Thread by @tha_rami

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 So, a 75 tweet version of Destiny lore and terminology, because I love this game and it sounded like a fun challenge. We'll start at the beginning of the lore, and work our way forward to the games. Let's see if I can make this work.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 You play as "The Guardian", who is effectively a magic space zombie soldier granted immortality by a giant space orb called "the Traveler". The Guardians guard the Traveler, which has sat motionless in the sky above Earth's last safe city from the start of Destiny 1 in 2014.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Guardians are zombies - they were humans that died centuries ago, and were revived by tiny floating robots spawned from the Traveler called "Ghosts". The Ghosts finds a corpse with potential, reanimates it, and as long as the Ghost survives, they can revive their Guardian.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Traveler was originally encountered on Mars, in our real worlds' current day, where it had started terraforming the atmosphere into a beautiful world. It represents & channels "the Light" - a sort of "Force"-like power that allows impossible powers.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 In the centuries after its arrival, it guided humanity into a Golden Age unlike any before. Humanity colonized the solar system, and the Traveler terraformed planets, and gave the humans of Earth impossible gifts. They called it a "Golden Age", and the Golden Age ended long ago.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 We were not the first place the Traveler visited. Before us, the Traveler encountered the Eliksni -far, far away- and uplifted their culture too - until it abandoned them. These "Fallen" still (mostly) revere the "Great Machine", and have attempted to re-gain its favour.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 It also visited a planet called Fundament, on which it kept an unspeakable evil deep under the oceans at bay. A weak & short-lived species was tempted by this evil into a pact: to be granted power & to test it against all other life. These would become the "Hive".

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 A military race of... let's call it space rhinos? that favour aggressive expansion called the "Cabal" effectively assimilated entire other species into their ranks through force. The Cabal are disciplined at war, and spent countless centuries in conquest.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Finally, there is the Vex. The Vex are an enigma, a fluid-based life form that exists in robot bodies. They have the capacity to travel through the flow of time, & to impose their simulations on reality. With the Vex that we get to the (current?) central conflict of Destiny.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 There is a sentience that far preceedes time called the Gardener. The Gardener played a "Game of Life"-like game against another sentience called the Winnower. Each game was an entire universe, from start to finish. They played this game over & over.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 But every time, without exception, the game would end the same way: with a pattern that would subsume all others, and place the game into a never-changing and vexing Final Shape. The Winnower appreciated this, but the Gardener found it boring.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Frustrated after endless iterations, the Gardener decided to change the game: it inserted itself into the game to see if it could bring about another outcome. This would become the Traveler, wielding the Light. The Winnower inserted itself too, and it would become the Darkness.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Unbound by the rules of their own "game", their avatars in our iteration of this game are "paracausal": They can bring about miracles without natural cause. The Traveler traveled the universe, nourishing life. The Darkness traveled the universe, winnowing the weak.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 And that brings us back to Earth: the Traveler was relentlessly hunted by the Darkness, and it was our Solar System where the two would clash. This "Collapse" saw humanities Golden Age ended violently, and despite all of humanities achievements, the situation looked dire.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 It seemed as if the Traveler would abandon Earth like it did the Eliksni, until it was forced by to make a final stand on Earth by a human AI called Rasputin. A networked intelligence with control over the cumulative of defense assets, it stopped the Traveler from fleeing.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 With no other options left, the Traveler held back the Darkness at a tremendous cost, and was rendered into some sort of permanent hibernation. In its final moments, the Traveler created the Ghosts, and from the Ghosts the first Guardians rose.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Over time, those chosen by the Ghosts organized - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. After many conflicts, the strongest faction built a great city in the shadow of the Traveler: The Guardian's home, the Last City, and the last safe bastion of humanity.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Now, when I say "humanity" - humanity isn't quite what you know anymore. Yes, there is humanity as we know it, but there are also the "Exos" - a race of robotic beings with human intelligences, built back in the Golden Age by a brilliant but ruthless scientist called Clovis Bray.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 And there are the "Awoken", a group of humans aboard a spaceship that got caught in the battle between Light and Dark. The paracausal clash led to them finding themselves in a pocket dimension where time flowed differently and reality was... more malleable.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Awoken organized under a Queen named Mara Sov, eventually left their pocket dimension & founded an outpost in the Asteroid Belt in our solar system. For the longest time, they were hostile to humanity whenever interfered with, and as such they were left alone in their Reef.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 So we are 20 tweets in and... this is where Destiny 1 starts.

