#distributary

[crow-posting]

Okay. So. I saw this post by @seraphstation which basically confirmed my thoughts about the Collapse lasting ~1,600 years. But it got me wondering again: how long were the Awoken in the Distributary before they left with Mara Sov?

Since time in the Distributary passes differently than time on Earth, some have theorized that the Awoken were hundreds of thousands, even millions of years old. But while the Distributary was 12.1 billion years old, the Awoken were not, and Mara was described as "confident in her centuries of purpose" after her return to the Sol system. So it seems more likely that the original Awoken (the 891 and the 40,000) were only a few thousand years old at the time of their return [early City Age].

While I'm not good enough to suggest an exact number, there are a few things I noticed: first, Alis Li rules for an age - roughly 1,500 years* - then another age after the Theodicy War. Then Nguya Pin becomes queen, and at some point in her reign [after a rhetorical "nine and ninety years"], begins a project to "identify whatever debt the Awoken owed the cosmos." A brief 30 years later, as Devna Tel succeeds Nguya Pin, Mara and her followers make their exodus.

*Note: an "age" isn't defined by a specific length, but several real-life ages [Bronze Age, Middle Ages, Ancient China, Roman Empire] lasted between 1,000 and 2,000 years. So 1,500 seems like an appropriate aggregate.

Once outside the Distributary, the Awoken are immediately divided again and Mara builds the Dreaming City in response. This prompts a visit by the Ancients, who seem unimpressed by her - an odd reaction to someone if they had also been around for millennia, but fairly normal if they were much younger.

All of this, plus Mara/Uldren/Sjur's "young adult"-like behavior up until the establishment of the Reefborn, leads me to believe that the original Awoken were at least 4,000 years old - but no more than 7,000 years old - by the time they returned. Could I be completely off-base with my estimate? Absolutely, but it's the one that makes the most sense to me.

And I'm gonna roll with it until Bungie tells me otherwise, because Avraam (my Warlock) being the Legolas of my group is the funniest thing I can imagine.

[screebyy]

hiera hodos lore....

ID: A comic depicting Mara Sov and Sjur Eido from Destiny 2. Sjur is a tall, muscular woman with light purple skin, and yellow markings on her cheeks. The marks are concentric semi-circles that extend from her jaw to below her ear. She has long, pale blonde hair, with bangs that hang down to her eyebrow. the front part of her hair is braided back to a small bun, while the back of her hair is worn down. Sjur is wearing a reddish-purple coat with a fur-lined hood and a long gray skirt, and is carrying her bow on her back. Mara is wearing a dark purple cloak with gold lining, over an off-white sweater and dark purple pants, with dark brown boots that go up to her knees.

Panel 1: Sjur and Mara are walking up a hill in the Reef, towards the left. Sjur is in the foreground, far ahead of Mara. They are walking on a path that winds up the hillside, all the way from a small settlement in the distance. Asteroids and stars are visible in the sky. It is snowing, and there are several inches of snow accumulated off the path. Mara is saying "Slow down," and Sjur is glancing back at her.

Panel 2: Sjur turns back to Mara, with one hand extended back to her, and the other placed politely behind her back. She is smiling, and says, "I could carry you." Mara is doubled over resting her hands on her knees, hanging her head and exhausted. Text hovers next to her reading "tired" and "tfw tall gf."

Panel 3: Mara is standing slightly straighter but still bent over. She is reaching for Sjur's extended hand hand, smiling with her eyes closed. She says "Don't." Sjur is grinning, leaning towards Mara.

Panel 4: Sjur is tilting her head, grinning cheekily as Mara takes her hand. Sjur says "~ mhm ❤️." Mara looks at her from the corner of her eye, blushing slightly and looking almost shy. Text points to sjur that reads "going to pick you up immediately." A speech bubble from Mara reads "..."

Panel 5: Mara is sprinting dramatically to the right and towards the viewer, blushing hard with a determined look on her face. Sjur is in the background, chasing after her with her arms stretched out over her head and a comically distraught expression. Sjur is shouting "But my queen! My heart's calling is to serve you!!!"

[fandom-geek]

vaguely fascinated by osana sov's naming choices. she chose for her daughter a name that can mean "bitter (strength)" or "lady" in two ancient languages (hebrew and aramaic) and for her son a name that means "old friend" in another ancient language (old english)

like every other golden age character has a name that's pretty normal by our standards, which tbh includes mara, then osana just names her other kid uldwyn. then again, even osana's name is either a variant of the hebrew hosanna or after an obscure and possibly fictitious old english princess-saint whose name means something along the lines of "godly solitude", so i suppose mara might be considered the odd one out

[blakistan]

Something about how the Witness’ goal is to bring together the Traveler and the Veil to gain admin control over the universe and shape it to its own vision. Something about how the Distributary is a pocket universe created at the edge of Light and Dark, where the first to enter could shape its properties to their whim. I swear there’s something here, I’m just not sure what exactly

[flowers-of-io]

Every Ghost is born knowing that we have to find our Guardian. We don't know what they look like. Not on the outside, anyway. On the inside, I'd always known who you were.

