Bite-sized Backstory 24: The Gift Mast and Dragons?!
Oryx had gotten what he wanted. What he’d been seeking for a long, long time. In the wake of his victory over Quria, Blade Transform, he finally had the location of the Gift Mast. Soon, he has all of the Hive gather for a major assault. When his sister Savathûn arrives at their staging area, Oryx goes to visit with her. I think the only way to describe Oryx’s mood as he converses with his sister is… giddy!
Oryx brings his clever, deceitful sister a gift: What remains of Quria, Blade Transform after he took it at the end of their battle on the Nicha Thought-ship. Savathûn expresses caution and some dry skepticism, but Oryx seems in too good a mood to let her bring him down. When Savathûn ask Oryx if the Vex is meant explode and kill her or invade her throne like it did his, he just replies that if it does kill her then she deserves to die. This is the now very familiar philosophy of the Hive and their worm gods, and again, Oryx seems almost giddy as he repeats it… but Savathûn is not amused. What she says in reply is very, very interesting:
“I don’t have a strict proof yet, you know.” Savathûn strokes the void with one long claw and space-time groans beneath her touch. “This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.
Oryx tries to explain to her that they, the Hive, are that proof. They are so intent on killing everything in the universe that if they succeed then the proof is verified. And even if they fail, whatever kills them must be even more ruthless than them so in a way they still win even if they lose. Basically, Oryx is completely convinced he is in the right no matter what happens. But once again we see that Savathûn isn’t so sure:
“I like that,” she says. “That’s elegant.” Although of course she has had this thought before.
That’s very much veiled sarcasm coming from Savathûn. What we’re seeing here is Savathûn realizing that even though her brother is more powerful than she is, he isn’t smarter. Oryx thinks he has it all figured out, but clearly Savathûn has considered the Hive’s reasons for killing everything and has some sort of legitimate doubt about whether what they are doing is actually correct. This is quite the role reversal from how these two siblings were back during their war with the Ammonites. Remember, back then it was Oryx who had grave doubts about the correctness of killing everything!
Soon, the Hive make their move to capture the Gift Mast. We learn that the Gift Mast is an absolutely massive megastructure left behind by the Traveler for a race or group of races called the Harmony. Somehow, at some point, the Harmony’s star died and collapsed into a black hole, but the Traveler seems to have altered the physics of this black hole in order to keep the Harmony safe. We are told that it changed the orbits of the Harmony’s ten planets so that they would orbit the black hole and that it changed the black hole so its accretion disk, the spiral of matter the black hole is sucking in, gave off warm light to those ten worlds. If we ignore the Gift Mast for a moment, what the Traveler did for the Harmony might already be the one of the most impressive acts we’ve yet heard about.
The Gift Mast itself is said to be some sort of hollow structure built within the relativistic jet of the Harmony’s black hole and that it is absolutely massive in scale, so much so that it towers over the Harmony’s star system! If this is to be taken even half way literally, then the Gift Mast might be ten of millions of miles tall! (Also, if you don’t know about black hole jets, do a bit of reading, ‘cause they’re awesome!)
We’re told a couple of times that the Gift Mast “…sings a radio lullaby, made of soothing lies.” What could that mean? Could the Gift Mast simply be reacting to the force of the black hole’s jet streaming around it and through it? Perhaps it is literally emitting soothing sounds at radio frequencies? Or maybe it’s doing something else entirely? Could these “radio lullabies made of soothing lies” be an ongoing communication from the Traveler to the Harmony? Or some sort of ranged extension of the Traveler’s power?
As Xivu Arath’s begins her assault on the Harmony, she utters a few thoughts and warnings about the upcoming battle:
- We learn that the Harmony are somehow able to direct near light speed streams plasma from their life-giving black hole towards their enemies. Could this be what the Gift Mast is really for? Is it part of this extremely powerful weapon that Xivu Arath calls the Harmony Sting?
- Xivu Arath mentions other dangers that stand in her way. She mentions the Gift Mast and the Harmony stings then goes on to warn her broods about Oryx and his daughters and how powerful they are.
- She also notes that Savathûn will be distracted by the Gift Mast.
- We also get what almost seems to be a standard Hive proclamation about what they plan to do to the Traveler. Chase it down, devour its Light, etc, etc.
Then, lastly but nowhere near leastly, Xivu Arath makes mention of “THE DRAGONS”, saying:
Our gods should be ours alone. Their smug freedom is an insult to me. I’d shut them all in cells. Bring them to me!
These final four sentences almost certainly are the key to the most important and far reaching thing we learn from the Hive’s Books of Sorrow…
…so, of course, we’ll take a break here and examine these “dragons” in depth next time! :p
Previous: 23: End of Failed Timeline
Next: 25: The Harmony and the Ahamkara
Bite-sized Backstory 23: End of Failed Timeline
With his new, powerful Dreadnaught complete, Oryx sets out to accomplish two of the last objectives we’ll hear about: Hunting down the Nicha Thought-ship and discovering the location of the Gift Mast.
These last two objectives are… interesting… because we’ve so heard very little about them. The first we hear of the Nicha Thought-ship is after Oryx’s twin daughters have grown up and become powerful wizards. Ir Halak gifted her father with a charting (prediction?) of the Nicha Thought-ship’s course. so Was this ship something Oryx had know about previously? Likewise, we only hear of the Gift Mast as Oryx’s Dreadnaught nears the Nicha Thought-ship. We’re not really sure why he thought it might contain the Gift Mast’s location.
So, what has really happened here? Is this Gift Mast some kind of fantastic legend Oryx and the Hive have heard of but have not yet been able to find? Is the Nicha Thought-ship similar? How did Ir Halak chart the Thought-ship’s course and how was she able to do so when Oryx, the First Navigator, was not? Unfortunately, there are no answers to these questions. At least not yet. And that feels a bit odd to me here so close to the end of the Books of Sorrow. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this point in the Hive’s history later? Or the Vex’s? I hope so, because right now this part of their story feels a little short changed and incomplete to me.
Anyway, having likely used Ir Halak’s predictions, Oryx approaches the Nicha Thought-ship only to find it guarded by a fleet of ships known as the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. A battle presumably ensues, though we are not told that specifically, and one way or another Oryx’s Dreadnaught ends up surrounded. As it turns out, this is just fine by Oryx. He thrusts his sword into the hull of his Dreadnaught and further extends his Throne World into the real world destroying the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. This is the same super attack we see him use against the Awoken fleet at the beginning of The Taken King. All that is left is the Nicha Thought-ship… which turns out to be an ill conceived trap.
On the Nicha Thought-ship, Oryx is ambushed by Quria, Blade Transform, the Vex mind that first deduced the Hive’s sword logic and discovered that worshiping the worm gods could lead to physics breaking paracausal results. Was the Nicha Thought-ship some kind of Vex ship? If so, was the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible a Vex fleet? Or was a Vex ship being protected by one or more non-Vex races? Another possibility is that the Nicha Thought-ship is not a Vex ship, but Quria, Blade Transform somehow convinced its owners to allow it to wait in ambush. Again, we have a lot of interesting possibilities but not a lot of information, much less answers.
Next, Oryx advanced on Quria, Blade Transform even as it springs its trap. It looks like Quria, Blade Transform once again tries to invade and take over Oryx’s throne world. We can see its thought process in a series of short, three part codes:
- <interdict>|<simulate>|<worship>Here’s what Quria, Blade Transform was trying to do. It interdicted Oryx’s dreadnaught then attempted to simulate Oryx’s power through worship of the worm gods.
- <insinuate>|<subvert>|<replicate>Next it is trying to subvert something (perhaps Oryx’s followers?) to its side and it tries to spread itself… to gain power? Note what Oryx says here. He recognizes that Quria, Blade Transform is trying to steal his ship from him and fill it up with its spawn.
- <observe>!<imitate>!<usurp>Again, we see Quria, Blade Transform attempting observe and imitate Oryx in an attempt to steal away his power. And again, this is confirmed by Oryx as he tells the Vex mind that it will never be as powerful as he is no matter what it does and no matter how much computational power it has.
- <unknown>|<enigma>|<shortfall>True to Oryx’s word, Quria, Blade Transform is not able to comprehend Oryx and his power.
- <abort>!<halt>!<abort>Having failed to usurp Oryx, Quria, Blade Transform attempts to back out of its ambush, but it is too late.
Oryx advances on Quria, Blade Transform’s Hydra platform seemingly immune to the Vex’s onslaught of weapon fire. In a last ditch effort to accomplish something before it is defeated, Quria, Blade Transform sets in motion the closest best guess simulation of Oryx that it could come up with. This incomplete simulation isn’t of the present day Oryx who has vast power after conquering hundreds of worlds and ending trillions of lives. Instead, what Quria, Blade Transform has come up with is Aurash, the oldest of the three brave royal sister who were once exiled from the Osmium Court long, long ago.
