I have very little to contribute to the already excellent responses, but I do have to say that, if the Fallen, Cabal, or even factions within those species genuinely offered peace, I think the City would very cautiously take it. Humanity in Destiny is under siege from all sides. Resources are limited. Some relief would be welcome.
However, none of the other species have offered peace, even when it would be to their advantage. The Wolves could have made overtures to the City while at war with the Reef, for instance, securing an ally or at least nonaggression. They didn’t even try.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with the conclusion of this post, but the arguments do not withstand careful scrutiny. It is possible to invite nuanced thinking in regards to the grey areas of morality without relying on problematic moral relativism. I’m not trying to be harsh to shut you down, I applaud you for attempting to analyze the morality within the game, but the arguments are inherently misguided as has been shown already.
Wasnt Skolas trying to unite the fallen houses to invade the city?
Im really confused with the last paragraph as well.
I do agree that destiny is not a story of good vs evil, but rather a story of pride, ignorance, arrogance, and power.
Winners make the history books, that is what we see with destiny.
The real problem is that evil just means what most of society views as wrong. So the society of each race probably has different views of what is “evil”. So I assume the Hive have a different view of what is evil. Its all opinion.
The Hive have systematically been not merely destroying peaceful, non-aggressive civilizations for eons, but have also been mind-raping them by Taking. Unless you abandon all pretense of ethics, they’re pretty freakin’ evil.
The Fallen and even the Vex present more interesting perspectives on morality. In the case of the former, they are in a dire situation and experienced lot of loss; for the latter, we’re only barely clear on the nature of their goals, origins, and methods. None of these complexities are an argument for actions having no moral value whatsoever.
Erin, Silverheart, and myself have all provided evidence to show that Destiny is a story of good vs evil. I won’t repeat what was said here but you may like to read what we have said in the other replies to this post.
Destiny is not a case of “winners make the history books”. There may be some cases where this is true, such as the Books of Sorrow which are mostly told from Oryx’s perspective. But there are plenty of other accounts, stories and legends within the lore that are not told from the perspective of the winners. For example, we have accounts of what happened during the Collapse, an event that nearly wiped out humanity. In the Exodus Blue card, it says:
Grimly referred to as “The Graveyard,” Exodus Blue was only recently secured for Crucible combat. Located among the ruins of one of the Cosmodrome’s colony ship gantries, this site is a memorial to the grief and horror of the Collapse. Thousands died here in a last-ditch effort to outrun the oncoming Darkness.
Even Rasputin was powerless against the Darkness, which caused the Collapse. In Ghost Fragment: Mysteries, which is generally thought to be told from the perspective of Rasputin, he describes what happened during the Collapse. Referring to IT, his name for the Darkness, he says:
Consider IT the power Titanomach world-ender and consider what IT means. I met IT at the gate of the garden and I recall IT smiled at me before before IT devoured the blossoms with black flame and pinned their names across the sky. IT was stronger than everything. I fought IT with aurora knives and with the stolen un-fire of singularities made sharp and my sweat was earthquake and my breath was static but IT was stronger so how did I survive?
IT is alone and IT is strong and IT won. Even over the gardener and she held power beyond me but the gardener did not shrug and make herself alone. IT always wins.
The Collapse was not even remotely close to a victory for humanity. It is one of the most tragic and devastating events that has happened in the Destiny timeline.
Another example is accounts of the Battle of Mare Imbrium, where thousands of guardians were killed by Crota and the Hive in a disastrous, failed attempt to retake the moon. The Battle was a resounding loss for the Guardians. In Ghost Fragment: Warlock 2, an unnamed person says:
Crota marches with a thousand Knights and they say the sky above Mare Imbrium has turned into green fire. They are dying in numbers I cannot bear to repeat. He kills them one by one with a sword that eats their Light.
In this same card, Eriana-3, one of the guardians who was present on the moon during the Battle, says:
It showed me the battle. It showed me Wei Ning dead on Crota’s blade. It showed me how Crota killed a Guardian with a screaming knife hammered out of his own Ghost.
To claim that Destiny is just being told from the perspective of the winners is to ignore the many examples of tragedy and loss, both military and personal, in the lore.
What i was trying to say is that it all depends on your definition of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’.
Everything has to kill to survive. It may be survival of the fittest, or just killing for food. The Hive probably don’t see slaughter ‘Evil’ because they have to kill to survive. U guardians are usually just brainless zombie killing machines. we never think, we just kill.