Thinking about Immaru again (it's what I do for a living, these days) and wondering if he'd known from the beginning he would be raising a multimurderer Queen of the Hive, or were his guidelines like. Someone clever and patient and curious and elegant and dangerous at close quarters when pissed off. And when he swung by that corpse and saw her, and everything clicked into place, he was like, "Oh, really"

[argentumcor]

Plot stuff I wanted before TFS

Light-aligned Vex collective that is Asher. Just all Asher. Whole thing.

The final death of Fikrul at the hands of Crow.

Resurrected Savathun stirring trouble and accompanying angst and internal conflict for everyone (we might get this, but based on Spider's really abrupt and undeserved heel-face turn, I expect disappointment).

The Nine splitting into two opposing sides before the final conflict...any follow up from the Nine, really. Not resolution, but they were very interested in the Light and Dark conflict!

Some resolution, even just in lore tabs, for Taox.

Some resolution, even just in lore tabs, for The Lost Cryptarch.

Update for current status of the Leviathan.

Follow-up with Toland, the crazy bastard.

The Traveler's POV of Unveiling.

Caiatl threatening Xivu Arath, possibly to her kaiju-sized face. ("This would just empower Xivu!" 1. Screw off, it would be cool 2. Screw off, this is a shooty game, she'll be killed by us shooting her in the face.)

Anything about Caiatl finally, truly contemplating her father's death (we must be getting that).

Crow as official Hunter Vanguard. Some people will be mad, some people will be happy, in universe and out, but can you just pull the trigger already? Glaciers move faster than the Hunter Vanguard plotline.

The Radiant Accipiter-themed Sparrow Amanda was building for Crow in Sweet Sorrow 😭

Amanda coming back as a Guardian after Defiance's mess, always up for that one at this point...

[night-dark-woods]

ID. a realistic digital painting of mara sov, leaning forward slightly with an intent expression. her mouth is slightly open, revealing fanglike canines. End ID.

was supposed to be a doodle and then suddenly it wasnt anymore anyway mara sov rules

[osirisdefencesquad]

i love filling out character sheets, but goddamn it gets a little annoying if you're not using ones specifically made for guardians

(birthplace questions my loathed)

[glassedplanets]

i cannot believe it's taken me this long to do a destiny AU but wow better late than never

playing very fast and loose with both canons here - pirate crews = renegade clans, marines/world gov't = vanguard (sorry actual vanguard whomst i love). the one piece is the traveler??? who knows. anyways:

luffy, human lightbearer

subclass: yippee!

loadout: wahoo!

ghost: mugi, one-of-a-kind shell given to him by shanks as a kinderguardian. the shell seems to change when he supers. What's Up With That!

all prismatic all the time, basically a dark age guardian. zero boundaries between class and subclass. just does whatever is fun. doesn't care until he Does and then you're fucked.

regularly wears (steals) class items from clanmates, it was a little alarming at first but they all feel whatever about it now

should not be trusted with raid mechanics.

zoro, awoken titan

subclass: strand

primary: breakneck (OG roll)

secondary: ergo sum (void/caster/wolfpack)

heavy: falling guillotine (OG godroll, WWB/relentless)

exotic: stoicism (inmost/star-eater or inmost/synthos)

ghost: wado, received from kuina after her death (don't think about this too hard. jaren ward/shin malphur situation. whatever). wado's shell was cloven by mihawk in a duel.

wears sanji's old bond looped into his mark, will not answer questions about this

specced hard into banner for a fuckoff insane melee loop, rotates melee buffs with luffy and sanji

mostly DPS/add clear, uses that ergo roll so that sanji/luffy/franky (haz prop) can get wolfpack, if the boss can't be meleed then Why Is He Even Here

flat-out banned from participating in the mechanics of several raid encounters on account of going to the wrong fucking place (vault, gatekeeper, sol inherent, totems, etc.), if he gets torn between dimensions or anything but first in queenswalk then everyone just has to desperately pray for the best.

ran vanguard bounties regularly until he eventually refused to cooperate with the then-head of the cosmodrome's operations; luffy found him with kuina's ghost bound and freed them both. The Rest Is History.

distributary-born but doesn't know (or care), kept being greeted weirdly by people in the dreaming city (which i guess is where we have wano's events......... kaido is literally a dragon, so)

