Errata

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.