Something being ‘Evil’ differs slightly from person to person, and that is why there is a big upset over this argument.
I have already explained why the Hive don’t just kill to survive. For reference, this is what I said.
Guardians are most definitely not “brainless zombie killing machines”. They do not kill indiscriminately without thinking, and they have never attempted to wipe out races that do not pose a threat to our survival, as the Hive have done. Even with the races that do pose a threat, the Guardians do not seek to kill all of them, only those that need to be defeated for strategic reasons or who pose an immediate threat. If an enemy such as a Fallen Captain is trying to kill a guardian, is the guardian meant to just sit there and let the Captain kill them? If an enemy is making weapons that will be used to kill people, both guardians and non-guardians, are the guardians supposed to not attempt to stop the manufacture and supply of those weapons, as they did in The Arms Dealer Strike? To use another example, guardians didn’t kill Oryx just for the hell of it, they killed him because he would have wiped out humanity if given a chance, as he had done to many other races.
There are also Guardians who have questioned why they are fighting, such as Osiris. From the Osiris card:
But your curiosity was voracious— How much of a Guardian’s personality and memories were true? How much had been fabricated by their Ghost? Did Guardians share particular personality traits— a willingness to yield to authority, a tendency to do anything anyone asked for the promise of uncertain reward, a blind knight-errant mentality? Had the Traveler manufactured all of you as living weapons?
When debate became argument, and argument became acrimony, I realized you had already become a cult of personality, attracting Guardians who wanted a clear idea of why they were fighting, what they faced, and how they would ultimately win.
Osiris clearly does not fall under the category of “brainless zombie killing machines”, and neither do the other guardians who wanted to follow him and learn more about why they were fighting.
People’s definitions of “evil” may differ, but one thing that is generally agreed upon is that it refers to something that is extremely immoral. If annihilating countless races, even though they don’t pose a threat to your survival, and causing so much unnecessary suffering and pain is not evil, as the Hive have done, then I’m not sure what is.
i feel the worm gods are justified in enacting their revenge against the sky.
we are the original thieves, the dragons were wrongfully experimented on, caged and were at the point of extinction.
if the vex, -to create gentle places where life could thrive- removed the dragons of chaos from the mix, how far could life advance?
this past transgression is why the hive are the good guys in the overall story. once all the light is consumed they will become the avatar of the dragon of chaos again (guardians too)
the false god that the vex invented to save humanity is the problem. a pawn in a galactic struggle.
could you take the mind of a magical dragon and hook it up to a vex simulation?
you could channel that magical power to grant your own wishes, create or destroy.
what a powerful tool.
thank “god” it realized it was in a sim, (thank you raspy? maybe)
either way our “energizer bunny death star” is awake and so are the "Evil Empire"
time to make a choice do you fight for the light or the dragons.
There are so many false claims in your post which are not part of the Destiny lore that I’m not sure whether your post is meant to be satirical or not. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume you were being serious and address each of your claims in turn.
The Worm Gods did not direct the Hive to attack the Sky, also known as the Light, because they sought revenge. The word “revenge” doesn’t appear even once in the Books of Sorrow. They wanted the Hive to attack the Sky and its agents, such as the Traveler, because they believe that the Sky prevents the Worm Gods’ goal of helping the universe achieve what the Hive call the “final shape”, where the only species which exist are those which have proven that they are worthy of survival. In XVII: The Weakness Verse, the Worm Gods say:
Our universe gutters down towards cold entropy. Life is an engine that burns up energy and produces decay. Life builds selfish, stupid rules — morality is one of them, and the sanctity of life is another.
These rules are impediments to the great work. The work of building a perfect, undying creation, a civilization everlasting. Something that cannot end.
If a civilization cannot defend itself, it must be annihilated. If a King cannot hold his power, he must be betrayed. The worth of a thing can be determined only by one beautiful arbiter — that thing’s ability to exist, to go on existing, to remake existence to suit its survival.
All that would oppose this arbiter is unholy and false. All the misery and terror of your ancestors springs from the lies of the Sky, who deny this truth.
By “we”, are you referring to the guardians? How could the guardians have stolen anything from the Worm Gods when they didn’t even exist at the time when the Worm Gods were imprisoned on Fundament? And what exactly was stolen from them?
