Errata

Irrational Hope

2026-06-01T00:00:00+01:00

Thirteen years ago, I watched this video and it’s not hyperbole to say that it changed my life forever.

The world of Destiny was so well designed, so well written, that this video marked the beginning of an obsession that, at times, consumed me.

It was an obsession that led me to pore through Destiny’s lore, to learn the ins and outs of Bungie’s API, and to build the Ishtar Collective. It led me to meet hundreds of people who shared at least some aspect of my obsession.

It led me to meet some of my closest friends — my fireteam.

It led me to speak at conferences and to take part in dozens of podcasts and YouTube videos.

I fell in love with every aspect of Destiny.

So many separate pieces came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts: the gameplay, the setting, the environments, the art direction…

But the Ishtar Collective exists because of one element above all of those others. Its lore. And the lore exists because of its writers.

Those writers built a mythology out of nothing that, in my opinion (and, if you’re reading this, probably yours too), rivals some of the best science fiction of the last century.

The way that the writers combined elements of post-apocalyptic survival, millennia-old pacts with ancient gods, scattered alien scavengers, unfathomable cosmic entities warring over the very nature of life, and, of course, space magic, gave Destiny a feeling that was unlike anything else.

To all of the people who contributed to shaping the lore of Destiny over its lifetime —

Thank you.

Thank you for building a world that we love, filled with characters that we love.

Eris Morn once said:

Thank you for being so worthy of trust. Thank you for carrying my hope.

And that’s how I feel. Every expansion, every season, we trusted you with a world that we loved, and invariably you surprised us and delighted us.

On June 9th we’ll receive the last update to Destiny 2.

It hurts writing those words out so plainly.

For eleven years the Ishtar Collective has collected and archived the stories of Destiny, and that is exactly what we’ll continue to do.

I’ve always felt that the underlying message in Destiny is one of hope.

The universe of Destiny has been, at times, dark and unforgiving, but never without hope. Whether it was the hope of the Gardener against the Winnower, or the hope of humanity against impossible odds, or the hope of the Fallen to find redemption, or the hope that fuelled Eris in her escape from the Hellmouth, hope has always been interwoven into the DNA of Destiny.

Eris asked us to remember the value of unshakable, irrational hope — the choice to act as if we lived in a better world, so that a place for that better world might exist.

I’ve spent thirteen years acting on that hope.

Thank you for carrying it with me. Let’s keep carrying it together, towards whatever comes next.

In Love and in Light.

— baxter.

The April Fools Release Update

2024-04-01T00:00:00+01:00

Hey everyone. We’ll keep it short and simple. April Fools needs more time to become exactly what we want it to be, so we’re moving its release date to May 1, 2024.

April Fools is the culmination of the first ten years of Ishtar Collective tomfoolery and, for lore nerds everywhere, countless hours spent arguing about whether Rasputin shot the Traveler. We want to honor that journey, so we’re taking the time we need to deliver an even bigger and bolder vision, one that we hope will be remembered and treasured for weeks to come.

We know you’re eager to get your hands on April Fools. In that sense, delays aren’t fun. For our part, we are excited to have the extra time needed to bring our vision for April Fools to life for all of you. We’re looking forward to sharing much more in April, including all-new fools, to showcase the significant silliness currently in development.

Thanks for reading and for being on this journey with us.

- baxter

Loremoji Competition Results

2022-05-01T00:00:00+01:00

In March we started a Loremoji Competition, where we asked people to submit their designs for emoji for the Ishtar Collective Discord, and we offered some nice prizes.

On April 1st, due to ~~events outside of our control~~, emoji appeared all over the site. Also we somehow added reactions to the site. What followed was 48 hours of madness as we did our best to roll back the changes. But while those changes were live, a lot of people seemed to enjoy them.

Now that the dust has settled, we can get back to the competition.

The quality of the submissions was very impressive. Judges were asked to vote on each submission, ranking them based on the overall quality of the submission. While there were a lot of really high quality emojis submitted, there were also some clear winners!

First place – Bees with “Sigh Indeed” and “Crow-moji”

*Sigh* Indeed

Crow-moji

The two submissions in the top spot were both by Bees – “*Sigh* Indeed” and “Crow-moji”. We really loved the way that Bees was able to capture a number of our favorite Destiny characters!

Graceful Rhulk

Eris Moji

Droji

Bees actually submitted 5 emojis in total and we really liked all of them.

Second place – Marly with “Ratman Drifter”

Ratman Drifter

We really liked the quality of “Ratman Drifter” by Marly.

Third place – faerie_flower with “::D”

::D

faerie_flower submitted a lot of lovely entries, but we especially liked “::D”, or “four eyes” as I have been referring to it.

Ghost Emoji

Another Misunderstanding

Spicy Five Stars

Temporary

It is most nourishing

Runners up

VulshokBersrker

Blinded By Lore by VulshokBersrker

fontiago

pogcalus by fontiago

pensive traveler by fontiago

pleading traveler by fontiago

Ytak

Raising VotD hands by Ytak

MajesticIncite

Mindgobble by MajesticIncite

Operation - Calus by MajesticIncite

The Great Egg by MajesticIncite

Boximus

Pensive Zavalass by Boximus

Remember Amogus by Boximus

discobal6l

Hungry by discobal6l

stocks

dapperLiksni by stocks

rhulkHappy by stocks

troggers (traveler poggers) by stocks

Zok

funnyjokebrotha by Zok

Thank you

Thank you so much to everyone who took part, and congratulations to the three winners! It was a really fun competition and I hope we can do another one in the future.

Loremoji

2022-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Ishtar Collective Discord server is home to some of the best and weirdest emoji I have ever seen, and all of them have been submitted by our wonderful community.

In the interest of continuing this long and proud tradition, we are running a competition.

We want you (yes you) to submit your designs for Destiny Lore-themed emoji, henceforth called LOREMOJI.

We’ll judge all of the submitted Loremoji, and the ones that we think are the best and/or the funniest will win prizes.

What are these prizes?

Your Guardian drawn by adulture

We’ve worked with the amazing Mengmeng Liu, aka adulture, on a few occasions in the past, and they have kindly agreed to draw a Guardian portrait for one of our lucky winners.

Gift card for the platform of your choice worth $100

A gift card on Steam, PSN or Xbox Live for the value of $100 (or close to that amount if we have to buy it in a different currency).

$100 voucher for the Ishtar Collective store

Think of all the lore T-shirts and posters you could get! Just think!! You could even get a mug!

Plus a special Discord role

Everyone who enters will get a special role in our Discord server.

How do I enter?

Submit your designs to our Loremoji competition site. You can enter as many times as you like.

Any other rules I should know about?

The rules are

The competition will run for 2 weeks from the 18th March 2022.
You give us the right to use your emoji designs, obviously.
You promise not to be a jerk and submit other people’s work as your own. That would not be cool.

Best of luck, I can’t wait to see everyone’s submissions!

Spoilers

2021-06-16T21:58:00+01:00

Hey everyone! Recently we at the Ishtar Collective have been thinking a lot about spoilers.

I’m going to start this post by explaining what we are going to change and then go on to explain why we are going to change it. That might sound back to front to you but that’s the way I’m doing it.

What we’re going to change

From now on, whenever we add a new Entry or Vendor Interaction to the site we will set a ‘spoiler date’ for it.

The default spoiler date will be guessed based on the start date of the season.

As the season progresses and we get a better understanding of when content will be made available, we will update the spoiler date on individual documents.

Any documents that have their spoiler date in the future will be marked as ‘seasonal spoilers’, and have a red banner.

Any documents that have their spoiler date in the past week will be marked as ‘weekly spoilers’, and have a gray banner.

Any documents that have their spoiler date set to earlier than one week ago will look exactly as they always have.

Weekly and seasonal spoilers will also have their text blurred out by default, so if you accidentally visit such a page you still have to make a conscious decision to read the text.

We decided not to blur out the categories on the page. I know this isn’t ideal and we might reconsider this later.

For now all documents, whether spoilers or not, will still be searchable. We might also reconsider this in the future.

When documents are linked to from other pages we will try to show a spoiler icon. This isn’t always easy to do because of the way that certain pages are generated.

Why we’re doing this

Since the start of the Ishtar Collective we’ve always pulled content directly from Bungie’s API. Our assumption has been that if it’s in the API (and not marked as redacted) then it’s safe to put it on the site.

But at the start of Season of the Splicer, the update from the API contained a lot of content referencing events that hadn’t happened yet, and seemingly wouldn’t take place until the end of the season.

Spoilers are an inevitable part of building a website dedicated to Destiny lore, but it felt like the things in this update were spoiling too much.

I saw numerous threads on r/DestinyLore, comments on Twitter and discussions on Discord where people were frustrated that they knew what would happen toward the end of the season.

Talking to people that I know from the community I got some very different perspectives. Some people felt that if it was in the API then it should appear on the site. Other people felt that if it wasn’t available in the game then it shouldn’t appear on the site. And some people felt that even datamined content (which we don’t currently have on the site) was OK to publish.

Rather than base any decisions on individual conversations, I decided to put together a survey to understand how our users felt about ‘end-of-season spoilers’.

Analysis of the results

If you want to see the in-depth data you can skip ahead.

Overall, people were much happier about spoilers being on the site than I expected.

77% of respondents said that they were happy with end-of-season spoilers being on the site in some capacity.

I was really surprised that 25% of all respondents were happy for datamined content to be on the site — something that we don’t currently do right now, and realistically I don’t think we will ever do.

In terms of how we should display that content, 74% of people thought that there should be some sort of spoiler tag.

And 51% felt that seeing spoilers should be ‘opt-in’.

Some common themes in people’s written answers were that they didn’t want to make the site more complex to use. Clicking on a ‘reveal spoiler’ button is a little more complex, but hopefully not too bad.

Hopefully our proposed changes will go some way to reduce the risk of inadvertently spoiling content. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible to satisfy everyone’s requests.

If you have feedback please let me know on Twitter @IshtarColl or in our Discord.