The simulated Aurash expresses shock and outrage at what Oryx and the Hive have become. Oryx responds by boasting about all the mighty things he has accomplished. Quria, Blade Transform spends its final moments observing Oryx’s reaction and transmitting the data it records to the rest of the Vex in the hopes that it will be useful at other points in space and time. It knows that its fellow Vex will use the data it has gathered to further study Oryx’s power. In the end, Quria, Blade Transform gains one last glimpse of Oryx’s power as The Taken King takes it, just as he has done to so many other powerful foes.
I really liked this sequence. In a way, Aurash gets to see the end result of her folly. Turns out the old Leviathan was right, after all! She did become a monster!
We do learn one other very interesting thing from Quria, Blade Transform’s demise: The Vex were in some way or another present around the same time that the Hive destroyed the Ecumene many thousands of years prior. The simulated Aurash knew to question Oryx about his sisters Sathona and Xi Ro because the Vex learned about them from the intelligence given to the Ecumene by Taox…It makes you wonder where else have the Vex been present and what else they might know.
Oh, and one last fun tidbit. The Grimoire Card where Quria, Blade Transform is defeated is named: “End of Failed Timeline” This a reference to the timeline hopping that happened in Marathon Infinity… except “End of Failed Timeline” does not actually appear in Marathon Infinity’s terminals. As far as I can tell, it only appears on the Marathon.Bungie.Org Story Page making the title of this Grimoire card one of the most awesome Bungie.org in-jokes ever! 🙂
Bite-sized Backstory 22: Crota's Punishment and Oryx's Plans
Upon hearing Eri’s call to set his house in order, Oryx returns home and quickly overwhelms the Vex pouring into his throne world. The power the Vex had gained through killing and worship was nowhere near a match for the powers that Oryx possessed. As is typical, Oryx took some of the Vex and turned them against each other. We are told that Quria, Blade Transform, the Vex mind in charge of the attack, tried numerous different strategies but none of them were effective against the power Oryx had.
We aren’t told how much longer this miniature war between the Hive and Vex lasted, but Oryx noted that he had finally found a worthy rival, so it would probably be safe to assume it went on for several more years after he returned. Once it was all over and the attacking Vex were defeated, Oryx took a few important actions:
- He punished Crota for his failure to stop the Vex invasion. To do this, Oryx took the “sink or swim” method with his son and threw him into the Vex’s gate network! We don’t really know where (and/or even when!) Crota emerged, but we do learn he survived his and eventually became a highly feared creature much like his father. Eventually, Crota began making shrines and temples to his father, likely to share his required amount of tribute.The way Crota was punished also helps answer the important question of why Oryx took so long to reinforce his son even though Crota was just one step from devouring the Traveler and its Light. By throwing Crota into the Vex gate network, Orxy seems to have sent his so so far away it took him hundreds of years to reach him. Oryx’s fleet might have been rushing to our star system only to arrive a few days or weeks or months too late!
- Oryx rededicated himself to observing and recording and learning from the destructive actions of the Deep. This spurred the creation of the Worlds Grave that our Guardian visits when we needed information about the Hive. This also shows us that while Crota is more powerful than the Vex, he really does consider them a serious threat.
- Oryx sought out Savathûn’s advice on the Vex. She tells Oryx that the Vex hope to understand everything so they can come find a way to come out on top no matter what happens. Of course, Savathûn’s answer proves she has almost certainly had contact with and studied the Vex, even if Oryx doesn’t realize it.I think what the Vex are doing is combining their vast computational power with their limited ability to mess with time in order to make sure they know what their enemies will do and to make sure they have a counter ready… by the time their enemies carry out their plans.Interestingly, this might mean that the Vex are not on the same page as the Darkness, worm gods, and Hive with regards to having to destroy everything to win. The Vex are trying to find a “victory condition of every possible end state of the universe,” but perhaps some of those victory states include cooperation? For instance, we see Oryx nearly destroy the Vex by taking Atheon within the Vault of Glass. But do the Vex win that battle by fighting back and destroying Oryx? No. They survive by essentially negotiating a temporary truce with the City. By letting Praedyth communicate with us across time, the Vex essentially offer us the remains of Praedyth in exchange for our help in driving the Taken out of the Vault of Glass.
Oryx probably made a mistake by telling Savathûn about how the Vex invaded his throne world. She very quickly leaked this information to Xivu Arath in the hopes that one of them could accomplish what the Vex had. If they could invade Oryx’s throne world there was a chance they could defeat him, but Oryx was already a step ahead. He decided that it was no longer safe to simply rely on his throne world to protect him from death. He needed to make sure it was much more safe from being found and breached, so he decided to reinvent his throne world into the form of a mighty dreadnaught.
Creating his dreadnaught was one of the most difficult tasks we ever see Oryx accomplish. It took the combined power of him, his court, and a verse from his Tablets of Ruin to do it. We are told that Oryx’s dreadnaught is built from a piece of the remains of Akka (the worm god who Oryx previous killed but who we are now told is dead but far from gone) combined with pushing Oryx’s throne world inside out so it protrudes into our normal space. That Oryx’s dreadnaught, which is still orbiting within Saturn’s rings in the current day, is at least partially made from a piece of a worm god should scare the heck out of the City!
Oryx and his court complete the construction of his dreadnaught, and Oryx once again commands his forces to go out and conquer and send him his demanded tribute… but something strange happens here. Alongside Oryx’s little speech we see what are essentially scribblings in the margin of the text by Savathûn! She writes:
I am Savathûn, insidious. I graffiti this notice for you. These Books are full of lies!
Who is Savathûn writing to? And what does she mean? Which part or parts of the Books of Sorrow are lies? Is anything we’ve learned about the Hive true?! Yes, I think a lot of what we think we know about the Hive is true. We eventually see the Hive’s philosophy and past corroborated by other sources like Eris Morn and Toland the Shattered. Still, it does seem we need to be cautious in believing every single thing the Books of Sorrow tell us about the Hive. And we should probably be looking for gaps or contradictions.
With his dreadnaught completed, Oryx once again feels safe from attack and in fact goes on the offensive. His target? The mysterious Nicha Thought-ship!
Previous: 21: The Origin of the Vex
Next: 23: End of Failed Timeline
Bite-sized Backstory 21: The Origin of the Vex
As Oryx’s daughters grow older, they continue to increase their knowledge and dig deeper into their powers and abilities. At some point a few years or maybe centuries later after their birth, Oryx came across his daughters experimenting with death and a Hive wound that they cut between places. When questioned about what they were doing, Oryx’s daughters tell him that they are working on a way to separate an Ascendant Hive’s soul from its body. By storing its soul in its Throne World, they think that they can both make it harder for an Ascendant Hive to be killed and make their songs of death more powerful.
What they created was what we will eventually know as an Oversoul. They even call it that. How does this thing work? What’s it’s real purpose? Here’s my guess: Perhaps even Ascendant Hive have some vulnerabilities in the physical world. Maybe a powerful enough Guardian could kill one outright even in the real world? Or if not a Guardian, maybe something even more powerful like the Traveler could? But if their Oversoul is already stored in their throne world, maybe nothing can be powerful enough to kill an Ascendant Hive in the physical world?
Oryx is impressed by his daughters and instructs his son Crota to watch them in the hopes he might learn some cleverness from them. Then something interesting happens. Oryx leaves his daughters and travels somewhere far away to watch the Deep destroy an unnamed ancient fortress world. We’ve heard of the Deep acting on its own at least one other time, but this is the clearest indication we have that the Deep is able to move and attack and destroy all on its own. If there was any doubt before, it is clear now that the Deep (which we know better as the Darkness) is something more than just a another term for the Hive and their ongoing conquest.
After Oryx leaves, Crota follows his instructions to watch his twin sisters and begins experimenting with wounds to other spaces similar to what his sisters were doing. He cuts into a new space that neither he nor his sisters had observed or traveled to before, but instead of finding a new way to resist death or gain secret power, Oryx finds a strange race of intelligent machines. What he accidentally discovered was the Vex!
Vex come pouring into Oryx’s throne world and immediately begin trying to understand this new strange reality they’ve found their way in to. At first they can’t understand the physics and rules of the throne world. We’re told they try and construct problems, by which I think it means they’re trying to process and simulate the physics of this new reality with little success. But then, as Crota prepares to destroy them, the Vex start to figure things out. Specifically, they create a new Vex mind called “Quria, Blade Transform” that beings to understand the Hive’s Sword Logic. It somehow learns or deduces that killing things can grant it power. So the Vex begin to build units meant for war.
Corta moves to attack these new Vex soldiers, but the Vex teleport away from Crota and instead attack and defeat some 2,000 of Oryx’s Acolytes and 10,000 Thrall. By doing this they begin to gain power within Oryx’s throne world. So much so that even after Crota enlists the help of his sisters, they are unable to destroy the Vex. Oryx’s daughters even create annihilator totems and are able to destroy the Vex within Oryx’s throne world, but the Vex keep pouring through Crota’s wound and are even able to reinforce it so that Corta and his sisters are unable to close it.
