Ragashingo

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

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.

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

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!

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

“Guardian Down!” Lord Saladin’s ghost informed him as a barrage of arc missiles streaked across the outskirts of the town turned battleground. The excited clicks and grunts of the alien pirates echoed above the fighting. They were winning!

The hundred or so Fallen advancing on the town were a problem, but in truth they weren’t much more than a screen for the spider-shaped walker standing on the ridge behind them. Saladin knew he had to get up there, somehow, and put an end to that threat, but Ragashingo had already shown a solo charge through the Dregs and Shanks would not be enough.

“Up and over, not through!” Efrideet’s said from her place beside him, her voice as young and cheerful as always. “Me or you?” she asked.

“Me,” Saladin growled in replied.

Together, they sprinted at the Fallen hoard, Saladin’s shield of arc energy deflecting what small arms fire came their way. At the critical moment, Efrideet increased her pace and then, gripping Saladin tightly, launched them both into the air. As her catapult gave out, Efrideet surged forward with a burst of speed and a crackle of lightning as she propelled her fellow Guardian forward with all her might.

Saladin flew towards the walker straight as an arrow, flaming axe now in his hands. With one final burst of lift and one mighty slash of his axe, he severed the robotic tank’s cameras and sensors from its body and guns.

With the walker dead, Ghosts were free to relight their Guardian’s embers, and what had been a dwindling defense quickly reversed into a thundering attack as cheers for Efrideet and Saladin rose above even the scavengers’ calls for retreat.

Ok, that’s not actually a Grimoire Card, but it’s what I imagine might have happened when I read this small section of Efrideet’s:

In the tales of the Iron Lords, Lady Efrideet was one of the most prominent characters. She once threw Saladin like a javelin into a Fallen Walker—a City favorite retold for centuries.
…

–Lady Efrideet

The Iron Lords originally formed to put an end to human warlords who were using their gifts of Light and Ghosts to rule and terrorize populations who somehow survived the collapse. It was only later that the Eliksni arrived and began scavenging and killing. The focus of the Iron Lords quickly shifted to fighting this new alien threat and completing the walls of the City.

While there’s not any cohesive timeline to be found, there are some great stories from this time period. Stories like:

The plan Lady Skori comes up with to ambush a group of Fallen while her fellow Iron Lords are pestering her about spending too much time writing the Iron Song:

”…
A lot of people are relying on us, Skorri. If you don’t think you’re up for—”

“Hunters up top, 11 o’clock on the ridge. Two shots to the Servitor, draw their attention up. I come in with Radiance, Dregs are blinded, Jolder’s powered up, she rushes in, splits ’em in half. You hopefully don’t trip over your cloak like you did back at the Flood Zone, but I’m not optimistic. The rest come out of the cave, take out the Captain, Felwinter finishes off the south group with a Bomb, everything else is candy.”
…

The epic stands Lord Silimar made defending the same location against the Fallen again and again:

…
As the Fallen charged, Silimar refused to abandon what he’d built, though others retreated to a stronger position. “Go,” he told them. “Save yourselves. I’ll slow them down.”

The enemy came in overwhelming force. A breaking wave of blades and firepower and death. Atop the structure’s central bulwark, Lord Silimar held his ground.

“Take it if you can, you bastards!” He shouted at the swarming enemy.

He leapt upon the great edifice and there put up a final stand as the enemy engulfed him. He died with his dagger in the guts of an Archon while the great structure shook with explosions and rained stones down upon the land.
Later that night, when Lord Silimar rose again from the ashes, he found Lord Saladin already there and waiting, standing near the place where he’d made his final stand.
…

Lord Timur’s Stormtrance defeating hundreds of Shanks and their Vandal keepers in an unusual way:

…
Lord Felwinter, I know what you are. And you are no Warmind or even one of its puppets. Come. You must see this.” He makes a gesture like he’s casting a spell over the sand. “Follow my footfalls; this area’s rigged with dirty Fallen nonsense.”

They struggle up the dunes. Felwinter glides ahead. As he lands, a sandstorm rises to meet him. More shanks. Hundreds of them. Behind them, a lone Vandal sniper lays down covering fire.

Felwinter, realizing his mistake, runs back toward Timur, shielding himself in the Light of suns.