Survey Results

I shared a link to the survey on the Ishtar Collective site using a notification banner, on Twitter and in our Discord.

The survey was open for around 48 hours and there were 1,117 responses.

Q1: How do you feel about the Ishtar Collective showing content that is currently available in-game, but that you have not yet acquired?

If we group together the responses that “think this makes sense on the site” we get the following results:

Q2: How do you feel about the Ishtar Collective showing content that is NOT currently available in-game, e.g. spoilers for the end of the season?

If we group together the responses that “think this makes sense on the site” we get the following results:

Q3: Given your answers, and thinking about an API update that takes place at the start of a season, which of these statements do you agree with? You can select more than one.

There were 306 comments. Rather than listing each one, I’ll try to summarize the common themes. (Please note that none of these are actual quotes).

“I want to avoid spoilers but I can’t help myself”
“I want to have access to spoilers because I won’t spoil things for people, but I don’t want other people to have access to spoilers because they will spoil things for people”
“The content should be released on the site at the same time as it is released in-game”
“I don’t care if the content is not in the game yet, I just want to read it, but I would like it to have spoiler tags”
“Please don’t make the site more complex to use”
“I like being able to read the lore without having to unlock things in-game”

To be continued

Just like the rest of the site, this spoiler feature will evolve over time, based on feedback and on the lessons that we learn.

But hopefully it will be a step in the right direction.

Thanks for reading!

The Dream of the Deep Stone Crypt

2020-10-28T13:00:00+00:00

Since the inception of Destiny, we have been pushed forward by our desire to reclaim the greatness of our lost Golden Age — a lost Eden where everything was better, purer.

However, over time our view of this idyllic period has become tainted. We have begun to see that the Golden Age is not as idealistic as we had first imagined, and that just like today it was filled with sinners, wrongdoing, misplaced trust, foolishness and wild ambitions.

Those legendary times still influence the present, now more than ever, with the coming of the new season and the DLC “Beyond Light”.

We will venture into the lore, meeting with Cayde-6 to unveil his last secret, following the steps of Clovis Bray… looking for answers to old questions: what is an Exo? Where is the Deep Stone Crypt? Who is the mind behind it all?

The house of Bray

The events we will dig into are deeply rooted in the Golden Age. There is one name that is repeated again and again throughout this period – a man, a company and a philosophy that stands out in all the legends: Clovis Bray.

He was the founder of the eponymous company that had numerous branches such as Braytech Industries and financed a lot more initiatives, and has known rivalries against other organizations, such as the Ishtar Collective. This mega-corporation has the imprinting of the cyberpunk entities of similar stature in its identity. It was a totalitarian economic colossus, which encompassed almost every field of human knowledge and production, and played a role in a huge proportion of the research and the discoveries made during the Golden Age. It capitalized on its near-monopoly, exploiting its position many times and crossing various moral boundaries in the process.

Clovis Bray ran the business with his family, mainly his grandchildren: Anastasia Bray (revived as a Guardian we know as Ana); Elisabeth “Elsie” Bray; Wilhelmina “Willa” Bray (who helped in creating the Engram and SIVA technology) and Alton Bray. Their father, and son to Clovis, was Clovis II.

The Clovis Bray corporation was single-handedly responsible for (or directly involved in) most of the major technological breakthroughs in the Golden Age: Rasputin and the Warmind Project; SIVA; Engrams; interstellar communication; Project Exodus; solar system colonization, and many others.

Among these, we have one of the most noticeable and interesting: the Exo Project.

Surviving the human spoils: the Exominds

“Exo” is short for “Exomind”. The project seems to be born as a response to an unknown threat – some theories point to the Vex, as they were contemporary to the Golden Age, but the real purpose is unknown.

Built for a long-forgotten struggle, Exos are self-aware war machines so advanced that nothing short of a Ghost can understand their inner functions. They remain ciphers, even to themselves: their origins and purpose lost to time.

— Exo

The scope of the project was to create an artificial body frame to host a human mind. It is a complicated neural transfer routine, which discards the human body of the host in the process, and it’s permanent. As for the nature of the project most of the human subjects were motivated by tragic, personal situations or forced into it by the company to cover their debts or through offering a pardon for their crimes. It is not known if these matters factored in, but the process was not flawless. There were some inherent problems in separating a human mind from its original body, which caused a phenomenon called DER (Dissociative Exomind Rejection) to emerge. It is known that our complex intelligence and conscience are deeply tied to our sensorial and cognitive systems, which are mainly developed through our bodies. When a human mind is transferred into an Exo frame, it could cause a reject – in the same way our body can reject transplanted parts, such as organs. When a mind is rejecting its body, though, a psychological collapse happens, causing the mind to fragment irreparably, similar to Dissociative Identity Disorder in humans. The result, in the case of the Exos, is the death of the subject.

Early experiments in Exo science managed to encode the Human consciousness into a form that could be processed digitally. At the time, we believed that was the big hurdle to overcome in the creation of the Exo. Little did we know that the real challenge would be the phenomenon known as Dissociative Exomind Rejection.

— Ghost Scan: Core Terminus, Mars

To deal with these issues, the Exo Project team adopted some fixes. The infamous reboot routine was one of them, involving a complete deletion of the memories of the human mind during the transfer. This proved to help the mind to detach from the previous body and identify itself with the new, artificial one, successfully creating a blank slate template. The reboot can be used several times for effectiveness: the number after the name of an Exo is the number of times that they were rebooted (Saint-14, for example, must have been rebooted 14 times). Although a very inhuman process, this is also dangerous in the long run: it has been estimated that rebooting causes damage to the short-term memory, blocking new memories from forming effectively, and therefore not safe to do over 20 times. This can be easily seen on subjects such as Banshee-44 – whose high number in his name suggests he was rebooted way too many times, making his memory very volatile.

A second method to avoid DER is to create a way to bond the mind and the new body together, and it involves bodily functions – humanism features. Eating, drinking, having sex and others – these are all functions that Exos have, primarily instincts, which are not necessary for the survival of an artificial construct. If an Exo doesn’t eat or drink, they will not die, but these features are important to avoid dissociation from the body.

However, there is a third method, which is not spoken nor heard of. It seems a dirty secret, something challenging morality in an already borderline field. In some way, it is the opposite of the first one: creating memories – fake memories, to be precise.

—so there you have it, Ace, that’s why I did what I did. I had no choice, really. It was that or the great beyond. Just know your dad did what he had to do if I ever wanted to see you and your mother again. You probably won’t recognize me, since I’ll be, well, a robot and all, but I’ll find you, I promise—

—from the journals of Cayde-6

— Cayde-6 — Mementos from the Wild

Image by SiLeNtWaLkEr based on artwork by Bungie.

The story of Cayde-6 and his beloved son Ace may sound familiar and add layers of tragedy and depth to a light-hearted character like Cayde, other than confirming what we know about being selected for the Exo program. He read about his previous life in a journal he found with him when he woke up as a Guardian. He seems to know that these memories could be fake – there is not a sure way to tell – but he chooses to hang to them anyway. Fake memories could be an effective solution to avoid dissociation between body and mind – to give a meaning to an end, a purpose to live as an Exo. Cayde seems to have been selected for the program because he owed a huge amount of money for damaging Bray properties, so he sacrifices himself to protect his family. But… what if this is just too perfect? A noble sacrifice, full of regrets maybe, nonetheless needed to preserve the future of his loved ones – a powerful psychological drive. Cayde suspects this and has thought about it many times: “The kid. The woman. I do not know them. They are not real. But I wish I did. And I wish they were.” This is because, as an Exo, he is also a machine and can corroborate the material he found about his past with memory flashes – glimpses of a life that the Traveler could not erase when making him a Guardian, because embedded in a technology the Ghost cannot entirely grasp (we will get back to this later). Ironically, the only Guardians that can have flashbacks about who they really were are the Exos, whose memories are probably fabricated.

But the flashes… Like daydreams, they promised something more. Something other than suffering and war. So I clung to them. And I built my truth. And it made me a better man.

Some would dispute that fact. Some would say, “A good man who lies to himself is good only because he hides from the truth.” But I disagree. I think, in this world, you need to find what is best in you and cling to it. That’s all I did. I found what moved me, and I fought for it.”

Without Ace, and without my Queen to listen to me, to hear me, to see me… there’s no telling who I would’ve become.”

— Bad Beat

A terrible doubt arises: what is worse? Cayde losing his humanity and family because of one single mistake, or his family not existing at all, ultimately making his sacrifice void? This is a variant of the cartesian cogito ergo sum problem, a question humans love to not answer: do the memories make the man, or the man makes the memories?

While Cayde seems to have an answer for that, we cannot help thinking about the coldness of putting a human being in this chilling impasse in the first place.

The way that the Exos were conceived bears some resemblance to the way that the Clovis Bray company was run: ruthlessly, with ambition and few moral obstacles. This resembles a similar setting, the one in the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and the movie based on it, “Blade Runner”, with the Tyrell company creating human simulacra (the replicants), giving them limited time to live and fake memories of other people to carry on. And we can surely rely on comparing Clovis Bray with Eldon Tyrell on many common points.

In this regard, the sad story of Cayde isn’t just _his _sad story. It’s the bleak narrative of all the Exos.

—Here’s the truth, Ace. I don’t remember you. Found your name in a journal I had on me when my Ghost rezzed me. I guess I used to write to you? And I kept doing it. Even though you’re long dead, if you ever really existed. Just like having someone to write to, I guess. So there you have it. Now, you’ll never guess what happened today, Ace—

—from the journals of Cayde-6

— Cayde-6 — Mementos from the Wild

The Exo Dream

Even though the Exo Project was developed in Freehold, on Mars (where Clovis Bray headquarters are mainly located), the place where Exos were assembled is called the Deep Stone Crypt.

The first instances of this name came through the Grimoire. All the Exos, it seems, have a recurrent dream. They march toward a Tower, through peaceful means or fighting an army.

You can ask others about Deep Stone and they’ll tell you about the army. They might confess one truth, which is this: we have to kill the army to get to the tower. Usually this starts bare-handed, and somewhere along the way you take a weapon.