Soon, a stalemate exists between the Vex and Crota, his sisters, and their Hive followers. Within Oryx’s throne world, the Hive are dominate. But each time they try and attack the Vex outside the throne world the Vex prove to be too powerful and are able to drive them back. Then, something very very dangerous happens.
The Vex steal some worm larvae from the Hive and quickly learn that by worshiping the worm gods they too can obtain powers similar to the Hive’s. The Vex being to alter reality with their worship and soon construct a priesthood dedicated to worshiping the worm gods. The worm gods Motive this and very quickly the worm god Eir demands Oryx return home and deal with the Vex himself. We’ll take a look at how Oryx reacts next time, but first I think we need to consider what just happened.
I think maybe the Vex started by worshiping the worm gods but that’s not what they ended up worshiping by the time our Guardians encounter them. We haven’t seen any worm gods in the Black Garden, but we have seen the Vex bowing and praying before a big blob of Darkness. I think what happened here is that the Vex, like Oryx, were smart enough to go over the heads of the worm gods and worship the Darkness itself. The Hive and even Oryx are all bound to the worm gods, but the Vex figured out that the worm gods were just middlemen standing in their way!
Ultimately, I think the worm gods were scared that they were going to lose their hold on the Hive. If the Vex proved it was possible to draw power from the Darkness without needing a worm growing inside them, how long would it be before Oryx or Savathûn or Xivu Arath realized it as well?
This is why Eri called to Oryx and demanded he put his house in order. They (the worm gods) saw that they were one step away from being pushed out as the power that controls the Hive. Oryx already partially stepped around them with his Tablets of Ruin and by speaking with the Deep directly. The worm gods have been telling the Hive that they must kill everything to prove their worth. Up until now, “everything” never included the worm gods. And they wanted to make sure it never does by having Oryx destroy the Vex before he or his sisters realize what is really going on.
There’s one other wrinkle in all of this. After Oryx comes back and drive the Vex out of his throne world, we are told that Savathûn was laughing because she tricked Crota into cutting his wound to the Vex’s space in the first place… But that would mean that Savathûn knew about the Vex before Crota or even Oryx did! So, not only did Crota not create the Vex, it seems almost certain that he wasn’t even the first Hive to encounter the Vex. I think what we’re seeing is Savathûn being one step ahead of everyone else like she has been in the past and like she will be in the future.
Passage Of Years
This was a very different sort of thing I tried on a whim late into the morning one night. I wanted to see if I could show the passage of time through conversation alone. I also wanted to have the characters speed entirely for themselves with no description of who was talking. Each brief conversation takes place on a different year that Sparks visited the Cunninghams, and the numbers show the ages of each speaker. With careful reading you should be able to confirm the identity of each speaker year to year. It was a fun experiment and I think it largely worked, even if it might be a bit harder for people to follow along.
20 | 15, 56
“Welcome to Cunningham Glass Blowers. I am Travis Cunningham. Is there anything with which I could help you with?”
“Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawzai… is my name. But you may call me Sparks Clearpath,”
19 | 16, 57
“Welcome to Cunningham… oh, it’s you!”
“Hello, Travis. Is your father around? We broke a pane and I need to talk to him about replacing it.”
18 | 17, 58
“Miss Clearpath! Over here! It’s nice to see you once again!”
“And you, Travis! I will make sure to stop on by your shop later to greet you and your father properly!”
17 | 59, 18
“Good morning, Travis. It is a pleasure to meet you once again. And you have continued to grow! It seems you are taller every season and every year!”
“And each year you remain the same. Still… beautiful.”
16 | 60, 41
“Travis? … Travis? Mr. Cunningham? Are one of you here somewhere?”
“Travis! We have customers! Damn that boy… I’m sorry, Miss Clearpath, my son seems to have forgotten his duties in favor of chasing after that Melinda…”
15 | 61, 20
“Greetings once again, Travis. Or should I say Mr. Cunningham now. You look so much like a young version of your father now.”
“No, I couldn’t have you call me that, Miss Clearpath. It would be like we did not know each other.”
“Well, seeing that we do, I would think you should know me as ‘Sparks’ by now.
“Indeed. It is nice to see you again, Sparks.”
14 | 21, 62
“Back again so soon, Sparks?”
“Yes, a boar damaged… oh my! What happened to your eye?!”
“This? A man was cat calling to Melinda and would not stop.
“Oh? Oh! I should hope he looks even worse?”
“No… not really. But Melinda kissed it afterward and it doesn’t really even hurt anymore!”
13 | 63, 44
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cunningham. Is Travis off today?”
“Ha. You could say that, Miss Clearpath. My son and his wife have gone to Dutos and will not be back for a week.”
“Wife? Melinda?! That is terrific news! You will have to relay my regards to him and her when they return!”
12 | 20, 64, 1
“Good morning, welcome to Cunningham Glass Blowers. Is there anything at all I can assist you with?”
“Good morning. Are you by chance Melinda?
“I am, and you must be the Miss Clearpath Travis has spoken so highly of.”
“Sparks, if you please. And who might this be?”
“This is Tamantha. We call her Tam. Can you wave hi Tam?”
“Gaaaa!”
11 | 2, 65, 24
“Welcm to glass blows!”
“Oh, good afternoon, Tam. My, look how big you have gotten.
“Hasn’t she? It is nice to see you again, Sparks.”
“And you, Travis. I can hardly believe it, how big your daughter has grown!”
“Neither can I. And we have another coming!”
10 | 3, 25, 66
“Daddy! Daddy!”
“Oh… hello Sparks…” ‘
“Travis? What has happened? What is wrong?”
“Melinda… and the baby… neither of them made it…”
“Oh… Ohhhh Travis, I am so sorry… I hardly know what to say.”
9 | 4, 67
“Spaaarrrrkks!”
“Why hello, Tam! Where is your father?
“He… he’s helping grandpa with the glass. (I can’t go back there by the fire…)
“You can if you are with me. Here, take my hand.”
8 | 68
Thank you for stopping by Cunningham Glass Blowers. I regret to inform you that due to my father’s illness our shop is currently closed. We hope to reopen soon but do not yet have a date in mind. — Travis Cunningham
7 | 6, 69, 28
“Good morning! Welcome to Cunninghams Glass Blowers. I am Tam Cunningham. Is there anything with which I could help you?”
“Hello, Tam. You know, your father used to say the exact same thing when I first met him!”
“She does it better than I ever did. She puts all of her effort into it. It is good to see you, Sparks.”
“I’m sure you did just as well when you were a child, Travis.”
“No, I really didn’t. I was far too interested in playing outdoors while Tam, here, is very much the young shop owner.”
6 | 7, 70, 29
“Hello Sparks… Grandpa is… gone now, but… We are still open!”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Tam. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I get sad sometimes though.”
“Sparks? Sparks, it is so good to see you…”
“And you, Travis. Tam told me about your father. Is there anything I can do?”
“We are ok, just a little sad. If you have time later, would you visit him with me?”
“Of course, Travis. Of course I will.”
5 | 71, 8, 30
“Hello, Tam! Hello, Travis!”
“Sparks!”
“It’s good to see you again. You missed a season.”
“I know. We were all so busy and I could not get free. I am still busy, but I could not come and not say hello.”
4 | 72, 31, 9
“Hello, Travis. How have you been?”
“Quite well. And yourself?”
“Well, as well.”
“Do you have it?”
“I do. I think she will enjoy it.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful. And I love the painting you did! Tam! Tam, come here! Sparks is here and she made something just for you!”
3 | 32
It has been almost a year now since I have seen my good friend, the Elf Sparks Clearpath. Twice or three times she has been delayed or skipped a season entirely, but never has she not come for an entire year. I worry about her now as does Tam on occasion.
2 | 33
Checking back to the year before, as I do, I am again saddened to note I still have not seen Sparks. In many ways, her continued absence is more troubling than Melinda’s or my fathers. Friends, family, and acquaintances come and go, live and die. But Sparks, more than any Elf I have known, seemed timeless. Perhaps because I so seldom saw her and yet she always remained so unchanged. Now, I have not seen her for two years and my heart aches almost the same way when I think of others I have lost.
1 | 34
Somehow conversation turned to Sparks Clearpath today. One of the men from the 458 claimed to have seen her recently. Another claimed to have news that she had been arrested, tried, and hung for murder or theft in Dutos. I told the second one off quite angrily, Sparks would never do such a thing, and the first soon backed away from his story. It has been three years since I last saw my Elven friend. Even Tam rarely mentions her now.
0 | 13, 76, 35
“Hello, welcome to… Sparks? Sparks!!!
“Hello… Tam…”
“Father! Father! It’s Sparks! Father! Sparks is here!”
“Sparks?! … Sparks, it’s so good to see you again. You look… Sparks? What happened to you? Where have you been and what has happened to you?”
“Travis. I… I need your help.”
