Ragashingo, Author at Ragashingo.com

Bite-sized Backstory 35: Betrayal At Cybele

When the Awoken captured Beltrik the Veiled at the Fortuna Plummet, Skolas knew he was running out of options. With no brilliant strategist on his side anymore, Skolas falls back on brute force. For a whole year, Drevis had managed to form an effective blockade of Pallas using only a portion of the fractured House of Wolves. Maybe Skolas figured he could do the same?

For his target, Skolas choose the Awoken “military fortress” of Cybele. Attacking an actual military target might be more difficult, but Skolas was desperate. Maybe he planed to strike a blow at the Awoken’s military power and embarrass all at the same time? A successful siege or defeat of a major Awoken fortification would seem to do the trick. Unfortunately for Skolas, his time had run out. Not because he choose a poor target now, in the present, but because of what he had done in the past.

When Skolas started attacking civilian targets like the Awoken colony of Amethyst, he set off a chain reaction that he did not expect. An Eliksni named Variks who served alongside Skolas as a scribe from the House of Judgement had finally seen enough. As Variks later put it:

Skolas wins control of House Wolves. Attack, attack, attack. Place of learning, place of healing, put to the burn. Then Siege of Pallas. Year of cruelty. Held the line to rescue butchers, murderers, Servitor. Ends with Wolf fleet scattered.

New tactics. Detonations. Blasts in civilian areas. Take the fight to them, he said. Cannot abide the hate. Uprising, they called it. Uprising on Cybele.

(Variks, The Loyal)

So, in order to put a stop to the senseless killing, Variks contacts the Awoken, and alerts them to Skolas’ plan. When Skolas’ forces arrive at Cybele, instead of achieving the element of surprise or even facing an even fight, they are instead immediately flanked and outmaneuvered by all four of the Awoken’s Armada Paladins. Skolas’ forces immediately collapse with some, such as the Kaliks-12 High Servitor, trying to flee. While some probably did manage to slip away, it sounds like the Awoken had Skolas right where they wanted him. By the time the battle was over, Skolas and most of his followers were captured or dead and, aside from a few minor skirmishes, the Reef Wars were finally over.

By betraying Skolas, Variks quite possibly saved the lives of many Eliksni and Awoken. Saving his own people is certainly the primary reason Variks stepped in as doing so was entirely consistent with his status as a member of the Eliksni House of Judgement. Across the Grimoire, we get little peaks at House Judgement’s function within the greater Eliksni society:

“The House of Judgment shall have no ketch, but it will live among the other Houses to guide the kells and keep their secrets.” —Eliksni Pact

(Gone To Ground)

Variks the Loyal remembers an ancient time, and an ancient name: the House of Judgment, when grudges and status fights were worked out in a safe place. When the berserk and the vengeance-crazed were kept somewhere harmless, and there were fewer rivals to plot around.

(Prison of Elders)

I hear. House of Judgment always hears. No choice. Has to. To keep Houses together. Had to.

First , the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope. Judgment not enough. Cannot keep Wolves from Kings, Scar from Winter. Fell to fighting. Fell to hate.

Judgment gone. Others slaughtered, slain. Death and docking. “Keep Eliksni together,” lost to pride and rage.

(Variks, the Loyal)

So, it seems that instead of the House of Judgement being a full Eliksni house like the Wolves or Devils, they were instead more of an cross-house group of peacekeepers and advisors. Variks himself is said to have traveled with multiple different houses in the time period after the Eliksni’s civilization was destroyed in the Whirlwind. His role as a trusted advisor would also explain how he learned of Skolas’ planned attack on Cybele far enough ahead of time to warn the Awoken.

But beyond that, beyond upholding his role as perhaps the very last member of the House of Judgement (The Art of Destiny 2 lists Variks as such…), Variks may have had a much more personal reason to oust Skolas. Jump into Destiny 1 and stand in front of Variks on the Vestian Outpost and you’ll eventually hear him say things like:

Are you staring at my arms, Guardian? Where Skolas cut me? Look away.

Skolas once told me to stand still. Then he cut off my arms.

You think you hate Wolves? I promise my hate is sharper.

Look closely at Variks. He has all four arms like a Vandal or Captain, but his upper arms are actually mechanical! Now… we know that Dreg can regrow their docked lower arms and that docking is used as a punishment / method of control across the Eliksni houses around the time of Destiny 1… but can an Eliksni’s upper arms grow back? Did Skolas maim Variks for life? And, if so, when did that happen? None of these questions have good answers, but I like to imagine that the reason that the Awoken Crows found Variks cowering was because Skolas realized he had been betrayed and decided to exact a severe punishment on Variks before they were defeated and captured at Cybele.

As we know, Variks went on to become an advisor to Queen Mara Sov. He proclaimed her as the new Kell of the House of Wolves, and for a time that actually held. As for Skolas, Mara Sov sent him to The Nine as a prize or gift, to celebrate their mutual victory (over the House of Wolves?)

We’ll see Skolas again, eventually, but next we’re going to take a look at the House of Devils on Earth. They found something very interesting at the beginning of Destiny 1. Something that in the past had, and in the future may very well again, cause great problems for the Guardians of The City.

Oh! Before we go, there was one final battle at the end of the Reef Wars that occurred after Skolas had been captured. I found this one to be pretty amusing.

“After Skolas’s capture at the Cybele Uprising, Veliniks named himself the new Kell. Didn’t work out great for him.” —Petra

(Veliniks, the Ravenous)

by Ragashingo

The Sorcerer

Crunch…

Each and every step Sparks Clearpath took ended with an icy crunch. Each and every movement forward through the calf-high snow that had blanketed Cagleton was its own little struggle. To pull a leg free. To keep herself and her bulky traveling gear steady and upright. To let her boot sink back down halfway into the snow. To make sure she didn’t end her step on an unseen rock or root that would cause her to twist an ankle or break a leg. And to repeat the whole process over again, with each and every step.

A particularly strong gust of wind buffeted Sparks and kicked up the snow around her as she turned a corner causing her to pause in the swirling breeze so she could re-secure her burnt orange cloak tight around her sturdy leather and fur outfit. She struggled a little against the wind before she managed to tug her hood back over her pointed ears and tuck her long, silvery-white hair back away from her face.

The scene around her was almost surreal. Cagleton was not a small town. Most any other day, a main road like this would boast its fair share of folks coming and going. There’d be sounds of horses and carts heading out of town or to nearby stables and barns. There’d be the friendly banter of travelers saying farewell one another and the loud murmur of vendors and buyers haggling over end-of-day prices. And, of course, there’d be the laughter and scuffle of children darting playfully through the foot traffic as they raced home for their suppers. Instead, with most everyone huddled inside away from the sudden bitter cold, an odd stillness had descended on the city, leaving Sparks feeling very much alone in a place she more often than not felt was just a little bit too crowded for its own good.

It struck Sparks that she might never see this street so empty ever again, so, despite the wind and the cold, she stilled herself and took a moment to appreciate the uniqueness of it all. It was like being back home in some distant section of her familiar woods, except here, the trees had been replaced with buildings and lamp posts reaching up into the snowy sky. For a short moment all was calm and peaceful. But then, another gust of wind kicked up around her spurring Sparks back into reluctant action. She might have paused longer in the middle of the snow-covered road, but with the shadows stretching long around her and the sun dipping low in the gray, stormy sky, she really could not afford to stand still any longer… not unless she wished to risk the unpleasantness of frostbite. So, with a lurch and a heave, Sparks made sure her treasured longbow was still strapped securely across her back, then pulled her right foot free of the snow and ice and began trudging forward once more.

Crunch…

Traveling up one of the cobblestone streets of such a large trading town during the final days of autumn was not normally so difficult, but this year the icy storms that signaled the onset of winter had appeared far earlier than was typical. And that was… deeply inconvenient… for the tall elven maiden. No… it was not just inconvenient. Having to turn back when she’d just begun was frustrating. And infuriating. And heartbreaking.

Sparks’ plan had been to leave Cagleton near the beginning of winter after stocking up on a few last necessary supplies. Then, after nearly four weeks of continuous outdoor travel, was to pass south through the Ko’tooth Mountain Gap just before the first snows fell. The more temperate climate beyond would have allowed her to travel in relative ease throughout the long winter after which she would have turned back north to the cold riverside town of Tiu Nanaze. There, Sparks would finally have been able to fulfill one of her longest held dreams: To catch glimpse of the unruly, elemental sprites that danced among Tiu Nanaze’s melting ice floes as winter’s freeze came to an end. She had always marveled at the bedtime stories her mother had told her of her own journey. She’d last listened to those stories many, many decades ago, but Sparks had always promised herself that she, too, would make the journey someday when she was able.

It had taken Sparks more than two years and no small amount of luck to prepare for the trip once the opportunity finally arose. It had been something of a minor miracle that she’d been able to end her autumn near Cagleton with coin to spare, supplies on hand, and with no pressing debts or duties to speak of. But, if this premature snowfall held—as it seemed it would— it was now highly doubtful that she would even make it out of Cagleton at all again this winter. And come spring, her responsibilities and commitments would return and it might be another decade, or perhaps several more decades, before she’d be able to consider such a journey to Tiu Nanaze again.

Sparks could have continued on, of course. She had lived practically her entire life outdoors in the large forest her parents still called home. Having experienced well over two hundred winters, the snow and the cold were as familiar to her as any other season. If she’d needed to, she could have drawn on her experiences and special talents and pushed her way through to Ko’tooth despite the early snow. If there had there been report of some emergency—an outbreak of sickness or rumors of raiders down south, for instance— she might have done just that. Risking her life for others was her calling. It was what she did. But putting her life at risk for her own delight and amusement? When she knew there were places and peoples who would need her come spring? No. She simply could not justify it. Though still considered somewhat young by her fellow elves, Sparks had learned well to bide her time and to know her limits. Especially when it came to going against nature’s will.

And so, only two days after striking out on the first leg of her long, exciting journey, she had turned back to Cagleton with a heavy heart. The push back into town had been slow and sorrowful, with few people to see or greet or talk to on her way in. Someday, she would try again. But right now? Right now, she was cold and tired, and still another good thirty minutes away from her resting point, with the day far too close to being done. So, of course, that’s when the storm decided to once again make its might known.

Sparks braced herself against the icy gusts and gritted her teeth against the freezing cold as she crunched ever forward. In the dimming dusk light, she could barely see her hand held up in front of her face what with the heavy snowflakes filling the wind around her. But finally, up ahead, there was hope. At the very edge of her vision, she could just make out the flickering lanterns and large, golden lit windows of Pillory’s Pub, the same inn and tavern she had set out from two days before. Inside, she knew she would find warm food, friendly faces, and a place to sleep and plan her next move. It wasn’t the legendary enchanted ice flows of Tiu Nanaze, but it was something.