Ask again and if they’re buzzed they might also admit that most of us don’t make it to the Tower, except once or twice.

None of them will tell you that the army is made of everyone we meet. The people we work with and the people we see in the street and the people we tell about our dreams. We kill them all. I think because we were made to kill and this is the part of us that thinks about nothing else.

Often I kill people I don’t know, but like most of us I think I knew them once, in the time before one reset or another, when my mind was younger and less terribly scarred.

So that is how we go back to the Deep Stone Crypt, where we were born.

— Ghost Fragment: Legends

This recollection is disturbing and it sounds like someone implanted a recurring, fabricated memory inside the subroutine of all the Exos’ minds. We will come back to this later, but the mention of the Crypt in this context helps us to identify it as the main complex where the Exos are born and a powerful symbolic force through their psyche.

In the recent lore tied to Felwinter and his Lie (which is a beautifully told, must-read narrative), we discovered that Rasputin has (or at least he had) access to this complex, and that he used it to create the SIDDHARTHA GOLEM.

What the Crypt really is

For years The location of this place and its nature were major speculations. There is a consensus that the Crypt is the place where the Exos are born, confirmed from various sources – flavor text, Grimoire, generic lore – but there could be more behind this.

A flavor text in a Titan mark from in Destiny 1 quoted:

A badge illustrating the infamous subroutine which seeded the first Exo consciousness.

— Deep Stone Crypt

The mention of the “infamous subroutine” that was implemented or that generated the first Exo consciousness put an interesting note on the name of the place itself. Deep Stone Crypt is a weird name for a location – more of a code name, maybe, for something else. Could the Crypt be also the name of the routine that was used to tie the human mind to the body of the Exo frames? Or maybe, the code that embeds the Dream sequence? Knowing the habits of Clovis Bray to name things through cultural references, this could be wordplay.

The symbol on the mark is identified with the crypt itself:

The image of an ancient tower (or a stylized one) is present, as well as a setting sun – both close reminders of the Exo Dream and not of a real, advanced complex of frame mass production. The whole Crypt matter could be a symbolic one (oneiric, heraldic), with some connection in reality. It is difficult to separate the liminal elements from the actual physical ones, to follow the breadcrumbs to a formal solution, but when it comes down to the lore, symbols and reality are often both existing on the same narrative plan. The tower and the Crypt could be both a real and symbolic place.

The last secret of Cayde

In the material coming within the “Taken King” Collector’s Edition DLC, we have some input from Cayde-6:

Saturn. No, someplace else. Someplace colder.

This moon has been almost completely converted, a sarcophagus of ice and iron.

Stone towers rung round with glaciers, rooted deep within a heart of snow.

I came here flesh and bone. Gave everything to the ice.

Started over.

Rebooted.

— Cayde’s Journal

It looks like the place where Cayde was rebooted as an Exo could be an icy moon around Saturn. The recollection is complete with the description of “stone towers” and words such as “sarcophagus”, all of them reminders of the Crypt’s main symbolism.

Cayde is one of the keys to this mystery, as he is on a personal mission to find the Crypt and something… maybe someone related to it.

In the same package of the Journal, we find a sketch of Saturn… but the observer is clearly on one of its 62 moons.

After Cayde’s death in Forsaken, we were sent to recover his Ace of Spades. While opening his secret stashes, we got some recorded messages, which, among all the other things, shed light on Cayde’s quest against someone connected to the Crypt.

This one’s for the minds behind the Deep Stone Crypt. You think just ‘cause you made me, you can unmake me? Hey, I understand. I were you, I wouldn’t want people knowing what I did either. Guess you better hope I didn’t tell anyone about the crypt. Or about the, uh, what was it? Oh yeah… Long Slow Whisper. ‘Cause if I did, that would be real bad for you, huh? I may be dead, but I guarantee you ain’t heard the last of me.

— Quest: Ace in the Hole

Cayde is looking for the “minds behind the Deep Stone Crypt”, on what seems to be a personal vendetta. It looks like he thought that one possible contender for his killing could have been someone or something related to the Crypt, as he knew their secrets and these seem to be important enough to get killed for. In particular, he knew about the Long Slow Whisper. This name is a peculiar hint, as it’s an exotic combination of three words, and it’s connected to the Crypt in an interesting way (we will see about this later).

The messages in the stash included this last line:

Oh, and, uh, tell “Paladin Oran”: If the sun over Nessus escapes nebula cycle, evac labor after dawn, under solstice. You got that, P.V.?”_

— Quest: Ace in the Hole

The recipient of this last part of the message is Petra Venj, as it uses an old Reef encryption system (as in the lore of the Telesto). When all the first letters of the words following the keyword “Paladin Oran” are put together, we get the real message:

“It’s on Enceladus.”

Enceladus is an icy moon of Saturn – the last piece of the puzzle that connects Cayde, his journals, the sketch of the planet, and the Crypt together. Could it be that the Crypt is located on Enceladus, then?

As a reinforcement of this idea, we have another source for the location of the Crypt, though alleged. An old series of concept art from Frank Capezzuto when he worked for Bungie, reveal a hulking structure, resembling a great tower, rising from the tundra in a frozen location and displaying Braytech design cues. These elements alone are enough to suggest that this could have been a preliminary vision for the Crypt, discarded in the process as many other concepts.

The éminence grise

Thanks to the marketing material for “Beyond Light”, we now know that the Crypt is on Europa, another icy moon, but in Jupiter’s orbit; our quest to unravel the secrets of the Exos becomes more complicated, all of a sudden.

What’s on Enceladus? And still, the old question remains: what was Cayde after?

On the 18th of August 2018, the well-known content creator and loremaster Myelin Games was part of a multi-conference called Destiny Down Under. After the conference, he ran through all the messages received and a weird pair caught his attention:

The user who sent these messages was called Oryxbng, and a quick search revealed they were connected to Bungie. The name, though, goes back to a company called Oryx Design Lab, which is in turn managed by none other than Chris Barrett, ex-art director, now game director, and lore curator at Bungie. Why did Barrett send those messages to Myelin, and what do they mean?

The term “Long Slow Whisper” was already quoted by the recording after picking up the last of Cayde’s stash. It’s part of Cayde’s quest against the “minds behind the Deep Stone Crypt”, and this is an important hint.

If we recall, the Clovis Bray corporation manipulated and exploited people like Cayde into being Exos. Cayde was one of the few Exos (and, in time, Guardians) who knew about his past through some inputs and some journals he found with himself. Even though most of this information is likely a fabrication, Cayde seems to know what happened to him, and he was actively looking for this individual or entity behind the Crypt, with the help of some allies such as Petra Venj. This mysterious villain seems to be connected to the House of Bray. Clovis Bray was the mind behind the Exos. He is deeply connected to the second line of Oryxbng messages, as Elsie Bray is almost certainly the Exo Stranger, and her “being refused 42 times” is a clear indication of her being unfit for the Exo Program until something happened. She is the long-lost sister of Ana Bray, one who distrusted Bray with so much intensity that she rebelled against him in the past in various forms, as confirmed by the lore of Worldline Zero.

However, the Exo Stranger is not likely to be responsible for the troubles of Cayde and the Exos. Nor is Ana, and those are the last two Brays around, aren’t they?

Cayde’s anger, though, is not just about the past. In his words, one can feel the burning drive for justice – in the present. His enemy lives in this time, right now. What if the one most responsible for this, the gray eminence behind it all, could be someone we all believe is long dead, lost in the mists of the Collapse?

This person could be no other than Clovis Bray in the flesh.

Putting the hints together

Clovis Bray always wanted to live forever. He created an empire; he created the Exo Project for war, probably, but the “struggle” quoted in the definition might have been for something else. He had another goal in mind: to allow mankind to outlast its own time. For him to become an Exo and keep his house and his projects to be perpetuated forever. We never had any confirmation via any lore that Clovis Bray is really dead – this door was cleverly left half-open. And Cayde, somehow, was on the tail of this man. Even though the Crypt is on Europa, maybe Clovis’ hideout is the subject of “it’s on Enceladus,” or something else related to it.

Clovis was remembered by many as a man obsessed with his plans, projects, and creations, who treated every person (including his offspring) as mere collaborators and had in mind a universe of possibilities for humankind. He is deeply connected to what happened during the Collapse, as the lore of the K1 Project suggests. He probably knew about the Pyramids and the Darkness coming too, and never saw the Traveler as a savior, but as an opportunity.

His presence is constant in the Destiny narrative – for example, in the current Season of Arrivals, we cannot ignore the reemergence of Clovis Bray’s long-lost journals, the Atlas, which Ana is currently looking for and that, allegedly, could contain all the answers we seek about the mysteries of the Golden Age and beyond.

To have a good depiction of Clovis – the man – we could use a short quote from the Grimoire, whichhad Clovis working on his last project, a never-ending one, nicknamed “The Sisyphus Project”.

“Clovis refuses to back down. Meanwhile, the others have taken to calling it ‘the Sisyphus Project’…” — laboratory notes found at a Clovis Bray facility

— Sisyphus Project

This is a very important subtext: Sisyphus was a Greek mythological king who used his cunning to challenge the gods and, in one or two cases, even wins over them. He betrayed the sacred principle of xenia (a complex hospitality tradition in Ancient Greece), imprisoning the god of death and subverting the natural order of the world. His ego was almost larger than his intellect and he was ruthless to the point of creating a deathless world. This is a perfect description of Clovis Bray – a man who exploited the power of knowledge coming from the Traveler for his agenda, who wanted to live forever beyond the consequences.

Sisyphus was thrown into Tartarus, the deepest part of the netherworld in Greek myth, where he was forced to roll a huge rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it fall down and start all over – the proverbial Sisyphean task, a monumental but futile effort. Is this a metaphor of the last, never-ending project of Clovis Bray… to live forever inside an Exo without the downsides of it? If this was the plan all along, this could explain the inception of the Exo project.

Why are Exo minds human?

