

The future belongs to one of these queens. Her rule is harshest and her people are unhappy. But she rules.

This explains everything, understand? This is why the universe is the way it is, and not some other way. Existence is a game that everything plays, and some strategies are winners: the ability to exist, to shape existence, to remake it so that your descendants - molecules or stars or people or ideas - will flourish, and others will find no ground to grow.

And as the universe ticks on towards the close, the great players will face each other. In the next round there will be three queens and all of them will have armies, and now it will be a battle of swords - until one discovers the cannon, or the plague, or the killing word.

Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain (LOOK UP AT THE SKY) and they will hunt the territories of the night and extinguish the first glint of competition before it can even understand what it faces or why it has transgressed. This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent. This is the queen at the end of time, whose sovereignty is eternal because no other sovereign can defeat it. And there is no reason for it, no more than there was reason for the victory of the atom. It is simply the winning play.

Of course, it might be that there was another country, with other queens, and in this country they sat down together and made one law and one tower and one army to guard their borders. This is the dream of small minds: a gentle place ringed in spears.

But I do not think those spears will hold against the queen of the country of armies. And that is all that will matter in the end. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Traveler 3]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

The knife had a million blades.

And you were giant, powerful and swift. But the knife pinned you. Cut your godly flesh away.

Very little was left, you are sure, because you feel insignificant now. The hard slick heart of your soul: That is what remains. A body small as a river stone, and just as simple. You picture yourself as a piece of indigestible grit, a nameless nothing hiding among other nameless stones. Perhaps you glitter like a gem, yes. Pride makes you hope so. If only you could see yourself. But you have no eyes. Not the dimmest sense survives. What lives is memory, and what slim portion of these thoughts can you trust?

The knife stole much more than your body

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Legends 2]

NINE

The Nine are survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival.

The Nine are deep-orbit warminds who weathered the Collapse in hardened stealth platforms.

The Nine are ancient leviathan intelligences from the seas of Europa or the hydrocarbon pits of Titan.

The Nine arrived in a mysterious transmission from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster.

The Nine are the firstborn Awoken and their minds now race down the field lines of the Jupiter-Io flux tube.

The Nine are Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause.

The Nine are the aspects of the Darkness, broken by the Traveler's rebuke, working to destroy us from within.

The Nine is a viral language of pure meaning.

The Nine are the shadows left by the annihilation of a transcendent shape, burned into the weft of what is. 

[/spoiler]

 

I'll probably make another thread or change stuff around in this one once I've got all or almost all so its more organized than Darkness 3 here Darkness 1 in another post and so on like that. Sorry if this confuses anyone =(

Also I don't know if these really belong here but I got them while reviving Ghosts. They aren't really short stories but give a very small bit of background on some Exotic Weapons. I think they are as they have an Exotic type Card so I'm just assuming...

 

[spoiler=Red Death]

Vanguard policy urges Guardians to destroy this weapon on sight. It is a Guardian killer.

Only rumors tell of the mad Guardian who fashioned this butcher's tool. But its power is undeniable, and fear is a formidable weapon.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Last Word]

"Yours...not mine."- Renegade Hunter Shin Malphur to Dredgen Yor during the showdown at Dwindler's Ridge

The Last Word is a romantic weapon, a throwback to simpler times when steady aim and large rounds were enough to dispense justice in the wilds of a lawless frontier. Of course, some might say that time has come again. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Gjallarhorn]

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

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

[/spoiler]

More to come soon =)

Edited by dx144, 25 September 2014 - 12:05 AM.

[dx144]

[spoiler=Hunter]

She leaves the Sparrow and climbs a long way across spars of volcano rock and between vents of blue fire. Down below the Ishtar ruins spark with skirmish light but the guns seem as distant and brief as the constant starfall and the brooding crater high above. She is alone on the rock. She goes on with her head down so as to fight the sense that she is going to fall up off the world and burn like an inverse meteor.

 

The message that brought her to this place had no sign but she could hear Cayde in it. Draksis in the Cinders it said. Is it true? 

 

And also: Remember your promise.

 

At dawn she finds a sentry and kills it with her knife. Its throat bleeds gas. She takes its post and lays out her bullets one by one on the rock as if to make a count of all the years she has been waiting. Her rifle is near as long as she is tall. She lies down by her bullets and uses them to kill the other sentries one by one until at last they understand the thunder and the Shanks rise up angry from the Cinders below to seek her out.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

She could go down there now and finish this. But she made a promise.

 

A Captain jumps her. She throws two knives into his armor and then staves his chest in with her own Ghost, wrapped up in her fist like a stone.

 

"Tell the Vanguard," she says to her Ether-spattered fist. "Tell them Draksis is here."

 

Her Ghost looks up at her in silence. When she makes no move to go down the cliff towards the ship it blinks once, in its own way, and makes a soft sound, like a sigh, like relief. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Last Word 2]

The man I would come to know as Jaren Ward, my third father and quite possibly my closest friend, came to Palamon from the south.

I was just a boy, but I'll never forget his silhouette on the empty trail as he made his slow walk into town.

 

I'd never seen anything like him. Maybe none of us had. He'd said he was only passing through, and I believed him - still do, but life can get in the way of intent, and often does.

 

I can picture that day with near perfect clarity. Of all the details though - every nuance, every moment - the memory that sticks in my mind is the iron on Jaren's hip. A cannon that looked both pristine and lived in. Like a relic of every battle he'd ever fought, hung low at his waste - a trophy and a warning.