And for now? It would do.

A rush of warm air and a cacophony of familiar sights, smells, and sounds greeted Sparks Clearpath as she pushed her way past the heavy wooden doors of Pillory’s Pub. Glad to be out of the freezing storm, she stepped clear of the doorway and took a moment to loosen her scarf and knock the last of the ice and snow off the bottom of her boots.

It was crowded inside, to say the least. Nearly all of the two dozen circular oak tables that filled the pub’s main floor were packed with travelers trying to carve out their few inches of space. Aside from a single small, empty table set furthest from the large roaring fireplace to her right, there was hardly a spare seat in the house. A handful of waiters and waitresses hurried here and there to bring patrons their food and refill their drinks. When Sparks had left two days ago, the pub had only been a third full at most. Now? The low murmur of conversations that usually filled the room had grown so loud she was sure she could shout and very few would even notice!

And that presented a problem.

Yes, the warm air and ample oil lamps on the walls and in the center of each table and absolutely mouthwatering aromas that wafted out from the kitchen made her wish she could stay, but with so many visitors, Sparks was certain all of the rooms upstairs had already been booked. She teetered shivering in the entryway for a moment, unsure of what she wished to do. A hot meal before she had to venture back out to find some other place to sleep would be welcome, but the longer she delayed, the harder it would be find a place with rooms to spare.

A pair of grumpy looking men forced Sparks to move aside as they pushed their way past her and back out into the storm. Sighing again at the inevitable, she tugged her scarf back up over her face and turned to follow them, but before she could take more than a step, a strong arm spun her round and pulled her back away from the door.

“Oh, deary! You look half froze to death!” said one of the plump proprietors of Pillory Pub as she maneuvered Sparks further inside. “Come, let’s get you warmed up before you catch ill! Don’t you worry, there’s plenty of room by the fire and still seats left at our tables,” Mrs. Pillory said reassuringly.

Though she stood a good two heads shorter than Sparks, the middle-aged, red-headed woman was certainly not lacking in strength as she had no trouble angling the elven maiden towards the fireplace set along the right hand wall. The Pillorys always kept a large fire going in the winter to comfort travelers coming in out of the cold. It was a house rule that you spent a few minutes getting warm and then made room for newcomers when your time was up. Sparks rarely followed that rule, however, but not for a lack of grace or kindness on her part. Rather, she’d had an all too close and painful encounter with fire once, long ago. And, where for most, it was a treat to bask in the thawing heat of the Pillory’s roaring fireplace, for Sparks, she’d… well, if forced to make the choice, she’d far prefer to step right back out into the winter storm.

“Not by the fireplace,” Sparks rasped, her voice still weak from the cold. She coughed to clear her throat then tried again. “Please, not by the fire,” she said more clearly this time as she began to feel the uncomfortable heat upon her face.

“Hmm? Oh!? Oh, Sparks!” Mrs. Pillory said excitedly as she recognized just who she was dragging about. “I’m sorry, we’ve gotten so many tonight I did not even notice it was you! Why, I’d not expected to see you again for some while. That storm out must have been very bad to see you back here so soon!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the woman altered their course and lead Sparks back left past her pub’s many patrons all the way to the single, unoccupied table.

“Here, you sit and give me that cloak of yours. Coat too,” Mrs. Pillory commanded as she pulled Sparks free from her frozen outer layers. “I’ll set these up by the fire to thaw and have one of my girls bring you something warm to drink. A cider would be all right?”

“Wait… I mean… yes, that will be… thank you,” Sparks replied, reluctant to be parted with her things, but also glad for the help. There were not many who could fluster her so, but Mrs. Pillory constant decisiveness and uncompromising kindness made her one such person.

A short while later Rashel, the older of the Pillory’s two daughters, stopped by to place a tall, steaming mug on Sparks’ table. The dark haired girl was in her late teens now, and had grown beautiful in the few years since Sparks had last seen her. She was smart, too. One of the benefits of waiting on and chatting with so many patrons whilst growing up, Sparks imagined. She and Rashel had shared a wide ranging conversation about a good many topics before she had set out two days before. If nothing else, Sparks hoped they might pick back up that conversation.

“I’m sorry you did not make it far on your trip,” the girl sympathized. “I’ll be free later if you’d like to talk,” Rashel added before calls of ‘miss’ had her hurrying back across the room to tend to a pair of patrons.

“I’d like… that.” Sparks said in reply, but Rashel was already gone. The mug full of warm cider she had left was still there, however, and it felt sooo good in Sparks’ cold hands. She lifted it to her lips and very nearly purred in relief as a trickle of the hot, cinnamon-tinged drink made its way past her chapped lips and down her parched throat where it pooled delightfully warming the pit of her stomach.

Sip by sip, little by little, Sparks began to thaw. Over the next hour, she ordered a warm meal, finished off two more mugs of the Pillory’s delicious cider, and confirmed what she had already suspected: That there were no rooms left unrented at Pillory’s Pub.

“I’d surely love to rent you a room. You know I would. For all you’ve done me and Higgs o’ver the years. But I had folk lining up a day before you even got back, and you know how that is,” Mrs. Pillory said sympathetically, when asked. Sparks nodded, glad for the woman’s commitment to her guests, but not so thrilled the result that commitment currently brought.

As the evening wore on and the fire across the room dwindled, more and more of the pub’s patrons finished their meals, buttoned up their coats, and ventured back out into the cold stormy night. Sparks watched them leave and gave a little prayer for the safety of each even as she slowly prepared to depart as well. She was just about to go search for her coat, bow, and cloak when a man with dark curly hair and even darker robes pushed in through the pub’s front door… and all the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

***

Sparks did not recognize the dark-robed man who had just stepped in to Pillory’s Pub. He was not some friend or foe who she had cause to greet or avoid. And none of the dozen or so remaining patrons scattered about the tavern seemed to give him much attention. Maybe she was just tired? Maybe all of it… the cold, the storm, the disappointment, the fire… maybe it had all worked to make her… jumpy?

Sparks had just about to shrugged off her premonition as nothing more than a false alarm when a sudden clatter to her right did cause her to jump. She turned from the dark-robed man to see Rashel kneeling in the kitchen doorway attempting to pick up a dropped tray. But the waitress wasn’t looking at what she was doing. Instead, she was focused solely on the newcomer, with her mouth hung open and her eyes wide with worry. Across the way, another of the Pillorys had noticed the man’s entrance. One of Rashel’s youngest siblings, eight year old Sopha, had approached the man and was in the process of leading him towards the fireplace as if nothing were the matter, but a quick glance back to Rashel told Sparks that something was very wrong indeed.

The girl’s shocked expression turned to a grimace as she spotted her young sister interacting with the man. At first, Rashel looked back over her shoulder to the kitchen as if she were going to retreat back through the door to get help or maybe to hide, but then she stood, took a moment to collect herself, and proceeded towards the man and her younger sibling with a pleasant smile forced upon her face.

“I’ll tend to him, Sopha,” Rashel called from across the room, keeping her voice even and in control so not as to frighten her sister. “You go tell mother Don’ven is here.” Little Sopha, unaware of her sister’s worry, was all too happy to do so.

With her sister safely out of the room, Sparks half expected to see Rashel confront the man and demand that he leave. She had twice seen her do just that to patrons who, on the face of it, had seemed far more intimidating than this newcomer. But, surprisingly, Rashel did no such thing. Instead, she approached the man and performed her best curtsy before guiding him to an empty table near the fireplace. There, she spoke with him briefly then turned back toward the kitchen as if having taken some food or drink order from him. Sparks looked to Rashel as she passed by for some sign as to what was the matter, but the girl was too busy chewing worriedly on her bottom lip to pay much attention to anyone else.

For the next few minutes, the man relaxed at his table and did little more than gaze at the lamp sitting in its center with a serene smile on his face. It was only now, after observing him as he sat across the room, that Sparks was slowly able to piece together why this man’s appearance had so completely and unexpectedly demanded her attention.

For one, he was happy. Her own source of sourness was one thing, but even discounting herself, every single soul Sparks had seen since being forced back into town had been miserable in some way due to the sudden shift in weather. Even the loudest and most energetic of the patrons from earlier had been busy complaining about the storm. But this man? He’d already had a happy smile even when he’d first entered in from the cold. And even now, that little, ever so slightly off-putting grin was still there.

Then there were his dark robes. At first, from a distance, they appeared black, but upon further inspection Sparks determined them to be a very rich dark blue. And now that he was closer, Sparks could also detect fine shimmering patterns covering the man’s clothing. The artistry was… exquisite, but, worryingly, the shapes stitched from some sort of fine golden thread had an orderliness and complexity about them that Sparks had seen may times before. Anyone possessing experience with protective magic would recognize that the man’s robes were covered in spell equations of abjuration. The expense alone of such robes was more than enough to draw Sparks’ attention, no matter the person wearing them.

Abjuration spells made sense, though, as the man seemed remarkably unaffected by the storm he had just come in from. His face was too rosy. His short combed hair too neat and too untossed by the heavy winds. And there was not so much as a single flake of snow to be seen anywhere upon his person. Even his gleaming black boots were perfectly clean of dirt or ice. It would take anyone else several minutes in front of the fire to recover so thoroughly from the storm, but this man look as if he’d walked in from the most perfect of spring days. Clearly, the man’s robes were permanently imbued with a spell that protected him from the elements? Did they do even more than that, Sparks wondered?

What it all added up to was that the man was clearly a wizard or sorcerer of some amount of wealth and or power, and it was just as clear that Rashel, at least, had some reason to be worried by his arrival. Thoughts of finding a place to sleep now long forgotten, Sparks knew that she would not be able to leave Pillory’s Pub now that it was clear that friends of hers were possibly in danger. But, there was also little for her to do at the present time, so she took in and released a long slow breath to calm herself then began to nibble at what little bit of a roll she had left on her plate in hopes she might not stick out too much until she could find some better reason for remain.

Soon, Rashel reemerged from the kitchen, though this time she was following close in behind her much shorter mother. Whatever trouble this man represented, it was surely quite serious as the usually jovial Mrs. Pillory now had that same worried look in her eyes and a forced smile on her face as her daughter had worn just a few minutes before. She moved quickly across the room towards the newcomer’s table with a full plate of meat, mashed potatoes, and bread in one hand, and a cloth napkin, silverware, and a large froth-topped mug in the other.

“Miss, do you have more cider? And perhaps another roll if it is not yet too late?” Sparks asked as mother and daughter walked past her table.

Mrs. Pillory nodded to her daughter who quickly made her way over.

“What…?” Sparks whispered only to be cut off by Rashel’s hushed words.

“Father owes him money,” she said quickly, before she hurried off back to the kitchen with Sparks’ mug.