VJ-G-66-03 sanji, human (?) warlock

subclass: prismatic, solar super

primary: fatebringer (OG fatebringer roll™)

secondary: tarrabah

heavy: apex predator (recon/B&S)

exotic: solipsism (assassin/synthos)

ghost: mignon, received from zeff after voluntarily giving up his light for sanji

wears zoro's old mark tied below his bond, will not answer questions about this

specced into Burn Motherfucker Burn, solar buddy + snaps, frontline add clear alongside luffy and zoro, also part of the "if the boss can't be meleed/snapped then why am i even here" gang

CAN be trusted with raid mechanics but is often better utilized keeping adds off the other half of the fireteam

sanji's body is riddled with vintech implants that don't seem to do anything. they're most definitely new, and sanji wasn't rezzed that long ago, but vintech was lost in the collapse along with everything else and the only thing that really survived is a bunch of muddled records found at old vega collective sites.

sanji was the vintech patriarch's one failed experiment; his consciousness refused transfer to an exo body and after many attempts, he was discarded but managed to survive through the kindness of dark-age guardians until he was taken in by zeff.

he has three vertical black facial markings; each experiment has a number of markings corresponding to their order (and color) in the sequence.

and other straw hats! i have a little less about them, but:

nami, human hunter

subclass: arcstaff (Throw Stick/well of bad/i don't remember its actual name)

primary: patron of lost causes

secondary: riskrunner

heavy: stormchaser

exotic: liar's handshake

ghost: zeus, stolen from big mom (tangerine shell)

(was tempted to do stormcaller unlimited power but arcstaff is... you know)

usopp, human hunter

subclass: solar, precision goldie

primary: succession

secondary: trinity ghoul

heavy: scintillation

exotic: nighthawk

ghost: merry (sheepshead shell)

can and should be trusted with raid mechanics along w/ nami

and the rest of the crew i'm not 100% set on buuuuut:

chopper: exo warlock (well of radiance)

robin: awoken warlock (strand? void?)

franky: exo titan (thundercrash)

brook: exo hunter (stasis)

jinbei: awoken titan (stasis? arc?)

misc others:

law: awoken prismatic hunter, blinky knife

reiju-0: exo void hunter, tether + smoke bomb, le monarque

ichiji-1: exo solar hunter, blade barrage

niji-2: exo arc titan, striker, ACD/0

yonji-4: exo strand titan

and textless, glow-less versions if you got this far!

[crow-posting]

There used to be a Jolyon Till Lore master post floating around, but I've lost track of it so I'm making my own. Tagging @purplegalaxy99 ✨

Edit: master post has been found! Thank you @thefirstknife

- - -

Jolyon Till was the friend and partner of Uldren Sov, and a current acquaintance of Crow. He is described as tall, with "narrow intelligent eyes" and blue skin, and was perceived as "happy-go-lucky" before Uldren's downfall. He is known for his skills as a Crow (Awoken intelligence) and a sniper, though he also works as a scout.

Note: though the nature of his relationship with Uldren isn't explicitly stated, it is generally interpreted as romantic, the same way Osiris and Saint-14's relationship was interpreted before being officially confirmed.

Jolyon is mostly known for breaching the Black Garden alongside Uldren [The Forsaken Prince], but he also created the Lord of Wolves shotgun. His signature weapon is the Supremacy, a rapid-fire sniper rifle; his secondary weapon, like all other scouts, is a Vestian Dynasty sidearm.

Not much is known about Jolyon's personal life, though Uldren knew "everything about him." He knew someone named Laviska [1] and attended the same combat academy as Uldren [2], and is known to be rational, but it is unknown whether he is a Distributary Awoken or has any family or loved ones besides the Sovs.

Like Petra and the Techeuns, he can travel to / from / around the Dreaming City but is not tied to its curse. Whether this is because he didn't die during the curse's activation (like Amrita did), or simply due to the inconsistencies within the curse lore, is currently unknown.

- - -

Edit:

Jolyon has been mentioned twice in-game: first in this memory from Haunted, then in this radio message from Wish.

(Thanks @theforsakenprince for the addition!)

Editing this for future readers, link to better version is also in the comments.

[disco-archetypes]

SHIVERS - All around you, rain falls on the great city of Revachol. Rain drips from the eaves and floods the gutters, washing the filth away.

SHIVERS - Winter's grip on the city is loosening. The spring thaw is here.

YOU - Finally. What now?

SHIVERS - Your shirt sticks to your chest. The shoulders of your disco blazer grow heavy. The cold finds its way in under your skin. You shiver, and the city shivers with you.

YOU - What is in the west?

SHIVERS - Sheets of rain over the water. A flight of stairs leading into the ocean. Wave after wave washing the coast of Martinaise, with its motorboats and gently swaying reeds.

SHIVERS - The ruins of a half-sunken seafort crumble on an inlet. Beyond the Bay of Revachol, ghosts rise into the sky.

YOU - Who are you, ghosts?