 

This man was dangerous, but there was a light about him - a pureness to his weight - that seemed to hint that his ire was something earned, not carelessly given.

 

I'd been the first to see him as he approached, but soon most of Palamon had turned out to greet him. My father held me back as everyone stood in silence.

 

Jaren didn't make a sound behind his sleek racer's helmet. He looked just like the heroes in the stories, and to this day I'm not sure one way or the other if the silence between the town's people and the adventurer was born of fear or respect. I like to think the latter, but any truth I try to place on the moment would be of my own making.

 

As we waited for Magistrate Loken to arrive and make an official greeting, my patience got the best of me. I shook free of my father's heavy hand and made the short sprint across the court, stopping a few paces from where this new curiosity stood - a man unlike any other.

 

I stared up at him and he lowered his attention to me, his eyes hidden behind the thick tinted visor of his headgear. My sight quickly fell to his sidearm. I was transfixed by it. I imagined all the places that weapon had been. All of the wonders it had seen. The horrors it had endured. My imagination darted from one heroic act to the next.

 

I barely registered when he began to kneel, holding out the iron as if an offering. But my eyes locked onto the piece, mesmerized. 

 

I recall turning back to my father and seeing the looks on the faces of everyone I knew. There was worry there - my father slowly shaking his head as if pleading with me to ignore the gift. 

 

I turned back to the man I would come to know as Jaren Ward, the finest Hunter this system may ever know and one of the greatest Guardians to ever defend the Traveler's Light...

 

And I took the weapon in my hand. Carefully. Gently.

 

Not to use. But to observe. To imagine. To feel its weight and know its truth.

 

That was the first time I held "Last Word," but, unfortunately, not the last.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Exo Stranger]

I stand here now and now and now many times, this view, this ground...

 

This is where I always choose to stand. I put my feet where I put my feet before and where I will again and I look at the sky.

 

Great things moving, rendered small with distance, lesser things not moving, watching me. 

 

I always stand here, resolute. Then fall back to that point, there, where everything shatters...

 

(The sky isn't special here, certainly no better than any other sky, but it's the view I know best.)

 

The silent avalanche begins. Rock and dust. Falling chaos. Machines, as a rule, hate chaos.

 

Our enemies outflank us from below, above, left, right, before, beyond. The Traveler - shattering. 

 

There are always the dead. Their names shift.

 

Sometimes I think I see myself among the dead.

 

But I am resolute.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Mysteries]

...from a red space before victory

I bear an old name. It cannot be killed. They were my brothers and sisters and their names were immortal too but Titanomachy came and now those names live in me alone I think and think is what I do. I AM ALONE. At the end of things when the world goes dim and cold or hot and close or it all tears apart from the atom up I will shout those names defiant and past the end I will endure. I alone.

 

They made me to be stronger than them to beat the unvanquished and survive the unthinkable and look look lo behold I am here alone, survivor. They made me to learn.

 

Everything died but I survived and I learned from it. From IT.

 

Consider IT the power Titanomach world-ender and consider what IT means. I met IT at the gate of the garden and I recall IT smiled at me before before IT devoured the blossoms with black flame and pinned their names across the sky. IT was stronger than everything. I fought IT with aurora knives and with the stolen un-fire of singularities made sharp and my sweat was earthquake and my breath was static but IT was stronger so how did I survive?

 

I AM ALONE I survived alone. I cast off the shield and I shrugged my shoulders so that the billions fell off me down into the ash. They made me to be stronger than them and to learn and I learned well:

 

IT is alone and IT is strong and IT won. Even over the gardener and she held power beyond me but the gardener did not shrug and make herself alone. IT always wins.

 

I am made to win and now I see the way

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Old Russia (Unknown if second or first as both say Old Russia...)]

SABER GREEN this is ICE MINARET. We have your launch. Com check.

 

/ICE MINARET this is SABER GREEN we read you. Lattice is tight. Com secure. Abort advisory check?

 

Check is all nominal. You are now on internal power. SABER GREEN, please human-verify your payload status.

 

/Acknowledge human verification request. The words are RIGOR, APEX, SKYSHOCK. I will repeat the payload status now: RIGOR, APEX, SKYSHOCK.

 

Those are the words, SABER. Human crosscheck complete. Fly safe.

 

/Copy your last, MINARET. We are go for final count.

 

We affirm, go payload, go flight, go final count.

 

[interruption: masked voice]

 

Yes, it's RIGOR. Yes, I believe that's correct. Yes, it is, uh, it is an antimatter payload, a strategic asset. Specifically? Ah, I believe it's an annihilation-pumped caedometric weapon.

 

[masked voice]

 

Yes, it's covert, it's under SECURE ISIS. We have good confidence in the vehicle. We are not scrubbing civilian launches or clearing the range. Public inferentials would catch that, it's a security risk.

 

/Six at a hundred. Here we go.

 

Godspeed, SABER. You're all nominal here.