“…and we’re so glad you have returned.” Sparks managed to hear Mrs. Pillory saying as she delivered the man his food on the far side of the room. That was a lie, of course, but Mrs. Pillory at least told it well.

Rashel returned a few moments later with more cider in hand. She was about to deliver it to Sparks’ table when the man spoke up. And asked for her by name.

“Rashel, come, let me inspect you,” he said. His tone was friendly, but there was something just ever so slightly disturbing about the way he delivered his words.

“Yes sir,” Rashel replied. She placed Sparks’ drink on her table before turning to move swiftly over to the man. He did not hide his interest in her as she approached. In fact, he almost made a show of looking her body up and down. Then he made a little twirling motion with his hand and Rashel straightened her back and began to slowly turn in place with her arms held down by her sides. This sort of thing had happened multiple times before, Sparks judged, given how automatic Rashel’s reaction to the man’s small, circular gesture had been. Her mother took on a troubled, defensive posture as she was forced to watch this man look her eldest daughter over. Once again, it was clear to Sparks this man was not considered a friend.

Sparks’ attention was drawn back to the kitchen door as it slammed open once again. Out came Mr. Pillory all in a huff. He was not exactly a tall man, but his every morning spent cutting wood and ever evening maning the stoves and managing the kitchen had made him into a man that very few were prepared to cross. And, unlike his wife and daughter, his angry scowl made it clear that he seemed to have no plans to placate this Don’ven… except, Sparks noticed, he also carried a sizable purse of coin held tightly in one hand.

When he reached Don’ven’s table, Mr. Pillory took one angry look at what was going on and quickly ordered his wife and daughter back to the kitchen. Only when there were both out of Don’ven’s sight did he unceremoniously drop the coin purse onto the newcomer’s table. The man looked at it for a long moment. He then picked the coin purse up and seemed to weight it in his hand only to set it down and push it back towards Mr. Pillory with a shake of his head.

Mr. Pillory said something Sparks could not make out. The man replied. And then the two began to argue openly over the contents of the purse causing the other patrons scattered here and there to look up and take notice. They were still a bit too far away for Sparks to make out more than a few words or phrases, but she didn’t need to hear the exact words to understand that things were not preceding well. And then, Don’ven suddenly stood. His chair scarcely had time to clatter to the floor before he all but shouted, “We had an agreement, and if you refuse to fulfill it then I shall burn this entire place to the ground!”

Sparks could not help but cringe as the man’s threat sent a shudder through her. Mr. Pillory, too, seemed to finally deflate. Sparks was sure this Don’ven had won the argument, but then one of the hearty looking travelers seated nearby took to his feet as well.

“Now, you listen here, sir. I do not know what…” he began, intending to help bring the argument to a more dignified end, but the man in dark robes did not even give him the chance to finish his sentence. Don’ven raised his hand and spoke a few quick unfamiliar words and sent the capable looking traveler flying back through the air with enough force to smash the sturdy table and chairs behind him.

For a brief, uncomfortable moment, no one moved as the injured patron writhed on the ground. The sorcerer just stood and looked from person to person as that grin of his widened. Finally, a woman and what looked to be her husband stood and made their way towards the injured man, but the sorcerer glared at them.

“Leave. Him. Be.” He demanded, causing them both to shrink back.

By now, Sparks was standing too, her focus drawn to the injured man and flow of blood slowly pooling beneath his arms and back. If nothing was done for him, he might be dead in minutes. That was something Sparks would not allow, not if she could find some way to help it.

Her first instinct was to retrieve her longbow from where it rested at her feet. The distance to the sorcerer was good, and if she had been in the woods, or even out in the open, engaging him might have been feasible. But inside the pub which this sorcerer had already threatened to burn to the ground? And with multiple bystanders around, some of whom were between her and her target? She might still win in a fight, but the cost would likely be much too high. Certainly, the one injured man would lose his life, and others in the room might as well.

That being the case, Sparks thought for a moment then nodded to herself as she settled on an alternate approach. She quickly threaded her way through the tables and patrons in front of her until she was almost close enough to help the injured man. A few more steps and she would be able to care for him, but, as she figured he would, the sorcerer took note of her before she got the chance.

“Did you not hear me? I said leave him,” he called threateningly.

“No,” Sparks replied firmly as she continued forward.

The sorcerer’s eyes burned with anger as he turned to fully face her, but Sparks spoke again before he had the chance to do more anything more.

“What ever debt you are owed here, I will pay you double if you refrain from harming anyone else.”

“You have the coin for that?” The sorcerer scoffed, clearly amused by her sudden offer.

’Good, he’s talking,’ Sparks thought.

“Try me,” Sparks countered aloud, as she knelt down by the injured man’s side. The would be hero’s eyes were clenched shut and his breathing was shaky and labored in a very bad way.

“You expect me to believe you have five hundred gold coins?” The sorcerer demanded.

“Ha! Five hundred? That’s far too much,” Sparks replied as if the dangerous man in front of her had just told a bad joke. As she did so, her experienced hands quickly felt along the dying man’s head, neck, and back. Midway down her fingertips found a nasty puncture wound where a large splinter from the smashed table had pierced the man right between his shoulder blades.

“I decide what is too…” the sorcerer began again, but Sparks cut him short once more.

“That bag there has only what? Fifty gold? One hundred at most? And you tell me you are owed another five times as much?” Sparks asked incredulously as she jerked a dagger-sized piece of wood out of the wounded man’s back. With the wound as clear as she was likely to get it, she sealed her palm over the gaping hole and made use of the healer’s touch her mother had taught her so long ago. “If that were the case, this place would already be in flames.” She noted as she gave the sorcerer a disbelieving look. With any luck, her defiance would distract him long enough to not even notice what she’d really done.

The dying man opened his eyes and looked up at her in wonder as much of the sharp, debilitating pain coming from his back cooled then melted away. For just the briefest of moments, Sparks allowed herself to believe in her own cleverness. She’d done it. She’d crossed the room and distracted the sorcerer and successfully healed the man on the floor before her. But no. He noticed.

“What. Did. You. Just. Do?” The sorcerer demanded.

“Two hundred gold!” Sparks offered quickly as she backed away from her patient and held her now bloodied hands up in front of herself. “Pl…please sir, two hundred is all… it is all I can afford…” she said, intentionally stuttering a bit as she played up the twinge of very real fear she felt.

“You have that much here with you?” He asked after a long, worrisome pause.

“Y… Yes sir. With my bags at… at that table, sir,” Sparks answered. She was almost in the clear now. All she had to do was keep stroking the man’s ego to keep him from retaliating. More often than not, ones like him lived for that feeling of power they could get by holding their strength or their special talents or their influence over those they considered lesser than themselves. The maiming and killing usually only happened when the other party failed to properly play along. This man would be no different… Sparks hoped.

“Go on and get it,” the sorcerer ordered, even as his cruel smile returned to his lips.

Sparks nodded and made a show of fumbling her way back to her table. She kept in clear view as she retrieved first one, then a second, and finally a third coin purse from her pack. Each held a different amounts and types of coins according to what she had expected to need over the course of her now aborted journey. The smallest one held the type of currency favored by the soldiers who guarded the Ko’tooth Mountain Gap, while the largest, heaviest one only jingled so loudly because it was filled with many dozens of nearly worthless copper coins. Its sole purpose was to be given away as a seemingly lucrative prize in case some group attempted to rob her along the way. The middle-sized one was just regular spending money, but only a small amount of it to make it seem like she had nothing else left.

With all three bags in hand, and a fourth and fifth still safely concealed down in her pack, Sparks carefully circled around the far left side of the room as she returned to the sorcerer, in an effort to keep his attention away from the man she had just healed. The look the sorcerer wore was of someone in complete control. It was frightening and well practiced, so much so that Sparks had no trouble at all getting her hands to tremble as she handed over each of the three bags in turn. She was brave, yes, but not so brave to not feel a proper amount of trepidation at being so close to such a dangerous man.

The sorcerer weighed each bag then set them down beside the large sum that had already been delivered to him by Mr. Pillory. He held Sparks’ gaze for another long moment, only for his features to soften as he broke into an mirthful smile and nodded for her to return to her table.

“Mr. Pillory,” he called with a bit of dramatic flare as he picked up his chair and sat back down to his meal, “I simply cannot believe you allow your fine establishment to remain in such an untidy condition. Kindly clean it up at once, and send that shapely daughter of yours back out here with another ale. Mine seems to have spilled in all the excitement.”

“I will… see to it at once, Don’ven,” the pub’s owner replied as he began straightening chairs and righting tables. Sparks cautiously moved to help him. When they were done, they carefully lifted the wounded traveler and, together, carried him back towards the kitchen. The man tried to voice his thanks partway there, but Sparks quieted him with a stern look and a firm shake of her head.

“Higs!” “Father!” “Daddy!” Came three worried shouts as she and Mr. Pillory pushed their way through the kitchen door and leaned the injured man against the low cabinets.

“Thank you, miss,” the injured traveler said as if it were the most important thing he had ever done. Looking up to Sparks and then over to the Pillory family he began to babble, saying, “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have made more trouble for you… if I’d known…I just…”

“It’s all right. What you did, standing up as you did, it was noble. Your actions speak well of you. But now you need to rest,” Sparks said to him.

“He wants us to send Rashel back out, to bring him an ale he says, but I won’t do it,” Mr. Pillory was telling his wife at the same time.

“Yes. You will,” Sparks interjected, causing all in the crowded kitchen to turn towards her. “You cannot risk angering that man again,” she explained. “Do as he asks as long as it is within reason and I will take my place back at my table and keep an eye on you all. Your daughter especially.”

“Sparks… I cannot send my girl back out to be gawked at by that.. that villain.” Mrs. Pillory complained.

“I know it is hard not knowing what he might do, but it is our best chance to get through this without further violence. I will go out with her and keep watch on her. I promise,” Sparks reassured Rashel’s mother. Then, turning to Mrs. Pillory’s daughter, she asked, “Rashel? I need you to be brave for me. To help me protect you and your family. Can you do that for us?”

The girl… no… the young woman pulled herself free of her mother’s embrace and nodded. “What would you have me do?” She asked, her voice full not of fear, but of resolve. Sparks gave a little sigh of relief. At least she had someone determined to see this through.

“Bring the man his ale. I’ll follow you out after a moment and sit back where I was so I can watch over you. If he should do more than look at you I will have my bow and I will protect you.”

“I can do that…” Rashel said as she moved to fill a mug. Everyone in the kitchen stood still for a moment, awkward and agitated, until Rashel pulled the heavy stein back away from the tap. “Ok, I’m ready.”

“Ok…” Sparks echoed her before taking in a deep breath. “This will work,” she assured the room… and herself.