Timur continues forward, grasps the brass familiar around his neck, and closes his eyes. A slight hum rises and his trance takes him deep into the sea of shanks, his trusted Lash raised and tearing his path through the darkness. Felwinter is slow to follow, but fast enough to witness Timur’s focus turn shanks by the pack against their Vandal keeper, chasing him back toward the sea.
…

And Rezyl Azzir who, while not an Iron Lord, existed as a figurative and literal Titan of the City around that same time. His defeat of a Fallen Kell is the stuff of legends!

…
A massive blast cratered the ground a few feet from the Titan. The Ketch had turned its guns on Rezyl.

Another blast impacted to Rezyl’s left and he stumbled. A third exploded directly in his path…

…and Rezyl fell.

From the treeline, his Ghost watched as the Fallen celebrated and a Skiff drifted down from the Ketch above.

The circle around Rezyl’s body parted and the imposing figure of their Kell stepped forward to admire his prize.

The chittering excitement quieted to a steady drone as the Kell lifted Rezyl’s limp body by the neck.

A chorus rose among the crew, growing louder as the Kell hefted Rezyl over his head for all to see.

Rezyl’s Ghost darted low through the crowd. He didn’t like Rezyl’s plan, but now he understood it.

Distracted by their Kell’s triumph, the Ghost’s presence went unnoticed until a beam of light swept over Rezyl’s body.

The mood shifted instantly, cheers turning to ravenous shouts.

The Kell’s gaze fell to the Ghost as the beam faded.

The circle began to collapse — the Fallen set to pounce.

As the Kell moved to toss Rezyl aside, cold steel met the underside of the alien marauder’s jaw, followed by a red flash as Rezyl pulled his cannon’s trigger.

Ether spewed in an angry geyser and the Kell’s grip loosened. Rezyl hit the ground and unloaded five more rounds into the Fallen leader’s torso. The monster dropped.

Frenzied, the Kell’s crew closed in like a flood.

Rezyl’s Ghost lifted above the fray, frantic, “Now! Now! Now!”

In one motion, Rezyl rose from a crouch, his fists clenched and raised high as a storm of Arc Light built within him, his full might raining down on the Kell’s chest. The shockwave of Rezyl’s attack hit like a meteor, shattering the Kell’s body and any Fallen within the Havoc storm’s radius.
…

You’ll note almost all of the quotes above are just smaller sections of each story. The stories of the Iron Lords are fantastic, especially when you put them together which is why we’ll loop around and revisit them someday. But for now, I hope you can see that the Iron Lords and their contemporaries like Zavala and Rezyl did a lot to safeguard humanity during the early years of the Eliksni’s incursion into our solar system.

But as much as they did, it was a distant noble Queen who saved us.

Before we really begin, I thought it might be interesting to explore some oddities of Eliksni biology, and take a quick look at two of the key individuals we’ll see driving the Eliksni’s fate before and during the events of Destiny.

Skolas the Rabid:

The incredibly difficult Fallen Kell many of us faced in the Prison of Elders was once merely one of multiple captains serving the previous House of Wolves Kell before the Reef Wars. We ultimately killed him to earn treasure from the Queen of the Reef, but did you realize that Skolas had been caught by the Awoken once before? And that it was Xur, or some other Agent of the Nine, who released him and set him on his (ultimately failed) quest to become the prophesied Kell of Kells?

Take a quick look:

He looks up. At the tiny hooded shape before him. The cell’s mist is clearing. He can see.

“I believe that I am here,” the creature says. To Skolas’ ears it has a strange voice, a strange accent. It speaks his language. “I have a clear purpose. I cannot explain it. Forgive me.”

From beneath its hood, tiny fingers of shadow probe the air.

Skolas rises up to smash it, to show his strength, because the alternative to violence is waiting for violence to come from a universe that has neither respect nor compassion. But he checks himself. His ambitions have brought him here, to this cell in this strange place… only it’s not so strange, is it? It’s the hold of a Ketch. “The Queen,” he says to the thing. “You work for the Queen.”

“The Nine made me aware of my purpose,” the creature says. “If am here, then it is because the Queen sent you to the Nine, and they wish you sent back.”

–Mystery: Fate of Skolas

Whoever or whatever the Nine are, they sure had it out for the Awoken!

Variks The Loyal:

Throughout all the wars and battles the Eliksni have undertaken in our solar system, and despite all the powerful leaders that have risen up in opposition to the various pockets of Humanity, Variks, a lowly scribe from the Eliksni House of Judgment may yet be the most influential Eliksni of all. We’ll get to his story in a bit, but first I wanted to point out something interesting that he revealed to us with his own words:

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

–Variks The Loyal

Did you see that?! Variks claims to have been alive before the Eliksni found our star system!