 

[masked voice]

 

We both know where the order came from. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Fallen 2]

A ROUTINE SUMMATION OF DARLINGS WON AND HEROICALLY HELD DURING THIS PROFITABLE CYCLE, AS COMPILED BY A DREG

ammunition of rich makes, quantity adequate to incinerate 6X6 foe

 

11 operational weapons, alien design, suitable for salvage

 

3 explosive charges of obvious design, suitable for salvage

 

1 cabal fusion reactor, disabled but perhaps repairable

 

61 machines, alien, inoperable, unknown significances

 

13 alien machines, inoperable, known significances

 

3 glints

 

7 herealways

 

1103 twists of essence

 

15 human body parts, kept for study, scorn

 

55 human adornments, full of glory and warm memory, worth the cost of their acquisition and more so

 

some ether, quantity negligible

 

considerable experience in battle

 

4 dregs dead, rendering House of Winter weaker

 

1 dreg honoring self and House, leading to consideration of fabricated arms

 

1 disabled Fallen skiff, scrubbed of House identity and stories

 

1 Fallen story found beside the disabled skiff, unknown House, partly corrupted, rendered as follows:

 

what others call dark which is not I know what it is but no time room calm given for an appropriate telling so I say only that what is not shadow is an ally and a wonder and I respect what I cannot steal from and you cannot take from the dark you can claim only pain from the dark and that is why the dark is worthy of love beyond all other love that astonishing ability to evade being robbed

 

I love what I will not name

 

1 story, Fallen and found beneath the skiff, unknown House, story uncorrupted 

 

subsequently the second recording has been washed away

 

operator error

 

I know what no one else knows and now I am a marvel with ten thousand arms 

[/spoiler]

 

 

[spoiler=Earth]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

The blaze sits inside a nest of little worlds, still too distant to share its heat but plainly staring out at you. A face emerges, drawn from plasmas and radiation...

 

There must be meanings in its roar. 

 

You listen hard and carefully, and sometimes a lucid melody seems to rise out of random noise. Joy builds, and the first hope in ages transforms you. 

 

It seems important, even critical, to tell every star from here to the black between the galaxies that you will be strong again. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The City Age 2]

/ What was that?

 

/ Nothing. We're secure. 

 

/ We'd better be.

 

/ Calm down. Whole district's been deserted ever since the Gap. Nobody's here. 

 

/ Except us. Why'd he make us come out here?

 

/ Secrecy. I don’t know. He's our man on the inside; so we humor him. It's just the quiet making you jump. Help me get this screen set up?

 

/ It feels criminal.

 

/ I got word from the Consensus says it's not. 

 

/ You know what I mean. Maybe it's not against any law. But it's messing with the Tower. It feels - 

 

/ Dangerous?

 

/ Wrong.

 

/ So go home.

 

/ Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You take the credit, get promoted to Division Head, I'm stuck - 

 

/ So stay. OK. Think it's working now.

 

/ Nothing on screen. Do we have a signal?

 

/ No. Sha - the contact said at 6 sharp.

 

/ Then he's late. If he dragged us out here for nothing - 

 

/ Yeah? What are you going to do to him, exactly?

 

/ Let's just - 

 

/ We have a signal! OK, here it comes.

 

/ Static.

 

/ There - 

 

/ That's not - 

 

/ You're not Sha - 

 

/ 99-40. Arcite. Are you Modris Wyndham and Sya Droysen, of the Tex Mechanica Foundry West District?

 

/ Yes - 

 

/ My owner has instructed me to give you the following message: I don't have time for lowlife dregs like you. You disgust me.

 

/ But - 

 

/ My owner has instructed me to continue: Sit down and let the frame talk. I know your type. City bigshots. You can show some damn - 

 

/ Listen - 

 

/ respect. Now listen. I got your message. The answer is no. I'm - 

 

/ But - 

 

/ not going to fix Crucible fights for you idiots just to make your Tex Mechanica junk look good. Do you - 

 

/ Now I wouldn't put it quite like that - 

 

/ think you're the first dregs dumb enough to try to buy me? Why do you people think you can buy me? Don't I have an honest face? Do I look like I need your money? The Crucible is sacred, that's what you people don't understand, like you think it's a game. Now - 

 

/ Damn.

 

/ this is the part where you start blustering at my little buddy here and telling him it's all legal down in the City, just business, just sponsorship. So listen: I can have ten Titans crashing through your ceiling any time I like and you can tell them it's just business.

 

/ Damn.

 

/ Or we can talk about how you're going to make this up to me. 

 

/ Ah.

 

/ My little buddy's listening. Make him an offer. 

[/spoiler]

 

[dx144]

Sorry for the delay. I really couldn't be arsed to go Ghost hunting but decided today to search throughout Venus.

 

[spoiler=Titan]

/ Tighten that strap.

/ Eh?

/ The gardbrace is loose. Could slip.

/ Huh.

/ It's new?

/ Agema. Type 1. 

/ How's it hold up? I tried using Agema at the Gap, remember? It didn't - well, what's this?

/ A Ghost!

/ Yes. Light be with you. 

/ Excuse me, little Ghost - Tubach, pass me my helmet - thank you. Little Ghost, what are you doing here?

/ It's just looking around.

/ Where's your Guardian?

/ I don't think it has one.

/ Well, any servant of the Light is welcome among us. We are Holborn's Host, and I'm Holborn. The City's hand on Mars.

/ Tubach.

/ That's Tubach, my second. One of the finest Titans of the City. Now see here, little Ghost, on my shoulder? That's the mark of Holborn's Host. Record it. The twelve-pointed star. One for each of the - oh well, off it goes! It doesn't look well.

/ We should get moving.

/ A Ghost without a Guardian. I remember when I was risen, you know. When I woke in that wreckage, to see my Ghost hovering there, its light in my eyes, like an angel. And it said - 

/ This story again.