To Be Continued…

by Ragashingo

Review: Tomb Raider (2018)

I just got back from seeing Tomb Raider (2018) and… I think I probably saw it so you don’t have to.

Ok, what do I mean by that? Is Tomb Raider a typical “they should never have made this” video game movie? No. Not even close. As a live action rendition of the 2013 video game, it was somewhere between “ok” and “all right.” It had several missteps, but ultimately, while it wasn’t something like “the video game movie that puts video game movies on the map” or whatever, it did give the Tomb Raider (2013) era property due respect and, unlike so many other movies based on established games or beloved animated series, it pretty much completely avoided embarrassing its source material.

You can do far worse than this Tomb Raider movie. The live action Avatar The Last Airbender was a total embarrassment. Last year’s Ghost in the Shell totally screwed up with some of the most important areas of Motoko Kusanagi’s understanding of her identity. Tomb Raider made no such fundamental errors.

So, what did Tomb Raider (2018) do right, and what did it do wrong?

What It Got Right:

- It correctly and faithfully portrayed Lara Croft as an smart, independent, tough (but not invincible) character.

Sure, Lara gets beat a couple times in the movie. First, early on in the boxing ring to show that she is tough and scrappy but also small and able to be overwhelmed by a larger opponent. And near the end by the main bad guy who she fights pretty well against but who is just bigger than she is. But, in both of these fights, Lara gets in some good hits and in both of them she comes very close to winning.

While this movie significantly changed and paired down the circumstances surrounding Himiko and her curse, and essentially removed the supernatural element entirely, I think it still did it justice. Part of that was because there’s a nice little twist that Lara realizes at the end. In this telling, Himiko was a queen with some sort of disease that rotted those she came in contact with and drove them mad. So, she organized her servants and army to bury her away on Yamatai to rid her people of her “curse.” Himiko’s selfless act was a neat change from the vengefully evil character behind the game.
It had very good, perhaps even excellent, renditions of two of the 2013 game’s most memorable scenes:First, the reaching for the parachute as the old bomber breaks apart scene looked good in live action. It was well shot. It was well acted. It maintained that “Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.” feel that made it so great in the game. Second, the scene where Lara first has to kill, while a bit different than in the game, is still excellent in the movie. It is certainly the movie’s best scene and Alicia Vikander does a truly terrific job going from fighting for her life, to realizing just what a terrible thing it is that the man she was fighting made her do.
While this is not a “funny movie” or even a “Marvel quippy” movie, Lara’s sense of humor worked for me multiple times during the first hour of the movie.

What It Got Wrong:

While you spend much of the 2013 game playing a Lara off alone in the wilderness or temple ruins, it was actually something of an ensemble game, with a surprisingly strong cast of secondary characters. From Lara’s mentor Conrad Roth, to Lara’s best friend Samantha Nishimura, to Jonah and Reyes, and Grim, and Alex, the team that Lara journeyed to Yamatai with and fought along side, and occasionally saw killed ended up feeling important and almost like a family. Certainly, this was helped by some of the flashbacks and the voiced journals you could discover while playing the game. By removing these elements, the story and Lara’s actions became smaller and less meaningful.
Even though there was a small, decent twist to the reason Himiko was buried on the island, a good deal was lost by removing the supernatural elements from the story.Most notably, in the game Lara and company could not leave the island no matter what they did because Himiko’s power would sink their ship or strike down their plane or helicopter. That gave weight to having to find an actual solution. In the movie, the only reason anyone is trapped on the island is because nobody has a ship or aircraft handy at the moment. So it sorta removed the urgency and the feeling of being helplessly trapped that made the game so interesting.
The descent into Himiko’s tomb didn’t work so well because someone (the writers and or the director) decided that they had a well acted daughter and a decent actor as her father… so they might as well shoot for Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.The tomb traps and the not letting the book with all the information fall into the wrong hands felt too much like a poor imitation of The Last Crusade. The puzzles and traps weren’t nearly as iconic and really the whole thing just felt a bit unnecessary. So, the whole sequence from finding the way into the tomb to getting to Himiko’s coffin just sorta dragged where it shouldn’t have.
The movie kept cutting back to the boat captain who helps Lara get to Yamatai even though he was entirely disconnected from the plot and happenings for the final 3rd of the movie. While Lara is off playing Indiana Jones in Himiko’s cavern and tomb, this guy is rallying the oppressed workers to go back to Lara’s aid… except neither he nor they are ever actually relevant ever again. We get scenes of him saying “I won’t leave without Lara” when she is nowhere nearby (since she’s deep underground by that point) and he exactly zero ability to help her in any way.Honestly, I think it would have worked better if he’d attacked the guards to cover her escape and then been killed by the main bad guy.
There were a few places here and there that you could just kinda tell they didn’t have enough budget.Like the reveal of Hikimo’s burial structure felt a bit underwhelming. When Lara is parachuting through the trees the action felt a bit… indistinct and blurred as if they didn’t have the time or budget to render the tress whipping by in high resolution. This wasn’t too bad, and it felt like they correctly made sure not to reach too far and have things end up looking awful. But, yeah, it was also clear that it would have been nice if they’d had just a bit more to work with.

Ultimately, Tomb Raider (2018) is not a great movie, but it is also not a terrible one. There are better options out there right now if you want to go to the theater. But, at the same time, it is not a cheesy, disrespectful rip-off like so many video game movies are. There are moments of cleverness, fun, and excellent acting. And there are moments where I felt they should have stuck closer to the 2013 game. The movie finishes a bit weaker than it starts, but at the end of the day there’s at least a chance that this thing gets a sequel. Because, at the very least, Alicia Vikander deserves another chance to portray Lara Croft.

Side Stuff:

There were a couple of bad reviews I saw over the last week that I wanted to call out. In ine the reviewer said:

Also, for all the talk about female power and badassery, she was being saved by everyone else really often, and always crying.

I would say this is flat out false. As noted above, Lara is bested in the boxing ring by a fellow fighter. The two appear almost equally matched except the other woman was just a good foot or two taller than Lara and won the match by having more weight and strength to throw around. Then, near the end of the movie Lara almost loses to the bad guy, but this is in the same way that Malcom Reynolds almost loses to the Operative in Serenity. A good, even fight where the bad guy almost wins but then the good guy (or girl in Lara’s case!) breaks free and strikes the winning blow.

Lara also gets impelled by a large splinter coming down through the trees similar to how she is injured in the 2013 game. And she is in some decent pain because of this for a while until her father is able to patch her wound. But… Lara also strangles and drowns the man hunting for her during this time, so she is hardly helpless and did not need to be saved by anyone.

Throughout the movie, just like throughout the two recent games, Lara is often at a disadvantage due to the numbers she faces or due to being physically smaller than her opponents. But in terms of tenacity, demeanor, intelligence, cleverness, and all tha? Lara is more than an equal for any other character in the movie.
There were one or two reviews online that made it an issue that this movie is a reboot of the two previous movies and it is a movie based on the 2013 game that is itself a reboot of sorts of the previous games in the Tomb Raider series.To me, that’s backwards thinking. Tomb Raider (2013) is widely considered one of the most successful re-envisionings of a video game character. It took a franchise that was all but dead and brought it back to life in spectacular fashion. And, while I’ve never seen the two previous Tomb Raider movies, they both struck me as perhaps a bit over-sexed, and overly silly. This movie, in contrast, follows in the 2013 game’s excellent portrayal of Lara Croft as a more down to earth character character who is intelligent, resourceful, and physically capable.
To me, the idea that Tomb Raider (2018) is a rebooted movie based on a rebooted game is actually a big positive in its favor and certainly not the negative that these reviewers made it out to be.

by Ragashingo

Review: Gravity Rush 2

I recently started playing Gravity Rush 2, and… I’m loving it!

For me, this was a game I saw a trailer or review for sometime early last year but quickly wrote off as yet another “I guess I’ll never play that because I don’t own a PS4.” Between now and then I got a PS4, and a few days ago I remembered this game. Small warning, I will be mostly avoiding main storyline spoilers but I’m gonna talk a lot about the game including some of the initial plot setup and some of the activities you do. Those looking to be spoiler free may want to check out now.

Gravity Rush 2 is a continuation of the adventures of Kat, a teenage-ish girl who for some reason has the power to alter gravity in her vicinity. This power comes from her pet cat named Dusty whose coat looks almost exactly like the weird, distorted black star field effect used for the Darkness in Destiny. If Dusty is not nearby or is trapped or incapacitated, then Kat loses her gravity powers.

So, what does Kat do with gravity powers? First and foremost, she uses them to fall through the skies! In game terms, you press R2 once to activate Kat’s powers which leaves her floating stationary above the ground, then you point the camera/cursor where you want to fall towards and hit the button again.

The game, and even Kat herself, has no illusion that she flies anywhere. She falls to where she is going and her animations show that. While you can do some things to have Kat strike a more traditional superhero flying pose, holding X to fall faster usually works, for the most part she is fine with twisting and tumbling about as she falls in whichever direction she chooses. It’s an unexpected delightful way to transverse an open world.

Kat’s other core gravity based power is picking up various objects in a “stasis field” and effortlessly holding them in midair as they float and tumble near her. She does this for people and objects to take them safely to other destinations, and she also can pick up and launch debris in combat to damage enemies. (And sometime the people she picks up and throws are her enemies!)

Kat also has the ability to “gravity slide” which sorta tilts gravity at an angle and lets her slide down any surface as if she was always sliding down a very steep incline. It can be useful for traveling along a curving surface since she is constantly adjusting which direction “down” is. She could slide along the inside of a Sonic the Hedgehog loop, for instance, by using the power. I don’t use this one much because there was very rarely a reason to and because it makes moving around more tricky than it should be. Your ability to aim yourself is very finicky.

Kat’s final core gravity ability, which I do like a good bit, is that if you fall into the side or even the bottom of a flat structure, Kat will instinctively flip gravity around so she can run and jump across it as if she were standing right side up. This means you can stand on the side or even on the bottom of buildings. This also works on other objects like the sky flying cars and ships buzzing about the sky. It’s a little mind boggling to move around the bottom of a building as if you were right side up, but it’s also pretty awesome and the game handles this kind of thing perfectly. Like, your ability to clamber up a wall Destiny 2 style works just as well on the bottom or side of a structure as it does when you are right side up. (I like game engines that just seem to do the right thing effortlessly vs engines where something seemingly works sometimes and not other.)

The open world of Gravity Rush 2 can be summed up in one word: “Super Great” … Ok… that was two words. Let me try that again. The open world is: “Very well done” …. Well darn. One more try? No? Fine. The point is, I like it a lot. The game starts with Kat indentured to a small flying trading town that took her in after she was sucked from her home dimension via a gravity storm. This little town made of a dozen or so small buildings flying far above the clouds is a nice training area, especially since the game starts you out without your gravity shifting powers. So you learn to navigate around the town on foot before you regain your pet cat (and thus your gravity powers) within the first 30 minutes of gameplay.