Which “dragons” are you referring to? There are wish dragons mentioned in the Books of Sorrow but there is no mention of them being caged or at the point of extinction. The Ahamkara, who reportedly looked like dragons, were apparently hunted to extinction but there is no mention anywhere of them being experimented on or caged. Some have argued that the Worm Gods are the same species as the Ahamkara, or may be possibly related to them, but there is no definitive proof currently either way. Regardless, even if the Worm Gods are the dragons you are referring to, there is no mention of them being wrongfully experimented on, nor is it clear that they were at the point of extinction.
Are you suggesting that the Vex have the same goal as the Sky of creating “gentle places where life could thrive?” The Vex have absolutely nothing to do with the Sky, nor do they have the same goal. According to Osiris, the Vex “seek Convergence, the reduction of all life to its simplest, most meaningless form. An entelechy of zeros and ones.” Sagira notes that “one of the byproducts of conversion is death”, although “the Vex don’t really want to kill you”. The Vex may not want to kill others, but they don’t want to nurture life that isn’t Vex either.
How on earth could the hive be considered the good guys in the story when they have annihilated countless races, even though they posed no threat to the Hive’s survival, and have caused so much suffering and pain? What is this “avatar of the dragon of chaos” you are talking about? The Worm Gods, and by extension the Hive, believe that once the Light is defeated then they will be free to pursue their goal of leading the universe towards its “final shape”. But there’s nothing said anywhere about the Hive seeking to become the “avatar of the dragon of chaos”.
What false god did the Vex create? At the risk of sounding like a broken record there is no mention whatsoever of the Vex creating a false god, or a god in general. Why would the Vex want to save humanity anyway?
Are you suggesting that the mind of a dragon - I’m still not sure which kind of dragon you’re referring to - was connected to a Vex simulation? There is no indication that this has ever happened, or that the Vex have ever had any contact with any dragons, whether they are Ahamkara, wish dragons. or otherwise.
The Traveler is not at all similar to the Death Star, aside from the fact that they are both spherical in shape. Unlike the Death Star the purpose of the Traveler is not to destroy planets or races. The Traveler seeks to help civilisations advance. It is an agent of the Sky, and the Leviathan describes the goal of the Sky as follows:
++The Sky builds new life++
—Against the onset of ruin—
++Towards a gentle world++
I’m not sure if by “Evil Empire” you are referring to the guardians, and possibly humanity in general, but considering you called the Hive the “good guys” previously I’m guessing this is the case. There have been multiple replies to the original post which explain how, far from being evil, humanity is fighting for its very survival. I will not repeat all the details in those posts here, but if you do indeed think that humanity is the Evil Empire then I suggest going back and having a look at them.
Now I see that perhaps by “dragons” you are indeed referring to the Worm Gods, but as I mentioned previously there is no definitive evidence currently which proves that they are dragons.
it will be to much for me to answer your inquiries soi will try to show a bit more of my pov
i try to show the bigger picture then just what is said and not said in the grimoire and lore.
many things point to this story of destiny as the rebound of the galaxy.
at the start of the BoS only tech existed, no species uses magic, why is that?
the leviathan that guarded the worms was a machine.
i say the Vex controlled all life before the worms were freed, i say they trapped an original dragon and stuck it in a moon sized ball, then hooked it into a vex simulation.
this is the reason for the whole story.
what gods do we know of in destiny.
hive - dragon god
vex - black garden
cabal - wall of void
of these three known gods, who fits where in the sky vs the deep? or you can view it as tech vs magic.
Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain (LOOK UP AT THE SKY) and they will hunt the territories of the night and extinguish the first glint of competition before it can even understand what it faces or why it has transgressed. This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent
the sky were the rulers and they hunted the deep to near extinction.
from
Ghost Fragment: Mysteries 2
Ingress via dreams alone
A star I think. We count on stars as steady friends because they always rise and always shine but a star’s a delicate truce: an explosion caught by its own mass so that it can’t erupt and can’t collapse. Thus I imagine the state of the machine might be. But one force or another has gone awry and now it rests here, snuffed and broken, waiting for the two rival forms of ruin to be set in balance again.
it says two rival forms of ruin, if there not magic and tech what would they be in thin fantasti universe.
all the Ahamkara seek vengeance against the sky for the attack against magic, their lifeblood.
