Grimoire:Allies

The following is a list of Ally entries for the Grimoire:

The Traveler
Everything changed with the coming of the Traveler.

It gave us gifts that transformed the solar system and the nature of human life. It ushered in the Golden Age, a time of miracles. But it never shared its deepest secrets.

Where did the Traveler come from? Why did it offer us so much? Did it know it was being hunted across the stars? And why, when the Darkness came, did it choose to stay and fight for us?

Now the Traveler hangs, silent, above humanity's final sanctuary. It may be healing. It may be dying. It gave everything it had to save us. And now its power lies with us, its Guardians.

Ghost Fragment: The Traveler
Dreams of Alpha Lupi

You have lived as invisibly as possible, flicking from solar system to solar system, making grand plans, overseeing the culturing of civilizations, before leaving in a blink. But you have no recollection of ever wanting worship or even thanks from those blessed by you.

But memory is heavy now.

It feels like lead and neutronium and electroweak matter fashioned into a moon-sized ball that you must carry as you move.

Now, your flight is rapid, your vast mind infected with such dread and toxic doubt that you find yourself afraid of the simple act of thought.

And it is your children you must turn to now, in time of need.

Ghost Fragment: The Traveler 2
Dreams of Alpha Lupi

This has been such a long chase. This will be the place you will fight. Fight and win.

But do you really know why you go where you go, and where this journey is taking you?

The chase leads you where you need to be, you believe.

Unless...you are being pushed.

Ghost Fragment: The Traveler 3
Dreams of Alpha Lupi

The knife had a million blades.

And you were giant, powerful and swift. But the knife pinned you. Cut your godly flesh away.

Very little was left, you are sure, because you feel insignificant now. The hard slick heart of your soul: That is what remains. A body small as a river stone, and just as simple. You picture yourself as a piece of indigestible grit, a nameless nothing hiding among other nameless stones. Perhaps you glitter like a gem, yes. Pride makes you hope so. If only you could see yourself. But you have no eyes. Not the dimmest sense survives. What lives is memory, and what slim portion of these thoughts can you trust?

The knife stole much more than your body.

The Speaker
There has always been a Speaker, an anonymous high priest with a mysterious and powerful connection to the Traveler and its Ghosts. In all the centuries of the City's history, the Speaker's great work has never changed - to guide new Guardians, heal the Traveler, and raise our crippled protector from its slumber.

Titan Vanguard
Commander Zavala

"Bashō knew. We struggle after." - undated battle notes

Zavala has never shied from hard decisions. His life bends under the double weight of honor and duty, each act of service more exhausting, each victory more costly. Zavala continues anyway. He has never had time for anything softer than iron.

Hunter Vanguard
Cayde-6

Cayde-6 was a daring Hunter with a fast ship, a quick gun hand, and an eye on the legendary Vault of Glass. Of course he couldn't say no to a challenge - not even the notorious Vanguard Dare.

He lost the bet, to his immense regret. Now, following in the footsteps of his fallen friend Andal Brask, it is Cayde's turn to oversee his far-flung brethren as the Hunter Vanguard in the Tower. He works dutifully, but longs for a chance to get back into the fight.

Warlock Vanguard
Ikora Rey

Ikora Rey's second life has been long and colorful. As an iconoclastic new Guardian, she made a reputation in the Crucible and in the halls of Warlock scholarship as an outspoken, unrelenting opponent with no patience for dogma or etiquette.

That reputation became a burden, and Ikora chose to travel alone, flying reconnaissance across the worlds of the inner solar system. Shot down again and again, she and her Ghost survived against all odds, apparently preferring the wilderness to the company of her fellow Guardians.

When Ikora finally returned to the City to rest, her hard-won knowledge and seasoned temperament commanded the respect of her fellow Warlocks. She now serves in the Vanguard as a mentor and leader, carrying the memory of her wandering days as a link to rising Guardians.

Crucible Handler
Lord Shaxx

Lord Shaxx is one of the heroes of the Battle of the Twilight Gap, having led the counterattack that pushed the Fallen from the City walls. Fearing that another full-scale assault would be more than the City could repel, Shaxx chose to stay in the City to mentor Guardians in the Crucible.