From that point what was a sorta difficult area to navigate around (since most of the buildings of the town are not connected to each other forcing you to always take the long way around bridges and catwalks) becomes dead simple to make your way around as you just fall to where ever you want to go to. The game and initial story setup/training really does a nice job of showing you just how useful your gravity powers are by forcing you to move around without them at first.

Not long after that, the mining town finishes its work and returns to its port city to resupply. It’s here where the game really begins. The flying city of Jirga Para Lhao is big, beautiful, and complex. At first glance, it appears to be made up of multiple small-ish floating islands, and to the game’s credit most of these islands seem to have an in-world purpose. The island your little mining town docks at has a market right off the docks but also has a small residential area and a few taller buildings. In the distance are other islands, some sporting skyscrapers, some are clearly shipping docks or warehouses.

Though this is a game you usually spend above the ground, landing and walking around is a joy because of all the little things going on in the city islands. There’s people shopping, people running the shops, people moving crates around, people juggling, people sitting on benches, groups of friends having conversations. There’s even kids and birds and dogs and cats and ducks.

This is not a game like Arkham City / Knight where everyone goes away leaving the play space devoid of almost all life. Instead, each island feels alive and more than sufficiently detailed. Plus the architecture is nicely detailed and varied. There’s bridges and water towers and lighthouses and all sorts of cool things all over the place. In some ways it feels like a somewhat more modern version of Bioshock Infinite’s floating city of Colombia… remade as an open world… without the racism.

For the first hour or so you have a blast exploring this open world, but then, at some point, you remember that you can fall wherever you want so you decide to test the limits and fall as far up or down as you can. When you do that you quickly find that the set of islands you can see around you are just part of the flying city you are in. High above the main city is a series of flying estates sporting mansions, parks, and gardens. Rich people and high class pets dot these more sparsely populated areas. And far above them is an official looking government building. And above that is a fortified flying military base complete with anti-air cannons that force you to keep your distance.

Go down, and for the first few seconds you think you’re just gonna descend into an endless layer of clouds, but then you sorta break through and find that there’s an entire flying shanty town populated by the poor and downtrodden. This group of twenty or more mini islands is definitely far more rundown than even the “normal” mid level islands and is in complete contrast with the flying estates far, far above.

All in all, the playable space in Gravity Rush 2 is just delightfully large and it surprises you at being even bigger than you thought it was when you first step foot off the flying boat dock. Oh… then in the mid to late game the map size and complexity doubles!

I don’t really have much to say about the graphics and animation of the game, other than they are fantastic. Kat’s character animations are especially superb. The way she tumbles if you land too hard or the way she strings snappy kicks together during combat are a joy to watch again and again. And, the use of fog to partially obscure distant parts of the city works really well. Up close everything is colorful and vibrant and just all around well done while the fog helps enhance the feeling of being in a huge play space. Oh, and the dogs are super cute, too!

So, what is there to do in this delightful open world? All this space would be wasted if there was nothing to do. There’s two main parts to Gravity Rush 2: The main story, and a bushel of side quests.

The main story is pretty long and is split into at least three main segments. A lot of it is told through a fairly unique series of comic book style panels. You’ll start at one panel then press X and a character will maybe move in from off panel or someone who was in the panel will get a speech bubble usually accompanied by a word or short phrase of spoken dialogue to give a touch of tone and mood to what you read in the speech ballon. Then you press X again and maybe another character replies or another speech bubble appears. Each panel gets two or three little events like that then you shift left or right or up or down to the next panel, as if reading an animated comic book.

A typical “cutscene” is usually around 5 to 10 panels long and the art is great. It fits very closely to the game’s graphics and does not feel out of place at all. One thing this game doesn’t have is fully voiced dialogue. Often the characters will speak a few words along with their speech bubbles that you read. What little speech there is sounds like a strange half French half Japanese and is more for tone than anything else. The voiced phrases almost never have enough words to match what was actually said in the speech bubbles. Still, it works well enough and was never really a negative or a distraction.

I liked the main story. Some pretty big things eventually happen, but Kat does her best to maintain a cheery, upbeat attitude. My only complaint is that it sorta forgets that I didn’t play Gravity Rush 1 and a few characters I didn’t know pop up to help or hinder Kat in rapid succession without much introduction.

Maybe the real draw of Gravity Rush 2 isn’t the main story but is instead the side quests. These too have fun, comic book style cutscenes, and cover a surprisingly wide variety of tasks. Of the top of my head, over the course of the game Kat has:

Gone mining for minerals in a ruined city
Helped deliver a last crate of cargo to a departing airship that forgot it on the dock
Delivered a ton of newspapers all across one of the larger islands
Tracked down a shop and its owner based on a photo where you had to pay attention to the direction and distance of objects in the background
Run annoying errands for the wealthy high class jerks on their private floating islands
Watered some trees (one of Kat’s powers is picking up nearby objects and if she does it near a source of water she will hover globs of water around herself until she throws them)
Starred in an action movie
Impersonated a local hero in order to trick people into buying ice cream
Tailed a cheating boyfriend through the entertainment district
Flew a little girl around a park to keep her entertained
Helped a journalist uncover corruption by taking a photo of a government guy and a criminal during a secret business deal
Survived police training
Helped a daughter buy a present for someone
Looked for a new place to live
Raced a bird to prove who is ruler of the skies
Broke up a student lead demonic cult
And… I don’t know… a whole bunch of other stuff

While a couple of these missions do repeat their basic gameplay elements, no two is exactly alike and even the ones that are similar still have you doing those similar things for very different reasons and at the behest of entirely different characters. And, as you can see from the list above, most of the things you do are just delightful!

But maybe the best part is Kat who, while not one note by any means, is pretty consistently upbeat about things. She very often jumps at the chance to help people and even when things don’t go her way she still usually find a bright spot to hold on to. Her charming, adorkable personality is a nice, refreshing change to most modern open world heroes and heroines (such as Aloy or Geralt or… uh Batman who all tend to be more cynical and grim about everything.)

So, there’s a ton of side quests, many of which involve fetching or finding things. But there’s also a fair amount of combat. Certainly the main story gets very combat heavy by the end, and some of the side quests have a fair amount of combat as well.

On the ground, Kat can chain together a few rapid kicks and you have a dodge function that has you tumble out of the way. It’s not exactly Arkham style where you try and keep a flow going, but it doesn’t feel bad. In the air, though, is where you’ll be doing a lot of your combat. And there you have a variety of options from lock-on kicks that track enemies, to picking up and throwing things around you, to charged power attacks, to special attacks like slamming through a bunch of enemies or hovering in place as you constantly bombard enemies with debris.

The combat is just a little clunky because of the 3d any direction goes aspect of the game, but it still works pretty well. A lot of it is anticipating the direction you need to swing the camera around to keep attacking enemies. You have pretty good control of your own movement and you are generally in big open environments so combat is fairly fun. Occasionally, though, you are forced to fight in enclosed spaces. And there things become a lot more annoying. Not a huge turnoff or anything, but fighting in enclosed spaces as a character than can quickly fall in any direction… doesn’t work nearly as well as when she has room to move.

One thing I did enjoy was the boss fights. I’ve battled everything from giant walker robots that would be right at home in Sonic Adventure, to a boss I had to destroy parts of before I could attack its actual weak spots, to one boss that was perhaps the biggest enemy I’ve ever fought in any game, to at least a couple of bosses that were comparable to Kat in size, speed, and power.

All in all, Gravity Rush 2 is a delightful game, with an adorkable main character, a detailed, charming world, a ton of interesting side quest, and a main story that covers a lot of ground and eventually ups the stakes to epic levels.

My biggest likes were Kat’s personality and movement powers. Falling through the skies as an upbeat character just works so well.

My biggest dislike was the way the late story threw in a few characters that I had never seen before. Some of them Kat had clearly met before but they needed more introduction, for sure! Also, Kat’s solution to the final boss pretty much came out of nowhere and wasn’t even really shown on screen. 🙁

If you haven’t played Gravity Rush 2, I highly recommend it. I got it for pretty cheap off the PlayStation store and I bet an actually diligent deal hunter could find it for even cheaper than I did.

by Ragashingo

Bite-sized Backstory 34: The Fortuna Plummet

The Hildian Campaign

There’s one segment of the Reef Wars we just don’t know a whole lot about. During the long siege of Pallas occurred what was a perhaps an almost equally long search for Skolas called The Hildian Campaign. Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior were sent into the Hildian asteroid field to try and find Skolas and his chief strategist Beltrik, the Veiled, but this campaign was largely a failure. While there may have been small scrapes and skirmishes, for the most part the Reef’s forces came up empty in their search.

The Hildians are a dense group of over 1,000 asteroids and smaller objects that share an odd orbital arrangement with Jupiter. They orbit the sun a little slower than Jupiter so at times they are on opposite sides of the solar system as the gas giant while at other times they come close to approaching it. At their closest point, however, the Hildians never quite reach Jupiter’s orbit and soon they are back on their way away from Jupiter again. This animation from Wikipedia shows the orbits pretty well:

The brief description of the Hildian Seeker Jumpship says:

Nimble starfighters designed by the Reef to navigate dense asteroid fields.

So we know the Reef’s forces considered the Hildians a dense, tricky place to maneuver through. One would think that the Reef’s pilots would be experts with flying through tight space, what with the Reef’s confusing layout and all, so this must have been quite difficult indeed. It’s no wonder they weren’t able to find Skolas or Beltrik, in that case!

While the Reef’s forces failed to find their targets during the Hildian Campaign, it can’t really be said that the campaign was a total failure. Two things happened there that would become decisive towards the end of the Reef Wars.

First, Paladin Abra Zire had time to work out her anger over the Battle of False Tidings. We don’t have any confirmation of what this battle was, but my guess is it is a another name for the razing of Amethyst and the battle against Parixas that Paladin Zire was tricked into. The months or years of searching for Skolas among the Hildian asteroids are said to have cooled Zire’s anger into an icy resolve.

Second, Petra Venj, whose family had been killed when the Wolves attacked Amethyst, seems to have first cut her teeth as a Corsair serving under Paladin Zire during the Hildian Campaign. We’ll be talking about Petra a lot both now and in the future.

Fortuna Plummet

After the Reef defeated Pirsis and freed Pallas from its long siege, Skolas’ forces were likely starting to run thin. Likewise, hiding out in the Hildians for what could have been multiple years seems to have depleted the supplies of his chief strategist Beltrik, the Veiled.