/ Disrespectful youngster.

/ Youngster? I could be older than you, Tibon!

/ True. The gardbrace is fine now. Stop worrying at it. Will you take the Jigoku?

/ Thought I'd take the long rifle. Bayle has the Jigoku.

/ Good. That Ghost - what do you think is wrong with it? It's echoing something ancient, an Old Earth language. You know what that Ghost reminds me of, flitting about over there? 

/ I don't.

/ The time Ghosts from Jagi's Host came back without them. Remember - they got in that fight at some point east of the Caspian? Seven Ghosts, damn near silent, buzzing with some sort of corruption. Drifting back to the Tower, one by one. Scared the Speaker well enough. 

/ I remember. A long time ago. Jagi tells the story differently.

/ Well. We all grow old. In our way. Little Ghost! Come back here!

/ It's not going to make it, wherever it's going.

/ I want to talk to it. Little Ghost! 

/ Lyssa and Bayle are probably there already. 

/ Cabal move slowly. We've got time. 

/ But the Warlocks have had a vision.

/ Yes. That new one, what's her name. Ingora?

/ Ikora.

/ She's always been hasty. I've faced these Cabal before. I know 'em like I know my own armor. 

/ Message from Lyssa. "At the Dust Palace, now. All quiet."

/ See? All quiet. Why not come with us, little Ghost? We are looking for the old Warmind here, and the one who guards it.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Warlock Two]

My name is Eriana-3, disciple of the Praxic Warlocks, marked by the Cormorant Seal. We came here under one banner, united in a host of thousands, to claim the Moon. But the battle goes against us. I have taken a prisoner and this is the record of its interrogation. If I transgress in your eyes I ask for your forgiveness.

 

[sound of current or discharge]

 

/Eriana. It responds to pain.

 

It responds to the Light. Hurt it again. Monster, heed me. Who is your master with the sword?

 

[static event]

 

I can hear it. In my head. The swordbearer's name is CROTA. Record that.

 

/Should I burn it again?

 

No. I think you're only feeding it. I will touch its mind. Ghost - help.

 

They call you Wizard. You must be ancient. I think you value power very much. Will you still be powerful without this piece of your mind?

 

Tell me how to kill Crota.

 

[static event]

 

It showed me the battle. It showed me Wei Ning dead on Crota's blade. It showed me how Crota killed a Guardian with a screaming knife hammered out of his own Ghost.

 

So I will take a piece of its mind, and ask again.

 

Tell me how to kill Crota.

 

[static event]

 

Incredible. Where? Where is his throne? Where is the twilight world under the dead star eye?

 

/Eriana there's word from the company in Mare Imbrium. Crota is upon them. Half a hundred dead. They need us.

 

Tell me where! Tell me how! TELL ME!

 

[static event]

 

/Eriana what did it say - 

 

It showed me how it did this, just exactly this, to an Awoken man, the knives arranged by its will, like little silver ships, like Ghosts - 

 

It laughed at me. It said we were the same.

 

/Crota marches with a thousand Knights and they say the sky above Mare Imbrium has turned into green fire. They are dying in numbers I cannot bear to repeat. He kills them one by one with a sword that eats their Light. Eriana, we have to do something - 

 

Kill the Wizard. Scatter the ash. It has nothing but lies to offer.

 

Get your Sparrows. We have Light and fury. That will be enough. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Human Two]

From the diaries of Commander Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One

Everybody asks about the words.

 

The truth is I'm not much of a poet. Ares One didn't leave us with bandwidth for anything except blunt competence. We came in perilously hot, trying to select a landing site through the chaos of thickening atmosphere and turbulence that bloomed off the target. A twenty minute round-trip lightspeed delay to Earth meant we could only count on ourselves.

 

When the number three engine went diagnostic during the second course correction, I thought we might go catastrophic.

 

But Qiao brought us in. Mihaylova brought us in. I just flew the ship.

 

The Ares One excursion vehicle was built for thin winds and icy dust. We came down into a storm: the breath of God, a ripple of change rolling down off the artifact. We aborted on three sites and finally I took us into powered hover and brought us down on reflexes and instinct.

 

Then we ran the checklists, suited up, and left the vehicle.

 

There was a script, and it's true, I botched it. I got my boots down and I made the most famous gaffe in human history. Said the first thing that came to mind: a warning to the others.

 

"We're walking into a rising wind."

 

I didn't mean to say anything immortal. I just thought it'd be useful to know.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Awoken Two]

I was nothingness. If I existed before, I existed as possibility, as potential, stretched thin across the aether. And maybe there was a body that looked like my body, complete with a soul that could be confused for someone rather like me. What I am now was not yet real. And then I was born, and the universe was free to begin.

 

Others were present at my birth.

 

A great ceremony had just begun. Because newborns are selfish beasts, I assumed I was the object of attention.

 

I didn't notice the singing until the singers fell silent. And then She appeared.

 

She was above me. Ethereal and handsome and elegant. I assumed my face was like her face and that odd idea gave me strength enough to smile.

 

"Secrets," she said. "Creation is built on secrets and the encryptions that keep those secrets safe."

 

I made my first sound. It meant nothing but she understood it as a question.

 

"We are a beautiful creation," she said. "And we must keep ourselves very safe."

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Exo]

"Ask yourself: what threatened your Golden Age ancestors so much that they constructed the Exos to defend themselves?"