SHIVERS - The skyscrapers of La Delta, the financial district. Faint golden light seeps from the office windows.

YOU - What is down the shore?

SHIVERS - Urban coastline, rain dripping off eternite-covered roofs. Cinder blocks left over from half-finished construction. A defunct research and development building once seized by revolutionaries. An old wooden church stands on stilts above the water.

YOU - And beyond that?

SHIVERS - Coal City, end of all lines.

YOU - Run your fingers through your dampened hair.

SHIVERS - Your hair is an oily mess flecked with ash from neighbouring coal plants. Smoke stacks rise somewhere in the distance.

YOU - What's in the east?

SHIVERS - The great gates of the industrial harbour are locked. A chill runs down your back. You shudder like an animal trying to shake water from its hide.

YOU - Clench your teeth to stop shuddering.

SHIVERS - Behind the gates -- heaps of supply crates. Red and blue metal shipping containers slick with rain. The Greater Revachol Industrial Harbour is an artificial mountain range. Immense wealth resides within, and immeasurable poverty in its shadow.

YOU - And beyond that?

SHIVERS - La Drisienne, King Dris's Passenger Harbour. Cruise ships flanked by dock arms. Cranes watching over the mouth of the river distributary.

YOU - What is across the distributary?

SHIVERS - Couron, the lower middle class. Distributary after distributary cuts the city blocks in half. Seven-story buildings trail off into the rain.

YOU - What is beyond the Couron?

SHIVERS - A silvery curtain of rain over the houses. The class divide.

YOU - What's in the north?

SHIVERS - Capeside apartments -- tower blocks crowd one another, 4.46 mm bullets still lodged in their war-torn stone walls.

SHIVERS - Hallways collapsed from the mortar hits of a war that was lost long ago. Clotheslines go to waste in the rain. Radios play.

YOU - And closer to here?

SHIVERS - A yard. Rain falls onto the roof of a woodshed. Filthy water pools around a body. Droplets of rain slip from the dead man's cold cheeks.

YOU - What's in the south?

SHIVERS - A traffic jam. Rain thrumming on the roofs of motor vehicles. Inside, drivers watch water streaming down their windshields. The statue of a king shudders, he too is cold. The canal bridge has been raised.

YOU - What's on the other side?

SHIVERS - The road ascends; a raised motorway loops above the ghetto. Beneath its concrete columns -- a sea of rooftops, woodwork, and tar stretches northward. Four-story buildings as far as the rain can fall. The snows melt in Jamrock.

YOU - Why am I not there?

SHIVERS - To be in Martinaise, where no one goes. At the run-off point of a long-forgotten canal, in the whitest part of town. In the shadow of the day the Revolution failed.

YOU - What am I doing here?

SHIVERS - Standing in the rain, looking north, where Jamrock Rock City stretches inland.

YOU - Where do I live?

SHIVERS - On a street there that flows like a muddy river in the snow, with fire traps rising on either side. A film rental opens its doors to the rain, an armoured motor carriage rushes past the corner where you used to walk together... Suddenly, the hair on your back rises.

SHIVERS - YOU CANNOT RETURN.

YOU - Shudder, look further...

SHIVERS - In the rain-swept distance above the rooftops of Jamrock, a re-purposed silk mill stands perched above the motorway exit. Precinct 41 hunches in the rain.

SHIVERS - Your vision blurs. You wipe your face with your hand. The rain stings your eyes, making you look up and blink.

YOU - What's above?

SHIVERS - More coalition aerostatics. Way up there -- where rain forms -- rotors flutter silently. Your sight clears.

YOU - What's below?

SHIVERS - Collapsed storm drains. Old sewage systems flooded with rainwater. Hidden weapon caches from the Revolution. Doors leading down to Le Royaume -- the catacombs to which, for three centuries, they delivered the blue-blooded dead.

YOU - "Motherfucker." [Finish thought.]

SHIVERS - These spring thaw will not last. The winter will return to Revachol.

[screebyy]

uldren posting hours

[thefirstknife]

What’s the aphelion mystery?

The Aphelion is some sort of mysterious creature (?) that so far only the Awoken and Calus' people seemed to know about. There is no description of it, only that it's followed by intense radiation, the colour blue, and that it kills everything in sight. Sjur Eido, however, has been noted as having survived an attack which is wild. This lore tab shows it basically destroying an entire space station mysteriously. The lines here refer to it from the perspective of a Techeun.

Shuro Chi: The Techeuns you see here died while they were in trance together. Sometimes when you are in communion you cannot see what is coming close, like the Aphelion. Their last words were these "First it shimmered… then it crawled… then it screamed." Shuro Chi: These three Techeuns were victim to the Aphelion. I pray you never see it my friend, because no matter what gods you have killed, you will not survive it.