Beltrik moves his forces out of the dense Hildians and forms a defensive screen around the large, 225km wide asteroid 19 Fortuna. There, he moves his ships one at a time into a resupply position where they mine ether while the other ships hold their positions in a formation that we are lead to believe made them fairly impervious to attack. By this point it seems pretty clear that the Wolves have a pretty large advantage in numbers and firepower over the Reef, and the Reef has only won battles because of things things like the Queen’s Harbingers or luring the Wolves into bad positions.

Unfortunately for Beltrik, his opponent was Paladin Zire. This time, she refused to be led into any sort of trap, and instead devised a way to break through Beltrik’s defensive deployment. After the earlier success of luring Drevis’ Ketch into the path of 324 Bamberga, the Reef began looking for a way to repeat that smashing success, and at some point during the long siege of Pallas they developed Carybdis, a gravity weapon capable of pushing asteroids off course.

After apparently proving herself during the Hildian Campaign, Petra Venj was given command of a significant portion of Paladin Zire’s fleet and ordered to harass Beltrik’s entrenched position in an effort to make it look like she was attacking without actually suffering the massive losses that a true attack against that kind of defensive positioning would entail. Petra’s main goal was to serve as a distraction while Paladin Zire stealthily moved the remainder of her forces to the much smaller 21km wide asteroid 687 Tinette. You can see the actual orders sent by Paladin Zire in Ghost Fragment: The Reef 3

It turns out that Tinette was apparently on a natural close approach with Fortuna at the time, so Beltrik’s forces were probably expecting it to slide on by as they continued their resupply operations. What they didn’t expect was Abra Zire’s forces to use their new Carybdis weapon to alter Tinette’s orbit, causing it to crash through their defensive screen and directly into Fortuna. The massive collision that resulted shattered both asteroids and caused massive damage to Beltrik’s fleet. Beltrik was easily captured in the ensuing confusion, and for the first time in the Reef Wars, Skolas was deprived of his brilliant strategist. This entire battle, as well as the remains of the two asteroids would soon become known as the Fortuna Plummet.

Not long after this, we’re told that Prince Uldren’s Crows, which seem to be his mysterious force of pilots and spies, receive a message from an Eliksni named Variks who claims to be from the House of Judgment. The contents of this message would lead to the final battle of the Reef Wars and the defeat of Skolas and the House of Wolves…

…but there’s a lot to unpack there, so we’ll look at it next time. 🙂

by Ragashingo

Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

”Hellblade Selling Above Expecations, Nearly Breaking Even For Developer” is a bit of a downer title for something that is far more exciting. The news isn’t that Hellblade is going to turn a profit, quotes from the studio make it clear that was always going to happen. It’s that Hellblade is going to turn a profit months earlier than expected, meaning the game is selling rather well.

”We own the IP this time. It’s opened up a bunch of doors and possibilities that we just didn’t have until this point.” Antoniades, chief creative director at Ninja Theory told GamesBeat. “In terms of a model, I’d say it is a success.”

Not only does Ninja Theory own the IP to Hellblade, they self published it. In doing so, they necessarily made a smaller game with a smaller team than a AAA title gets, but now they are reaping that reward as there is no EA or Activision there to take their share of the profits.

The exciting thing here is that maybe, just maybe, this could be a signal to the industry. Not every game needs to be a massive AAA adventure. Not every game needs to be filled with random loot boxes. Making a good game on a less astronomical budget can work!

And yeah, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a good game. I played it over the course of two days and thoroughly enjoyed it. Without jumping straight into spoilers, the game opens with Senua, a Celtic warrior on a quest into a Norse version of hell to save the soul of her lover after he is tortured and killed in a Viking raid. Except, this isn’t a game about a heroic damsel or femme fatale epically storming the gates of hell. It’s a story about a deeply troubled young woman being pushed over the edge by tragic events trying to overcome her own demons while giving everything she has to save someone who she loves.

It is a very dark, very gritty game. Starting at about a minute in, things like bodies impaled on spikes is a normal you’ll need to accept. The game includes somewhat graphic looks at things like fire sacrifices, making your way through a dark place filled with monsters, or what it feels like to die. But all of this is in service to its story and is laser focused on what Senua is feeling and experiencing. Ninja Theroy worked long and hard to correctly portray various aspects of mental disorders in how Senua reacts or sees the world. This is a game where what they called “the low hanging fruit” of correctly portraying psychosis meant making amazing and chilling use of 3d positioned voices constantly talking to you, laughing at you, encouraging you, mocking you, and being afraid for you and for themselves!

All in all, the story is dark and introspective and extremely well done. It’s told fairly out of order, but I like that sort of thing. Piecing together what happened and when and why without everything being spoon fed was a fun challenge. And the acting done for Senua is the best I’ve ever seen in a game. Period.

Gameplay wise, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is something like Epic’s Infinity Blade mobile games from a few years back. Senua is the best rendered character model I’ve seen in a game, but they can get away with that because the entire game is a close up perspective on her which limits the amount of environment that need to be rendered. It all looks really good, but there is that sense that it can only look so good because it is very carefully keeping you to tight hallways on outdoor corridors of trees or whatever.

The combat also reminds me a good bit of Infinity Blade. Combat has a very fixed feeling to it in contrast to something like Tomb Raider or Horizon: Zero Dawn. Instead of scampering and dodging in an open world, combat is always in small-ish circular areas or occasionally on wide bridges. Instead of the camera being freeform, it is always behind Senua and always focused on an approaching enemy. At first, it can feel a little restricting. You can switch which enemy the camera focuses on (and thus which enemy you are engaging) but you are basically always facing an enemy.

Fortunately, this somewhat fixed, somewhat mechanical feel is made up for by simple but very well done combat. Combat is a game of dodging, blocking, attacking, and counter attacking. If the sort of base sword wielding enemy is about to try and hit you with a heavy attack you can see it in his great character animation and choose to dodge to the left or right, or you can hold a block and absorb the impact while being thrown off balance, or you can counter with a well timed parry that will allow you to flow into a counterattack combo. So, combat is about picking the correct move in real time to avoid damage or attack your opponent. Enemies with light swords can be beaten through easy blocks and the occasional heavy attack to break their guard. Enemies who carry a shield require a kick or a shove to break their guard since your direct frontal sword attacks are mostly useless. There’s also slow enemies with large heavy swords, and fast enemies who duel wield knives that they can throw at you.

Combat gets frantic and challenging as the game throws more enemies at you. They cluster around you and it becomes a game of picking the right enemy to focus on and of dodging and blocking enemies who attack from the side or behind. And all of this is happening while a chorus of voices in Senua’s head cheer you on, or warn you of an attack behind you, or fret as you take a hit, or taunt you as you are about to die, or urge you to finish an injured opponent. Once again, this game is gritty and violent. Get knocked down in combat and you can see the pain on Senua’s face. Having to stand back up after a near fatal blow feels hard and the game even goes so far to drastically limit your attack speed and power for a few seconds until you recover. It makes every battle tense and terrifying, even if mechanically there isn’t really as much danger of failure you are lead to believe. There are certainly times where you chain together dodges and attacks and blocks and combos that let you slice through an otherwise hard group of enemies and it feels very satisfying… so it’s not all grit and pain. It is fun, as well!

Taken all together, from the extremely excellent facial capture and acting for Senua, to the hellish story about her quest to defy the Norse gods, to the combat that is somewhat simple but deeply satisfying, to the various set pieces and puzzles you’ll face, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a fantastic game. It is not particularly long. Maybe 5 hours. 10 hours at most. But those hours are packed with narration and combat and storytelling and creepy frightening sights.

That the game is apparently doing well and is being considered a success pleases me greatly! 🙂

by Ragashingo

Bite-sized Backstory 33: The Long Siege of Pallas

Since before the Reef Wars, the Awoken could only ever tell that the Eliksni were communicating, but what exactly the aliens were saying to one another had always been lost in the pulsed static or rapid beeps and tones of encryption. It seems likely that the Awoken’s communications were almost certainly just as unreadable to the Eliksni, but then it was the Eliksni who were lashing out at Awoken colonies and murdering entire Awoken populations. For months or perhaps even years, the Awoken had been on the defensive. All they could really do was react, to Skolas’ next aggression.

Finally, though, after the attack on Amethyst, Prince Uldren and his Crows managed to break the House of Wolves’ encryption. Now, they could listen in on Skolas and his lieutenants and they strike back at his forces. The first of the Reef’s counter attacks came against Drevis, who if you’ll remembered, committed major atrocities on Amethyst.

Sometimes we think of space navigation as a solved thing. Even in our modern, real life age we can land rovers on Mars or send probes to take spectacular pictures of the planet Pluto. But really, we’re so good at those things because we have had years and decades to observe and perfect orbital models. Just recently a big-ish asteroid passed near Earth and the news stories were saying that there was a chances it would hit us when its orbit brought it back around in a few decades time. But, with only one short observation, doing the calculations to tell us for sure was apparently impossible. Even with our fancy technology, we’ll have to wait for the asteroid to pass us by once or maybe twice more before we’ll have any idea if it will hit us.

That’s how it must have been for Drevis’ crew and Pilot Servitors for the asteroid 324 Bamberga. Orbiting a little beyond Mars, Bamberga is roughly 230km wide, and the Eliksni, in their haste harass and attack the Reef, miscalculated its orbit. The Awoken however, who had likely been observing and charting Bamberga’s movements for multiple hundreds of years, knew exactly where it would be, and used that knowledge to drive Drevis into a trap.

We don’t have any account of exactly how Armada Paladin Imogen Rife’s forces drove Drevis’ ketch into the path of Bamberga. I’d like to imagine it was a running series of quick clashes, picket actions, and larger feints that kept Drevis on the run until Bamberga ran into her. Drevis’ ketch was utterly destroyed in the collision, and both she and her most prized servitor, Kaliks-4, were captured.

After the Reef’s defeats and humiliations at Amethyst and Iris, this must have seemed quite the victory, but remember, the Kaliks line of servitors were very important to the House of Wolves. So, instead of a uneventful voyage back to Vesta, where Paladin Rife would have presented Drevis to her Queen, the Awoken fleet was instead attacked by Pirsis, one of Skolas’ few top remaining lieutenants. Pirsis cornered Rife’s forces at the large asteroid of 2 Pallas and set up a siege.

2 Pallas is the third largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and is only a little smaller than Vesta, the asteroid that the bulk of the Reef is built around. At roughly 550km across, Pallas is almost twice as big as Bamberga, and is home to a sizable population of Awoken.

Pirsis didn’t just trap Paladin Rife at Pallas, she amassed a fleet of what must have been hundred of Eliksni ships, enough ships to lay siege to Pallas and cut it off from the rest of the Reef not just for weeks or months, but for years! The House of Wolves clearly had the superior position and overwhelming firepower, but they refused to press their advantage, because doing so would have meant the certain death of Drevis and destruction of Kaliks-4.