Bite-sized Backstory 20: The Eater of Hope and His Sisters
Following his meeting with the Deep (which Destiny players would know better as the Darkness) and his betrayal by his sisters, Oryx somehow manages fight his way back to his throne world and the physical world. This may have been possible because, as mentioned last time, Xivu Arath described the nature of her brother just like he once described her and her sister after killing them during the war against the Ecumene.
Interestingly, Oryx says that he had to fight “the swarming corpse of Akka” the worm god who he killed to gain the power to forge his Tablets of Ruin which allowed him to contact the Deep. This is once again proof that killing a worm god is not really enough to… uh… kill it. And this fact, of course, brings us back to the worm familiar that showed the three brave sisters the way to the needle ship even though it was dead.
Once Oryx makes it back to his court he once again goes to war against his sisters. He records crippling Savathûn’s tribute so badly that she will never again be able to challenge him. Then he tricked Xivu Arath and poisoned her tribute so she too could no longer challenge him. We can only imagine that neither of these campaigns Oryx engaged in were short. These two wars may have taken hundreds or even thousands of years for Oryx to secure his position at the top of the Hive.
Following all that, Oryx found a mother to make spawn with. Who was the mother Oryx told and what happened to her? We are never told. All we learn about are their children. First, there was Crota. When Crota is born, Oryx give him his name and his first sword, but other than that, Crota has to kill his way to a position in Crota’s court. Apparently Crota did this pretty well because he becomes the Hive god that nearly defeats the City some time in the future. For now, though, Oryx explains the meaning of Crota’s name. It means “the Eater of Hope” because they both are fighting a war against the false hope that the Traveler gives to the younger races.
Oryx also tells Crota about the oath he and his sisters took against Taox but he tells Crota that the oath does not apply to him. Does Oryx really believes that after having destroyed hundreds or thousands of races that Taox has still managed to stay ahead of his Hive? That seems incredible and unbelievable, but then Oryx seems quite serious about it. Maybe we’ll meet Taox someday? I wonder what she would be like now, tens of thousands of years later… Or is she just frozen in a stasis pod somewhere?
After Crota, comes Oryx’s two daughters Ir Anûk and Ir Halak. Of Ir Anûk, Oryx says that Savathûn is so impressed with her that she cackles and rages at her brilliance. Oryx notes that Ir Anûk has declared that she will kill one of the eleven axioms that make up Hive’s ascendant places (throne worlds) and will use the power she gains to defeat Akka as he once did and become a god as he is. Does this mean that she would be able to construct Tablets of Ruin? Either way, Oryx says he may kill her to stop her or he might applaud her for her achievements.
As for Ir Halak, she developed a song so powerful that it was able to kill everyone who heard it when she sung it in Xivu Arath’s throne world. (Aside from Xivu Arath, apparently, since she is still around later.) Oryx wonders if the Hive might soon employ death songs instead of swords and boomers. Oryx then sees that she has charted the course of the Nicha Thought-ship. This is not a ship we have heard of before, but it is one that will soon be very important to both the Hive and to Humanity as well…
…all because of a race of time traveling robots known as the Vex!
Previous: 19: Betrayal & Dreams of Teeth
Next: 21: The Origin of the Vex
The Fateful Storm
Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawazi awoke to the unsettling feeling of her entire home shaking around her!
Still suspended somewhere between her dreams and full wakefulness, the young elven woman opened her eyes in alarm at… at what?! The only sources of sound or movement were the roaring flames and the dancing shadows that they cast from the fireplace before her.
“Maybe it had been nothing?’ she thought. But then the loud rumbling returned and the tall glass windows in the foyer to her right began rattling in their frames!
Mkali Moto Kipande attempted to sit up from against the foot of her family’s living room sofa only to find she could hardly move. She was pinned, not by fear or injury, but by her younger sister who had snuggled halfway on top of her in order to share the soft, warm blanket she’d wrapped herself in earlier that evening. The rumbling around the two of them intensified further until it felt as if the house might shake itself apart. Mkali Moto Kipande gripped the edge of the blanket tightly with one hand and braced for something bad to happen… only for the rumbling to quickly echo off into the distance leaving a still silence in its wake.
‘It was only thunder,’ Mkali Moto Kipande realized, laughing gently at herself, only to flinch an instant later as a distant bolt of lightening appeared far past the kitchen windows to her left.
The bright, enigmatic display of power forked down from the dark night sky to the forest treetops below and lit the rooms around Mkali Moto Kipande in a harsh blue glow as the bolt lingered, strobing in place for a moment, before it winked out just as quickly as it had appeared. A new wave of thunder rolled in just in time for the next flash of lighting to streak into existence. Over the next few minutes the distant flashes moved ever closer and the waves of thunder came ever sooner. Before long, the lightening and thunder was joined by a heavy rain.
The storm which had been lingering out past the overcast horizon for the past couple of days was finally rolling in. But aside from her brief, post slumber startle, Mkali Moto Kipande wasn’t worried. She’d seen her way through harsh weather many times before. Warm and content in front of the nearby fire, with her sister sleeping sweetly against her side, Mkali Moto Kipande leaned back against the sofa and watched in wonder as the storm intensified. Soon, the sky remained lit more often than it was allowed to grow dark, and loud, sharp, immediate cracks of thunder took the place of the comparatively gentle rumbles she’d felt earlier. The heavy rain hammered the roof and pelted the windows while gusts of wind whistled through the forest outside and buffeted the walls of sturdy home Mkali Moto Kipande had watched her parents build two decades before, back when she herself had been well and truly young.
“Wha..?” Mkali Moto Kipande’s sister asked drowsily a few minutes later as a particularly loud crash of thunder shook the house and finally woke her from her post supper slumber. She raised her head from the comfortable spot it had found resting on her older sister’s stomach only to quickly bury it again as a nearby bolt of lightening flashed before her wide, frightened eyes.
“It’s all right, Inapita Sasa. It’s just the storm we knew was coming,” Mkali Moto Kipande answered as she stroked her fingers soothingly though her sister’s shorter walnut colored hair. “Sshhhh, it’s ok,” Mkali Moto Kipande repeated as more thunder had her sister grabbing hold of her waist and whimpering quietly into her shirt.
Inapita Sasa was some twenty-six years of age now and had already started her long journey chasing her older sister towards adulthood. She too had certainly been through similarly powerful storms before, but at times like this Mkali Moto Kipande could not blame her for reacting like the child she still by and large resembled.
The storm raged around the Njia’yawazi sisters for well over an hour before the heavy rain and strong gusting winds began to die down. Mkali Moto Kipande moved to get into a more comfortable position, but there still wasn’t much she could do with her sister draped over her. They’d been in the same spot since they had concluded their celebratory family dinner some three or four hours before, and the lack of movement had begun to take its toll on Mkali Moto Kipande’s neck, legs and back. Inapita Sasa had even fallen asleep once more despite the waining storm. She looked so peaceful that Mkali Moto Kipande delayed waking her for a time but eventually she simply had to move.
“Sit up, Sasa. You’re hurting me,” Mkali Moto Kipande whispered to her sister as she gently rocked her awake.
Her sister groaned and almost went to asleep again, but reluctantly rolled fully onto the floor… after playful shifting more of her weight onto her older sister first, of course. Apparently unsatisfied with her new position, Inapita Sasa sat up so her back rested against the sofa, just as her older sister’s did. A few moments later she leaned over so that her soft cheek and heavy head found their way to her big sister’s warm shoulder. This new position would not remain comfortable for long, either, Mkali Moto Kipande knew, but she could not help but smile at the tenderness of the moment.
‘…me and my sister, quiet and warm and cozy in front of the fire…’
“The storm is ending, it is time for bed you two,” Mkali Moto Kipande heard her mother’s soft voice say from somewhere off to her left a short time later. She looked around, but did not spot anyone until she noticed her mother’s beautiful long white hair move past the dining room window.
‘How long had she been watching us and the storm? All along?’ Mkali Moto Kipande wondered with a small smile.
“Time for bed,” her mother said again as she gently separated her younger daughter from her older one’s side.
Thankful for the help, Mkali Moto Kipande extracted herself from the tangled blanket and stretched long and tall before moving over to the fireplace’s hearth. The fire was still roaring with life even though she had built it four or maybe five hours ago. In truth, she’d probably built it too big in response to a long, hard day’s work helping her father out in the cold, but it felt great in contrast to the chilly air that had greeted her as soon as she’d pulled free of her blanket. Mkali Moto Kipande held her hand and arm out near the fire for a long moment, basking in its heat, before drawing back as the heat began to sting her finger tips. She drew her hand away then moved back to the edge of the hearth where the temperature was a bit more reasonable.
“I want to sleep down here tonight,” Inapita Sasa complained over by the sofa as her mother worked ineffectively to get her to stand. Mkali Moto Kipande could not help but laugh.
“There might be more storms to come, Sasa,” Mkali Moto Kipande chimed in, but her sister held tight to the covers that were now wrapped around her body and refused to move.
“All right,” their mother said, relenting. “But I do not want you too close to that fire,” she said to her younger daughter while giving her older one a decidedly incredulous look.