This is from Calus' fanfic so the information might be a little bit dubious, however, Aphelion is mentioned like this:

After the reclamation of the Athenaeum World X, which held in it the secrets of one of the most advanced predators in the system, the Aphelion, which had the power to devastate whole worlds in the blink of an eye, the Shadow was able to use this lost knowledge to rebuild the Loyalist fleet stronger and more magnificent than ever.

That's the entirety of the lore on it. It's possible that the lore tab for Star-Eater Scales possibly mentions a glimpse of it. It's about an Eliksni who clearly suffers from some sort of hallucination while in a space ship and sees "blue particulates" past his window, which completely disappear by the end. Blue is also associated with the Aphelion which, combined with radiation might be referring to this.

It makes me think that it may not be a creature at all, but a personified concept of radiation that exists in Awoken folklore. In the lore tab about a space station being destroyed, some of the inhabitants were yelling that it is the "Stalking Core." This is interesting because it's mentioned in Marasenna during the Distributary days:

Most beloved are the fissioneers, who vaulted us to power on a world without petrochemicals. May they forgive the many stories of horror we have told in their memory. May they in particular forgive the lurid stories of the molten lead reactor, and the twelve who were impaled to the ceiling by their control rods, and the Core That Stalked.

Whatever it is, this is all we know and it compels me. Either explanation is really cool to me and I genuinely wouldn't want to know more. It's much more intriguing like this where you can let your imagination fill in the gaps. Of course I would also really like to know and explore this concept, but I don't think it's necessary. It's one of those things in lore that just leave me with a proper feeling of wonder and awe.

[zalia]

Truth to Power, Chiasmus, and the Final Shape (or, has anyone else noticed we're playing the story backwards?)

Through a set of circumstances, I ended up getting onto an unhinged rambling session at 3am so thanks to my friend who let me (one time when different time zones was actually useful).

Some of this may be a little bit of a reach, but I think it bears out, and i've put the truly out there thoughts at the end.

Contains spoilers for Season of the Wish finale, and basically of Destiny, including the Final Shape trailers and ViDocs.

Okay, lets talk about Truth to Power and Ikora and Arach Jalaal's discussion of it in the Witch Queen CE.

Truth to Power is a lore book from Forsaken and it is... odd to say the least. It starts out as a message from 'Eris' and then cycles through other characters Eris > Medusa > Quria > Dul Incaru > Savathun, and then back again. It includes a 'choose your own adventure' section, a hidden challenge to defeat Shattered Throne solo at light level 999, a hidden note to data miners, and talks a lot about Ahamkara, the Distributary and the Dreaming City, black holes, and Savathun's (potential) plans regarding it. Especially the idea of moving through worlds contained within worlds via black holes.

In the Hidden Dossier decoded from the Witch Queen CE, Ikora and Arach Jalaal discuss this book, it's many readings, and what it might mean.

One thing that comes up is that the story uses a literary device called 'chiasmus'

REY >> JALAAL Look at the structure of the text. At first, Eris is real. Then we learn Eris's voice is a deception by Medusa. Then we learn Medusa is nested inside Quria. Then we learn Quria is a fiction of Dûl Incaru. And at the center, Savathûn reveals herself to be the parent of it all. We are headed inward, as if moving from parent to child universe. Then we proceed in reverse. Savathûn is revealed to be a fiction of Dûl Incaru. Dûl Incaru a simulation by Quria, and so on. So in the end, Truth to Power moves outwards. Just as Savathûn plans to move. In from our universe and out to the Distributary— Or out from our universe to its parent. JALAAL >> REY Oh. I see. I see! A literary structure like that is called a chiasmus, and chiasmus means "crossing point"! Like a wormhole or a portal! It was hidden in plain sight.

They can also be thought of as ring structures. We end at the beginning.

Which incidentally is the tag line for the Akashic Revelation lore from Season of the Deep about a Guardian trying to enter the portal in the Traveller and getting visions of his original human life!

Which will become relevant i swear.

Lots of people have commented about the finale cutscene from Season of the Wish, and how it mirrors Forsaken - with Crow at Cayde's mercy, vs Cayde at Uldren's mercy. And you can kind of look at Crow's story in general as a reflection of Uldren's. Crow resurrected > Imprisoned by Spider > Manipulated by Savathun > Growing into himself and his freedom as a guardian > Reconciliation with Mara > Jumping through a portal to another facet of reality

vs

Uldren following Mara out of the Distributary > the growing distance between him and Mara > Prince of the Awoken, tricking Guardians, visiting the Black Garden > his growing madness leading to his imprisonment in the Prison of Elders and manipulation by Riven (who was controlled by Savathun) > Death

There's another cycle (there are many cycles) I noticed with Saint and Osiris.