The last time the Wolves had amassed such a huge force, the Awoken had smashed it with Mara Sov and her Harbingers leading the way. But this time, that wasn’t so easy. With the Wolves besieging a major population center, the use of Harbingers would have lead to a massive number of deaths on both sides! In desperation, Mara Sov sent Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior to search for Skolas among the Hildian Asteroids, but they were unsuccessful in their missions due to the cleverness of Skolas’ chief tactician, Beltrik, the Veiled.

The siege of Pallas finally began to crumble when a Dreg named Weksis the Meek launched an unsanctioned attack on the Athens Hull, which I’m guessing is the name of Imogen Rife’s flagship. Weksis and his small group of followers were able to blast their way into the Athens Hull in an attempt to rescue Drevis and Kaliks-4 from imprisonment, but the timely intervention of Commander Hallam Fen stopped them in their tracks and saw the would be rescuers imprisoned beside those they had been trying to rescue.

Unfortunately, this attack spurred Pirsis, who by now had been dubbed “Pallas-Bane”, to launch a more major attack of her own. Her larger, more able strike team fought their way through the breach that Weksis had opened and managed to free Kaliks-4. We’re told that Pirsis might have gotten away with the important Prime Servitor, but she instead tried to free Drevis as well. This lead to a face to face clash between the Awoken and Eliksni leaders in charge of their respective sides of the siege.

Perhaps Pirsis and Paladin Imogen Rife had seen each other during negotiations over the previous few years, but they probably never met in person. Now though,they fought one another gun vs gun and blade vs blade! Paladin Rife was forced to destroy Kaliks-4 in order to prevent its escape, but she, in turn, was cut down in battle by Pirsis!

Ultimately, Pirsis attack was a second failure, but her siege of Pallas might have continued if not for the efforts and quick thinking of Awoken Commander Hallam Fen. He somehow managed to get through what must have been intense jamming from Pirsis’ fleet and, with quick thinking, coordinated with the Queen’s Crows and Techeuns to create an enormous illusion of approaching Harbingers. Pirsis’ forces went mad. They still remembered the battle that took place at Ceres before the Scatter. Remembered how their ships had been disabled or destroyed by the thousands by the intense power of the Queen’s Harbingers. And so, they broke ranks and fled in complete disarray.

In the confusion that followed Commander Fen’s bluff, he along with Paladins Leona Bryl and Kamala Rior pounced on the Wolves. They managed to force most of them to retreat, and even more importantly, they managed to capture Pirsis, Pallas-Bane! In return for his service and innovative thinking, Queen Mara Sov allowed Hallam Fen to succeed his mentor, the late Imogen Rife, in the role of one of the Reef’s four Armada Paladins.

For those who are curious, the Reef’s forces are headed by seven Royal Paladins:

Royal Armada Paladins:

Abra Zire
Kamala Rior
Leona Bryl
Previously Imogen Rife, now replaced by Hallam Fen

Royal Army Paladins:

Pavel Nolg
Devi Cassl

Royal Awoken Guard Paladin:

Yasmin Eld

Following the failure of the long siege at Pallas, Skolas’ forces were again forced to move into the open in an effort to seek a new advantage over the Reef. The end of the siege of Pallas would come to mark the beginning of the end of the Reef Wars. In the few remaining battles, the Awoken would demonstrate that they had learned well from their previous clashes with the Eliksni, and before long Skolas himself would be betrayed!

Sources:
WANTED: Drevis, Wolf Baroness
WANTED: Weksis, the Meek
WANTED: Pirsis, Pallas-Bane
The Royal Awoken Guard

by Ragashingo

Bite-sized Backstory 32: The Eos Clash & Amethyst

After the Awoken smashed their fleet and their leadership at Ceres, the House of Wolves splintered into a variety of groups vying for control. As we saw last time, the three primary contenders for the Kellship were three of Virixas’ lieutenants: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid.

The first order of business for these three claimants was to gather their forces and, critically it seems, take command of as many servitors as they could. Servitors are still somewhat mysterious to us. The basics are as follows:

Servitors are living relics of the once-mighty Fallen civilization. Packed with ultra-sophisticated machinery, they process matter and energy into the Ether that the Fallen depend on for life. In battle they support the Fallen with defensive systems and their own powerful energy weapons. Outside, they anchor Fallen comms and provide vital technological acumen.

Servitors have complex relationships with each other and with their Fallen crews. Servitors are attached to a Prime, a massive Servitor which exists in unclear symbiosis with a Fallen Archon. The Archon conveys the Kell’s wishes to the Prime Servitor, and exerts some measure of control. Recent developments suggest that Prime Servitors are more than a focus of worship and logistical activity. They may play a key role in Fallen star flight.

– Servitor

We quickly see this “complex relationship” servitors have. Skolas and Parixas fight over control of the Kaliks line of servitors, but Irxis somehow knew that the Orbiks servitors had at least some control over the Kaliks line of servitors and used that advantage to deal heavy blows to her rivals.

The next major battle to take place in the Reef Wars was an important battle called the Eos Clash. One way or another, Peekis, one of Skolas’ subordinates, managed to pin Irxis’ forces in or near the orbit of the sixty-four mile wide asteroid 221 Eos. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a brilliant strategic move on Peekis’ part but one of desperation even though he had overwhelming numbers. Reading a bit between the lines, could it be that Skolas forces were being severely harmed by Irxis’ partial control over the Kaliks servitors?

In any case, this large scale battle of Wolves on Wolves ended with Irxis dead and both fleets in ruins.

Though technically a victory for Skolas, the Eos Clash came at a terrible cost for him. He docked Peekis’ arms and demoted him to Dreg as punishment for his recklessness.

– WANTED: Peekis, the Disavowed

At this point, we are told Skolas changed his strategy. How did he change it? Cayde-6 has the answer for us:

The Awoken will tell you that a long time ago the Queen conquered the House of Wolves. What they won’t say, because they are very serious important people, is that the House of Wolves did a lot of the job for them. After the Queen killed the Wolf Kell, the Fallen started competing for the throne. One of the first battles was called the Eos Clash and I wasn’t anywhere near it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not making this up. A Fallen named Skolas wiped out one of his rivals in the Eos Clash. But the battle cost him so much he got to thinking: if the Reef killed my boss, and gave me a chance at the throne, maybe I can use the Reef to kill all my rivals too!

– Prison of Elders, The Reef

The first, and maybe best example of Skolas’ new strategy can be seen with the Silent Fang’s attacks and trickery at Amethyst and Iris.

The Fang used to do hit-and-run attacks against civilian targets during the worst days of the Reef Wars. I’m not sure, but I think that’s what made Variks turn against Skolas. Assassins unleashed on miners, on teachers. That’s a long way to fall.” – Petra

– Talk to Petra

In order to defeat his challenger for leadership of the House of Wolves, Skolas had Drevis, the leader of the Silent Fang assassins, personally lead an attack on a civilian station of Awoken called Amethyst. The Silent Fang killed everyone there, including Petra’s sisters, one of which, Pinar Venj, was the leader of Amethyst. This massacre becomes one of the biggest driving forces in Petra Venj’s life, as she later noted in a letter to her Queen:

It was your service that kept me from sorrow after Amethyst was razed. The loss of my sisters, my whole life, as our station burned… it took something from me.

By your will, it was given back to me.

Promoting me to the Corsairs, allowing me to strike back at the Wolves. Letting my fury find purchase in defense, in support, and in glorious battle. I know, as I’m sure you did, that without focus my heart would have grown toxic.

– Petra Venj, Queen’s Wrath

In response, the Reef’s Paladin Abra Zire lead a fleet chasing after Drevis in the direction of the bright, reflective asteroid Iris. Her response had come too late to protect Amethyst, but she wasn’t going to let anything stop her from punishing those responsible.

Except, at the same time, Grayor, who was likely another leader among the Silent Fang, led an attack against one of Skolas’ remaining Eliksni rivals. They hit Parixas’ ketch then fled so that Parixas would chase after them towards… the bright reflective asteroid Iris.

7 Iris is an asteroid about about 2.3AU from our sun, is about 200km across, and its surface is very reflective and very bright:

Iris’s bright surface and small distance from the Sun make it the fourth-brightest object in the asteroid belt after Vesta, Ceres, and Pallas. It has a mean opposition magnitude of +7.8, comparable to that of Neptune, and can easily be seen with binoculars at most oppositions.

– Wikipedia

Through a combination the glare coming off Iris and the Eliksni’s jamming and cloaking we’re all fairly familiar with, the two members of the Silent Fang slipped away leaving Paladin Zire’s forces to clash with Parixas’! By the time the battle was over, the Reef’s forces were victorious… but so was Skolas! Not only had his forces badly bloodied the Reef’s nose, he had also managed to use their response to further his own ambitions!

Unfortunately for Drevis, the Reef’s reach was quite long. As we’ll see next, she was soon captured, but instead of an easy victory, her capture would spark the largest and longest series of battles in the Reef Wars.

by Ragashingo

Bite-sized Backstory 31: Meanwhile! At Twilight Gap!

As the House of Wolves scattered and splintered among the many planetoids of the asteroid belt, the House of Devils lead the other Houses against the City.

In some ways, the City had unfortunately set its self up for such an attack. What started as settlements underneath the Traveler slowly grew into a metropolis protected by high walls, artillery equipped towers, and scores of nearly immortal Guardians. After establishing itself, the City began to expand outward but those new outer sections were not as well defended and gave the Eliksni a weak point to attack.

This lookout station at the edge of the City’s borders was decommissioned in the face of increasing Fallen attacks shortly before the Battle of Twilight Gap.

– Frontier

As the City learned to walk again, it found a world overrun by alien menace. It faced disaster and defeat. Even in recent years, as Guardians begin to venture back to the Moon and the inner planets, the City’s territory has withdrawn – outer sections abandoned and converted into fortifications in the wake of the Battle of Twilight Gap.

– The City Age

During the battle, the combined forces of the Eliksni houses, except, of course, the House of Wolves, managed to breach at least some of the City’s defenses. Eliksni walkers traded shells with the City’s guns while other Eliksni forces worked on swarming those gun positions. Despite the City’s defenses being lead by the Iron Lord Saladin Forge, the Eliksni even managed to fight their way onto (and possibly into?) the City’s main defensive walls. Things weren’t looking good!

“Kei-Ying. Gave his last full measure at Twilight Gap.” —The Last Stands of First Pillars

– Murvaux Type 0

At the desperate battle of Twilight Gap, Warlocks worked in concert to shatter the enemy. It was not quite enough.

– Mystic Drain

The House of Wolves and the Awoken tore the Reef apart trying to get a tactical advantage. All the while, we were desperately trying to hold the Walls against the Devils, Kings, and Winter. It was one of the darkest chapters in the City’s history.” —Zavala

– Kell Rising

But, ultimately, the City’s walls held, thanks in large part to both the Guardians who died defending it and the legends who finally drove back the Elkisni’s advance.

