Forum:The Black Fleet

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This article is about the fanfic version of the Pyramids. For the official version, see Black Fleet.

The Black Fleet
Overview
Homeworld:	Ascendant Plane
Focal world(s):	Solar system (currently)
Goals:	Ostensibly reduce complexity to simplicity
At war with:	Sanctuary The Hierarchy of Hierarchies House of Time Imperial Cabal
Distinctions:	Nightmare creation Paracausal interference
Other names:	The End

"Reality is often disappointing. So I have chosen to remake it in my image. My brothers are content with folly. I have proven them to be in error. If you wish to dispute this, come at me with all of your armies and philosophies. I shall prove my argument thus."

— The Architect

The Black Fleet is a fleet of tetrahedral megastructures responsible for the enshrouding of the Solar System. They are the eternal nemesis of the Traveler and all servants of the Light, and actively pursue the Traveler wherever it may go.

Overview

An ancient and highly advanced "race", these ships have been around for approximately as long as the Traveler. Few have survived their onslaughts, which are as mysterious as they are arbitrary—each species that the Traveler visits, they arrive shortly thereafter, be it a few centuries or long millennia. By then the Traveler has long departed, leaving some to speculate that it may be their agent, while those that have witnessed the Fleet's hostility towards it have argued the opposite. No clear consensus has ever been reached, nor are their goals as clear-cut as one of their servant species, the Hive.

History

The Ancient Past

Millions of years ago the Black Fleet had waged war against an advanced civilization known as the Hierarchy of Hierarchies and an AI God of the fourth singularity. This war lasted for many centuries, the archailect using Displacement cannons to fire implosion bubbles to great effect against invading Hive forces and was capable of destroying minor pyramids. It was all for naught as the pyramidic fleet discovered the clarketech device left behind by the Traveler and used it to detonate the system's star, and the archailect succumbed to a Vex mind-eater virus.

At least one major pyramid unit was left behind, heavily damaged, in orbit of Titania for inscrutable purposes.

The Second Collapse

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Organization

Pyramid

The main composition of the Fleet are its monolithic Pyramids. They are uniform in shape yet widely vary by size—the largest measures over fifteen thousand kilometers evenly spread; the smallest nearly a thousand meters.

Being regular tetrahedrons, in which all four faces are equilateral triangles, they contain no distinguishing features apart from banks of exotic weaponry running the length of their edges and converging at each point, and their armor plating. This plating is made out of a black substance that absorbs light and suppresses electromagnetic radiation, earning their name well, and seemingly ripples and flows like water to the naked eye. Any apparent injury will leave a minor scarring of orange-red glowing material that quickly recovers to its original smoothness. Light-blessed beings report a chilling sensation upon touch.

The pyramids possess a form of shielding that "freezes" oncoming projectiles by shifting them onto an alternate plane of reality into eternal stasis, and is always active. Their weapons defy analysis, capable of wiping entire enemy fleets with but a single pulse of enigmatic energy. There is no apparent visible means of propulsion or power generation as no reactor core was ever discovered upon a pyramid prior to their invasion.

Though no clear fleet-based roles have been observed, from catastrophic engagements with them the following hierarchy has been tentatively reconstructed.

• Ordinary Pyramid—the most common, numbering over ten thousand ships, and the smallest, measuring nearly a thousand meters.
• "Light-class" Pyramid—the next most common, numbering almost a thousand ships, two kilometers. They possess fewer "weapons" but seem to bear the most pyramidic scales yet far.
• "Heavy-class" Pyramid—the third most common, numbering around five hundred, anywhere between five to a hundred kilometers, and act as escorts.
• Large Pyramid—the second least common, numbering at fifty, these behemoths are fifteen thousand kilometers in size, yet almost seemingly massless.
• "Jupiter-class" Pyramid—the least common, numbering just twelve. These solitary, gargantuan vessels measure at 70,000 kilometers with an approximate mass of Jupiter, are constructed in situ out of the solar system's own mass, and are the source of the enshrouding of Sol.

Scale

Each pyramid contains a fleet of "scales", hexagonal prisms with daggerlike points orbiting about them. These dagger points are apparently semi-autonomous and will react as either a unit or individually, by either physically swarming the target or attacking from afar. The "scales" are known to the Hierarchy as autowars, and range from a few dozen to a hundred meters. They are made from the same substance as their larger brethren and are equipped with similar weapons.

Though no clear fleet-based roles have been observed, from catastrophic engagements with them the following hierarchy has been tentatively reconstructed.

• Ordinary Scale—measuring ten meters evenly, they seem to favor swarm tactics.
• Medium Scale—measuring between ten to twenty-five meters, they seem to favor support roles.
• Heavy Scale—measuring between fifteen and thirty meters, they seem to favor "bubble" tactics, that is englobe a select enemy and drown them in weaponsfire.
• Autowar Scale—measuring one hundred meters, named such by the Hierarchy of Hierarchies, they construct new Scales in situ and send them into battle, and are just as deadly as their smaller counterparts.