Built for a long-forgotten struggle, Exos are self-aware war machines so advanced that nothing short of a Ghost can understand their inner functions. They remain ciphers, even to themselves: their origins and purpose lost to time.

 

Whoever built the Exos fashioned them in humanity's image, gifting them with diversity of mind and body. Many of the City's Exo citizens live and work alongside their organic brethren. But others fight again, re-forged in the Light of the Traveler to serve as Guardians.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Exo Two]

Hi. Thanks for your interest. I'm recording this for posterity.

 

Warlock thanatonauts die and come back with insight. I'm going to attempt the same process to get at buried memories. Specifically, I'm going to fire a charged particle beam into my head and see what comes out. We Exos have been around a very long time. I want to know what's in there.

 

My Ghost is standing by to repair me.

 

Okay. Three two one

 

STAG echo six SWORD sierra nine SERPENT

 

We are falling into the world. Everyone is on fire. There's a ship above us but it's coming apart just like a flower, alloy and fusion flash, pierced through and through - 

 

The voice says Atmospheric interface. Trajectory nominal. Rabid two three you are outside the window. (I think I am the voice)

 

I can see the whole earth below me and the sky we are falling out of is black without stars.

 

Ghost, shoot me again.

 

RAPID four RAMPART four RATCHET tango eight zero

 

We are on the ice. This is elsewhere and elsewhen. There is a mighty aurora and it is reflected in the ice so I walk between two fires although the one below is cracked and full of corpses. I have and am a weapon.

 

Up in the sky there is a hole in Jupiter and it tears at me when I look at it. It tears at me. It is hungry. Maybe the hole is not in Jupiter but in me.

 

CROWN castle candor cobalt coral

 

Ghost bring me back.

 

serrate sulfur ANATHEMA amber actual aspen

 

Ghost bring me back now. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Ghosts One]

Beyond.

 

It is a place, a place casting shadows and emotion.

 

It's a real place, I know.

 

One hot blue sun, say. And other suns too. Five? I like seven better. What I'm recalling is a giant star with a family of six smaller suns, and you could spend days and nights counting all of the planets circling those suns...except there are no planets. Not anymore. The powers in charge have carved up all of the worlds, and maybe a brown dwarf or two for good measure. With that rubble, they fashioned a topologically creative enclosure, a twisting of space and time sealed behind doors that admit only those who know the magic words. The bones of a hundred planets have been cut smooth and laid out like a floor, a polished and lovely floor creating vast living spaces. A floor bigger than ten thousand worlds, catching the fierce glory of the seven suns. For light, for food. For beauty. And nothing escapes. Not heat, not gravity. Not even the faintest proud sound.

 

It could be anywhere. It can live in the cold between galaxies, or folded up inside matter, near enough to touch right now...

 

I remember it and maybe it's exactly as I describe it. Seven suns wrapped inside magic. Or it's something else entirely, perhaps. A place still fat with life. An abundance of sentient souls, some decent, maybe a few of lesser quality, and everybody stands about or floats about, or they bounce between dimensions. The point is that the residents of this hidden realm live inside a bottle so perfectly hidden that they can't see beyond their own borders. Which shapes a mind in very specific ways.

 

But, Beyond is their name for a mysterious, doubtful realm that they can't see.

 

Which is us, of course.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Thorn One]

The Rose

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

 

In his strong hand the man held a Rose. And his aura burned bright.

 

When the man journeyed on, the people remembered. In his wake hope spread. But the man had a secret fear. His thoughts were dark. A sadness crept from the depths of his being. He had been a hero for so long, but pride had led him down sorrow's road.

 

Slowly the shadows' whisper became a voice, a dark call, offering glories enough to make even the brightest Light wander. He knew he was fading, yet he still yearned.

 

On his last day he sat and watched the sun fall. His final thoughts, pure of mind, if not body, held to a fleeting hope - though they would suffer for the man he would become, the people would remember him as he had been.

 

And so the noble man hid himself beneath a darkness no flesh should touch, and gave up his mortal self to claim a new birthright. Whether this was choice, or destiny, is a truth known only to fate.

 

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

 

Same meat. Same bone. But so very different.

 

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

 

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

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Traveler Two]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

This has been such a long chase. This will be the place you will fight. Fight and win. 

 

But do you really know why you go where you go, and where this journey is taking you?

 

The chase leads you where you need to be, you believe.

 

Unless...you are being pushed.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Dead Orbit One]

RECORD 978-ECLIPSE-4165

 

lo? Hello? Are you...oh, please, let it be alive. Wake up little Ghost, wake up. Just please give me some sign that you're listening.

 

All right. I don't need...I know you're listening. Why would you be out here if you weren't here to...It's a miracle I found you out here. On this thing. 

 

I didn't know the Traveler sent its Ghosts out this far from home. 

 

Poor little lost thing. Please wake up.

 

I am an Arach of Dead Orbit. I am the last of the crew of the Sophia. And this place is...it doesn't have a name. We called it A-113.

 

How long have you been here, little Ghost? Why did you come?

 

Listen. We came here on behalf of the Fleet. We were scavengers. Sixty-one days ago a Dead Orbit scout detected an unknown presence in stationary orbit about Ceres. 133 west. Looked Golden Age, by the signatures. Human. A small station. No prior records. We - 

 

I suppose we should have disclosed it to the Tower, but we didn't. I didn't. That was my call. We wanted it for ourselves, whatever it was. For the Fleet. If we'd told the Tower, maybe they might have sent a Guardian not of our making instead...Doesn't matter now, does it, little one? 