Vanguard Commanders > Separation+Exile > Saint's loss of the Light + death > [Sundial Incident] > Osiris' loss of the Light and imprisonment > [Nezarec Tea Incident] > Recovery+being reunited > Vanguard Commanders

We've also had in the ViDoc the mention of receiving the Khvostov because it's the first weapon we ever use in D1, returning to the freeway we were resurrected at, returning to the beginning.

With me so far?

We've ended Season of the Wish with a redux version of the final fight of D1 Vanilla - the destruction of the Black Heart. Symbolically bringing us back to the start of our journey. But if you look at a lot of the themes of recent seasons... we've been travelling backwards loosely through a reflection of D1's storylines.

Season of the Wish/D1 Vanilla

In D1, we are guided to enter the Black Garden and destroy the Black Heart created by the Vex. This is the story where we first encounter Mara and Uldren who send us to get the eye of a Vex Gate Lord to enter the Garden. Which involves us going to the Ishtar Academy on Venus to find out more about the Vex (incidentally this is also where the Vex Citadel is located - something which has been very prominently visible in the Starcrossed Mission).

In Season of the Wish, we are following up work done by Maya Sundaresh and Chioma Esi of the Ishtar Collective on the Veil which was revealed to be what the Black Heart was trying to recreate. We're working with Mara and Crow (and Crow even lampshades the original story in a joke about the eye of a Vex Gate Lord!). Eventually we end up confronting the Vex and destroying a new copy of the Black Heart.

Season of the Witch/The Dark Below

In the Dark Below, we are guided by Eris to stop the resurrection of Crota by disrupting a ritual, and eventually kill him in his Throne World in the Crota's End raid.

In Season of thr Witch, we take part in a ritual to tithe to Eris to help her ascend into becoming the Hive god of vengeance so that she can cut Xivu Arath off from her Throne World

Eris: Crota's soul is banished. You have given me the gift of vengeance. I thank you… - D1

Season of the Deep/The Taken King

I admit that this is out of order and a little more of a stretch, but chiasmus is not necessarily an exact thing and I think the parallels are there.

In The Taken King, we are confronted with Oryx's fleet arriving in the system to get revenge for the killing of Crota. He destroys a large portion of the Awoken Fleet who were there to buy us time, including killing Mara Sov (she had a plan and got better!). We have to pretend to be Ascendant Hive to face him on the Dreadnaught (which is created from the body of one of the Worm Gods) and we take shards of his sword to create our own. Eventually we face him in King's Fall, use his hoarded stolen Light and free it to defeat him.

In Season of the Deep, we have the sudden reappearance of Titan in the system sent by Xivu Arath. We have Sloane who has willingly become half Taken to learn about Xivu's plans and undermine them, and she is supported by Ahsa, one of the proto-worms who is seemingly akin to the Worm Gods (Eris uses her name and the name of her slaughtered family in her ritual in Season of the Witch, alongside the names of the Worm Gods). We save Ahsa, Sloane is possessed briefly by Xivu but recovers. We also enter a pyramid and take a gift of Darkness (Wicked Implement) left to us by Xivu.

Also we have a whole dungeon about the Lucent Hive trying to resurrect Oryx and Xivu's voice memories regarding him and everything about the Hive.

Season of Defiance/House of Wolves

In House of Wolves, Skolas, Kell of Wolves, is freed from his imprisonment by one of the Nine. he declares himself Kell of Kells, frees his followers from the Prison of Elders, attempts to assassinate Mara Sov. Mara, angered by this, gives Guardians the freedom of the Reef to hunt Skolas down as he tries to unite the various houses. He eventually breaks into the Vault of Glass to bring Wolves from the past to aid him. We stop him, capture him, and eventually kill him in the Prison of Elders. This leads to a very slight improvement of relations between the Reef and the City, although the Awoken, barring Petra, are still mainly ambivalent and Mara is absolutely only interested in us as a means to an end.

In Season of Defiance, the Shadow Legion are capturing humans and Eliksni and imprisoning them on the pyramid ships. We are aided in their rescue by Misraaks, once of the House of Wolves (as was his mother) now Kell of Light (and potentially Kell of Kells eventually???), and Mara Sov, who comes to aid us, willingly using her power to let us walk the Ascendant plane in order to rescue our people. It very much solidifies the alliance between the City and the Reef.

So essentially, House of Wolves is former allies of the Reef turning on them to destroy them. Season of Defiance is former enemies banding together to save their people.

Also Taniks is in House of Wolves, and conspicuously mentioned in Season of Defiance.

Lightfall/The Red War

Again, out of order slightly, but the more I think about it, the more I see the parallels.