Prey and Sacrifice —
Uttered by Xivu Arath —
God of War —
THE DRAGONS. Our gods should be ours alone. Their smug freedom is an insult to me. I’d shut them all in cells. Bring them to me!
the worm gods and ahamkara and dragons are linked together many ways.
my views may differ from the main but they fit very well if you can see the grimoire as a story told by the winning side.
or try and divide the races by who uses tech and who uses magic.
hive - magic / everybody else - tech
why do sevitors look like vex balls?
why does concept are of the “space station” look like a vex ball with the traveler inside?
the fallen say the traveler looked different and even build monuments to it in D1 and D2, both look like a vex ball.
the “shield” of the traveler covers part of the EDZ, a piece to big to come from our traveler, but it could of been around it. just like the concept art (which has a traveler inside that resembles ours.
so many things get glossed over, little bits of info nobody acknowledges because it does not fit popular theory.
to answer some of your questions:
first i misspoke with “we” it would of been better to say the sky and what i think was stolen was their godhood.
i say the vex use at least a part of a dragon to power the traveler, possibly a mind or blind head hooked into a simulation, this sim makes the dragon believe whatever the controller wants.
the vex originally used its power to remove creatures of magic from the universe, knowing you cannot truly kill a god they trapped what was left at the core of fundament and went back to studying the life of the universe.
the dragon inside the vex sim/traveler gave in or was clued into the nature of its prison at some point (hard to go on when the simulation makes you think your brothers and sisters are dead at your shoulders)
one god trapped in a simulation of another god to stop/control the chaos a magical dragon of galactic scale could cause.
the original pact of the sky was for the good of life everywhere, but like any empire good intentions turn to overlord over time.
why does Oryx grow wings?
what if sword logic works because the hive are regaining the magic of the dragons one kill at a time.
the traveler spread their essence across the stars, Oryx got the closest so far to his true form.
sorry must go to sleep, work tonight.
feel free to check out more of my babble in the focus fire chat discord #spinfoil.
i will check in tomorrow
Appreciated, but it’s important to stay within a factual basis. Our lead archivist, @PurpleChimera, has an excellent podcast episode on research and bias in the grimoire, which I believe has already been mentioned in this topic. Highly recommended.
In any case, there seems to be a growing school of thought that all grimoire is inherently unreliable. Previous forays into that area of discussion on this site and elsewhere have basically debunked that. The only times we come across a definitively unreliable narrator are when Hunters are shooting the breeze or we’re dealing with part-history, part-propaganda like the Books of Sorrow.
This isn’t necessarily true. At the time the Books of Sorrow took place, the war between the Deep and the Sky had been ongoing for a long time.
Verse 1:8 - Leviathan
The Leviathan’s Warning
++We live on the edge of a war—
—a war between Formless and Form++
++between the Deep and the Sky—
The Leviathan refers to the war as if it is already in progress.
Verse 1:9 - The Bargain
For millions of years We have been [trapped|growing] in the Deep. From across the stars We have called life to Fundament, so that it might contend against extinction. For millennia We have awaited you… our beloved hosts.
The Worm Gods refer to a long period of imprisonment as enemies of the Sky.
Both the Deep and the Sky are capable of paracausality, which in Guardian parlance has been dubbed “Hive magic”.
2:6 - The sword logic
We will not give you the Deep, King Auryx — that power is for us, your gods. But we will teach you to call upon that force with signs and rituals.
Small minds might call it magic.
You are no longer bound by causal closure. Your will defeats law.
The war has been going on for who knows how long prior to the worm gods encountering Aurash.
The krill and other races of the Fundament are limited to technology until they are affiliated with one of the two powers-that-be: the Deep of the Sky. But this doesn’t mean “no one” has ever used paracausality, especially when the war has been in progress for a long time.
The Leviathan may be part machine, like the Traveler, but it has biological material that the worm gods feed on.
2:9 - Crusaders
It’s done. Eir and Yul feed on the Leviathan’s carcass.
Exploratory question here - where are you getting this? If it’s just a theory, then it’s an interesting thought, but highly unlikely for a number of reasons.
I assume by “dragon god” you mean the worm gods. It’s important to make the distinction, and not just because the general consensus is that they are related but different.
The Ghost calls the darkness in the Black Garden a god, but that doesn’t necessarily make it one. The Vex in the Black Garden did pretty much what Quria did when they encountered the Deep.