Lord Shaxx is one of the heroes of the Battle of the Twilight Gap, having led the counterattack that pushed the Fallen from the City walls. Fearing that another full-scale assault would be more than the City could repel, Shaxx chose to stay in the City to mentor Guardians in the Crucible.

One day Shaxx vows to return to the war beyond the City, but only after he is confident the fires of the Crucible have forged a new generation of warriors.

– Crucible Handler

A hero to the City and a legend in his own right, Saladin Forge led the City’s defense during the Battle for the Twilight Gap. His protégés, Commander Zavala and Lord Shaxx, now lead the Tower’s Vanguard and the Crucible, respectively.

– Iron Banner Rep

You want another story about the Twlight Gap? Ana Bray, the Hunter. We all dug deep that day. We all touched the Light in ways we never thought we could. Or should. Ana, though. When she fired the Gun, where her Golden blasts hit home, she left behind the pools of light. Like splashes of sunlight that burned and burned.” —Lord Shaxx

– Talk to Lakshmi-2

He could feel his light draining. He pulled all of it into one last hope.

He reeled back and bam!

His helm found purchase, breaking through just above the Kell’s eyes. The Ether screamed from his head and together they fell to the ground.

The Exo Guardian rose, staggering back. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Kell’s body. He’d never seen any Fallen withstand a skull puncture, but this was no ordinary Fallen. He waited…and waited.

“Ghost?” The words barely audible. He heard her flash in, but had a hard time pinning her down. She was buzzing about, surveying the Fallen Kell.

“He’s dead alright. So that’s it, we are done now?”

He removed his helm, tossed it aside, and dropped to his knees.

The Devils without a Kell. This war was over, at last. They could finally go home.

– Legend: Saint-14

Because of the Reef’s intervention in attacking the House of Wolves as they approached Earth, what should have been a great, if perhaps costly, victory for the Elkisni instead turned into a major defeat. In all likelihood, the Battle of Twilight Gap ended their chances of reclaiming the Traveler through conventional warfare.

The near defeat at Twilight Gap changed things for the City as well. Outlying districts were abandoned or converted into fortifications. Lord Shaxx began the Crucible as a method of training Guardians to fight foes just as dangerous as themselves, and Lord Saladin, who had an even better understanding of what it meant to face an unwinnable battle, instituted the Iron Banner to challenge Guardians to fight with the full strength of their Light without the concept of fair play helping or hindering them.

Oh! And of course one other very famous thing resulted from the Battle of Twilight Gap:

” 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.

– Gjallarhorn

Amusingly, not everyone working on the famed rocket launcher saw it Crux’s way, and that included his gunsmith partner Victor Lomar!

This commission is a commemoration! They deserve something dependable. These men and women did not survive the Gap so that you could make art!

– Beauty in Destruction

by Ragashingo

Bite-sized Backstory 30: The Nobel Queen and the Scatter

When the Eliksni came to our system, the various houses did what they always did. As Variks says:

House Winter, attack. House Devils, plot. House Kings, plan. House Wolves circle. House Judgment… wait.

– Variks The Loyal

The attacks the House of Winter performed are referred to in Draksis, Winter Kell:

Kell of the Wintership Simiks-fel, has been an elusive target for the Vanguards. After his countless raids on jumpship reclamation convoys, Cayde-6 personally upped the bounty on him. With confirmed sightings of the Kell in the Ishtar Sink, the time to strike is now.

The result of which is seen in Ghost Fragment: Hunter:

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.

Which eventually leads to us boarding Simiks-fel and killing Draksis ourselves in Destiny. We get to see a lot of the House of Devils plotting firsthand as well. They try to capture Rasputin in Destiny and they eventually try to take control of SIVA in Rise of Iron.

The House of Kings we see very little of. There’s that one meeting between the House of Wolves and House of Kings that we break up. The one deep in the Cosmodrome around that hologram of the Traveler. But other than that, the Kings are very cautious and generally do not stick their necks out.

Now, the House of Wolves? At some point after the Eliksni fight their long running skirmishes against the Iron Lords, and after the establishment of the City, all the Eliksni houses put their heads together and plan a massive attack. The House of Wolves is apparently intended to be the muscle:

The transmission was broadcasted on all Fallen frequencies. Lacking, at the time, the ability to crack Fallen encryptions, the Master of Crows could discern only that the Fallen Houses were all talking to each other. That was a thing that had never happened before.

Then the Techeuns looked Earthward—and saw the Fallen there becoming bolder. Tactics suggested they were planning a massive attack. We had no interplanetary arrays—no way to warn Earth. We thought we would be able to do nothing but watch.

But then the Wolves arrived from the Jovians. Their army was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions strong: a dark wave that washed over the Reef, rushing toward the Earth. As soon as we saw them it was clear that if the Wolves reached Earth, the City would fall.

– WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells

So, while some houses like the Devils essentially parked themselves right on top of the homeworld of the immortal, unkillable Guardians, the Wolves had been somewhere far away past Mars and past even the asteroid belt. Arriving from the Jovians means that the House of Wolves had taken up residence on or near Jupiter’s moons.

We’re also told in Vestian Outpost, Queen’s Bay that:

the Reef’s sunward side, the Vestian Outpost marks the flightpath any Guardian must take to access the Queen’s realm. Beyond it lies the Vestian Web, the heart of the Reef built around the asteroid 4 Vesta.

That would put the Reef here some 2.5AU (21 light minutes) from the Sun:

By contrast, Ceres is a little farther out at roughly 2.7AU.

But, of course, these two asteroids are in constant motion and depending on exactly when Destiny takes place they might be closer together or on opposite sides of the sun from each other.

The WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells Grimoire Card then continues with:

Seemingly oblivious to our existence, the bulk of the Wolf fleet stopped to regroup at Ceres. The Queen’s decision was this: attack the House of Wolves, thereby saving Earth but revealing the Reef’s presence to any and all enemies in the quadrant; or remain silent, preserving the Reef’s invisibility but allowing the City to perish.

That a pretty bold move by Queen Mara Sov, but we actually have a more detailed look at it in Ghost Fragment: Fallen 4. This is one of my favorite scenes in all of the Grimoire so I’m going to post it in its entirety:

This happens long ago, but not too long to matter.

Ceres rules the Asteroid Belt. Ceres is the white queen of this space, four hundred million kilometers from the Sun. Ceres is round. Round means power, out here: nothing else in the Belt is big enough to crush itself into a sphere with its own gravity. Ceres has its own chemical stars. Shavings of salt and ice that glint in orbit. Like a crown.

There are other lights, newer stars, newer crowns. Warship engines. Another queen is coming to conquer Ceres, because Ceres is full of warrens and shipyards and habitats, because Ceres is round and lucky as a Servitor. Because Ceres is full of the Wolves she wants to rule.

Shark-fierce ships gather in squadrons and tribes. Skiffs. Ketches. The Kell of Wolves has a fleet gathered here. The Kell of Wolves heard the call, and summoned the House of Wolves to prepare for the great battle on Earth. The salvation of the Kell’s people depends on their ability to shatter the City. It’s a matter of survival.

Now the Wolf fleet turns to meet the Queen.

See the squadrons of Skiffs wrapping themselves in stealth, cold and transparent, knifing out invisible and brave? See the Ketches like broad blades, the bright thoughts of a Servitor guiding them to battle? See them turning, accelerating, waking up their jammers and their arc guns? All doomed. The Kell of Wolves will never make it to the Twilight Gap. The Kell of Wolves put all that strength in one place, and now the Queen of the Reef is coming to break it.

Out there, coming out of the dark, are the Awoken. Not so great a fleet, is it? Little fighters scattered around like four-pointed thorns. Destroyers and frigates and salvaged hulls pulled out of the Reef. And right at the front, at the speartip, flies the Queen.

The Wolf Kell, practical, brave, tallies strength of metal and equipment. The Kell considers the chance that the Awoken have some secret weapon, something gleaned from hulks in the Reef or whispered up by the witches, and sets that chance aside. The Kell thinks the House of Wolves can win decisively. So the Kell sends challenge and warning. I AM LORD OF WOLVES, the Kell sends. YOU ARE AN EMPTY THING WITH TWO DEAD SOULS. THIS IS MY HOUSE. THESE ARE MY TERMS. SURRENDER AND I WILL ONLY TAKE YOUR SHIPS.

The Awoken fleet cuts their engines. Drifts. Wolf strike elements, torpedo-armed Skiffs hidden under jamming and camouflage, find their firing solutions.

The Queen’s ship broadcasts. I AM NOBLE TOO, she says, OH LORD OF WOLVES.

The Kell doesn’t mind a little banter before the kill. It gives the Wolf ships longer to draw the battle away from Ceres. The Kell replies. YOU HAVE NO LINE. YOU HAVE NO POWER. Captains and Barons signal their readiness, Skolas and Pirsis and Irxis, Drevis, Peekis, Parixas, all of them bound by fear and loyalty, all ready for war.

STARLIGHT WAS MY MOTHER. The Queen’s ship whispers in eerie erratic radio bursts. Servitors begin to report a strange taste in the void. AND MY FATHER WAS THE DARK.

Here, at last, too late, the Kell begins to feel fear. CALL ON THEM, THEN, the Kell sends, one last mocking signal before death and ruin, AND SEE WHAT HELP THEY OFFER.

So the Queen calls, as only she can. Every Servitor in every Ketch hears it. Every Captain and Baron roars at their underlings as sensors go blind, as firing solutions falter, as reactors stutter and power systems hum with induction. Stealth fails. Space warps. The House of Wolves shouts in spikes of war-code, maneuvers wild, fires blind.

Behind the Queen’s ship, the Harbingers awaken.

The Queen’s line there “I am noble too, oh Lord of Wolves. Starlight was my mother; and my father was the dark.” gives me chills each time I read it. We don’t really know what that means yet, but clearly the Queen is not nobody! Cayde-6 once said of her:

And who’s the best at cutthroat politics? That’s right, her Majesty, the Queen of the Reef.

…

Whatever happens— I want you to remember that she knows, more than anyone else I’ve met, how to set one foe against another.

– Prison of Elders, The Reef

So, what happens next?

Her Harbingers ripped into Ceres, destroying the asteroid and killing Virixas, Kell of Wolves and more than half his House. The remaining Wolves scattered, burrowing deep into the Belt for cover. There, new claimants to the Kellship quickly arose: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid.

– WANTED: Skolas, Kell of Kells

The Awoken win a decisive victory here, but, as we’ll soon see, the conflicts that the Queen just kicked off aren’t called the Reef Wars for nothing!

by Ragashingo