In the Red War, the Last City is attacked by the Red Legion led by Dominus Ghaul who is obsessed with claiming the Light, and captures the Speaker. The Guardians lose the Light and are driven out of the City. We have to regain our Light abilities from the Shard of the Traveller that we are guided to. The Speaker is killed after admitting the Traveller doesn't speak to him. We go to gather our allies once more, assault the City, fight Ghaul who is then destroyed by the Light when the Traveller awakens. The Black Fleet is shown to activate at the edge of the System.

In Lightfall, we follow Osiris who has had a vision of Neptune. We arrive in Neomuna which is a City under assault from the Shadow Legion led by Calus (who was exiled and deposed by Ghaul). Our Light abilities are suppressed so we have to master Strand which is seemingly a product of the Veil. We gather our allies, including Caiatl who had taken over command after Ghaul's death, and combat the Shadow Legion's assault on Neomuna. We fight and defeat Calus who has been granted Darkness abilities. But the Witness communes with the Veil, damages the Traveller, and most of the Black Fleet leaves the system to enter the Traveller.

Season of the Seraph/Rise of Iron

In Rise of Iron, we're called by Saladin Forge, the last of the Iron Lords, to stop the Eliksni House of Devils from taking control of SIVA, the nanomachine plague which killed the other Iron Lords when they went to seek it to save humanity, because Rasputin got mad that the Traveller resurrected his son as Felwinter. We fight the SIVA animated corpses of some of the Iron Lords and destroy the replication chamber. We fight the Devil Splicers who have been augmented by SIVA.

In Season of the Seraph, we are working to recover a damaged Rasputin and stop Xivu Arath from taking control of Rasputin's Warsat network and weapons. We enter bunkers to recover his data, including returning to Felwinter Peak to recover Felwinter's memories which leads to Rasputin sacrificing himself to save humanity, where before he had sacrificed the Iron Lords for his own selfishness. We also fight Witness animated corpses of Eliksni (the Scorn) and Eliksni Wrathborn infected by Xivu Arath's cryptoliths (which can also infect computer systems). Eramis, once a Baron of the House of Devils has to see and grieve her friends and comrades turned into mindless puppets, as Saladin once had to see the Iron Lords turned into puppets by SIVA.

I think there's also a note to be had about how we're doing these repeats. In D1 the vast majority of the time, we are alone. We are not yet the Young Wolf, the Godslayer, the hero. We are just one random Guardian.

In D1 vanilla, there's no real mission control. You have Elsie Bray tell you to follow a signal and give you some info, but then you are on your own. Mara and Uldren are quite relaxed about potentially getting you killed. In Season of the Wish, we are guided by Osiris and Mara, aided by Crow. We have people with us every step of the way. At this point in D1, Petra was more or less exiled from the Reef. In Season of the Wish, she is one of Mara's greatest supports, and you can hear how much Mara cares about her.

The Dark Below has you guided by an Eris who is alone, untrusted and seen as crazy at best, or a genuine threat to the City at worst. She has nothing in her life but vengeance. In Season of the Witch, we have an Eris who has Ikora and Drifter and Mara there to support her and who trust her. The worry is mostly for her rather than about her.

We have gone from the Last City being a last bastion of humanity with the whole universe against us, to one of two cities, filled with those we had once called enemies.

Conclusion

So yeah, a theory that we're travelling back through our story, a chiasmus (there may well be other parallels in previous seasons too) which is taking us right back to the start of our story.

Except here's the thing... Elsie Bray is the one who starts things off by having us destroy the Black Heart. It's implied to be the major event that changed things. But Elsie's timeloops are stated to always take her back way before our resurrection, to the moment when Cayde becomes Hunter Vanguard.

Well, we're just about to get Cayde back.

So what happens when you reach the beginning/end of the story and yet it continues? We're outside the boundaries of this story now! Off the path we've been following!

But unlike when we were resurrected, alone save for Ghost, when we go into the Pale Heart, we will not be going alone. We've come through the chiasmus and we've done things better, built alliances, made friends, united the Light and the Darkness.

So when we step beyond the boundaries of the storyI would suggest one thing – Guardians make their own fates.

The actual unhinged theorising

So, there was one connection my mind made at like 7am when I briefly woke up after going to bed at 4am. A Chismus is kind of like a labyrinth.

In English, Labyrinth is often synonymous to maze, and it can be! However maze and labyrinth are also used as specialised terms - a maze is a multicursal puzzle with many branching paths, while a labyrinth is unicursal, and has only one winding path to the centre and out again.

You can see them in lots of places, including places of worship where they can represent symbols of pilgrimage, or a path to enlightment/salvation. Walking them can be used as a form of meditation. And historically they've also had sometimes been used as a way to trap evil spirits, or turn away evil.

So a Chiasmus is a ring structure, and you follow it from start to finish then back to start, and a labyrinth is a unicursal winding path that takes you to the centre and then back out again, and the story of Destiny is (loosely) following that structure.

There is one specific labyrinth I think it's worth looking at.