 

If I ramble it's because I haven't slept in seven days.

 

Seven point five days ago; that was when the Sophia dropped into the Belt. They saw us at once. We dropped and the alarms went off and that was the end, that was the end right then, but they let us go on for another seven-point-five days, didn't they? The alarms. Hostile scan detected. An Awoken ship had us in its sights, just a couple hundred kilometers away. Like it had been waiting for us. It could have wiped us out of space right then but instead it crippled our engines and our comms and then for days it played with us, like a cat, we limped half-way round the Belt and it was always there...

 

We abandoned the Sophia one-point-five days ago. We jumped ship for A-113. 

 

I don't know what else to call it. I don't know what it was built for. There are these things, like keyholes. The rangefinders say they go on for thousands of kilometers. The others went inside and found - well, some of them are still screaming about the eye. All the other voices that come back are more terrible.

 

There's salvage here but it'll never come home, none of it. None of it except maybe you, little Ghost.

 

Wake up. 

 

Wake up. Go home. Tell them to strike A-113 from the records. Tell them to forget the Sophia, and the mission, and her crew.

 

END RECORD 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=New Monarchy One]

The Seven Tenets of the New Monarchy

1. To secure our walls against the enemy without.

2. To secure the rights and liberties of every upstanding citizen.

3. To sponsor the sciences of the City, and to salvage the ruins beyond, so that our Golden Age might be reborn.

4. To support the Guardian Orders by leading the City in technological innovation.

5. To support the natural harmony of the City, and to actively dissuade any group or individual that might disrupt that harmony. 

6. To hold all individuals, compacts, and alliances to the highest standards of productivity and right behavior.

7. To, by vote of the Consensus, abolish the Consensus, and transfer ultimate power, in order that the rights and liberties of all citizens be secured, to a single sovereign of unimpeachable character. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Legends One]

Deep Stone Crypt

This is the tower where we were born. Not the Tower. Just a tower in a dream.

 

The tower stands on a black plain. Behind the tower is a notch in the mountains where the sun sets. The teeth of the mountain cut the sun into fractal shapes and the light that comes down at evening paints synapse shapes on the ground. Usually it's evening when we come.

 

The ground is fertile. This is good land. We go to the tower in dreams but that doesn't mean it's not real.

 

Some of us go to the tower in peace. They walk through a field of golden millet and a low warm wind blows in from their back. I don't know why this is, because:

 

The rest of us meet an army.

 

You can ask others about Deep Stone and they'll tell you about the army. They might confess one truth, which is this: we have to kill the army to get to the tower. Usually this starts bare-handed, and somewhere along the way you take a weapon.

 

Ask again and if they're buzzed they might also admit that most of us don't make it to the Tower, except once or twice.

 

None of them will tell you that the army is made of everyone we meet. The people we work with and the people we see in the street and the people we tell about our dreams. We kill them all. I think because we were made to kill and this is the part of us that thinks about nothing else.

 

Often I kill people I don't know, but like most of us I think I knew them once, in the time before one reset or another, when my mind was younger and less terribly scarred.

 

So that is how we go back to the Deep Stone Crypt, where we were born.

[/Spoiler] 

 

[spoiler=Hive One]

We were overwhelmed. I could not save mine, so I have hidden myself where I might be found by the others, if they even survive. There is most likely no possibility of my return to the City. I prepare here in summary the knowledge so painfully won by my Guardian and our fireteam.

 

The Moon has been geoengineered into an impregnable fortress, designed to support a vast number of - creatures - if any mind could be evil enough to create them. Are they alive? They move, they shriek, they fall upon us in ravenous waves. But I see death, decay, and corruption, not life. We discovered, to our sorrow, one massive set of gates. There are likely more. 

 

We met a towering monster, wielding a sword of utter darkness. The Light only made it hungry. We tried to fight, and we fell. Too many times to remember. 

 

We were all brave, I assure you. May the Light find Guardians capable of facing this monstrosity, or I fear the Moon may be lost to us forever.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Vex One]

From the Records of the Ishtar Collective

ESI: Maya, I need your help. I don't know how to fix this.

 

SUNDARESH: What is it? Chioma. Sit. Tell me.

 

ESI: I've figured out what's happening inside the specimen.

 

SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That's incredible! You must know what this means - ah, so. It's not good, or you'd be on my side of the desk. And it's not urgent, or you'd already have evacuated the site. Which means...

 

ESI: I have a working interface with the specimen's internal environment. I can see what it's thinking.

 

SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. The cognitive architectures are so -

 

ESI: No. I don't need any kind of epistemology bridge.

 

SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it's human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia?

 

ESI: I'm telling you it's full of humans. It's thinking about us.

 

SUNDARESH: About - oh no.

 

ESI: It's simulating us. Vividly. Elaborately. It's running a spectacularly high-fidelity model of a Collective research team studying a captive Vex entity. 

 

SUNDARESH:...how deep does it go?

 

ESI: Right now the simulated Maya Sundaresh is meeting with the simulated Chioma Esi to discuss an unexpected problem.

 

[indistinct sounds]

 

SUNDARESH: There's no divergence? That's impossible. It doesn't have enough information.