[…]

Why does a war machine have emotions? Why should a war machine have awareness? These are not useful traits on the battlefield.

[…]

Now. This is what I believe happened, back in the time before any Exo can remember. It explains everything.

I think someone wanted to live forever.

— Ghost Fragment: Exo

Solving an impossible problem

The task is not an easy one. To allow Clovis to be transferred into an Exo and virtually live forever, without DER and retaining his memories, we have to jump over some major hurdles. The first is that a special Exo is needed, which we know is feasible today. After Rasputin was almost wiped by the Pyramids’ attack, Ana transferred him into a special Exo, using a singular engram from the remnant of the Pillory technology, exploiting the ECHO project – a system created to fragment a rogue Warmind neural network and transfer it into a series of custom, special Exos. It was already hinted in the lost concept art of the DLC “Warmind”, and it is now a reality for the upcoming DLC after the Pyramids shut down Rasputin (who will probably come to the Tower in this guise in the near future). We have another advanced Exo in the lore, and that was Felwinter – who had access to all the Seraph technology by the touch of his hand.

The hardware of this special Exo can support the huge amount of space needed to have a Warmind like Rasputin transferred into it via the Pillory Engram. This engram, we can argue, could host the whole amount of data that form the memories of a man. Clovis could be rebooted to avoid DER and, subsequently, his entire life uploaded via this engram, after being previously saved. This would allow Clovis to keep being Clovis – one of the main goals of this whole endeavor.

The second issue is… how could Clovis Bray survive alone, isolated between alien invading armies, hostile creatures, and other calamities such as the coming of the Pyramid ships?

We are missing the final piece here, to connect it all… that could be the Long Slow Whisper.

With his cryptic messages, Chris Barrett is suggesting a connection. When a mysterious subroutine called 4988.00.XK is rejected, then the Long Slow Whisper is recommended to be reiterated. So, the Whisper could be another routine as well, some very important part of the Exomind, deep inside the code of their neural system.

What if this routine is connected to the Exo Dream, to the original idea behind the Exos?

The army

The original purpose of the Exo Project seems to be creating a war machine, more efficient than a standard combat frame, with a human mind acting in synergy with superior hardware and software. This is reiterated by the words of Christopher Barrett when, at the Game Developer Conference in 2013, he defined them as “sinister, powerful, and tireless war machines.”

The Dream, we know, is just the remnant of this ancient code, buried deep in them. Some of them, especially the Exo that are now Guardians, have grown out of their original purpose and coding, becoming something else entirely. But the Dream still goes on.

The idea of making the Exo kill people that they know – and possibly love – fits the description of war machines above: they have a switch, a trigger that devoids them of all humanity which would eventually be an obstacle on their path to fulfill orders and bring havoc. This is working in pair with the imagery of the Tower – this mystical place they are recalled to, a military base, not only a construction complex – the Deep Stone Crypt. This location houses something that activates the trigger; this is the place that all the Exo need to reach, to gather there, and await the next order to fulfill, called back by something, by someone.

The whole concept is very close to another very well known one in science-fiction, used for example in Star Wars – the infamous order 66, a liminal command that superimposes the waking will and turns one personality into something else – usually, a blind killing machine.

What if this is the Long Slow Whisper… a hidden message, whispered slowly for a long time, buried deep inside the waking mind?

Such a vast, infinitely replicable army of Exos could be very hard to stop in the right hands, and it seems to have been used at least once, and against the Vex.

In a confusing vision, a lonely Ghost (probably trapped inside the Vault of Glass) witnesses a fierce battle between an army of Golden Age Era Exo soldiers and a group of Vex. It’s not clear if the Ghost was present (probably not, as this is a vision), but the Exos involved seem to not understand what a Ghost is when he is spotted and grabbed by one in the vision. When the dust settles down, the Ghost observes a crashed vehicle nearby.

Most details are obscured by dark and shadow, but one detail is easily made out: a massive crashed spacecraft. The last image: a sigil of Golden Age Earth, emblazoned on the side of the ship’s prow.

— Mystery: The Vault of Glass 2

This incredibly obscure but deeply interesting Grimoire reference is now connected to the Deep Stone Crypt. In the trailer about the “Beyond Light” DLC, Bungie has shown a very interesting frame, possibly taken from the new Raid ambience of the Crypt:

In this special chamber, a Vex Goblin and an Exo prototype are tied together, suggesting a very intimate link between the two technologies. It is clear now what Clovis Bray’s interest in the Ishtar Collective was: he cannibalized and retrofitted the advanced technology of the Vex to suit the Exo project. What allowed a Vex to retain its organic data inside an artificial body must have worked as well to keep a human mind inside an Exobody. Both, if we have to deconstruct their essence to the basics, are cybernetic organisms. Placing the Exomind Project as derived from the most ancient and advanced technology in the universe will surely explain why even the Ghosts cannot understand it properly, as we have seen.

When Cayde describes the icy moon in his journals as a place almost completely converted, we could infer a Vex action, a place converted by a Vex mind, as it happened for Nessus and Mercury.

An army of Golden Age-branded Exo raiding a Vex installation sounds like Clovis Bray is trying to exhume more secrets from the Vex, and hints at the Vault of Glass’ great comeback – which is planned for the near-future (vaguely put in 2021). If we will ever return inside the Vault, maybe it’s because of the events that will unfold in the Crypt on Europa. This connection is more evident when we check a text from a scannable item on Nessus (the theorized Destination from where we will access the Vault again), while using an Exo as a PG:

Aah! I think this Conflux reacted to your Exo body… and then it burned out. Is there some connection between the Exos and the Vex? That can’t be.

— Ghost Scan: The Tangle, Nessus

Other similar instances of scannable on Nessus, such as a terminal created to allow an Exo to connect to the Vex network, are dismissed by our Ghost as “Cayde’s doing”. But now there is a new, sinister meaning behind these coincidences, masterfully hidden by Bungie lore-tellers.

This brings us back to Cayde. He may have known the dark secret behind the Long Slow Whisper and the Deep Stone Crypt. Is this the “final plan” the Raid announcement text is referring about?

Below the frozen tundra of Europa lies the Deep Stone Crypt. For decades it has remained dormant. Your fireteam cautiously approaches, weapons raised, and the final plan is set in motion.

Heading to Europa

We know that “Beyond Light” will have Europa as the next Destination, with the Deep Stone Crypt serving as a Raid. Images of the Raid were shown and the Crypt looks like it’s forged in the classic Braytech attire – a design shown, again, in the discarded concepts for “Warmind”. Braytech’s visual style is different from the Seraph’s, implying that Rasputin and the Warmind project had little to infer in this environment, even though it was free to access to the Warmind. We know that Ana and Rasputin were actively looking for the Crypt before the Pyramids attacked him – which is peculiar as Rasputin had full access to the location and resources of the Crypt in the past, as specified in the lore of Felwinter’s Lie. This could imply that the Deep Stone Crypt is not a fixed complex, but a movable one or a series of structures (Cayde described the towers as many), and can reconcile with the “Enceladus” hinted location of the past. The number in the designation of the Crypt quoted in one of the Felwinter lore (“Crypt-342”) could be the clue, even if probably related to an address inside the complex.

“See that? This is the first time SIDDHARTHA GOLEM is mentioned. It…” She paused, then went on, quieter, “It says, ‘Initiate SIDDHARTHA GOLEM upload at DSC-342.’” A beat. “DSC, Felwinter.”

Felwinter was silent, thinking, uncomprehending. “DSC?” he asked quietly.

“Deep Stone Crypt.”

— 10. THE DISCOVERY

More and more layers of mysteries are piling on this story, including the massive presence of the Vex in the site – their interest in the place of mass production of the Exos then it could be a confirmation of the link that ties both together.

We will have to wait to have all these old mysteries to be revealed – to know the truth about what ties the Crypt, Cayde-6, Clovis Bray and his house, and the Exo Stranger (whose presence in the next DLC is not a coincidence at all, following our reasoning). Although, pursuing these shadows, in the end, could be a way for the community to honor the memory of Cayde too, to win his last, desperate battle against an opponent whose influence is spanning all over time and space in the world of Destiny. That opponent is, obviously, Clovis Bray.

Some of these questions will find their final answer inside the game, but we can grasp a great deal of the truth behind this tangled story way before that: with the Collector’s Edition of “Beyond Light” a physical book is coming along, which sports the Deep Stone Crypt logo on the cover. This is the fabled journal of Clovis Bray, or a great part of it, mysteriously resurfaced. In the next installment of this article series, we will examine them, with deep attention, revealing secrets, confirming many of the theories waved in the past years and in this article as well. We will keep tracking the trail of Clovis Bray, relentlessly.

As for now, the mysteries of the Deep Stone Crypt stay. Whatever the truth behind this story will be in the end, between the threat of facing an army of warmongering Exos, the illusion of immortality and the will of discovering the real nature of why the Exos dreams the Dream, the shadow of the Deep Stone Crypt is now stretching toward us. And soon we all will be under it.

“In memory of the Deep Stone Crypt, the tower where we were born.”

— Ring of Living Stone

The Ballad of Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor

2019-09-05T21:42:00+01:00

This post contains major spoilers regarding the story of Shin Malphur. If you’re not familiar with Shin’s story and would like to read about it, check out the Shin Malphur category page on Ishtar Collective.

Man with the Golden Gun. The Renegade. The legendary Shin Malphur has gone by several names and titles throughout his long life. With the release of For Every Rose, A Thorn we found out two more of those names: Zyre Orsa, and Dredgen Vale, one of the original Shadows of Yor. Shin’s account of how he became one of the Shadows of Yor may call into question his reliability as a narrator, particularly in relation to Dredgen Yor. If you’re familiar with Shin’s story, you’ll know that he believed that Yor’s motivation for his actions was to teach Shin to walk the line between the Light and the Dark. Does Shin have a good reason to think that, or could he have completely misunderstood Yor’s motives? Shin’s involvement with the Shadows, especially their plan to trap those who would fall to the Darkness, also raises questions about how Shin should be perceived. Should he still be viewed as a hero, albeit a renegade? Or has he been revealed to be someone who is not so heroic after all? This post aims to address such questions. Bear in mind that although parts of my post are based on evidence from the lore, other parts are speculation and not confirmed.