With Rise of Iron, we learned that the Iron Lords were at the height of their power some 500 years before Destiny’s present day, and that some Iron Lords were fighting Fallen well before that. If Variks’ quote above is to be believed, he and a good number of other Eliksni might have been present during the Whirlwind. Even if he was born much later, it certainly seems he might have braved the part of the journey to our solar system in search of the Traveler. That would mean that Variks, and many other Eliksni, might very well be over 500 years old!

There are two other interesting things we know about the Eliksni and their biology. First, they have the ability to regrow limbs:

Dregs cling to the lowest rung of Fallen society. Docked of their lower arms in a ritual of humiliation and obedience, Dregs seek to prove their worth. Only a few will survive to gain promotion and regrow their limbs. Their suicidal bravery is fueled by ambition and shame.

–Dreg

Interesting, then, that Variks has at least one robotic arm… but we’ll get to that…

And second is the ability for Eliksni to literally grow in size when they are able to feed on large amounts of Ether:

The Guards are handpicked from birth, stuffed full of Ether to make them strong and brainwashing to make them unthinkingly loyal to the Kell.

–WANTED: Wolve’s Guard

Kell uses Ciphers to control the Ether flow. Archons and Barons take deep draughts, grow tall. Dregs with tiny sips stay small.

–The Elder Cipher

It’s kinda neat to get even the smallest confirmation that, yes, Eliksni really do range in size from the small Dregs to the impressively large Kells. It seems likely that this Ether fueled growth is fairly slow, but we don’t know that for sure.

Oh, and about ether, and the way it releases from an Eliksni’s body upon a successful headshot? Some Guardians talk as if the Eliksni really do have souls that escape when the body they are in is killed:

Those Fallen in the Ishtar Sink on Venus…story is they raided the Prison of Elders in the Reef. Got an Archon Priest. The Queen’s bounty is high so we know it’s powerful. We need to hunt this thing down before they fully restore its soul. -Cayde-6

–Winter’s Run

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

–Devil’s Lair

I have devised a technique to liberate the soul from the flesh. It works very reliably on Fallen.

–The Calming

But someone out there, perhaps an Eliksni, has this to say on the subject:

The gas is no soul. An ethereal lifeblood, maybe, but a soul? I think not.

–Kellbreaker’s Gloves

Who’s right? In a universe where Hive undo their own deaths by surviving in alternate dimensions, and where our Guardians are brought back to life some five hundreds years after the devestating defeat at the end of our Golden Age… who can really say!?

Up next? I think I’ll just post all the cards relating to the Iron Lords in their proper order and expect you to read them straight through from beginning to end. The story of the Iron Lords is pretty awesome, and some of those cards talk a little about early Eliksni activity, so… it’s all good! Right?

The Fallen are ruthless scavengers. Brutal and uncaring, they arrived on their massive Ketches in the wake of the Collapse to loot and pillage our devastated worlds. – The Fallen

By the time Destiny’s story ends, it is clear that the Fallen have it the worst out of all the races we’ve met. Once the combined forces of the City and the Reef, not to mention the Vex, Hive, and Cabal, are done with the Fallen, it’s fair to wonder how many of them are even left in our system and how many of their ancient Houses are still intact.

But this race of pirates and scavengers humanity derides as Fallen was once something much more. Though some of their people have come to embrace the term Fallen, they actually call themselves Eliksni much as we call ourselves humans or humanity. And once, long ago, the Eliksni, like us, were visited by the Traveler.

The image clears of dirt and dust as a hand wipes the lens clean. A figure holds the Ghost up, looking into the lens. Harsh light from an unfamiliar sun backlights the four-armed creature, making it impossible to see its face. Its massive head turns, and a clicking and chittering voice can be heard speaking to something off-screen. While the noises themselves are harsh, the tone and content seem almost gentle. A curious creature, not a violent or angry one.

The lens refocuses beyond the creature’s head as it talks, and a startling landscape climbs to the horizon. It’s a paradise. Carefully tended lakes and rivers, water everywhere, wind their way between fields of lush iridescent crops and into groves of starkly colored trees. Every inch of the land seems engineered, brushed by a sculptor’s hand for form and function both.

The sky is a light pink, spotted with clouds and crowded with ships. Thick lanes of aerial traffic soar through the air, tightly managed and seemingly endless.