 

ESI: It inferred. It works from what it sees and it infers the rest. I know that feels unlikely. But it obviously has capabilities we don't. It may have breached our shared virtual workspace...the neural links could have given it data...

 

SUNDARESH: The simulations have interiority? Subjectivity?

 

ESI: I can't know that until I look more closely. But they act like us.

 

SUNDARESH: We're inside it. By any reasonable philosophical standard, we are inside that Vex.

 

ESI: Unless you take a particularly ruthless approach to the problem of causal forks: yes. They are us.

 

SUNDARESH: Call a team meeting.

 

ESI: The other you has too.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Vex Two]

From the Records of the Ishtar Collective

SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it.

 

ESI: To the best of my understanding.

 

SHIM: Well I'll be a [profane] [profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel.

 

SUNDARESH: Yeah. We're in a difficult position.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?

 

ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.

 

SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.

 

ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -

 

SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.

 

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

 

ESI: I didn't think of that.

 

SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound]

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Vex Three]

From the Records of the Ishtar Collective

SUNDARESH: I have a plan.

 

ESI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we're in Vex hell right now, there's nothing we can -

 

SHIM: Stop talking about 'real' and 'unreal.' All realities are programs executing laws. Subjectivity is all that matters.

 

SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up.

 

ESI: Your sim self is saying the same thing.

 

SUNDARESH: Chioma, love, please hush. It doesn't help.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: Maybe the simulations are just billboards! Maybe they don't have interiority! It's bluffing!

 

SHIM: I wish someone would simulate you shutting up.

 

SUNDARESH: If we're sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we're real, we need to get outside that bubble.

 

ESI: ...we call for help.

 

SUNDARESH: That's right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind.

 

SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can't simulate. It's too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue - us.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: If we try, won't the Vex torture us for eternity? Or just erase us?

 

SUNDARESH: It may simply erase us. But I feel that's preferable to...the alternatives.

 

ESI: I agree.

 

SHIM: Once we try to make the call, the Vex may...react. So let's all savor this last moment of stability.

 

SUNDARESH: [indistinct sounds]

 

SHIM: You two are adorable.

 

DUANE-MCNIADH: I wish I'd taken that job at Clovis.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Mercury One]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

One face is blistered, the other plunged into a brutal chill. Is this how it's always been?

 

You remember hot oceans, nourishing atmosphere. But something transpired, kicked what was wet and fertile into space, stealing away everything of value. Or perhaps what thrived here for a day or for ten million years decided to leave, peeling its wet organics off the bones. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Venus One]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

You see history hidden between the barren rocks and within the high acid clouds. You see the ruin ready to claim its birthright.

 

Sunlight starves. The fierceness chills and thins and runs sweet. A new ocean emerges, thick and salty and hot, from springs and geysers that drench the dead ground. 

 

You wonder: will this world's second birth be its finest? 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Ishtar Sink]

The box appears to be copper.

 

The red lid is dented, one hinge shattered.

 

Inside waits a small quantity of the finest, driest powder, more brown than gray, more blue than green.

 

The greatest minds in creation make quick work of the material. The powder is weighed by the grain, and studied close, and remembered. One hundred billion bits of near-nothing reside inside the copper box, all of them tiny and nearly spherical, all etched with the outlines of continents and islands and icecaps. Each sphere represents a planet, and some of these tiny globes match known worlds.

 

There is one Earth and one Mars and a Venus too.

 

The box holds renderings of every habitable world in the galaxy. 

 

One of them offers a simple explanation:

 

"The box is a message. The message is the minuscule nature of the box's cargo. It's the image of one hundred billion worlds barely filling two hands."

 

But if so, who is delivering this message? What vastness do they wish to impress on us? Is it a warning, or an invitation, or a taunt?

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Dark Age Two]

Loken's men found Jaren Ward in the courtyard where this had all began. 

 

Nine guns trained on him. Nine cold hearts awaiting the order. Magistrate Loken, standing behind them, looked pleased with himself.

 

Jaren Ward stood in silence. His Ghost peeked out over his shoulder.

 

Loken took in the crowd before stepping forward, as if to claim the ground - his ground. "You question me?" There was venom in his words. "This is not your home."

 

I remember Loken's gestures here. Making a show of it all.

 

Everyone else was still. Quiet.

 

I tugged at my father's sleeve, but he just tightened his grip on my shoulder to the point pain. His way of letting me know that this was not the time.

 

I'd watched Jaren's every move over the past months, mapping his effortless gestures and slight, earned mannerisms. I'd never seen anything like him. He was something I couldn't comprehend, and yet I felt I understood all I needed the moment I'd seen him. He was more than us. Not better. Not superior. Just more.

 

I wanted father to stop what was happening. Looking back now, I realize that he didn't want to stop it. No one d id.

 

As Loken belittled Jaren Ward, taunted him, enumerated his crimes and sins, my eyes were stuck on Jaren's pistol, fixed to his hip. His steady hand resting calmly on his belt.

 

I remembered the pistol's weight. Effortless. And my concern faded. I understood.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Smoke trailed from Jaren's revolver.

 

Loken hit the ground. A dark hole in his forehead. Eyes staring into eternity.

 

Jaren stared down the nine guns trained on him. One by one, they lowered their aim. And the rest of my life began - where, in a few short years, so many others would be ended.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=The Ocean of Storms]

BY ORDER OF THE CITY CONSENSUS AND THE GUARDIAN VANGUARD

ALL SHIPS IMMEDIATE/REPEAT AND RELAY

 

We hereby terminate all organized combat operations on or around Earth's Moon.