“…I’ll clean it up first thing in the morning,” Mkali Moto Kipande confirmed, before quickly looking away from her mother’s disapproving gaze. She rose and pulled the heavy, cast iron screen in front of the fireplace then tried to angle past her mother but was unable to resist being pulled into a loving hug.
“You did good today. I know you would have rather been off hunting or exploring these last weeks, but your father was very grateful for your help,” her mother whispered lovingly into her ear.
Mkali Moto Kipande returned her mother’s embrace then pulled away and continued on to the straight staircase built into living room’s back wall. She quietly scaled the twelve steps that led to the short hallway that, along with her room on one side and her sister’s on the other, made up the entirety of their house’s second floor.
A long rumble of rolling thunder to the southwest drew her tired eyes to her small window once she’d climbed the stairs and entered her room. The streaks of lightening that flashed far in the distance seemed to confirm her prediction of the approach of a second wave of storms, but by now Mkali Moto Kipande’s fatigue of a hard day’s work had caught back up with her and she was too tired to give the idea much care. She climbed into her cool, welcoming bed and within minutes found her dreams once more.
***
Mkali Moto Kipande drifted back awake some minutes or hours later to a strange, pungent smell. At first, she thought maybe an animal had died somewhere nearby. A bird that had found its way inside, maybe? But there was something more to it, something… sweeter… that nagged at her in the darkness of her room. Wood? Was somebody cooking downstairs? In the middle of the night?
The odor itself was odd enough, but even stranger were the solitary little specks of hot, irritating dust that kept finding their way into her mouth and nose with every few breaths she took. She tried to ignore it all, at first, but soon found that she could not. Every time she would near sleep she would be jolted back to wakefulness! Fed up, Mkali Moto Kipande sat upright in her bed, thoroughly perplexed by the strangely warm air she tasted around her. It was still dark outside, and still raining, but the lightening and thunder had passed on by… Or so she thought until a muffled crash shook her room!
“That was not thunder!” she told herself, now fully awake.
Whatever it had been had sounded more like a tall tree crashing to the ground. Or maybe it had felt like one hitting the house? Still more curious than worried, Mkali Moto Kipande slipped out of her bed oddly thankful she had not taken the time to change out of her sturdy work clothes. She took a few moments to properly lace her ragged shoes then opened the door to her bedroom and… nearly choked on the hot, foul air that rushed in past her. Her eyes went wide as the smell that had been so hard to place hit her full force. The air was hot and thick and smelt of wood and ash and smoke and… FIRE?!
‘The house is on fire!’ Mkali Moto Kipande realized as she slipped into a panic.
For a brief moment, all she could do was recall the tragic scene of the burnt out home she had seen years before, during one of her family’s trading trips to the nearby city of Dutos. The townspeople had told of how the bucket brigade had formed in time to prevent the fire from spreading. Of how they might have very well saved that section of the city. But how the family trapped inside, a husband and wife and their children, had, tragically, not survived. The thought that her family might soon suffer the same fate pulled Mkali Moto Kipande back to the present and pushed her out into the hallway that separated her room from her sister’s.
“Wake up Sasa!” Mkali Moto Kipande called out as she reached for her sister’s door.
Not waiting for a response, she began to turn the handle. That it was hot to the touch did not register in her mind until well after she had begun to push the door inwards, but by then it was too late. A swell of smoke and fire swirled then surged out into the hallway with enough force to slam the door shut even as it knocked Mkali Moto Kipande backward into her own door frame. It was all she could do to remain standing after the harsh, unexpected impact.
Mkali Moto Kipande could hardly see, her eyes were watering so badly, but the realization that her sister was trapped with those flames pushed her forward once more. She sank low and braced herself this time before attempting to push the door open. Fire and smoke again briefly rushed out into the hallway, but Mkali Moto Kipande pushed through it only to have her heart broken when she opened her eyes.
“Inapita Sasa!” Mkali Moto Kipande half screamed, half sobbed, not willing to believe the scene in front of her.
Before her, her sister’s room was fully ablaze and had been for multiple minutes. The wood paneled walls were all but consumed, her sister’s oak desk and dresser had both already collapsed and been torn apart by the flames, and worst of all, there was smoke pouring up through a large hole to the left of her sister’s burning bed. Mkali Moto Kipande wanted to believe she was trapped in a nightmare, but rationally she knew that her here and now was all too real. But… there was no body! Mkali Moto Kipande checked a second time. Her sister’s room was all but destroyed, but her sister was not in it…
‘She had wanted to sleep downstairs!’ Mkali Moto Kipande remembered. ‘Please have let her slept downstairs…’ she pleaded before pulling back out of the doomed room.
She turned to the nearby stairway but could not seem to take the necessary steps forward. She had been so worried about her sister she had somehow missed the column of smoke and glowing embers that rolled up the slanted ceiling above the stairwell. The thick black clouds billowed up towards her before spilling out onto the wider hallway ceiling overhead. Mkali Moto Kipande clenched her fist and summoned her courage then forced herself to move to the top of the stairs only to cover her mouth at the sight she saw.
The stairwell that had been her way down to a new, promising day each morning and her way up to the comfort of a good night’s rest each evening now looked more like a passage descending down into hell itself! Many of the stairs had been been blackened by soot or ash while a dozen small streams of smoke were pouring out from cracks up and down the supporting wall to her left. Worse, the floor below that should have been too dark to easily make out was disturbingly visible, lit orange-red by the constantly shifting light of unseen fire somewhere below.
Mkali Moto Kipande hesitated. The staircase was her only way to safety, she knew that, but already she could feel the heat carried upward by the smoke. How much worse would it be down at ground level among the flames themselves? Another loud crash shook the floor beneath her feet and the entire house seemed to try to lurch out from under her. The thought that the house might come down around her spurred Mkali Moto Kipande back into action.
“All I have to do is make it outside. I’ll be fine no matter what happens as long as I make it outside…” she told herself before she took one last clear breath and started her descent.
She moved quickly, surefooted even amongst the heat and smoke, but Mkali Moto Kipande knew she was in trouble from her very first step. What had always been a solid, sturdy staircase creaked and shifted as soon as she put her weight onto it. The wall to her left groaned under the added stress and the smoke that had been streaming from multiple points was quickly joined by small licks of fire as what unburned material remained within the damaged wall caught fire.
Mkali Moto Kipande grabbed hold of the railing to her right, sure the stair beneath her feet was about to break way, but instead the entire staircase tore free of the gutted wall with a long sickening crack. It leaned for a moment then fell sideways and smashed apart on the hard floor below. Mkali Moto Kipande hit the ground hard then screamed in silent agony as a large section of the staircase crushed her right ankle. She could actually hear the meaty snap as her bones broke!
For the first few moments Mkali Moto Kipande was unable to think, she was in so much pain. But the pain in her leg quickly gave way to the stinging heat she felt on her face, arms and legs. Forcing her eyes open, all she could see were the flames that surrounded her with only glimpses of the fireplace where she’d built her large fire visible between them. Horrifyingly, the thick metal screen, with its curving, flowery patterns, was not where she had placed it. Instead, it had fallen… no… it had been pushed outwards and off the brick hearth. And there on the scorched floor, past the screen, was what could only have been the charred ash of spent firewood.
‘Am I responsible for this? Did I destroy my home and kill my family?!’ Mkali Moto Kipande asked herself as the heat from the nearby fires began to scald her face.
She coughed and choked on the fumes and screamed at the pain and pulled her legs up to her chest as instinct forced her to curl into a ball in one last, ineffective attempt to protect herself from the burning heat.
‘It hurts! It hurts it hurt it hurts it hurts!’ Mkali Moto Kipande cried out in her own mind until the pain became so overwhelming that even her thoughts were pushed aside. Her only instinctual hope now was that the pain would come to an end… and then it did… though not in the way she expected.
The intense heat that had been smothering her lungs and eating at her skin and bones vanished in an instant. A moment later, a familiar surge of energy passed through her body and the pain from both her grievous burns and her smashed leg was simply gone! Somewhere, deep within her overwhelmed mind, a memory surfaced of how it had felt to jump into a cool lake on a hot summer day.
For a long instant, Mkali Moto Kipande relived that jump from the tall grassy hill down to the swimming hole below. She squinted into the blinding sun, and felt the hot grass crunch beneath her bare feet as she ran. Her mind latched on to the warm whistling air that blew her long white hair back away from her face as she jumped and fell towards the water below. She clung to the memory of the sudden forceful upward jolt of the water as it broke her fall and enveloped her within its shockingly cool weight. Mkali Moto Kipande hung there for a long moment within the cool waters of her memories then went to open her eyes expecting the see the muted browns and greens typical of the murky lake, only to find herself back in the hell that was the burnt remnants of her house with… with her mother’s burned and bloody face unmoving inches above her own!