And beyond it all, above the clouds, hangs a perfect alabaster sphere. The image wobbles, shaking, flickering as if the Ghost is blinking. And the fragment ends. – Mystery: The Vault of Glass

The first image we get of the Eliskni comes to us through the strange, time-bent perception of a Ghost within the Vex’s Vault of Glass. This brief glimpse of an Eliksni world shows us that not only were they perhaps equals to Humanity in the height of our Golden Age, it’s even possible that they were our betters! Their lanes of air traffic speaks to a civilization bustling with technological prowess, while their paradise of perfectly engineered lakes, rivers, farm lands, and forests suggests that perhaps they have already long past the age of expansion, colonization, and struggle Humanity was in before its Golden Age came crashing down.

Skolas, the eventual Fallen leader of the House of Wolves, had this to say about the Eliksni’s Golden Age:

Remember the age before the Whirlwind, when ether ran free, when we ruled ourselves and our futures as kings. We wanted more than glimmer and glints and herealways. – Ghost Fragment: Fallen 3

Unfortunately, while the Eliksni’s Golden Age may have lasted a good deal longer than Humanity’s, it did not last.

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.

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

Found the Light. Too bright in Darkness to hide. – Variks, The Loyal

Something powerful and terrible attacked the Eliksni. Something so overwhelming they were forced to flee their home world and chase after what they called the Great Machine until they found it damaged and unmoving hanging low above the beginnings of what would years or maybe decades later become the City on Earth.

Destiny’s story might have been very different if the Eliksni that had survived their Whirlwind acted as a unified force. They might have come out the heroes. At the very least they might have been far and away the dominant rulers of our solar system with far more might than the Hive, Vex, Cabal or the Awoken of the Reef. But, instead of working together to preserve what remained of their race after the Whirlwind, the Eliksni almost immediately fell into infighting if not outright civil war.

While we don’t know much about this possible Eliksni’s civil war, we do know that the House Judgment, which seems to have helped settle disputes and keep order among the other Houses, was destroyed. House Judgement may very well have been one of the last Houses to fall due to the effects of the Whirlwind, but there were surely many others that were wiped out in, or because of, the Eliksni’s version of our Collapse. The most interesting of these Houses has to be the House of Rain.

Throughout Destiny, the Fallen repeatedly take bold but foolish risks. Their infighting and the way they throw themselves into the meat grinders of the City’s Guardians and the Reef’s Awoken is a tragic theme we see over and over. But, in Destiny, and in the Grimoire especially, there is a second theme that permeates the Fallen’s story. It is a promise of renewed unity and perhaps even redemption as all the Fallen Houses gather under the leadership of one Eliksni who will eventually be known as the Kell of Kells. If a Kell is the leader of a Fallen House, this individual will be the leader of all the Fallen Houses.

One of the most interesting things about this Kell of Kells is that their eventual existence was predicted by the House of Rain before it was destroyed in the Whirlwind:

Petra: What about this House of Rain, the Prophecy you keep quoting?

Variks: House Rain lost in Whirlwind. No survivors, but I keep their prophecies. You think many claim to be Kell of Kells, but none have. House Judgment closest thing to peace the Fallen ever know.

Petra: Heh. Maybe you are the Kell of Kells. – The Kell of Kells

And the prophecies Variks spoke of?

What Whirlwind whisked away will be rewrought, and every kell and ketch will kneel to the Kell of Kells.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – The Hunt for Skolas

The Great Machine will marvel, moved by might, and come to crown him Kell of Kells.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – The Kell of Kells

Before him, foes will flee or fall. But he will heal the houses, make them whole.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – Gone to Ground

That even the Traveler would recognize this Kell of Kells seems completely unprecedented with what we’ve seen so far in Destiny… so I really we see these prophecies come true!

Like the story of the Hive we covered last time, the story of the Fallen Eliksni is one filled with hope and despair, with battles and betrayals, and maybe with even a hint or two about to expect from our favorite four-armed race in Destiny 2. I had a blast exploring the Grimoire last time for the Books of Sorrow, and so I hope you’ll join me again over the next several weeks as I trace the path of the Eliksni.

We’re finally at the end of the Books of Sorrow. This final chapter seems to be written from Oryx’s point of view as he muses on all that he has done.

First we see (Oryx’s?) Hive restate their belief in the form of an open letter to the things they plan to kill. It’s the same basic thing where they say that building safe spaces for cooperation is a fatal lie because the universe only offers two paths: Being ruthless or being extinct.

