Bite-sized Backstory is an ongoing guide to the incredible stories contained within the Grimoire Cards and Lore Books of Bungie’s Destiny.
Select one of the following entry points to get started:
History of the Hive
History of the Eliksni
History of the Awoken
History of The Last Word
Bite-sized Backstory 31: Meanwhile! At Twilight Gap!
As the House of Wolves scattered and splintered among the many planetoids of the asteroid belt, the House of Devils lead the other Houses against the City. In some ways, the City had unfortunately set its self up for such an attack. What started as settlements underneath the Traveler slowly grew into a metropolis protected by high walls, artillery equipped towers, and scores of nearly immortal…
Bite-sized Backstory 32: The Eos Clash & Amethyst
After the Awoken smashed their fleet and their leadership at Ceres, the House of Wolves splintered into a variety of groups vying for control. As we saw last time, the three primary contenders for the Kellship were three of Virixas’ lieutenants: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid. The first order of business for these three claimants was to gather their forces and,…
Bite-sized Backstory 33: The Long Siege of Pallas
Since before the Reef Wars, the Awoken could only ever tell that the Eliksni were communicating, but what exactly the aliens were saying to one another had always been lost in the pulsed static or rapid beeps and tones of encryption. It seems likely that the Awoken’s communications were almost certainly just as unreadable to the Eliksni, but then it was the Eliksni who were lashing out at Awoken…
Bite-sized Backstory 34: The Fortuna Plummet
The Hildian Campaign There’s one segment of the Reef Wars we just don’t know a whole lot about. During the long siege of Pallas occurred what was a perhaps an almost equally long search for Skolas called The Hildian Campaign. Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior were sent into the Hildian asteroid field to try and find Skolas and his chief strategist Beltrik, the Veiled, but this campaign…
Bite-sized Backstory 35: Betrayal At Cybele
When the Awoken captured Beltrik the Veiled at the Fortuna Plummet, Skolas knew he was running out of options. With no brilliant strategist on his side anymore, Skolas falls back on brute force. For a whole year, Drevis had managed to form an effective blockade of Pallas using only a portion of the fractured House of Wolves. Maybe Skolas figured he could do the same? For his target, Skolas choose…
Bite-sized Backstory 36: The Fallen Houses
With two crushing defeats, one at Twilight Gap at the hands of The Last City and another at Cybele at the hands of the Awoken, the Eliksni found themselves being driven back once again. Since the Dark Age they had raided and pillaged the scattered settlements and cities of Earth mostly unchecked. But now, the Awoken had set up colonies and industry and a military presence within the Reef, and the…
Bite-sized Backstory 37: Yang Liwei
The Awoken have been a strange puzzle ever since we first visited the Reef back in Destiny 1. We met the Awoken Queen and her brother, but we didn’t even learn their names until Petra Venj called upon the Guardians of The City to hunt down Skolas in the House of Wolves expansion. For all of Destiny 1, the Awoken were a culture and a power whose extent was frustratingly difficult to discern. Did…
Bite-sized Backstory 38: Brother, Mother, and Alice Li
As Mara heads inside from her most recent spacewalk, we get to learn a little more about the young woman and those around her. We learn that Mara was previously some sort of Extra Vehicular Activity tech near Jupiter. It was, in fact, a shocking experience on one of her maintenance EVAs that caused her to insist that she and her family leave the solar system. Mara and an unnamed man were outside…
Bite-sized Backstory 39: SKYSHOCK
After her meeting with Alice Li, Mara likely returns to her normal routine. She makes timely, unscheduled repairs. She disappears for days at a time as she basks in the starlight shining on the Yang Liwei’s outer hull. And she continues to perform spectacular, death defying acts so she can spread those sensations among the colony ship’s crew. I get the sense that nothing and no one onboard the…
Bite-sized Backstory 40: The Awakening of the Awoken
Physics no longer work quite right outside the Yang Liwei, where Mara Sov went to die. When Mara pushes off the ship’s hull the strange, life threatening gravity waves being produced by the mysterious alien ship push and pull on her, yanking her first one way and then the other. She pushed off with some 50km of super thin tether, but her progress away from the ship is uneven. Eventually, though,…