Initially, Mkali Moto Kipande tried to recoil away, but there was no where to go. She was pinned on her back, forced to stare helplessly past her mother’s face at the rain clouds beyond through the charred debris that had come down on her mother and herself. She could hardly draw in a breath much less move with all the weight pressing down on her, though she tried and struggled anyway, of course. Finally able to wrench one arm free, she brazenly pressed her hand to still smolderingly hot sections of wall and ceiling and pushed with all her might, but she felt no give. But neither did she feel any heat or pain. How could that be?
Lightheaded and confused, Mkali Moto Kipande did the only remaining thing she could. She embraced her mother and began to cry. It was only then that she felt the shallow movement of her mother’s chest. Her mother was still breathing!? She was alive!? Mkali Moto Kipande’ joy was short lived, however, as she again began to cough on the fumes still rising up around her. Soon, she found it difficult to keep her eyes open. It felt as if the world were spinning around her even though she couldn’t move. For a long minute she fought against the terrifying darkness that slowed her mind and dulled her senses as it welled up around her, but soon her world again faded dimming and narrowing until everything went to black.
***
There were strange moments and sensations before Mkali Moto Kipande woke again. Half remembered dreams of bleary vision and muffled sound. Of being pulled from her hell. Of looking back at what little remained of her home as she was carried away. Of her father and sister hovering worriedly over her. Of having cool water flowing over her parched lips and down her aching throat. None of it seemed real. And all of it did…
***
The first thing Mkali Moto Kipande felt when she finally awoke was radiating heat. The first thing she smelt was smoke. The first thing she heard were soft snaps and pops. The first thing she tasted was burnt wood. The first thing she saw was FIRE.
Without even thinking, Mkali Moto Kipande flinched away from the flames leaving behind the old, patchwork blanket she’d been covered in. She could hear someone calling her name behind her but it didn’t matter. She had to get away from the fire!
Wet, rain soaked ground squished beneath her feet as she tripped and stumbled her way blindly forward only to fall to her hands and knees as she came to the edge of what had been her family’s home. All that remained was ash and glowing embers and a single tall pane of glass that somehow did not shatter as the house had come down.
A smaller hand gripped hers then her sister swung around to stand between her and the devastation. Inapita Sasa was dressed in one of their father’s old set of work clothes, like she herself was, Mkali Moto Kipande realized.
Her sister was hurt and limping, Mkali Moto Kipande saw. Even in the early morning light she could tell her sister’s face and arms were red with blisters and burns, but she was alive! They both were alive! In unison, they embraced each other, both trying and failing to hold back their combined tears of joy and sorrow.
“Are you all right?” Mkali Moto Kipande asked after a minute.
Her sister stepped back and took a deep breath before answering. “I used all my healing on mother…” she managed to say before her lower lip began to quiver and her brave facade fell away once again.
Mkali Moto Kipande pulled her sister into an equally tight, but oddly different, hug. Before, they had been equals who had survived a tragedy. Now, she was the older sister again, and it was her job to stay strong and fearless.
“It’s not your fault. You did everything you could,” Mkali Moto Kipande said, even though she had not been there to see it.
“I’ll try more when I can tomorrow. I… I just don’t know if I can do any else.”
“But you saved her?” Mkali Moto Kipande asked. She felt her sister nod into her shoulder. “Then you did enough.”
“Inapita Sasa? Mkali Moto Kipande?” their father called to them from somewhere behind.
Mkali Moto Kipande rose to her feet and turned to see her father emerging from the small animal pin and storage shelter she had helped him build over the last month. It was the accomplishment they had been celebrating at dinner the night before. And though it was a fraction of the size their home had been… it was their home now, wasn’t it? She slowly stood then led her sister trudging up the gentle slope to the shelter where their father embraced each of them in turn.
“I thought I’d lost you, my daughter!” he said to his older child as he gripped her tightly.
“I thought you had too, sir,” Mkali Moto Kipande replied. “Where is mother?” she asked after pulling back.
“Around the corner,” her father answered, indicating the only truly enclosed room in the small barn. “She is very badly hurt and cannot yet speak, but she will know you are there. Just let her know you are all right then let her rest, ok?”
Mkali Moto Kipande nodded, her throat suddenly going dry. Trembling, she left her father and stepped through the doorway. There, under a sheet, on top of an old dirty mattress, lay her mother, her crippled form easily the most shocking aftermath of the fire.
Just hours before, U’tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika Njia’yawazi had been elegant and beautiful. What Mkali Moto Kipande had hoped to be in another fifty or one hundred years. She had been thoughtful and knowledgeable. Qualities Mkali Moto Kipande knew she herself was still working on. And she had been spiritual and magical. Two things Mkali Moto Kipande had long struggled to mimic with hardly any success. But now, her mother might not be any of those things ever again, Mkali Moto Kipande realized.
The woman lying before her was burned and broken. Her face and skin were disfigured from the heat of the fire. Much of her long, glowingly white hair had been burned away and what few patches and strands remained only served to deepen the impact of her injuries. Even the way she lay at an odd uncomfortable angle, mostly hidden beneath the sheet, spoke to how severely she had been affected by the fire and the collapse of the house around her.
Mkali Moto Kipande stood frozen for a long while with a heartbroken expression on her face. She was too shocked to really cry but somehow could not turn away. Finally, when she could bear the sight of her injured mother no longer, she made to leave, but just then her mother turned her head and spotted her. Though obviously in a great deal of pain, her mother pushed the sheet partly aside and shakily raised one badly blistered hand up towards her daughter. Gasping in sorrow, Mkali Moto Kipande stepped forward and knelt down so as to allow her mother’s rough hand to stroke her flawless skin and hair and face…
It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t even close to fair what had happened! Mkali Moto Kipande wanted so badly to reach out and return her mother’s love, but at the same time she was far too afraid that her simple touch would cause her mother more pain. Instead, she sat down nearby, and rocked herself as she cried tears of guilt that seemed to burn her face nearly as badly as the fires had. That her mother was crying alongside her made it all the more worse. Slowly though, Mkali Moto Kipande’s sorrow turned to anger and determination.
“I owe you everything, mother. I… I caused this, so I promise you, I will find a way to fix this.”
***
After three long, hard years of helping to support her family, of helping them to rebuild and survive, Mkali Moto Kipande walked through the familiar gates of Sharlstown with a plan. Though it might take two decades, she would restore life and vitality to her hobbled sister and to their mother who had nearly sacrificed everything to save them both.
Things didn’t exactly go as she had planned… but that is another story for another time.
Bite-sized Backstory 19: Betrayal & Dreams of Teeth
Coming out of the Deep’s friendly monologue to Oryx, we immediately move into an odd dream sequence. This dream is told form Oryx’s point of view and takes us back to his childhood back at the Osmium Court.
In this dream, Oryx (or should we can him Aurash?) is heading to his father’s orrery when he notices his sisters are chasing after him. They are ripping up the road behind him with their swords. And the road stones they are ripping up are shaped like tablets with odd writting on them. Oryx runs from them only to be tripped and slammed to the ground by his father who asks him why he wasn’t prepared for his sisters to move against him. Oryx starts crying, wanting to know why his dad won’t help him, but all his father does is prepare to tip some strange “black sun” into his son’s throat.
Oryx sees his jaws and teeth in the reflection of the anti-glare goggles his father is wearing and, with no other choices left, begins to eat his father! All the while his father tells him what he is doing is good and majestic. When he is done, Oryx looks back and realizes that his sisters have torn up the road behind him and that he has no way to get back where he came from.
Obviously, this dream is highly symbolic, though not confusingly so. There are several parts we can identify:
- The road stones covered in writting that Oryx’s sisters are tearing up are Oryx’s Tablets of Ruin he laid down in his Throne World to allow him to approach and commune with The Deep. It’s telling that these tablets in Oryx’s dreams are held up by or overlaid on worms, much as the Hive’s power is based on the power of the worm gods.
- Could the goggles that Oryx’s father is wearing to save his vision during lighting storms and sea fire have been to preserve his “night vision” for watching Fundament’s moons? He was at or near his orrery in the dream so that makes some sense.
- I’m not aware of any direct correlation between the black sun that Oryx’s father attempts to force feed him and anything within Destiny’s universe. In this instance it would probably seem to represent poison or death.
- What Oryx does to his father, eat him in self defense, is pretty much what the worm gods and the Deep have been telling Oryx to do for tens of thousands of years now.
- One minor but interesting thing is that this dream about teeth is that it is referenced in the description of the Warlock’s Voidfang Vestments which says: “YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE – scratched behind a buckle” That’s kinda creepy. Maybe the Voidfang Vestments were made by a Guardian who survive the assault on the moon? Or by Toland the Shattered who we’ll learn a good deal about later?
- And finally, given that his father is telling him that he should be prepared for betrayal and that his father calls being eaten in self defense “majestic” we can pretty easily conclude that Oryx’s father here represents the Deep itself. It is something of a father figure to him at this point and it has been teaching him that existence is defined by ones ability to exist.
Waking up, Oryx muses that he is glad to know that the universe is a thing that run on death. He realizes that the races he and his Hive have destroyed hate him but he is, perhaps now more than ever, firmly committed to the Deep’s view that the only way to make something good that can’t be broken is to break everything else first.