Hierarchy

Classes		TBA (TBA)	Nightmare	Human	Awoken	Eliksni	Cabal	Psion	Hive	Vex
Positions
Angel	Baseline soldier of the Black Fleet, armed with Shadow Launchers and utilize Barrier Shields.		Angelic Nightmare			Angelic Dreg		Angelic Psion	Angelic Thrall
Archangel	Frontline infantry, comes in light and heavy variants; light variant carries Shadow Launchers and Barrier Shields, heavy variant carries Pitch Javelins and Shade Bulwarks.		Archangelic Nightmare				Archangelic Centurion		Archangelic Knight
Ruler	Morale booster unit, extremely aggressive, armed with Darkness Scepter and uses Darkness Blasts.		Ruling Nightmare				Ruling Phalanx			Ruling Hydra
Power	Long-range rearguard support unit, armed with Chaos Rifles and Fusion Knives.		Empowered Nightmare			Empowered Wraith				Empowered Minotaur
Stronghold	Large defensive unit that flank and provide heavy support, armed with omnidirectional Shade Bulwarks and Soulrenders.		Fortified Nightmare						Fortified Wizard	Fortified Harpy
Lordship	Support unit, actively heals others, armed with Shade Incantation and Tenebrous Shield.		Lord Nightmare			Lord Servitor				Lord Wyvern
Throne	Mobile siege cannon. Shielded by Stasis, a Darkness-based subclass.		Enthroned Nightmare				Enthroned Legionary			Enthroned Goblin
Cherub	Lesser command unit, provides various debuffs for enemies, has greater morale boosting range. Shielded by one of three Darkness-based subclasses; armed with twin High Swords.					Cherubic Screeb			Cherubic Acolyte
Seraph	Higher command unit, provides various buffs for allies; makes certain units invulnerable until killed. Shielded by one of three Darkness-based subclasses; armed with a High Sword and Tenebrous Shield.						Seraphic Colossus		Seraphic Ogre
Leadership
Incarna	Highest command unit, provides buffs and debuffs for allies and enemies; shielded by all three Darkness-based subclasses; armed with a Soulstealer Sword and Darkness Glyph.			Incarnated Guardian	Incarnated Techeun

Weapons of Darkness

Offensive

• Shade Launcher
• Pitch Javelin
• Chaos Rifle
• Fusion Knife
• Soulrender
• Shade Incantation
• High Sword
• Soulstealer Sword
• Darkness Glyph

Defensive

• Barrier Shield
• Shade Bulwark
• Tenebrous Shield
• Darkness Scepter

Enshroudment

The exact process of this procedure is not fully known, but its primary engine of operation is the complete opposite of how the Traveler does it. Once a J-Brain has been fully completed, a process that by itself can take from anywhere from a few months to years depending on the local concentration of available matter, it begins to "tunnel" a rift between the dimensional fabric of reality, similar to creating a wormhole.

After the wormhole nexus is generated, godtech then stabilizes the aperture and keeps the throat open. "Physical" Darkness begins to pour from the wormhole and emanate from the J-Brain in all directions in an ever-expanding sphere for roughly a thousand astronomical units in all directions. With this range a single J-Brain can cover the entire Sol system from its central star to the Kuiper belt in a matter of days. Multiple J-Brains extend the range by an exponential amount—usually between ten to twelve such megastructures can create a sphere of Darkness that's voluminous enough to touch the outer boundaries of Alpha Centauri.

During this process the J-Brains realign themselves into an equidistant orbit about fifty astronomical units from the central star. All available planetary material by then will have been consumed by their construction, and what's left is transformed into a system of moon-Brains which orbit their host J-Brain. Where the material for their construction comes from is uncertain, but all evidence points to the wormholes. The moon-Brains seem to act as amplifiers, keeping the field of Darkness constant and stable.

What happens to the system's host star as unclear. Its light no longer shines, permanently snuffed out, but the physical body of the star still exists. Survivors posit that enshrouding is an elaborate godtech version of a Matrioshka hypernode, except instead of completely disassembling the stellar object it is instead compressed into the functional equivalent of a black hole. No supernovas have ever been detected from an enshrouded system. The theories for such enigmatic construction out of a thriving civilization are many and varied, but the most chilling notion of them all is that the Black Fleet establishes an enduring base of operations that would outlive the heat death of the universe, and continue their reign of terror upon a new unsuspecting universe.

Any attempt to penetrate an enshrouded system ends in failure, the prospecting spacecraft "shifted" onto another plane of reality. creatures and beings sensitive to the flow of time report unusual congregations of various timelines fracturing and diverging from the system. Speculation running rampant posits the Black Fleet continues their conquest upon all iterations and possible existences of a targeted system, completely ensuring that only their version is what remains. That this is not unlike the Vex's goal of Convergence is not a comforting thought. Once a system's enshrouded, all of the Black Fleet's armies seemingly disappear, or at the very least do not reemerge to terrorize any survivors.

Curiously enough, some systems and civilizations are "spared" the enshrouding completely, as what happened to the Taishibethi system and the Hierarchy of Hierarchies, instead suffering only the detonation of their star and the unmaking of their whole world. No one has offered a satisfactory answer, and it may well be an utter mystery.

List of appearances

Destiny 2: Beyond Light The Witch Queen Lightfall