Next, we see Oryx musing a little about where he is now. How his Hive and Crota keep him and his worm sated with rich tribute. And how he is now using his power to learn more about the Deep. Oryx briefly wonders about his sisters and has come to suspect that they might be hiding secrets and power from him since they went their separate ways, but as is typical Oryx is fine with that because “the only meaningful relationship is the attempt to destroy.” He also states that the Deep dosen’t want everything to be the same, but rather it was strong life that can live forever. This seems to have a few logical flaws, like what happens when there are only two forms of life left, but Oryx seems committed to his way of thinking now…

Then, we see Oryx thinking about his past and about returning to Fundament. But he concludes there is no point because he knows what happened to everything on that gas giant. He became that world’s ultimate descendant and learned the answer to the questions about the universe his people had been asking. We also see that Oryx is actually aware enough to know that he doesn’t yet fully understand the natures of the Deep and the Traveler, but he does want to learn.

And finally, Oryx considers all he has done. He thinks of his goals as to become so closely associated with death that if the universe ends he will survive as a part of the nothingness the universe becomes. He also relates the Hive’s philosophy in perhaps the most understandable terms yet:

Far better to have a savage universe with a happy end than a happy universe with no hope.

Oryx himself goes on to think through the process something would have to go through to defeat him. He reasons that someone would need to kill his echoes, defeat him in the material world, defeat his count, and then confront him in his throne world. He realizes that while he is vastly powerful, a lot of that power is now derived from the tribute flowing from his daughters, and Crota, and his court, and if all of those are defeated he would no longer be able to feed his worm god.

As cruel and destructive as Oryx is, he still acknowledges that if something is able to defeat his Hive and his court and his children and him then that thing deserves to win. As bad as Oryx is, he is at least honest about the whole thing.

We know he was honest when he wrote this final Book of Sorrow because if we track forward to the time of our Guardians we take this exact path to killing Oryx. We first killed Crota, then we eliminated the key players of Oryx’s court (namely the Warpriest, then Golgoroth, then Oryx’s daughters) and finally we cut Oryx off from the tribute of corrupted Light he has stored up. As Oryx said, if all these things were to happen, if he was to fail, then let him become wormfood. And so he did.

Of course, as all great villains, Oryx’s isn’t quite done. Even in defeat he is confident that whoever defeated him will ultimately be forced to carry on his work. He believes that no matter what happens, he, in the form of his ideas and his cruelty, will live on forever. And so far, we don’t have much to prove him wrong!

But, just as Oryx came to an end, so too has our in depth look at the Books of Sorrow! We’ve come a long long way!

• We tracked the heroic exploits of the three brave sisters who should have been heirs to the Osmium Court.
• We watched as the Hive, a race of short lived krill people entangled themselves with a group of evil worm gods and used destruction to rise above the lives they had lived for millions of years.
• We watched as Oryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath laid waste to hundreds if not thousands of powerful civilizations.
• Here at the end, we’ve see that the Hive fractured as its three masters went their separate ways based on differences of ideology and raw destructive might.

We’ll eventually revisit the Hive and their exploits as we explore their attempts to conquer Humanity and defeat the Guardians of The City. But first we have some new and exciting topics to cover, starting with:

I hope you’ll join me as I attempt to trace a proud race as they are forced from the heights of their Golden Age down to becoming scavengers on the edge of extinction.

Previous: 25: The Harmony and the Ahamkara
Next: 27: Whirlwind & Rain

The Defeat of the Harmony

We don’t know if the Harmony knew about the Hive, or the hundreds of civilizations they’d made extinct. It’s possible they saw the Hive coming and prepared as best they could. One day the Harmony must have been at peace, and the next they faced one of the greatest threats the galaxy has ever seen. And to be honest, they did pretty well, all things considered. But then, as we’ll see, the Hive weren’t fully committed to the fight, and the Harmony… and, well, the Harmony had some special help.

Xivu Arath leads the initial wave of the Hive’s assault on the Harmony and their ten worlds. We are told that she fights with strategies and discipline but is held at bay for fifty years. Strangely, it’s not the Harmony’s Sting superweapon that holds back the Hive’s god of war. Instead it is the Harmony’s “wishful bishops” who are able to fight Xivu Arath in the ascendant plane by obtaining power from “dragon-wishes.” Consider that for a moment. Only four races that we know of at this point have ever made it to the ascendant plane: The worm gods, the Hive (by ingesting the worm gods’ larvae), the Vex (because Savathûn tricked Crota into letting them in to Oryx’s throne world), and, of course, the Darkness. That the Harmony’s bishops were able to enter and fight the Hive there is extraordinary, which means these dragons the Harmony directed their wishes towards must be as well!