Dredgen Yor’s Motives

When reading Shin’s accounts, it’s worth noting that everything he says about Dredgen Yor’s motives and beliefs is based solely on his word. He provides barely any concrete evidence to support his claims that Yor believed in him; that all the death and destruction Yor caused was a “terrible means to an end”¹; that Yor was trying to push him towards the path between the Light and the Darkness; that Yor believed that the powers of both the Light and the Darkness need to be used; and so forth. Shin never mentions that Yor actually said any of these things to him, or that he read about them in Yor’s writings or in any other records about Yor he may have found. Nor do we have any records of Yor talking about believing in Shin etc. From what Shin says, he only met Yor twice in his life: the first time when he was a boy in Palamon; and the second time when he finally found Yor and killed him. If Yor said anything to Shin when they first met, then Shin does not mention it, nor do we have a record of any conversation between them on that occasion. In Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4, Shin recounts what happened on the day he killed Yor, including what Yor said to him.² There is nothing in that conversation which even hints that everything Yor did was because he believed Shin could walk the thin line between Light and Darkness. Of course, Shin may not have provided an accurate account of what Yor said, but if there was going to be a place for Yor to mention anything about the motives and beliefs Shin claims he had, that would have been the prime occasion for it.

One of the claims Shin makes is that Yor knew that strength and confidence alone are not enough to defeat “the terrors of the dark”, and that’s why he gave Jaren Ward the first shot.³ The problem with this claim, in addition to the general issues with Shin’s claims mentioned previously, is that Shin didn’t witness what transpired between Jaren and Yor when they met. Nor did he hear what, if anything, they said to each other so he cannot know if Yor said anything that would suggest that he gave Jaren the first shot. All he heard was gunshots in the distance - shots from the Last Word first, then Thorn.⁴ But from these gunshots alone it doesn’t necessarily follow that Yor let Jaren shoot first. It’s possible that they had a stand-off and Jaren’s reflexes were faster than Yor’s so he was able to shoot Yor first. Or perhaps Jaren caught Yor off guard and shot him when he wasn’t expecting it. A similar reason could also explain why Yor never shot Shin. He shot Yor mid-sentence, while he was still talking. Shin claims that Yor never even tried to shoot him, but maybe he was planning to do so after he’d finished talking. Perhaps Yor was caught by surprise as he didn’t expect Shin to shoot him while he was talking.

On the other hand, Shin may be correct that Yor never planned to shoot him, but if that’s the case, then there are other possible explanations for why Yor never tried to shoot Shin aside from the reasons Shin gives. Indeed, there are more plausible explanations for Yor’s actions in general than the motives Shin attributes to him. One possible explanation is that rather than trying to push Shin towards the path between Light and Darkness, Yor may have actually been attempting to corrupt Shin and to lead him into falling to the Darkness, as happened to Yor. There are a few hints that this may have been Yor’s true intentions. In Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4, Jaren’s ghost and Yor have the following exchange:

[u.1:3.0] Hide behind whatever titles you wish, it is all still a façade. No force of nature would play such games.

[u.2:3.3] Games?

[u.1:3.1] The cannon. You wish to tempt the boy. To spur him on and fuel his rage. There is intent there. The actions of a man, monstrous, mad or otherwise… you are nothing more.

[u.2:3.4] And what value does your conclusion bring, flawed as it may be?

[u.1:3.2] That a hurricane can only be weathered, not stopped. Not redirected. A force of nature is uncaring and without intent, but a man…

[u.2:3.5] Yes?

[u.1:3.3] A man is none of those things.

[silence]

[u.1:3.4] A man can be killed.

[silence]

[u.2:3.6] And there it is…

[u.1:3.5] There what is…?

[u.2:3.7] A sliver of hope.

— Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4

Despite Yor’s earlier claim that he offered the Last Word to Shin as merely a “gift” and a “memento”, this exchange suggests that Yor may have actually given the Last Word as a way of giving Shin hope that he could kill Yor. An earlier exchange between Yor and Jaren’s ghost also hints that Yor’s intentions towards Shin may not have been noble:

[u.1:1.8] The boy?

[u.1:1.9] You’d end him as well?

[u.2:2.0] If it comes to that… We’ll see.

[u.1:2.0] I won’t let you have the child.

[u.2:2.1] Been long enough now, think maybe he’s a man.

[u.1:2.1] You cannot have him.

[u.2:2.2] Not yet.

[u.1:2.2] I won’t let you.

[u.2:2.3] That you could stop me is an amusing thought.

— Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4

There are other hints that Shin may be incorrect in believing that Yor wanted him to walk the thin line between Light and Darkness. In Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3, Yor tells his ghost that the Light “is nothing but a crutch”.⁵ He believed that the person he had become was “better”, that he was “already more than the rest”. Yor also says to his ghost, “It’s been sometime since you saw me as worthy of walking among those I once called brother and sister. Yet… anymore, I feel as though I am worthy of so much more.” Similarly, in Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4, Yor says that he was “all that is right” and “all that is good”.² This exchange with Jaren’s ghost suggests that Yor did not have any faith in the Light:

[u.1:1.2] Is that where your faith lies, in steel?

[u.2:1.4] Not for some time. My steel is only an extension. My faith is in the shadow.

[u.1:1.3] Then my Light is an affront to all you are. I am your truest enemy.

[u.2:1.5] One of many.

— Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4

If Yor’s faith was in the shadow, not the Light, then why would he have thought that Shin should walk the path between Light and Darkness? Why would Yor have thought that the powers of both the Light and the Darkness need to be used to fight against threats if he believed that the Light is nothing but a crutch? Considering that Yor thought that the person he had become was better, that he was more worthy than other guardians, and that he was “all that is good” and “all that is right,’’ it’s more likely that if he was trying to push Shin in a particular direction, it would have been towards the same path he had taken that led to him falling to the Darkness and becoming corrupted.

One way for Yor to push Shin towards the path of the Darkness and corruption could have been to tempt Shin into giving into his anger and hatred. This could explain why Yor gave Shin the Last Word: as a way to spur him on to getting revenge. (This could be one of the few claims about Yor which Shin may have been correct about.) In the case of Rezyl Azzir becoming corrupted, it’s interesting to note that he was plagued by fear and despair before he became Dredgen Yor.⁶ ⁷ Such feelings may have made Azzir more susceptible to corruption. Similarly, Shin felt not only anger but also pain and sadness for everything he’d lost. In III: A Fire Inside, Shin describes what he felt as “loss, followed by a hole so big you can’t fill it with anything but retribution.”⁸ These feelings of anger, pain, and loss could have increased the likelihood of Shin becoming corrupted.

Another possible explanation for Yor’s actions is that he may have given Shin the Last Word as a way of giving Shin the tantalising hope of being able to use it to get vengeance for all the people Yor had killed, only for that hope to be taken away at the last moment if Shin couldn’t kill him. Taking away hope like that is the sort of thing that Yor would have relished, as mentioned in Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3:

[u.2:5.6] If I am being honest, I care only to give hope to the frightened, huddled masses so that when I come upon them they will have more to lose. Their pain will be greater. Their screams more pure.

[u.1:5.4] You…

[u.2:5.7] Nothing dies like hope. I cherish it.

— Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3

Of course, that explanation relies on the assumption that Yor didn’t believe Shin would be able to kill him, which may not have been the case. But considering that Shin was still young when Yor killed Jaren Ward and Yor had killed guardians who would have been far more powerful and skilled than Shin at that point, such as Jaren, it’s understandable why Yor may have underestimated Shin and thought that Shin wouldn’t be able to kill him. Perhaps he didn’t think that Shin would be able to master the Light well enough to be able to kill him. Then again, maybe Yor was getting tired of life and didn’t want to continue living but couldn’t kill himself for whatever reason, so he goaded Shin into doing the job for him. Or perhaps Yor was just playing games with Shin and the whole thing amused him. There are several possible explanations for Yor’s actions that are more plausible than the explanation Shin gives. It seems strange, at least on the face of it, that Shin would assume that Yor was trying to push Shin onto a path between the Light and the Darkness, particularly considering Yor never said anything to that effect to Shin. Not to mention Shin didn’t need the powers of the Darkness to kill Yor; all he needed was his Light.

If Shin has misunderstood Yor’s motives and Yor actually wasn’t trying to get Shin to walk the line between Light and Darkness, then where could Shin have come up with that idea? There’s a hint related to what may have made Shin think that Yor believed in him and so forth in III: A Fire Inside.⁸ After Palamon was destroyed, Shin was filled with feelings of pain and loss. Jaren “helped redirect that pain” by giving Shin “purpose” and teaching him “about vengeance”. He says that although “it felt good - like a fire inside”, in reality, “the ‘good’ was just a dulling of the pain - a covering up of the burden of my loss through the redirection of my focus.” For a long time, Shin was angry. He admits that after Jaren was killed, he “hated him for a good while.” In Shin’s words, “I was alone again. Lost. I had no direction. I felt abandoned—just me and the hole left by losing everything I knew.”

Shin spent decades hunting Dredgen Yor, first together with Jaren Ward, then by himself. He was “obsessed” and driven by rage and hatred towards Yor.⁹ In all those years, there was a single goal driving him: getting revenge by killing Yor. That desire for revenge may have been the only thing that gave his life purpose during that time. After many years, Shin found Yor and killed him, finally achieving his goal of revenge. But after the initial joy of getting revenge wore off, he may have come to the realisation that the one thing which had given his life purpose up to that point was no longer there. He didn’t have a goal driving him any longer. He couldn’t get revenge again - he’d already killed Yor. Shin may have felt lost and without direction, just as he did after Jaren’s death.

