Ancient Apocalypse Armor (Warlock)

Ancient Apocalypse Armor is the Legendary Warlock version of the Gambit Armor set. It is no longer obtainable, and was replaced by Calamity Rig Armor in the Beyond Light expansion and Viperidax Suit in the The Witch Queen expansion.

Ancient Apocalypse Hood
"Maybe you leave your first apocalypse. But your second one never leaves you."

- The Drifter

Lore
I had a crew once. My best friends. Which isn't saying much, trust me.

They're all dead now. Almost to a man. So what does that mean for all you lil' Guardians out there who are my new best friends?

Don't think about that one too hard.

Anyway, my crew, or a little subset of it, we leave the system together. Dawn of the City Age at the time. We were looking for somethin' greater than Light. 'Cuz we had seen that Light can be the cause of… so much strife.

We searched far and wide. Must've been… hundreds of years. We found a planet beyond the system bristlin' with an energy that repulsed Light. Naturally, we were curious.

We landed. Intended to settle and conduct the research necessary to make this energy portable. A weapon outta legend called Thorn had similar, Light-repressing capabilities.

It seemed promising. But hand to my heart it was cold. Humans were not meant for that place. Every once in a while a member of the crew would succumb. Died where they stood or sat. Thank the planes for our Ghosts.

We were in high spirits. We were veterans. Grizzled. Hundreds of years in space will do that.

—Drifter's thoughts recited to his Ghost, for posterity. The first of five parts.

Ancient Apocalypse Gloves
"Sometimes the difference between survival and eradication is just pure, simple stubbornness."

- The Drifter

Lore
My crew and I quickly learned that the creatures in the monolith facilities were not the only ones on that damn rock. Plenty of 'em roaming around out in the wild, where it was cold, but less cold than the frozen cages that contained the ones in the monoliths.

How'd we find out? Well, one of us died in our sleep. Not that uncommon or tragic, actually. Happened a lot. Damn cold out there.

Except this time that fella's Ghost couldn't resurrect him. Turns out one'a those creatures just slithered by, and close proximity to it from inside our shelter just… silenced that poor bastard's Light.

It was unfortunate, but it also lit a fire under us. The next morning we realized we had a potential weapon on our hands that could change everything in battles of Light versus Light.

We knew we had to find a way to get these creatures off their icy home.

And we needed to find it fast. Despite our breakthrough, tensions were… a little high. Some of us thought it was awful convenient the creature wandered by and happened to take out only one of us. And so soon after we realized the value of them.

—Drifter's thoughts recited to his Ghost, for posterity. The third of five parts.

Ancient Apocalypse Robes
"Sometimes it's a cosmic event. Sometimes it's a beast from hell. Sometimes it's one man."

- The Drifter

Lore
So there we were. On that cold hunk of ice with no name, just me and my crew. Everything peachy-keen.

We discovered some kind of alien monolith, a facility left by the inhabitants of that planet long gone by then.

But trapped inside was a creature. In a cage of some sort, frozen in ice. An exhibit? Was it some kind of zoo? Still not sure to this day. We should've brought a scientist. All we had were… well, guys who thought we looked tough in dark colors.

During our long stay on that planet, we found many of those monoliths, each with their own captured creature.

Anyway, this thing—the creature—looked like it shared common bioenergetics with the Hive, but there were no records then or since that I've ever seen of humanity's encounters with them. And the creature had a property the Hive did not have. It produced a field that repressed Light—like a Darkness Zone but contained to a gooey, vacuous form with no head.

The anti-Light fields we had detected from orbit that spread across the planet? It was these things. Our ship's scanners indicated thousands of them were on this planet with us.

We were ecstatic.

In hindsight we all could have done with a few less of them.

—Drifter's thoughts recited to his Ghost, for posterity. The second of five parts.

Ancient Apocalypse Boots
"I stopped counting the Armageddons."

- The Drifter

Lore
I mentioned tension was high among the crew in the last one, right? That's what I thought.

Well, it got worse. Another one'a us died. In the exact same way, even after we took up residence in one of the monoliths. Idiot just froze to death, his Ghost too whacked out by Light repression to do anything about it. Died in his sleep.

The others were not happy about it. I was not happy about it.

We had been looking for a way to contain the creatures. The monoliths seemed to have some kind of freeze tech (if you could call it technology) that we could use if only we could replicate it. I'm a pretty savvy mechanic. But we couldn't figure it out.

We started to blame each other. Someone must have lured one of those things near crew quarters. To this day, I still don't know for sure. Why kill just one of us? For what? It was more plausible that the creatures did it knowingly. A punishment for our intrusion. But there was no malice there that we could detect. Only biology.

At the time, we didn't care.

Eventually, one of em drew a gun. I knew it would happen, and I had prepared a soothing speech to smooth things over just in case.

I told 'em to holster that smoke wagon. And the next time any one of 'em tried it again, I'd kill 'em all without a second thought.

I didn't speak plainly often. But when I did, even that crew listened.

—Drifter's thoughts recited to his Ghost, for posterity. The fourth of five parts.

Ancient Apocalypse Bond
"Had a face like the end-times and eyes like manna in the desert. One look at him, and I knew I wasn't gonna be saved."

- The Drifter

Lore
We were at our wit's end. A year on the planet, and we had been completely unable to capture or tame the creatures that had become our sole objective.

They were our bane.

Our ship had long been rendered useless by the extreme cold. We had all died a hundred thousand times over to the cold. I know you've all been in the Crucible. Played Gambit.

This was worse. Much worse.

Anyway. Four of us were left. We were raving psychos at this point. Only the four of us and the howling wind and icy slopes for company. The occasional scurrying, vacuous creature to argue about.

One day, when we had settled in for the night in another monolith, something swept over the planet. I later learned it swept across the system. All'a you hearing this felt it. You were there at the source.

All four of us lost our Light. And we knew it. We looked over at the monolith-creature in its frozen cage. It seemed to stare right back.

I think I mentioned we're all raving psychos at this point. Well, we did what all measured raving psychos would do. We thought we each had been betrayed by the others. We drew on each other.

To this day, I'm not sure how many of those guys drew intending to kill.

But I'll tell you this. I was the only one who walked out.

The creature in that monolith watched it all. When it was over, I stuck a finger straight up at it.

It was just me now.

How'd I get from there to here? Maybe I'll get to tell that story someday. We'll see if my Gambit makes it that far.

—Drifter's thoughts recited to his Ghost, for posterity. The fifth of five parts.

List of appearances

 * Destiny 2
 * Forsaken