With Xivu Arath locked in a stalemate against the Harmony’s fleets (and their dragon-wish powered bishops, and their Traveler infused blackhole superweapon) Savathûn move in. But, instead of attacking the Harmony, she and her followers somehow disguise themselves and trick their way onto one of the Harmony’s worlds. And instead of spreading disease, or sabotaging the Harmony’s defenses, Savathûn moves to study the Harmony’s dragons in secret. She doesn’t just take scans of them or some such things, she and her followers vivisect them! That is, they experiment on these dragons and cut them open and take them apart while they are still alive!

Vivisection today (in the real world) often requires special procedures to limit the amount of pain experiments cause. It often takes the approval of an entire ethical review before a study involving vivisection can even be started. It seems extremely unlikely that Savathûn and her people were so high minded… Interestingly, we’re told that the Hive’s worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn’s actions, though not why they do so. The apparent joy shown by the Hive’s worm gods at Savathûn’s actions might have something to do with who or what the Harmony’s dragons actually are…

And then, of course, there’s Oryx. He and his Court hide and grow within the accretion disc of the Harmony’s blackhole. Oryx leaves the traditional combat to Xivu Arath and instead terrorizes the Harmony’s worlds by bombarding them with asteroids and comets. He also launches Seeders to grow his forces on the Harmony’s worlds much like Crota grew his followers into a powerful fighting force capable of taking on the House of Devils in the Cosmodrome. I can’t imagine that Oryx didn’t also use his power to Take key members of the Harmony’s defense and leadership, but we are not specifically told that he did.

We are told that this is not exactly a hard battle for the Hive. In fact, we are told that the Hive’s campaign against the Harmony is merely routine. Yes, they were slowed by the Harmony for a time, but soon enough Xivu Arath and Oryx’s forces emerge triumphant and Oryx and his Court tear down the Harmony’s Gift Mast. Interestingly, Savathûn is only said to have achieved her secret purpose, but we are not told what that purpose was or if it helped her brother and sister defeat the Harmony. It could be that she helped weaken the Harmony’s bishops with her experiments, but we just don’t know.

Oryx, by his right as the most powerful of the Hive, divides up the Gift Mast and its Light. He claims he is being generous in only keeping 2/5ths of it for himself, but do the math and you’ll see that even though he gives up more than he keeps, neither of his sisters will gain more from the Harmony’s defeat individually than he does. In everything he does, Oryx always makes sure that he comes out ahead… and his sisters recognize it.

Soon, Savathûn takes her forces and departs from Oryx and Xivu Arath saying: “Siblings, listen, we must part ways a while, so that we may grow different.” While her statement may seem straight forward, I can’t imagine that Savathûn is telling the whole truth. Xivu Arath also leaves Oryx, saying: “King Oryx, you take up too much space, your power constrains too many choices. I must go away from you.” I think she is being truthful. Xivu Arath’s stated plan was to beat Oryx to the Gift Mast and she failed.

The Hive achieved victory over the Harmony, but it is the last of their victories we hear about in the Books of Sorrow, and one can’t help but wonder if by going their separate ways the Hive as a whole was significantly weakened.

The Ahamkara

There is another, larger issue here though. That of the true identity of the Harmony’s dragons. I think we have enough evidence to make a good guess at who these dragons were, and, if my guess is right, I think the presence of these dragons reveal something very sinister in Destiny’s universe. Yeah… more sinister than a race of near immortals who’s stated goal is to kill everything so they alone can survive.

First, here’s my theory in full:

The Hive’s worm gods are just one example of this type of creature in the Destiny universe. The Hive themselves stumbled upon the Harmony’s dragons which they immediately recognized as being similar or the same as their worm gods. There is a third known set of these creatures in the Destiny universe: A group of wish granting dragons called the Ahamkara that appeared in Humanity’s solar system after the arrival of the Traveler. I propose these three sets of creatures are part of the same vastly ancient race and that they ultimately working towards the same sinister end.

