Ragashingo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fox three. Kill. Engagement over.

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

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

Mara does indeed show Sjur mercy:

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

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

Chapters Referenced:
Imponent III
Imponent IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters Referenced:
Imponent I
Imponent II
Imponent III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Osana gives the Diasyrm’s followers an offer:

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

Uldren comes saying something else:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two other interesting things happen immediately after the war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recall, that the Seventh Verdict was:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…or they will be. Next time. 🙂

Chapters Referenced:
Fideicide I
Fideicide II
Fideicide III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s Note: Since this post was made, we’ve learned more about The Nine. We’ll talk about them someday, but for now, they seem completely unrelated to this part of the Awoken’s story. 

Chapters Referenced:
Ecstasiate III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She fires the detach command into the tether.

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

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

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

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

—this.

This is how Alice Li awakens.

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know,” Mara lies. It is the first lie ever told, the first secret kept.

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

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

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

Chapters Referenced:
Cosmogyre IV
Ecstasiate I
Ecstasiate II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters Referenced:
Cosmogyre I
Cosmogyre II
Cosmogyre III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The House of Devils:

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

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

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

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

House of Winter

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

House of Exiles

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

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

House of Wolves

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

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

House of Kings

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

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

The Fallen are abandoning the Cosmodrome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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