This is a labyrinth carved into the portico of Lucca Cathedral in Italy. The inscription is Latin and translated reads "This is the labyrinth built by Dedalus of Crete; all who entered therein were lost, save Theseus, thanks to Ariadne's thread"

This is the seal for Season of Arrivals... oh hey that... that looks familiar.

This is from the Live Action Witch Queen trailer showing the Cradle on Mars with... oh wait... is that... the same fucking labyrinth?

It crops up in a lot of places in Destiny. You will see it everywhere.

Where am I going with this?

Look at the inscription for the Lucca Cathedral labyrinth: "This is the labyrinth built by Dedalus of Crete; all who entered therein were lost, save Theseus, thanks to Ariadne's thread"

We know the story of Thesus and the Minotaur. He was able to find his way through thanks to a spool of thread given to him by Ariadne (oh hey, guess what subclass we just got in the last expansion...).

Well, Ariadne's Thread is the name for a method of solving puzzles by an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes. Wikipedia says about this method:

At any moment that there is a choice to be made, make one arbitrarily from those not already marked as failures, and follow it logically as far as possible.

If a contradiction results, back up to the last decision made, mark it as a failure, and try another decision at the same point. If no other options exist there, back up to the last place in the record that does have options, mark the failure at that level, and proceed onward.

That sounds kind of Vex-like huh? Or even more specifically... sounds almost like what Elsie Bray has been doing. She is reset each time to the last set point (Cayde becoming Hunter Vanguard), and in each loop she tests paths up until destruction. It's how she comes to realise that she has to be the person who finds stasis first.

Each loop cuts off a branch of the maze, a set of possibilities that do not lead to the right outcome. And cutting off each branch until there is only one path turns it into a labyrinth.

I've thought for a while that it feels like something is iterating, working through every option until all the pieces align and there is only one path. Making sure the chiasmus works.

Piecing together a perfectly constructed bomb to take on the sword, which will detonate into the exact kind of chaos that Guardians are good at.

I apologise for the extreme longness of this post. I really hope it is semi-coherent at least?

[autism-crime]

Now that I’ve started thinking about it, the Awoken are kind of like space Drow.

They both have a matriarchal society (although with the Awoken I think it’s because the male/female population ratio is 1/4 male 3/4 female or something like that. The Drow are also a lot stricter with gender roles)

They both live isolated from the rest of society. With the Awoken living in the Reef and the Drow in the Underdark.

Both are highly distrustful of outsiders (originally anyway, the Awoken eventually chilled out a little) and have a hatred of defectors.

Live for a long ass time. (I think Drow can live for ~750 years and Awoken age slow as fuck, Mara Sov was 19 during the Collapse, she’s gotta be 1000 at minimum. I don’t know what their actual life span is but I know they’re immortal in the Distributary)

Purple

Both have some really kickass architecture in their cities. (Menzoberranzan looks pretty as fuck, if not pretty creepy. And the Dreaming City is beautiful, and that’s just one city. It’s apparently nothing compared to cities in the Distributary)

There’s probably more but my D2 lore is kinda outdated and I’m still pretty new to D&D

[synnthamonsugar]

DESTINYTOBER: Day 26 - Divinity

Read it on AO3

. . .

Even in death, divinity recognized itself. 

When Queen Mara Sov crossed into the High War, she finally understood Oryx fully, work that had begun in the bright familiarity of the Dreaming City culminating in appropriate darkness. The throne world was carved from Akka's body but it was foremost an externalization of Oryx's inner life-force; subsequently, to navigate it was to chart the Navigator himself.

As she made her way, Mara learned his full story and saw the parallels to her own. In Aurash, krill princess, pale and flawed prototype of who he would become, the older sister to a brash and irresponsible sibling, and the leader who guided his family toward the path of immortality, Mara saw her human life. In Auryx, just past the inflection point, testing the bounds of his potential, she viewed herself newly awoken in the Distributary. And in Oryx, not only in communion with powers beyond himself but capturing them at sword-point, she witnessed a premonition of her future.

Oryx, like Mara, knew he could have lived his whole undying life hidden in the safety of his Throne, but knew better than the only way to change the universe was to be a part of it. If only she'd been able to flip the Distributary inside-out, she might not have been forced to confront these travails by herself . . . but it was better her kin were safe. In this way alone, she and Oryx diverged.

According to mankind, divinity was an intrinsic trait of being. To the awoken, it was something attainable. But to the hive, it was a state of continual change, a metastatic struggle for growth, for self-realization. By this standard, she stood among their pantheon long before she had Eleusinia. 

Mara Sov craved Oryx's demise, longed for it with an ache that was physical despite her lack of a physical body. But there was a tinge of sweetness in her venom. She could, after all, not entirely hate that which she recognized in herself.