To make matters worse, revenge may have felt like a hollow victory to Shin. It most likely could not fill the aching hole left by the loss of so many people dear to him. Revenge could not bring back all the people he’d lost. It could not erase all the pain and suffering he’d experienced due to Yor’s actions. Nor could it douse the flames of hatred he felt towards Dredgen Yor. On the contrary, his hatred for Yor still burns to this day.⁹ Shin didn’t have any family or friends left. All he had was the Last Word and Jaren’s ghost, who he may not have been very close to considering that he mentions Jaren’s ghost “not believing in me.”⁸ He may have felt like his life was essentially without purpose, without direction. A purposeless life can often lead to a state of existential despair. It’s possible that this is what happened to Shin.

If this is indeed what happened, then perhaps, in an attempt to alleviate that sense of existential despair, Shin came up with the idea that Yor believed in him and was pushing him towards the path between Light and Darkness. Such a belief would have given Shin another goal to pursue: to do what Yor (supposedly) believed he could do, to walk the thin line between Light and Darkness. This would have given his life a renewed sense of purpose. Perhaps Shin also chose to believe that Yor caused so much death and destruction as a “terrible means to an end” because it was less painful to believe that all the pain and loss he had experienced at the hands of Yor was for a greater, noble purpose. Better to believe that than to admit that maybe the deaths of the people he knew and loved were, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless. That maybe there was no grand plan behind Yor’s actions, beyond perhaps a twisted game he enjoyed. Or perhaps Yor killed all those people simply because he could. Or if Yor had been trying to corrupt Shin, then maybe Shin didn’t want to admit that all the death and destruction Yor caused wasn’t just a “terrible means”, as Shin put it, but may also have been for a terrible end. Better to try to justify Yor’s actions as being the means to a righteous goal, although it requires quite a twisted logic to justify killing so many people as a means to an end.

Is Shin Malphur a Hero?

It’s debatable whether Shin would think that he is a hero, but he does believe that he is “right” and “just”.¹ (Funnily enough, this is very similar to what Yor said about how he is “all that is right” and “all that is good.”²) However, there are problems with Shin’s approach which suggest that he isn’t as heroic as he is often made out to be. It’s likely that there are guardians Shin has killed who would still be alive if they had never been tempted with the powers of the Darkness. While some guardians who fall to corruption after becoming involved with the Shadows of Yor may have been susceptible to corruption anyway, there would be others who may not have become corrupted in the first place if they knew nothing about the Darkness. Shin tempting guardians with the powers of the Darkness and killing those who fall into the abyss is akin to someone offering people an addictive drug and killing anyone who becomes addicted to the drug. Shin and the Shadows may not be fully to blame for guardians being corrupted by the Darkness, but they are at least partly responsible for tempting guardians to use those powers in the first place.

Shin is the sole judge, jury and executioner when it comes to deciding who is able to walk the thin line between the Light and the Darkness, and who has fallen into the abyss. He is not accountable to anyone. Even the Vanguard won’t stop him from killing those he considers too far gone down the path of the Darkness.¹⁰ If he makes a mistake and kills someone who hadn’t actually been corrupted by the Darkness, or who wasn’t likely to become corrupted, he won’t be punished. No one will exile him. He literally gets to decide who lives and who dies. That sort of power can be very easily misused, no matter how noble one’s intentions may be. What’s to stop him from killing anyone who gets in his way, or who disagrees with his methods, and Shin passing off their deaths as “necessary” for his cause? How we do know that he always makes the correct judgement when deciding who should die and who should be spared? The irony is that by culling those considered to be “weak”, Shin is doing what the sword logic and the philosophy of the Darkness demands: eradicating the weak. Shin may not realise it, but he’s doing exactly what the Darkness wants.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Shin tells our guardian only what he wants them to know. If he has been killing guardians who haven’t actually fallen to the Darkness, or those who would probably not have become corrupted, it’s unlikely that he would mention this to our guardian as it would paint him in a less than favourable light. There’s evidence in The Salt Mines entry¹¹ that Shin may not have been above killing guardians who didn’t fall into either of the above categories. In this entry, the warlock Aunor, from the Praxic Order, finds Shin with two guardians he has taken hostage. Shin had already killed a third guardian before Aunor arrived and would have killed the other two hostages if she hadn’t intervened. Aunor describes the guardians who had been held hostage as “third-degree offenders” who were “consorting with the Darkness on a material level only, collecting and concealing illegal artifacts.” She says that the guardians would be rehabilitated and reeducated if necessary. Shin disagrees with her assessment, claiming that the guardians were “already addicted” and that “men like this will destroy you from within.”

Dabbling with the Darkness on a material level does not sound like the guardians were enough of a danger to warrant being killed. They may have become corrupted at a later point, as Shin seemed to believe was likely to happen, but it’s also possible that they may never have gone far enough to become corrupted. They could also have been dissuaded from following the path of the Darkness, such as through rehabilitation and reeducation, as Aunor mentioned. Interestingly, the Drifter has a different view of those guardians to both Aunor and Shin. He calls them “idiots chasing legends” and claims that they were “no danger to anyone but themselves.”¹² Aunor, however, seems to think that they were enough of a danger to need to be put into custody. The different views of Shin, Aunor, and the Drifter regarding these guardians highlight the problem with having only one person, such as Shin, decide who lives and who dies. Shin may think that a guardian has fallen or is likely to fall to corruption and that the only way to deal with them is to kill them, but others may disagree that they are dangerous and need to be killed.

So, how do you view Shin Malphur? Do you see him as a hero helping to eliminate the threat of guardians who have fallen into the abyss and become corrupted by the Darkness? Or do you see him as a villain who murders guardians who may not have become corrupted in the first place if he hadn’t tempted them with the powers of the Darkness? Or do you see him as something in between, in the grey area between right and wrong? Regardless of how you view Shin, perhaps his story should serve as a warning to others, including our own guardian, of the potential dangers which may await those who choose the path of revenge. As the old saying goes, before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Herald of the Black Edge

2019-06-20T08:29:00+01:00

We’re just in to week three of Season of Opulence and there’s no doubt much, much more to come, but we’ve gotten some conflicting information as to what we should expect. With this season we, unsurprisingly, learned the full truth about Calus’ methods.

The short form is this: Calus was kicked off his planet and sent to die, saw something that couldn’t possibly exist and understood it as the inevitable death of the universe. He proclaimed himself as Herald of this death he calls the “Black Edge”, and set off back into the universe. He traveled to the planets he once ruled as Emperor of the Cabal and selected one from among their population who was best. This chosen one would become his Shadow. A handful of others from that race would be offered a life of Opulence aboard the Leviathan, while the ones not chosen would be consumed by the Leviathan.

To Calus this was a gentler end. Instead of letting them live their lives being jealous of their neighbors and warring with each other for it all to amount to nothing when the Black Edge comes, he ended it swiftly and peacefully, by sucking them into whatever the inside of the Leviathan’s mouth holds. But, even with this new insight of the universe, he held that grudge against Ghaul, he wielded his Shadows over a petty revenge and sent them all to their death in a failed attempt to assassinate Ghaul.

He’s learned from that mistake and has forgiven Ghaul for what he did. Calus now fully believes in simply living the life of Opulence until the end comes and delivering a simple and quick end to any that he can “save”. It should come as no surprise that Calus wants us, the player, to be his Shadow of the Guardian Tribe. But that’s just a part of what he does. He claims a Shadow, he saves a handful, he consumes the rest.

Before Season of Opulence launched we obtained two Narrative Previews. The latter depicted the boss of the Crown of Sorrow raid, Gahlran and how he was born to wear the Crown of Sorrow itself, but the former was more direct. It ends with Calus ordering his Loyalists to “hinder them. Topple them. Teach them pain.” As this is now clearly not just something to do with the raid, it must be something else left to come. Calus wishes for us to see the destruction done and to get it to stop, follow him.

But that’s not the only source of information we have for the future of this season. From the lore book Chronicon and from the Menagerie armor (which features additional Chronicon subentries) we see what the Psions are “predicting” our future to be. I say “predicting” because one entry taken at a glance and you might think it’s a vision of the future seen from the OXA, but taken as a whole you see the truth of these entries — that they’re fabrications by Psions to please Calus.

In short these entries tell of us joining Calus, killing all our past friends, finding new truths to the universe to grow stronger, then die in Calus’s arms as he waits for the Black Edge to take his life as the last living being. But they don’t just say what will happen, they have Psions critiquing the writing styles, they have contradictions with each other and with Calus’s own words, and they have things that just aren’t true.

As an Example of one which just isn’t true at all the Opulent Scholar Robes tell us this story:

MCXIV, forthcoming. Recorded by Underscribe Shipal

Thus did the Shadow of Earth slay the sentience known as Exodus Black.

Among the insurgents of the impudent Sol System there was one called Exodus Black, who was the first in the Sol System to be born into the digital aether. Because she spoke well and was beloved by all, Exodus Black was a hero among the insurgents. So the Shadow of Earth knew what must be done.

Using the knowledge gathered in the Athenaeum, the Shadow ripped Exodus Black from her starship body and, rending her consciousness in half, placed each piece in an Exo body.

When the two came online, Exodus and Black turned quickly upon each other, and each perished by her other half’s hand.

— Opulent Scholar Robes

In another, which is not only wrong but also contradicts this previous entry and has a suggested correction to the inaccuracy, we can look at the Opulent Scholar Gloves:

MCXIX, forthcoming. Recorded by Underscribe Shipal

Thus did the Shadow of Earth recommend to the Emperor Calus a Shadow of the Exo.

The Shadow of Earth went to the Emperor and said, “My good and bountiful pater, I am your Shadow of Earth, and my companion Petra Venj is the Shadow of the Awoken. Yet the Awoken trace their distant origins to Earth.”

The Emperor said, “My good Shadow, you are right,” and he cut down Petra Venj where she stood.

Then the Shadow said: “My luxuriant majesty, I meant to increase your Shadows, not decrease them. For as the Awoken hail from Earth but are their own people, so are the ones called the Exo. I wished to nominate to you a Shadow of the Exo.”

The Emperor said, “Ah, now I understand you.”

The Shadow said: “The one I nominate is called Failsafe-0.^ She is a malicious and humorless being, despised by all. She would make a worthy Shadow of the Exo.”