We've got the forces of Light under the Traveler: humanity and the Guardians. We've got those that oppose humanity or the Light: the Hive, the Vex, the Cabal & the Fallen. And in the twilight there are the Awoken.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 In Destiny 1, the Guardian is resurrected by a Ghost and brought to the Last City, where they meet the Guardians' leadership: the Speaker, and the Vanguard. The Vanguard consists out of an examplar each for the three classes of Guardian: the Titans, the Warlocks, and the Hunters.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Titans are the military strategists and the muscle. They punch and headbutt things.
The Warlocks are the spies and mages. They are spy-doctors that might heal you or evaporate you.
The Hunters are gunslingers and scouts. They wear capes.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Commander Zavala is the Titan Vanguard, Ikora Rey is the Warlock Vanguard, and Cayde-6 was the Hunter Vanguard. Together with the Speaker - a elusive man who speaks on behalf of the Traveler, they set the Guardian on the course to all the adventures.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 And adventure it is. The Guardian manages to recapture planets around the solar system, reboots Rasputin, and allies with the Queen of the Reef to reach the "Black Garden", a mysterious place from where the Darkness aims to weaken the inert Traveler even further.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Guardian proceeds to reclaim the moon from a Hive Prince named Crota, who had conquered the Moon and massacred endless Guardians, leading to one Guardian by the name of Eris Morn to attune to the Darkness in order to survive. She is critical in Crota's Fall.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Then Mara Sov, The Queen of the Reef, is betrayed by her royal guards, a group of Fallen that had pledged loyalty to her. Together with Variks, a fallen that remained loyal, she instructs the Guardians to exterminate those who betrayed her. Which we do. We're magic space zombies.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Crota, who we killed on the moon, has a dad. Oryx, The Taken King, arrives to the Solar System in a giant Dreadnaught. Mara Sov decides to stop Oryx from reaching the Traveler, sacrificing the majority of the Awoken forces, including herself & her brother and advisor, Uldren Sov.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Oryx is one the original three Hive (remember the weak creatures on Fundament?). In the depths of Fundament's oceans, he & his two sisters found Worms Gods imbued with Darkness, and made a pact: each would take a Worm into their body, and feed it with their strength and traits.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 If the worms are fed, they grant their host body incredible powers of Darkness. If they are not, the consume their host. Oryx was to be curious. His sister, Savathun, was to be cunning. The third sister, Xivu Arath, was to be strong. And all were to test their might in combat.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The three turned their fragile species into the powerful Hive & escaped certain doom on Fundament. Eventually, they conspired to kill one of the Worm Gods, granting Oryx the power to "Take" - warping creatures into subservient beings with paracausal ability.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Now, Oryx had arrived, and waged war on humanity and the Traveler. The Guardian kills Oryx, and is then drawn into the Ascendent Plane - a layer of reality forged in Darkness where the souls of powerful Hive can recover - and kills Oryx' essence, defeating him permanently.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Finally, the Guardian destroys SIVA together with the last of the Iron Lords, a dogmatic group of early Lightbearers. SIVA was a Golden Age nano-technology swarm meant to help humanity flourish, but which had the ability to self-replicate and the worst AI safeguards in history.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 After three years, Destiny 1 concludes. Destiny 2 is announced, and it kicks off with the destruction of the Tower that is the home of the Vanguard, the occupation of the Last City, and the capture of the Traveler - stripping all Guardians of their Light & ability to ressurrect.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 A shard of the Traveler empowers our Guardian (phew!), and the Guardian rallies the many now-mortal Guardians around the solar system to retake the City and defeat the Cabal leader, Ghaul - but not before he forces the Traveler to wake up & defend itself, returning the Light.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Mara Sov's brother, Uldren Sov, survived - and turned a traitor to the Awoken. Imprisoned & hopeless, he is deceived by a Taken shape-shifting wish-granting dragon (yup) named Riven. Riven grants him an army of mutated, and he escapes while killing the Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Riven sits at the heart of the Dreaming City, a fantastical (& gorgeous) secret home to the Awoken created by Queen Mara Sov. Riven, Taken by Oryx, manipulates Uldrens' grief to unseal the Dreaming City to try and escape.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Queen is revealed to have survived in Oryx' Ascendant Plane, having used his powers against him, materialising her essence into reality in a plane of existence in which that makes sense. She coordinates with the Guardian to defeat Riven, the last of the wish-granting dragons.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 For reasons, this gets the Dreaming City stuck in a 3-week time-loop created by the Vex Mind Quria, in which the City slowly falls to Taken corruption. The Guardians are forced to choose between letting the City falls, or to defeat the evil corrupting it and looping back in time.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The Guardians defeat more evils, allying with a deposed nihilistic Cabal ruler, getting pulled into prophecies by the mysterious Nine, the sentience of the planets in our solar system, and recovering lost-lost technology to strengthen our arsenal.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 After 5 years, we get our first glimpse of the real power of the Darkness on the Moon, where a giant inert pyramid ship hidden underground is revealed to be an avatar of the Darkness - the same way the Traveler is to the Light. The Darkness is coming. Or is it here already?