Now, lets break this down:

1. The Hive’s worm gods and Harmony’s dragons are the same type of creatures pursuing the same goals.

• Xivu Arath clearly recognizes the dragons as the same type of creature as her gods. She is offended by their “smug freedom” and wants them captured and locked away in cells. “Our gods should be ours alone.” seems pretty clear cut.
• We soon see that these dragons were working with the Harmony against the Hive. The Harmony’s dragons somehow grant the Harmony the ability to fight the Hive on the ascendant plane. As mentioned, this is unprecedented and unique out of all the Hive’s wars in the Books of Sorrow.
• The Hive’s worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn dissecting the dragons in secret instead of freaking out and demanding the Hive take immediate action to destroy them as they did when the Vex invaded Oryx’s throne world. Perhaps this is because not even Oryx has managed to truly kill a worm god. He “killed” Akka to gain the secrets that allowed him to Take enemies, but we are later told that Akka is still somehow alive.

2. The Hive’s worm gods are the same type of creatures as Humanity’s Ahamkara.

We have several instances of a shared speech pattern between the Hive’s worm gods and things said by the Ahamkara remains that Guardians have fashioned into powerful armor:

• In V: Needle and Worm, Sathona’s worm familiar says “…listen closely, oh vengeance mine…”
• In VIII: Leviathan, Sathona, who has been listening to the whispers of her dead worm god familiar says: “Let us dive, oh sisters mine.”
• In XII: Out of the Deep, a worm god speaking to Xivu Arath as the royal sisters chase Taox across Fundament says: “Reality is a fine flesh, oh generals ours. Let us feast of it.”
• In the Kagoor card, Kagoor’s worm says: “…this is the shape of joy, oh ruler mine.”

Contrast this with Humanity’s Ahamkara:

• They appeared on Venus at some point after the Traveler arrived. The Ishtar Collective, including Maya Sundaresh who might be the Exo Stranger, originally traveled to Venus to study the Ahamkara. It was only later that they found the Vex ruins.
• After the collapse, the Ahamkara were somehow still around. They were sought out for power and knowledge and for answers to questions no one had known to ask. Guardians sought them driven by hope, or vengeance, or despair. But the price of this knowledge was somehow too great and The City decided to make the Ahamkara extinct. We aren’t told what the price was exactly, but kicking off a “Great Ahamkara Hunt” with the goal of making the creatures extinct must have meant the price was pretty darn high!
• In Ghost Fragment: Legends 3, we hear about the Great Ahamkara hunt. Except we get this disturbing bit at the end:

And thus the Ahamkara were made extinct, their call silenced, their solipsistic flattering erased, their great design – if it ever existed – broken.

Of this you can be assured, oh reader mine

(Meaning the entire card was dictated by an Ahamkara?! )

• In Ghost Fragment: Warlock, we see a Warlock telling the story of how he accidentally sent a female Hunter chasing after an Ahamkara but telling her that there was no way she’d be able to kill one. He was showing off and was sure he’d sent her to her death. Apparently Ahamkara are quite powerful?More than that though, we see a chilling key phrase: He calls the Ahamkara “The dragon that made promises”! That is super huge! It links the Ahamkara which had previously been called “parasitic reptilian critters” to the concept of dragons and thus the Harmony and thus the Hive.
• Amusingly, if you were paying attention to the item descriptions, there is a Ahamkara Scale that is a hunter class item which has the description: “And that Warlock thought I couldn’t do it. Hah!” 🙂
• The Ahamkara are also mentioned in relation the Osiris in that one of his flaws or slights was chasing after Ahamkara lore. They are also clearly, if indirectly, mentioned in the card Ocean of Storms 2:

The tunnels were geologic in nature, or had to be. That’s what we thought until twelve hours into the second sub-lunar expedition, when we found the bones. A single long rib cage, the size of an aircraft fuselage.

The living creatures themselves, we found a hundred meters down. They might have been worms, if worms had scales and teeth and moved more quickly than a man could run.

This would seem to be a transcript or log perhaps from a Guardian just before the Hive and Crota killed thousands on the Moon. That long rib cage the size of an aircraft fuselage? We’ve seen something very similar! In the area where we have to kill Crota’s crystal! It has a vaguely dragon-shaped skull and the bones of its body stretches along the right edge of the room? Is that the remains of an Ahamkara?!