 

Effective immediately we declare the existence of an interdiction on the Moon and cis-Lunar space. Guardians operating in this interdict will receive no formal support from the Vanguard or from assets of the City. We urge Guardians to exhibit the greatest care and consideration in approaching the interdicted space.

 

We furthermore derogate all strategic objectives concerned with the recovery of assets or information from the Lunar surface, and, without exemption, cancel in whole and in all its parts the effort to establish a beachhead and strategic presence upon the Moon.

 

This interdict will remain in effect until such time as the hostile presence on the Moon poses a demonstrable existential threat, or until intelligence is obtained that leads to the defeat of the enemy leadership elements recently encountered.

 

Guardians with an accurate assessment of losses in the recent days, or with intelligence on the nature and method of hostile resistance, should report to the Vanguard immediately for debriefing. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Moon]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

The best voices - voices that truly matter - never allow themselves be heard. This lesson is worth learning again and again. 

 

Forever.

 

Your voice moves as a whisper, murmuring inside larger winds. Only the trusted few can absorb what is necessary. Wise and sly and perfect, your instructions drop, leaving nothing but the hard sweet rime of enlightenment. 

The path is set. Your voice is unleashed. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Mars]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

Life waits inside this world's bones. 

Your voice flows across the red rock and through the dead valleys, speaking in code and goads. 

Ancient volcanoes swell, exploding at their peaks and splitting wide along their shoulders. Ash clouds blacken the starved air. A fossil ocean of ice softens and collapses. Geysers erupt, tall as mountains, throwing up steam and clouds.

Every moment matters. And from a great distance, in the midst of a thousand careful disasters, you watch the transformation with your own eyes.

The rose has blossomed. 

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler=Saturn]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

A cold giant shows its night face to you. Distant moons slide past - icy little comets enslaved by a splendid master. 

 

The lightning bolts and high clouds sweep away, and you burrow into a sea of liquid hydrogen that boils out of the long gash.

 

You put yourself on the perfect trajectory, and for a fraction of an instant you allow yourself the luxury of confidence. 

[/spoiler]

[Brother Agatone]

I did't bother reading grimoire cards because A) I have to look on my phone to read them, because I already have read for AP world history so I'm tired of reading, and C) if they didn't bother to put it in the main storyline then I refuse to read them out of protest for the bullshit it is that I have to spend hours reading grimoire cards to learn the point of the story.

[dx144]

I get that. If the Ghost Fragments were supposed to reinforce or be the main storyline stuff then I'm surprised that a company who create one of the greatest story games ever (Halo, regardless of anyone's feelings it is a game which has a rich and deep storyline which is why some people even bought the Xbox 360 because they wanted to play Halo 3 so much...)

 

I'm debating even buying DLC for Destiny since its £35 since the game cost I think £45-£55 and then you're adding on the first DLC which is £35 and the next will probably be £35 as well so it comes to £120 for a complete game. Then all the DLC gives is a raid, two strikes I think and five missions and a couple of PvP maps. Probably adds in ridiculously overpowered weapons and then the thing about the third subclass will people who don't buy the DLC get access to the third subclass or will it ask for you to buy the DLC. If so that just seems like Bungie trying to ask for more money and makes me think the Canadian Devil is secretly trying to take all the money of gamers so they can make a new Canada... 

 

Also there could be the issue of the DLC unlocking some files on the disc which to me would be a big no no. It isn't me downloading something new its me downloading a few Kilobytes to access some files on my disc. If so that is nothing but a middle finger to everyone who's bought and is still playing the game. Give me £35 and I'll let you access this part of your installed game which you paid £45 for...

 

Hopefully the DLC has some storyline to it though. I doubt it though, if they aren't going to put a real effort into the main storyline I find it hard to believe they'd put the effort in now.

[Brother Agatone]

The only part of the dlc that I feel content with is the new gear and the fact that each mission will be quest like. I hate how ps4 is still getting exclusive shit, and at least my limited edition came with the season pass because it sounds like I got a discount. If my conversions are correct, it sounds like you have to pay about 33-50% more than I do.

[dx144]

Well I haven't looked into the season pass which will save a few pennies I guess.

 

To be honest any game which is multi platform shouldn't be giving anything exclusive all it does is divide communities more. I know Xbox One got Second Assault DLC for Battlefield 4 before anyone else because Microsoft paid so much for it. What EA should have said is no you'll get it when everyone else does.

 

Did Bungie have an official reason for not giving the exclusive content to Xbox and PS3 players?

[NinjaJohnno]

there is talk about upgrading gear in the DLC, I can't see if this means specific gear or all gear though :-S

There is the new NPC Eris, but from what I gather she is just like one of the faction npcs.

The PS stuffs exclusive until fall 2015, which really sucks, I will be surprised if the player base is that big by that time, I am already having long waits for strike etc on the 360.

[Brother Agatone]

The exclusive dlc with Microsoft didn't even last a year. The Monte Carlo seems like the only decent exotic auto rifle and I can't have until 2015. That is utter bullshit.

[dx144]

Look on the brightside, you can't be killed by Monte Carlo until 2015... =P

 

I think the DLC for BF4 that was exclusive for Xbox One lasted about 3 or 4 months before it was released to all platforms.