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Osiris accidentally a time machine, which breaks space-time, and we work to restore it before a Cabal faction exploits it to destroy us. We also accidentally save his lover from being lost in time, the legendary Titan Saint-14. We also find our own grave in the far future.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 The fleets of the Darkness arrive. After months of ominously charging up, they straight-up erase several planets from reality - not destroying them, but erasing them entirely. The Traveler re-awakens in a bright pulse of Light, halting the Darkness' advance & saving Earth.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Many Guardians, incredibly outmatched by the Darkness, start experimenting with the new paracausal abilities of the Darkness. The use of Darkness creates a split in the Guardians, as not all deem the use of a gift of the enemy safe.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Over the last two seasons, the Guardians have made a truce with the Cabal's new Empress, Caiatl, and those loyal to her. They also forged an alliance with a Eliksni/Fallen Faction that has moved into the Last City as a fragile alliance fended off a dangerous Vex simulation.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 At the heart of that simulation, the Guardians defeated Quria - the Vex Mind responsible for the time loop of the Dreaming City. Queen Mara Sov returns to end the curse, and to reclaim the Dreaming City. The "curse" has been ongoing for three years now, so that's big.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 And that brings us to today: Savathun, the Hive sister of Oryx, the Hive Queen of Deceit, has revealed herself to be the hidden hand behind many of the events of the past seasons. She has been spying on us, manipulating us, & had shapeshifted into Osiris, an ally, months ago.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 Almost 50 tweets in, the chessboard is in place, but we can't see the board, don't know what pieces, we disagree about what each piece can do and what the rules are, and Mara Sov & Savathun are the best chess players in town and somehow super chill about all this.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 A short final note: a lot of Destiny story is continuously recontextualised through new revelations or contexts. The story is full of "current understanding", unreliable narrators, strange chronologies, & prophecies. There will be errors in this & outdated information over time.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 One to point out already is that the AI Rasputin might very well not have forced the Traveler to take a stand during the Collapse, Recent lore strongly instead suggests he instead have only prepared for the eventuality that the Traveler would abandon us.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 And since people kept asking if there was a video version, I decided to just try myself for the challenge and practice. I don't like my reading voice at all, but it was a fun one-off experiment & I hope this is helpful to those who don't like reading.

@alextotheandru @cianmaher0 (Thanks to Hybridxt21 for the video, and all background music/soundscape was generated via mynoise.net)