Said the Emperor: “Thus will it be done.”

^ Note to Underscribe Shipal: My own independent research into the Sol System leads me to believe, with weighty certainty, that the ones called Exodus Black and Failsafe are, in fact, the same being. Thus, your supplementals contradict each other. Delete this footnote upon the rectification of this error.

— Opulent Scholar Gloves

(fun fact both of these are written by the same Psion)

But that’s just contradicting other Psions and, you know, reality, but they don’t stop there. Some Psions say Calus wouldn’t take on a second Shadow of a race, despite the fact that the character in question, Variks, would be the third. After Sekris and Mithrax (remember all fabrication). Meanwhile the Shadow of the Hive, Gahlran, failed, and now Calus is looking for a new Shadow of the Hive. He wants Toland, maybe Eris, despite also being Guardians he feels they can be a good stand-in for the Hive.

Everything you read from the Chronicon should be disregarded.

Calus is readying to continue his crusade as Herald of the Black Edge and he wants us to be by his side the rest of the way. He sees the power we have and he wants it.

Throughout the lore we have mention of Calus not being seen since shortly after the incident with the Black Edge. Since that time he has used stand-in robots and has hidden deep and alone within the Leviathan. There are also several hints that he’s changed. I don’t think Calus is simply a Cabal anymore. Sure the robots are what he used to look like, but whatever he’s become now, I don’t think it will be that.

The idea that Calus is more than he appears to be, that the robotic form we fought in the original Leviathan, the one Guardians go to meet, doesn’t even resemble what Calus is anymore, has been tossed around more than a few times in the lore surrounding him. From random Guardians, to the Drifter, to Sekris, to one of Calus’ own most loyal followers, all wonder what Calus truly is now.

These are two snippets from the Confessions Lore Book:

The robotic facsimiles he manufactures are eerily like him—or like the Calus I remember; I have the surest feeling that his true form is no longer the Emperor I knew. Perhaps he is just a mouth now, smiling, laughing, eating what it fancies…

— Entry VII

Without a secret troubling my mind, I’ve neglected this journal. I come back to it today in good humor, moved by my Emperor’s own amusement. A party of the Guardians that Calus entertains have arrived with a set of various squabbling demands—a starship, a precise description of their “Darkness,” a list of stars the Traveler has visited, a treaty with the Cabal empire for the defense of Earth, a chance to see Calus in his true form, repairs to certain weapons that they feel have gone askew, so much and so forth.

— Entry IX

From the Robes of Sekris:

In later days, my disguise could no longer fool him as it fooled others. His skill in designing and modifying mechanized life-forms was unparalleled and he made it clear he knew I was not what I appeared to be. I made it clear that, either way, he would continue to serve. But I think he guessed that my form and my strength are inextricably linked.

— Robes of Sekris

And lastly from the Shadow’s Cloak:

The miniscule man dismounted his machine and stared up. I pictured I would relish the moment when his eyes went wide at the sight of my grandeur.

But he didn’t seem to care. He frowned a little. Fascinating.

“Is that you?” he asked, voice echoing upwards at me. “The real you?”

“Yes,” I replied, and the metal around me rattled and shook at my speech. It was the truth. “One of me. Refreshment?”

— Shadow’s Cloak

Calus is a threat to us and there are a few things teased in the Vidoc that have yet to be seen in the game, specifically these things.

These two images both come from the Season of Opulence trailer, the first shows an Ascendant Realm looking location, but instead of within the Dreaming City it’s laying on top of the Leviathan itself. The second shows an Earth location where Cabal can be found and Sparrows can be rode, but in the background of it we also see that the earth is being lifted up into the air by an unseen force, almost as if it’s being consumed by a large ship piloted by an expelled Cabal Emperor.

Originally Season of Opulence was called Penumbra, and was meant to be a Season of secrets. The secrets so far have been the Menagerie weapons, a bunch of fantastic lore, and a couple of Triumphs hidden behind doing certain things within Menagerie. I believe the biggest secret of all is going to involve the first image shared above, the Ascendant Realm Leviathan. As I mentioned previously Calus wanted Toland, the Shattered, to become his new Shadow of the Hive. Of course Toland refused, or rather didn’t appear to Calus, but Toland isn’t just anywhere. Toland is currently without his mortal body and is a floating ball of energy found in the Ascendant Realm, so for Calus to reach out he must’ve reached out there, and I don’t think this was Calus’s first time spelunking in the Ascendant Realm.

I believe Calus will be launching his attack on our planet soon, that he aims to force us into becoming a Shadow, and that we will retaliate. Guardians stand strong together and wont back down for the chance to take on the REAL Emperor Calus. I believe that we will venture deep into the Leviathan, into the Ascendant Realm that lays beneath it, and we will find what the once-Cabal once-Emperor has become and we will kill him there. And the beauty of this retaliation is that even if we were to dethrone another powerful ruler, Calus wouldn’t be truly gone, he would have a Legion of Opulent robo-standins to fill his shoes. To cheer as we lap the Gauntlet, to continue eating and drinking all that he desires, to laugh and laugh and laugh as we slaughter his Loyalists one by one.

The Hive Language

2019-05-16T08:46:00+01:00

Hive Runes

Hive runes draw their power from a different dimension, where there’s no difference between a word and its meaning. When the Hive erode the barrier between our dimension and theirs, the rune for ‘death’ brings literal death.

—Ghost Scan of a Hive Rune

The Hive writing system is comprised of runes, similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. From what we know so far, the Hive glyphs are a logographic system, meaning each glyph represents an idea, such as the glyph above meaning ‘door’.¹ This rune appears on most doors to locked ritualistic areas, such as the door to the Temple of Crota on the Moon in the mission ‘The Dark Beyond’.

In total, the language of the Hive encompasses 35 glyphs. It is comprised of:

18 character glyphs
3 Court of Oryx Runes
4 Interloper Ritual Runes
1 from the Black Hammer Runestone (The other 2 runes on the runestone are a part of the aforementioned character glyphs)
4 newly discovered runes on the cover of For Every Rose a Thorn (2 of which are a new type of rune)
5 linear glyphs, which could be the Hive’s version of numbers

Hive ‘Alphabet’ Sigil

The Hive ‘Alphabet’ sigil (The term alphabet is used loosely here as it seems the Hive do not actually have an alphabet) has a total of 18 character glyphs and 5 linear glyphs, which shall be referred to as the 23 “base glyphs” for their common usage by the Hive.

This sigil, in particular, is in the Hall of Exalted in the Jetsum of Saturn, where you find a secret chest after defeating the Mindbender.

The base glyphs were first independently found on the Dreadnaught and the Moon on various consoles. Each dial on the console was a ‘row’ of the sigil.

For example on the Dreadnaught, in the Hull Breach (as seen above), there is a console used to summon hive with the Wormsinger Rune. This console has the 5th, 1st, 3rd and 4th row of the sigil. There is another console in the Asylum which is used with the Agonarch Rune. This one has the 5th, 1st 2nd and 3rd row of the sigil. If you put the two together, you get the alphabet sigil present in Destiny 2.

The base glyphs are used on a variety of things including Shriekers, hadium flake chests on the Dreadnaught, and Tomb Husks.


(Door/Treasure/Chamber)
(Haste/Lies)

Court of Oryx Runes

Independent of the ‘alphabet’ sigil, there are also the Court Of Oryx Runes. These runes are only present on the Dreadnaught in the Court of Oryx area, Hall of Souls. The runes are used to summon various ascendant Hive, which are members of Oryx’s High War. There are three tiers of Court of Oryx: Reciprocal, Stolen, and Antiquated.

(Reciprocal)

(Stolen)

(Antiquated)

Also present in the Hall of Souls is the Interloper Ritual, where various Hive are praying and speaking in a ritualistic fashion. Above the room where the ritual is held, there are various glowing Hive runes. These Hive runes are various combinations of the Court of Oryx runes.

(Stolen + Antiquated)

(Reciprocal + Antiquated)

(Reciprocal + Stolen + Antiquated)

For Every Rose a Thorn

On the cover of the Lore book, For Every Rose a Thorn, there are new Hive runes (circled in lavender). They are the same style of runes as the ones found on the ‘alphabet’ sigil and Court of Oryx runes, with an additional new type of rune: half runes. It is possible that the Shadows of Yor discovered new runes as they translated the Hive Tome found on Dredgen Yor’s ship.

Glyph Dialects

While the language itself is the same in Destiny 1 and 2, the general use and form are different. Oryx was more practical and orderly with the structure and placement of the runes, while his scheming sister, Savathun is more chaotic and unruly.

Dreadnaught

The majority of the Hive runes uncovered were originally discovered on Luna and Dreadnaught. The structure and use of the runes are very rigid, suggesting uniformity and purpose. This could be a reflection of Oryx, as he prided himself on having order in his family. This is also evident in the King’s Fall raid during the Warpriest and Gogorth encounters, as the Hive tablets that are used are structured in a grid-like fashion.

Court of Oryx

The Court of Oryx runes and their use in the Interloper Ritual show the additive nature of the Court and are a reflection of Oryx’s decree upon creating the court:

“I shall establish a court, and whoever comes into this court may challenge me. My court will be the High War. It will be a killing ground and a school of the sword logic we have learned from our gods.”

—Auryx, XXII: The High War

Savathûn

The use of the Hive Runes on Titan show a completely different system than the ones on the Dreadnaught. Specifically, in examining the Savathûn’s Song Strike, the runes on the void pedestals and the center pedestal prior to the boss fight. The fluid use of the runes could illustrate Savathûn’s innate nature to be cunning: she bends the rules and use of the Hive runes. This ‘bending’ of the rules might hint at her endgame plan. If Truth to Power is to be believed, she is attempting to end her reliance on the tribute system, and instead use a new system called Imbaru, where every failure to understand her makes her more powerful.