But Oryx also soon realizes that he has been stranded and cut off from his flow of tribute. In fact, he says he is lost somewhere strange. I submit that Oryx has actually been killed just as dead as he previously killed his two sisters when the Hive was losing the war against the Ecumene. I think he is trapped in such a deep dark corner of his Throne World that he does not recognize it and cannot find a way out.
I think this for two reasons:
- Soon after this, Xivu Arath writes one of her declarative missives like the one she wrote near the very beginning of the Books of Sorrow. Remember the outlaying of all the dangers of Fundament? This time, Xivu Arath notes that she once allowed Oryx to kill her and that she was resurrected only when he described her. In the very next section titled “RESURRECTION” she declares that she will now describe Oryx. Her description is neat and a bit frightening to read (go do so if you have time) but I think the important part here is that she had to make this description of her brother at all.
- We’ll cover this more next time, but Oryx describes making his way back from this strange place he was lost in as fighting his way out of hell. By now, Oryx has been killed many many times. First by his sister during the war against the Ammonites and later several times by the forces of the Ecumene, but each time he was just thrown back into his Throne World. A place where he is generally untouchable and has a great deal of power. A place that is hardly a hell. So I think his saying that he had to fight his way out of hell is very significant.
Ultimately, trapped in this hell, Oryx decides that he can no longer sit alone at the top of his pyramid as one of three equals leading the Hive. He decides he needs children to guarantee that he alone is the most powerful at the top of the Hive.
Sources:
XXXIII: When do monsters have dreams
XXXIV: More beautiful to know
XXXV: This Love Is War
XXXVI: Eater of Hope
I: Predators
Previous: 18: Majestic Battles and Waves
Next: 20: The Eater of Hope and His Sisters
The Failed Scheme
The Failed Scheme
The constant, repeating sounds of her horse’s slow trot and her wagon’s four rotating wheels fell silent as Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawazi came to a sudden stop. A smile formed on her lips and she breathed a small, satisfied sigh of relief as she stood and gazed into the distance. Far ahead, only just peaking around the curve of the soft green ridge the elven maiden had been following all morning, was the first signs of a tall wood-planked wall.
The wall, no more than two miles distant, belonged to her destination, the city of Sharlstown, a place she had never been. Though she’d had complete confidence she would find the city early on the third day of her journey, she had exactly followed her parents directions as well as the map she’d bought in the city Dutos after all, Mkali Moto Kipande could not help feel that small wave of relief in seeing for herself that the city actually was where it should have been.
“N’guvu!” Mkali Moto Kipande exclaimed with a laugh as her horse pushed its muzzle past her long straight white hair to playfully lick at her pointed ear. “Ok, ok, we’ll keep going,” she said in mock surrender as she lovingly rubbed its head in reply.
The sounds of travel picked up again, just a little bit faster now, as Mkali Moto Kipande started on her final push. More of the wall quickly showed itself as she emerged from between the two hills that had flanked her since the evening a day ago. Soon, the city’s gate and the still considerable stretch of road that led to it became visible. There were other walkers and riders on the road, a couple of wagons too, most heading towards the city gate like she was. It was an odd feeling, having to balance her excitement of soon arriving some place new with her patience of still being a good three quarters of an hour away, but somehow Mkali Moto Kipande managed.
That three quarters hours passed quickly and Mkali Moto Kipande now found it was uncertainty that weighted opposite her excitement as she neared the gate. The two guardsmen who’d first looked no bigger than nearby bees now loomed on either side of the entry way. They studied her with unconcerned expressions as she approached. When she got close one of them moved from his spot and walked out to meet her.
“Stop there, please,” he said to her in a friendly kind of tone when she was within an arrow’s shot of the wall. Mkali Moto Kipande complied and stood, holding her breath, as the guard walked up to greet her.
“Welcome to Sharlstown. May I have your name and your intensions, Miss?” he asked her.
“My name is Sparks Clearpath and I have come to trade,” Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawzai answered confidently.
“Where did you journey from, Miss Clearpath?” the guard asked as he walked past her to inspect her wagon.
“From my home in the woods near Dutos.”
“That’s quite the bow you have. And you’ve brought more, I see?” the guard asked as he stepped on onto the side of Mkali Moto Kipande’s wagon to inspect its content.
“Yes sir, I am hoping to trade them or sell them and the furs there for glass panes and steel door hinges, mostly,” Mkali Moto Kipande answered. Though a little nervous, she’d been through similar inspections with her parents and by herself several times before when entering Dutos. So far, things were proceeding normally, to her relief. ‘It is funny how different it feels, being so much farther from home!’ she thought to herself.
“And Dutos could not provide you with such?” the guard asked.
‘A fair question,’ Mkali Moto Kipande thought calmly before answering. “I’m certain it could, but I had long heard of Sharlstown but never seen it. This seemed as good a chance as any,” she explained.
“Really?” The guard asked after he’d finished his brief inspection. Mkali Moto Kipande stood just a bit straighter at his question. His voice… it didn’t sound suspicious exactly, but there was an extra note of interest that had not been present in his other questions. “And you would be what, close to sixty year of age or so?”
“Fifty six, sir.” Mkali Moto Kipande answered, impressed he had guess her age so closely. Judged by appearances alone, she looked of similar age to that of a human girl nearing her 20’s. But this guard apparently knew a good bit about her people and how slowly they aged.
“All right, Miss. Clearpath, everything checks out. You are aware there is a entry tax of three silver?”
“Three? I was told it was one…” Mkali Moto Kipande said, trying to keep her surprise from entering her voice.
She felt for her coin purse and frowned, knowing she had only brought seven old silver coins along with a handful of copper ones. Her family was almost entirely self sufficient and most times had little use for human currency. Even her parents had needed to scrounge around to locate the few higher value coins she had brought with her.
“It was one and probably will be again soon,” the other guard chimed in as he came froward from his posting near the wall. He’d apparently been close enough to hear her question. Or maybe he’d just recognized her expression? “But the city raises it temporarily when money gets tight,” the guard said sympathetically.
“You picked an unfortunate week to come visit, I’m sorry to say,” the first guard added.
Mkali Moto Kipande sighed as she pulled out the required three coins. “I usually have better luck,” she told the two guards as she forced a smile.
“I’m sure you do,” the first guard replied kindly as he accepted the fee. “Is there anything we can help you with? Direction and the like?”
“There is,” Mkali Moto Kipande replied. “I was told to seek out Cunningham Glass Blowers about the glass panes I am looking for. That he and his sons are the best in town and that his son Travis likes to hunt.”
“That he does!” The second guard said with a hearty laugh. “Drive his father crazy with it, his hunting, too, that lad!”
“I’m sure he’d love to see one of those bows of yours though if they are half as good as they look,” the first guard said. “You’ll want to head straight in then turn left on the second street after ‘The Hole’ tavern. Head down a ways and you can’t miss Cunningham’s on your right.”
“Thank you! That’s a big help!” Mkali Moto Kipande said happily.
“You have a good day, Miss Clearpath,” the first guard told her as he and his partner moved out of the road and returned to their posts.
“And you,” Mkali Moto Kipande replied before she pulled at N’guvu’s reins and passed through the open doorway into the new and unfamiliar city.
***
Walking slowly, horse and wagon following behind her, Mkali Moto Kipande took in all that she could. Sharlstown both was and was not what she had been expecting. In broad strokes, it felt a good deal like Dutos. The main street she was on was about the same width, the buildings to her left and right shared a similar human-built style and were about the same height. Most everything had the same variations on the color brown with few accents, same as Dutos. And yet, for a town so similar at first glance it felt almost completely different.
There were some people here and there, going about their morning business, but fewer of them and they moved with just slightly less urgency. The sounds around Mkali Moto Kipande were familiar, too. People talking. Doors opening and closing. Wood being chopped and metal being hammered. But… it was all a little quieter and a little… not more distant in actuality… but that’s what it felt like. It felt as if she were in some out of the way corner of Dutos and the sounds of the city were straining to reach her. That relative lack of noise made her own horse and wagon and even footsteps seem just a little louder in her ears.
Still, it had been the promise of the smaller town that had drawn her tens of miles from home. And, it wasn’t as if Sharlstown was a disappointment. Already it had its own charm. The main road was only packed dirt instead of the stone tile work three of Dutos’ main streets shared. And the way the people around her stopped to look as she passed by was new and intriguing. One youthful young woman playing vigorously at her fiddle stopped momentarily to wave, a gesture which Mkali Moto Kipande returned in kind. Another hurried couple took a short moment to cock their head her way before stepping into a nearby shop.