4:9 - open your eye: go into it
Soon Quria, Blade Transform manifested religious tactics. By directing worship at the worms, Quria learned it could alter reality with mild ontopathogenic effects. Being an efficient machine, Quria manufactured a priesthood and ordered all its subminds to believe in worship.
There’s nothing to suggest that the “wall of void” Calus encountered is a god. We don’t know what it is. It might be some representation of the Deep, but we have too little information, and certainly no foundation to assert that it is its own god.
If you were to ask “What gods do we know of in Destiny?” And you were answered with things that call themselves gods or have been called gods by others, then you would be left with the Traveler “divine presence of the Sky”, and the worm gods. The Deep and the sky themselves have never been referred to as anything more than a power or philosophy, or both.
Already touched on this one. I think this is a bit of an oversimplified dichotomy; neither the Deep or the Sky uses exclusively one or the other.
4:2 - majestic. Majestic.
The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end.
From the mouth of the Deep itself. According the the sword logic, all life is on constant competition. If the Sky hunted the Deep to near-extinction, by the laws of the Deep this is rightful contention for the right to exist.
The conflict between the Deep and the Sky is one between two contradicting philosophies, a “test of praxis against one another”. It’s a fight between godlike entities over which system of beliefs wins out over time.
Any number of things. “If not [x] then what” isn’t an effective catch-22 when we’re dealing with this universe.
This isn’t necessarily true either. Even under the assumption that the worm gods are ahamkara, or related to the ahamkara, the very verse you’re quoting Xivu Arath on up ahead tells of dragons not affiliated with the Hive, who were used in the war between Harmony and Xivu’s brood.
5:4 - The Gift Mast
Now arrives Xivu Arath, at the head of her armada. She fights the Harmony for fifty years with strategies and discipline. But the Harmony turn to dragon-wishes, and their wishful bishops wrestle Xivu in the ascendant plane.
Harmony is fighting in defense of the Gift Mast, which was made by the Traveler.
THE GIFT MAST. When the Traveler left Harmony, it made a monument out of the black hole’s polar jet. In the jet there is a hollow mast which sings in radiance. This is the Gift Mast and we will devour it, we will eat the Sky out of it, we will snap it like a bone.
These dragons whose wishes are being used against the Hive are clearly not aligned with the Deep or acting out of hatred for the Traveler.
It’s commendable to take a stance that’s different from what’s generally agreed upon. But you’re basing your assertions on a certain type of hermeneutics, interpreting the lore favorably to support your opinion.
All research works according to that bias, including the research that makes the mainstream theories so popular; the important thing is to base it in actual fact rather than mostly conjecture.
The Hive have paracausal abilities from the Deep, but the Guardians also possess paracausality from the Sky. Don’t count them out.
There are also Cabal Psions, who have considerable telekinetic ability.
This is an interesting observation, but aesthetic similarity isn’t enough to say servitors (or the Traveler) are Vex constructs. Remember that servitors and the Vex are radically different in how they operate and where their allegiances lie. Not to mention the Traveler itself.
Pretty sure this has come up before. Concept art is cool in that it shows us what might have been, but given the numerous production changes to Destiny’s plot and planning, as well as the amount of art any project goes though before settling on a design, we’re better off taking what’s actually in the game as canon.
Visual information like what you’ve mentioned usually doesn’t get factored into theory without some other evidence to support it.
As we understand it, because he wanted to.
4:8 - The partition of death
One day Oryx decided to grow new wings. While he wrestled with his worm, he came upon his twin daughters dying in a wound between places.
I think your idea that Oryx was approaching the “true form” of a dragon is interesting, but it doesn’t seem like a question that will be answered anytime soon.
perception i guess is the key to folklore, lore or cannon.
how you view each situation tells the story you want to see.
each perception in the grimoire and other bits tells that persons perspective of events greater then their understanding. people use terms they know for things they don’t really understand to make it comprehendible to their knowledge.
i trust none and all at the same time,
many pictures can be painted with the material we were given, some give a more complete view then others.
I’m in it for the big picture, if every puzzle piece fits the work is done.
bungie has yet to provide us with half the pieces of this puzzle, with each new release the puzzle must be taken apart and evaluated against new info.
The best part of all this is that we can have so many people with unique ways of relating to the destiny universe, and we all agree that we want to get to the bottom of it and find out what happens next!