Beyond these things, we have multiple examples of gear that various Guardians fashioned out of Ahamkara parts speaking to the Guardians in the same way that the worm gods often spoke to the Hive:

• Claws of Ahamkara: “Look at all this life, oh bearer mine. There is so much left to burn.”
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps: “Plating the Ahamkara bones in silver helps to quiet the auditory hallucinations… oh bearer mine.”
• Skull of Dire Ahamkara: “Reality is the finest flesh, oh bearer mine. And are you not… hungry?” (Almost word for word what the worm god said back on Fundament hundreds of thousands or millions of years before!)
• Young Ahamkara’s Spine “Give me your arm, oh bearer mine. Let me help you fill the world with teeth.”

We also have a couple of pieces of armor that don’t directly speak as a worm god / Ahamkara but seem related nonetheless:

• Voidfang Vestments: “YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE” (This relates to Oryx’s dream of himself and his father where he saw nothing but his teeth in the reflection of his father’s goggles.)
• Long Tomorrow 9G: “Some of ‘em survived. I know a fellow says he saw a wish dragon on Jupiter a ways back.” (Again, linking the Ahamkara to the ideas of dragons that grant wishes!)
• And most recently with the Age of Triumph we got the Knuckles of Eao: “Boons I grant you, oh bearer mine, but debts must be paid in time.”

I love all these things because like with the weapons named after the Iron Lords, most of these have been around since Destiny’s launch or were added in The Taken King and when linked together with all the other information paint a cool bit of backstory that is hard to uncover at first.

3. Despite being separated by thousands or millions of years, the Hive’s worm gods / Harmony’s wish dragons / Humanity’s Ahamkara act very similar and are possibly pursuing the same goal:

• In all three cases, these creatures seem to put themselves in a position where they can make terrible, costly bargains in exchange for helping address other creatures’ desires for hope, vengeance, or despair. That is, they grant wishes, but at a very high cost.
• In the Hive’s case, their motives seem fairly clear. By having the Hive ingest their larvae, these worm gods grant the Hive near immortality and fantastic powers, but they also feed upon the destruction the Hive cause. And they don’t just feed, their hunger expands faster than the destruction they consume so that ultimately the Hive are forced to implement a massive pyramid scheme of tribute that flows upward.
• In the Harmony’s case, we don’t learn anything about what they traded to their dragons in exchange for the power to hold the entire Hive in a 150 year deadlock, but it does seem that the Harmony only turned to their dragons in a time of despair.
• In Humanity’s case, we are told directly that Guardians sought out the Ahamkara for the same reasons, but that the knowledge and power that the Ahamkara offered came at such high a price that The City eventually decided that they needed to be completely exterminated.
• It is an Ahamkara itself, it seems, that taunts at us over the results of The City’s “Great Ahamkara Hunt.” It seems to be suggesting that even being hunted down and killed by the Guardians did nothing to stop the Ahamkara’s grand design. This would be consistent with Oryx’s inability to kill Akka. Not only that, but we have evidence that at least one Ahamkara survived on Jupiter.

My best guess is that the Ahamkara are playing a similar long game to the one they sold to the Hive, but they are playing it better by playing all sides. They think that the Darkness will be victorious, but they themselves do not have the power or skills to oppose it. They fear allying themselves with a single race only to see some cataclysm or foe destroy that race and them along with it. So they spread themselves out all across the galaxy and seem to have been following closely on the heels of the Traveler. In each case we see the Ahamkara we also see that the Traveler either was nearby at the time (as with the Hive and Humanity) or had certainly been around at some point (as with the Harmony and their massive Gift Mast.)

Is there some other possibility? Could the Ahamkara be present all over the galaxy after some great war between Light and Darkness, and the Traveler in doing its space magic terraforming is accidentally waking them up? All except the Hive’s worm gods who were trapped in Fundament’s core?

It’s clear we don’t have the whole story regarding what went on with these Hive worm gods / Harmony Dragons / Humanity’s Ahamkara, but I fully believe that they are actually a huge part of Destiny’s past and will play a large role its future. I think that the Fallen, and Vex, and Cabal, and Hive, and Humans are merely pawns in a much bigger ongoing war between the Light and Darkness. Hopefully, with Destiny 2, we’ll begin to see a bit more of that hidden war.

Oh, and there’s one last weapon description that I think is very relevant to this whole discussion of the Ahamkara:

Cryptic Dragon:

Those who doubt the existence of dragons are always the first devoured.

Editor’s Note: Since this article was published, it has been made clear that the Ahamkara and Worm Gods are two separate races that use similar means to influence casualty and alter reality. This new information will be fully addressed in a future Bite-sized Backstory. 

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