‘Yes, Sharlstown would be an interesting place to return to,’ Mkali Moto Kipande thought, ‘that is, if I can afford the entry fees…’
Soon, Mkali Moto Kipande came across a small tavern with a somewhat newer appearance that the buildings surrounding it. Above its door was a sign that read “The Hole” the name of the landmark the entry guards had instructed her to look for. She continued on past one street then guided N’guvu onto the narrower path to her left. With the way the buildings blocked the still rising sun, the small side street felt a good deal like one of Dutos’ alleyways, Mkali Moto Kipande mused. Not a minute later she came across a good sized shop with large, clean windows and an elaborate sign made of blown glass fitted with, and intriguingly illuminated by, a collection of small orange glowing lanterns.
“Cunningham,” Mkali Moto Kipande said, reading the glowing glass letters aloud. This had to be the place! She continued a short way past the shop’s entryway to a hitching post. With N’guvu secured, she retrieved a second bow from the back of her wagon, then took in and released a breath to calm her nerves before she pushed her way through the heavy wooden door.
Inside, the front half of the shop was clearly set up as something of a showcase of goods. Glassware cups and bowls of various sizes and colors gleamed and sparkled, reflecting the glow of hanging lamps above while a row of sample window designs to the left and a wide variety of lanterns and lamps and plates to the right each pulled at Mkali Moto Kipande’s attention. Samples of all kinds stretched back along the straight walls where they ended halfway into the shop. It was there that the display section stopped and the work area started, complete with benches and tools and two large, roaring fireplaces who’s heat Mkali Moto Kipande could feel even in the entryway. There in the back a large man worked a billows as his gloved hands handled a long pole with a molten glass shape fitted to the end. Mkali Moto Kipande was about to call out to him when a sudden clatter of shaking glass drew her attention back close.
“Are you… are you here to rob us?” asked a young human boy no more than perhaps fifteen years of age. He had obviously gently bumped into one of the shelves displaying a row of plates when he’d seen her and now stared with his mouth agasp. Mkali Moto Kipande quickly recognized his question for what it was, realizing that she must look quite the sight in her toughened leather outfit with a hunting knife and quiver of arrows at her sides and two bows, one across her back and a second held (non-threateningly) in her hand.
“Travis!” the man working the fires and glass called loudly in a gruff voice from the back.
“Sorry…” the boy apologized sheepishly. “Welcome to Cunningham Glass Blowers. I am Travis Cunningham. Is there anything with which I could help you with?” he asked, his routine sounding only slightly over-rehearsed.
“You can,” Mkali Moto Kipande said reassuringly. “I have come looking to have cut window panes custom ordered.”
“Can… May I?” Travis asked, ignoring her reply. He was looking intently now to the longbow Mkali Moto Kipande held in her left hand.
She smiled and held it out for him. The boy grabbed it immediately, his hand gripping the wrong end, but then, to his credit, he flipped it around so that it faced the correct direction and pulled back on the string as if he had a notched arrow. His form and technique, while not flawless, clearly spoke to his having loosed many an arrow before.
“Who made this for you? It must have cost you… a lot more than I make…” he said appreciatively.
“The cost was only my time and a bit of hard work. I made it myself,” Mkali Moto Kipande replied before turning at the approach of heavy footsteps. Now it was her turn to stare, as the man who had been at the back of the shop towered above even her. She was considered tall among most humans, but was a head shorter than the man who now stood before her.
“My son is right. The bow is very good quality,” the man said after taking it from the boy. It looked more like a short bow than the longbow it was when held in his hands. “I’m guessing you want to trade it for something?”
“Um…” Mkali Moto Kipande said as her mind failed to find the words she had intended to say.
“She is looking to have window glass custom made,” Travis ended up replying for her.
“Ah! What sort of windows, Miss…?”
“Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawzai… is my name. But you may call me Sparks Clearpath,” Mkali Moto Kipande replied, finding her voice once more. “My family and I are constructing a new home of my father’s design and the front foyer calls for two sets of double windows with panes three feet two inches by seven feet five inches.”
“All for this bow?” the man asked jokingly.
“No,” Sparks said, letting through a friendly laugh of her own. “I brought nineteen more as well as an equal number of well made quivers and a few arrows for each. I also have a variety of fine furs and pelts.”
“I don’t need all that,” the man replied flatly, his smile gone.
“No… but… but others will. I do not anticipate having any problem paying for my order,” Makli Moto Kipande said, trying to reassure the man.
For a moment no one spoke. Mkali Moto Kipande felt as if she were holding her breath even if it were not strictly true. Finally, after a short eternity, the man cracked a smile and said, “The name is Trevor. Trevor Cunningham. Bring in two more of your best bows as downpayment and we can talk the exactlys of these windows of yours.”
To Be Continued…
Bite-sized Backstory 18: Majestic Battles and Waves
After defeating the Taishibethi, Oryx returns to his throne world and makes preparations to have his first direct meeting with the Deep. He creates a special alter for the Deep and prepares an unborn ogre for it to possess. We’ve seen unborn ogres several times in Destiny. You might know them better as Tomb Husks.
When he is ready, Oryx calls out to the deep saying:
I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.
This call might seem trivial, or just a fancy greeting, but at the very least Oryx’s words here are a clever call back to one of Bungie’s earliest game series. In 1996’s Marathon Infinity, we learn of a creature or creatures called W’rkncacnter. They are described like this:
In primordial space, timeless creatures
made waves. These waves created us and the
others. Waves were the battles, and the
battles were waves.
Later one or more of these W’rkncacnter attack a powerful race called the Jjaro, killing one of them. After this, a second Jjaro somehow flings these powerful ancient beings into a star where they are trapped by the intense gravity and burned by the star’s heat but somehow survive and wait to somehow be released to once again cause chaos.
Part of last game in the Marathon series, Marathon Infinity, involves jumping across timelines in an effort to prevent the W’rkncacnter from being released when a militant race tries to detonate the star they are trapped on.
It’s also worth nothing that in an even earlier Bungie game called Pathways Into Darkness you are a member of a strike force tasked with using a nuclear weapon to temporarily stun an enormous, ancient, mostly dead god-like alien long enough for the Jjaro to arrive and help remove it from the Earth. The opening to Pathways Into Darkness describes the alien and situation like so:
Sixty-four million years ago, a large extra-terrestrial object struck the Earth in what would later be called the Yucatan Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico. The dust and rock thrown up by the resulting explosion caused enormous climactic changes in the ensuing years, and many of the Earth’s species became extinct during the long winter that followed.
The object itself was buried thousands of feet below ground, its nearly two kilometer length remarkably intact. It remained there, motionless, for thousands of years before it finally began to stir- and to dream. It was a member of a race whose history began when the Milky Way was still a formless collection of dust and gas- a powerful race of immortals which had quickly grown bored of their tiny universe and nearly exterminated themselves in war.
This particular being, whose name no human throat will ever learn to pronounce, was part of the cataclysmic battle that formed Magellanic Clouds, billions of years ago. It died there, or it came as close to dying as these things can, and drifted aimlessly for millions of light years before striking the Earth.
The heat of impact liquefied the rock around it, which later cooled and encased the dead god’s huge body far below ground. As it began to dream, it wrought unintentional changes in its environment. Locked deep beneath the Earth, strange and unbelievable things faded in and out of reality. Vast caverns and landscapes bubbled to life within the rock, populated by horrible manifestations of the dead god’s dream.
There’s a few Destiny links here:
- The concept of a dead god has been brought up in Destiny before in reference to the Traveler. I believe it was Petra Venj who even mentioned that The City was hiding beneath a dead god back when she was assigned as a diplomat to The City. (Back when she very briefly set up her table on the towers back deck.)
- The first Destiny ViDoc was titled Pathways out of Darkness. Given that the thing which the Hive and worm gods call “the Deep” is what The City knows as the Darkness, we have some interesting possible parallels.
- Ultimately, we’re looking at tentative similarities between games made decades apart so we can’t draw too many conclusions, but we also may get some small amount of extra insight into the true nature of the Darkness by looking at the themes of Bungie’s past games. It does seem like Destiny’s Deep and Sky have been in conflict before… perhaps similar to the W’rkncacnter and the Jjaro?
When the Deep arrives at Oryx’s alter it possesses the Ogre he prepared for it and speaks to him. Mostly the Deep repeats the philosophy we’ve heard from the worm gods, but interestingly, it does so with a lot more… or at least different… personality. The way it talks is much more conversational that the worm gods distant and almost haughty style of speech. It even refers to Oryx as a friend at one point.
One of the interesting things that it tells Oryx is that if life is going to survive past the end of all things it will have to do so not by kindness or with a smile but by violence and sword. In time, we’ll see at least one other major power in Destiny express a desire to survive past the end of the universe.
In the end, the Deep tells Oryx that two sides pitting themselves against the other until one prevails is the way the universe figures itself out. And it says that this process is not barbaric or evil but is actually majestic. Could it be right? When viewed on on a long enough timeline, is what the Hive and Deep are doing actually beautiful and majestic, even if it causes some suffering along the way?
Sources:
XXXI battle made waves
XXXII Majestic. Majestic.
W’rkncacnter section of the Marathon.Bungie.Org Story Page
PID.Bungie.Org Transcript of the Pathways Into Darkness manual
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