Nokris and Cathedral of Dusk

With the introduction of Nokris, the heretic son of Oryx, the runes on his robes are not a part of the alphabet, but instead, look very archaic and look similar to the runes seen on the Cathedral of Dusk crucible map in Destiny 1. It is possible that the runes used in the Cathedral of Dusk and the ones used by Nokris are an archaic version of the Hive runes that we see on the Dreadnaught. It is also possible that this tablet is explaining how Oryx communed with the Deep itself since the Cathedral of Dusk is deep in the Dreadnaught, and Nokris also communed with the Deep to make his pact with Xol. The symbol at the top of the tablet means ‘jewel’, and that same symbol is on numerous banners on the dreadnaught, which could mean that this tablet has some significance to Oryx and the Hive.

(Jewel)

The Touch of Malice and the Cauldron

The Touch of Malice and the Cauldron Map in Destiny 1 both share similar versions of runes. They are different than the ones present on the Dreadnaught, which could relate to a more modern version of the Hive runes, similar to how Archaic Egyptian became Egyptian Hieroglyphics, which eventually became Hieratic (Cursive Hieroglyphs) as a way to write the glyphs concisely and with fewer strokes. Hieroglyphics were still used but for religious and important ceremonies such as tombs and monuments to their gods.

My theory is that the difference in Hive dialects is similar to the difference in Egyptian dialects. The Temple of Crota and the Shrine of Oryx on the surface of the Moon are much younger than the Dreadnaught, and the Hive Runes are still in use for ritualistic nature on the Moon and Titan:

Nokris/Cathedral of Dusk	→	Hive Runes on Dreadnaught	→	Touch of Malice/Cauldron
Archaic Egyptian	→	Egyptian Hieroglyphics	→	Hieratic

If the Hive language is truly a logographic language then it is possible that some runes serve as semagrams (semantic symbols that specify meaning), since some of the logograms have different meanings depending on the context, such as the rune above having a variety of meanings: ‘haste/lies’¹ or ‘doorway/treasure/chamber’.² To know which meaning is used, a rune might be placed beside it to add connotation. This might be the purpose of the previously mentioned half runes, as most semagrams are few strokes.

Hive Speech

“What may seem like a void between their shrieks, holds, what I believe to be yet another clue to their origins. In one tone the Hive plea to their gods, but in the next, they whisper to another. Perhaps it is here which holds the answer to their ultimate demise, or a bridge to their desires. In my studies, I still struggle to match the tones to their rune system.”

—Excerpt from the Journal of Toland

The drawback to having a logographic language is the logogram or character is separate from the pronunciation. However, from the grimoire of the various high ranking Hive, we have a few words translated:

Word	Meaning	Source
Malok	My Poison	Malok, Pride of Oryx
Lokaar	Not There	Lokaar
Vorlog	Less Than Me	Vorlog
Auryx	Long Thought	X: Immortals
Aiat	An Expression that is a question and its own answer	Quote from Seth Dickinson

Unless we get an ascendant Hive willing to speak and help us understand their language, (similar to Variks translating Skolas’ speeches in the House of Wolves), or something similar to the real-life Rosetta Stone, the translation of the Hive Language will be extremely difficult. It would be interesting if we were able to examine the Cryptarch’s work on Hive runes; it is evident that some Cryptarchs, such as Crytparch Adonna, have at least attempted to crack the code on the Hive language.

What is Crown of Sorrow?

2019-05-13T00:00:00+01:00

The TWAB this week announced the first piece of Season of Opulence content, surprisingly it was the name and date of the raid and season, even more surprisingly they’re on the same day just hours apart!

Season of Opulence, originally named Penumbra, will be the final instalment of the Annual Pass content. Penumbra was meant to be a content drop filled with secrets, only locations and themes were teased until recently, showing off scenery clearly from the Leviathan, but with its final shipping name it was clear who we would be consorting with: Emperor Calus.

Calus was the once Emperor of the Cabal race, which included more than just the Cabal and Psions that we see in-game, but was overthrown by one of his most trusted allies (and even his daughter) when he desired to free all of the enslaved races. The Ghost Primus, Ghaul, staged a coup and with the help of others was able to force Calus onto the Leviathan and to leave their planet.¹ Calus couldn’t simply be killed for he was seen as a God to the people, and though Ghaul wished to replace Calus, killing him would only further divide the people.

Under Ghaul’s leadership the Cabal went through a drastic societal change. The jovial Calus believed that he should represent all that the Cabal wish to be. Fat with strength, riches upon riches, lavishly clothed in only the finest and eating and drinking anything which is sweet and good. Ghaul couldn’t be any more different from the old Emperor. He built the Cabal into a more strict military. Though they were once strong proud people who could no doubt conquer any planet, Ghaul beat their wills into a more brutish form. From finesse and skill of taking over, to that of total warfare.

Calus mourns the loss of his true Cabal, even the Loyalists who followed him onto the Leviathan are a little better than that which Ghaul has created.

Crown of Sorrow

Which brings us to my first suggestion of the name of the raid. The raid will be called Crown of Sorrow, immediately people will see Sorrow and think it must mean the Weapons of Sorrow or perhaps the Books of Sorrow, and it might just mean that, but don’t let one possibility cloud the others.

We’ve had one raid and two raid Lairs on the Leviathan, the first being called the Leviathan, the second Eater of Worlds (another name for the Leviathan, specifically its insides), and lastly the Spire of Stars. All three of these titles can arguably be associated with the location in which the activity takes place, so why wouldn’t the Crown of Sorrow fit the same naming scheme? There’s much to the Leviathan that we haven’t seen, and a location named the Crown of Sorrow, a place named for Calus’ remembrance of his once great people, fits easily and snugly.

Assuming that the name would be a location however doesn’t give much insight at all to what we would be facing. Penumbra is a DLC of secrets, it could be we find a new race aboard the Leviathan to stand as a prologue for the upcoming story of Destiny, but most likely it would be some form of an invasion, from the most likely: the Red Legion, to the less likely: Fallen and Vex, or even Hive, like some people are thinking.

Keeping with the location being the namesake of the Raid there is one theory that has been going around. The Leviathan is eating, or at least was eating, the centaur planetoid Nessus. Nessus is one of the few locations on which we have the confidence to say that SIVA exists, thanks to the Exodus Black having crashed there. It could have laid dormant this whole time, only to be consumed by the Leviathan, but does that mean it was destroyed? Recently we rendezvoused with an unlikely ally, Mithrax of House Light, who helped us repel a House of Devils attack on the Old Tower, and they weren’t there for just any reason. They were there to steal SIVA from a Cryptarch Vault.

Could the Devils have sniffed out another source of SIVA, now on the Leviathan itself? Calus has history with the Eliksni through Sekris, Baron of Shanks, so perhaps the Devils know about Calus already. Many of them no doubt were on Nessus while they were still aligned with House Dusk and were just able to see the ship in orbit.

It could also be that there isn’t an invasion at all on the Leviathan, but that Calus is just finally at the decision point of his time in our system. Normally when Calus enters a system or the Orbit of a planet he threatens the entire planet with death. One lucky survivor, the best among them, gets to enlist as one of Calus’ Shadows. In the case of the Sindu pilot, Jarus, his battalion of Ace-Defiant pilots were all wiped out except for him, judged best among them, he was “saved” by Calus and became a Shadow. Though the choice was not his to make.² Calus has been put in a tough place and doesn’t know which of the Guardians should be his Shadow. A Warlock, a Titan, a Hunter — all three have proven themselves worthy, but only one could be chosen. Calus himself might be the threat emerging from the Crown of Sorrow.

But the last possibility I’ll suggest is also the least likely, in my opinion. To believe this theory is to build one theory on the backbone of another which might not have any ground to stand on in the first place. There’s an issue with Calus, in that we have no idea if anyone has actually met him. Sure we have this history of events that he tells us or that we learn from his past Shadows, but what does that actually mean? They could have been misled just as we were, and he could simply omit anything he wants left unknown. When we first encounter Calus and defeat him we find it’s not actually Calus but a stand-in robot. Upon defeat he congratulates us on our accomplishment and allows us to take some victory prizes in a secret room filled with more of his machines.

When we first enter the Leviathan we see statues of a large Cabal, when we delve deeper we find more and more of the statues, we even find a statue of just a head in the Pleasure Gardens. When we reach the Throne Room we see him, the Cabal the statues were made in the image of, and as we fight him everyone gets taken away to a Psionic projection Realm which has his Head floating and attempting to kill you. All this is meant to show you who Calus is over and over, forcing you to have a vivid picture of him in your mind, and yet we never see the real him. Even his past Shadows could have been fooled, all except for the Baron of Shanks, Sekris, who was said to see through his disguise.³ If Calus isn’t what he seems then what is he? Or rather, who is he?

This wouldn’t be a Destiny theory if we didn’t mention Savathûn as somehow being responsible for everything we see, and what if Calus is just that. What if Calus is an ancient masquerading figure who dethroned whomever was Emperor before him only to destroy the civilization of the Cabal? Could Crown of Sorrow reveal to us the Truth of Calus? That he is nothing but an idea given shape? Personally I don’t actually think so, but what is a little concerning is that one of those who dethroned him, Umun‘arath, shared a similar name to one Hive entity, Xivu Arath. Could Calus be just as he seems, though paranoid, and Umun be the one hiding in plain sight?

If Umun were to truly be Xivu the Cabal would make the perfect place for her to go, as a Hive God of war. The question is though, if she is Xivu why would she hide instead of just wage war with her Hive? Without the Hive beneath her offering up their Tithes Xivu would have a difficult time keeping her Worm fed, however, Oryx being the First Navigator came to our system directly through travel, Savathûn indirectly through trickery, how would Xivu enter if not by conquest like the Cabal did? The whole idea of Xivu makes little sense while at the same time having some chance at actually being the case so it’s hard to prove or deny it.

In any case the Crown of Sorrow will soon be tackled by the Guardians, the first to win the race will win the glory that such a feat deserves. Whatever we face on the Leviathan, Hive or SIVA, the Red Legion or Calus, something entirely new or just someone new thinking there’s something to gain on the Eater of Worlds, I’m sure it will be one hell of a fight.