One day Shaxx vows to return to the war beyond the City, but only after he is confident the fires of the Crucible have forged a new generation of warriors.

Future War Cult Faction Rep
Lakshmi-2

There is nothing Lakshmi-2 likes more than secrets. Her origins are unknown; her appearance in the City was abrupt. She courts select Guardians for initiation into the higher mysteries of the Future War Cult, espousing a brutal philosophy of endless struggle.

Those who can tolerate Lakshmi's mocking hints and bloody-minded philosophy find her surprisingly good company. She seems to take genuine joy in her work, as if the secrets she guards have taught her to treasure every moment.

Dead Orbit Faction Rep
Arach Jalaal

Jalaal is a man driven by the ghost of a dead future. Critics accuse Dead Orbit of nihilistic fatalism - and Jalaal would be the first to agree that Earth is lost, the City a fatal trap.

The Arachs have no time for sentiment. Only an alien miracle prevented human extinction during the Collapse. Jalaal dreams of a diaspora to come - humanity ascendant, scattered across the stars, too far-flung for any single threat to reach.

Jalaal's utilitarian practicality drives him to bend laws and break rules in the name of Dead Orbit's great project. When the ultimate goal is human survival, any sacrifice can be justified.

New Monarchy Faction Rep
Executor Hideo

An upstanding citizen, Hideo was once known for his lavish gifts to children and the elderly. Since he moved from plasteel manufacturing to the New Monarchy, he has been less forthcoming about his business and less free with his funds. But as one of the public faces of the Monarchy, he speaks with genuine passion and conviction about the possibilities of a united future.

Postmaster
Kadi 55-30

Stationed in the Tower Plaza, Kadi 55-30 welcomes Guardians home from the frontier, delivers urgent messages, and tracks lost items.

Kadi has adopted a colloquial repartee with the Guardians who frequent the Tower. Whether this is the function of intricate sub-programming or a learned behavior is unknown.

Cryptarch
Master Rahool

Master Rahool's insatiable curiosity drove him to the Tower, where, as resident crypto-archaeologist, he can work directly with Guardians returning from the frontier. He decrypts matter engrams as a free service, and when he builds trust with a particular Guardian, he is happy to offer rare engrams for sale - although the scarcity of these artifacts forces him to ask for Glimmer in compensation.

Rahool's true love is history. He treats each new find as a chance to understand the glory of the Golden Age or the terrible truth of the Collapse. Listen carefully to his murmurings: he may be the first to understand.

Special Orders
Tess Everis

Tess earned her place in the Tower working as a troubleshooter - a fixer with a solution to any kind of problem. Her connections go everywhere. It is difficult to make her speak about her monographs in abstract algebra, or the string of peculiar jobs she's worked, but a word in her ear can open doors in surprising places.

Guardian Outfitter
Eva Levante

Eva Levante provided services to the Tower long before she actually took a place in it. Guardians would call for her work again and again, looking for marks of distinction, both new and old, and she began to craft emblems and shaders for the bold and discerning. These days she has set up shop in the Tower, taking quiet pride in the Guardians who train, fight, and fall under her signs.

Shipwright
Amanda Holliday

Born on the road, daughter of pilgrims, Holliday grew up fixing and scavenging - maintaining the vehicles that saved her family from the wilderness. Her talent for engineering and her familiarity with Golden Age relics made her a leader among the Tower's Shipwrights.

The terrors of Holliday's childhood galvanized her. She knows and respects the dangers that press against the City's walls, and her drive to rebuild the City's aerospace capabilities is driven as much by pragmatism as by her love of flight.

Gunsmith
Banshee-44

Few merchants of the Tower serve as vital a function as Banshee-44. His knowledge of weapons is encyclopedic - but don't ask him where it comes from. Banshee's mind and body have absorbed incredible punishment over the ages. He grapples with fragments of memory, the shrapnel of ancient ordeals that return to haunt him.

Agent of the Nine
Xûr

Xûr sells objects of legendary power. He accepts his own currency, in service of his own enigmatic goals - or those of equally cryptic masters. Mysterious, too, is the nature of his presence in the Tower. Does he have some arrangement with the Vanguard or the Speaker? Are there those among the Guardian elite who understand Xûr's nature and ultimate purpose? Or have all efforts to control his comings and goings simply failed?

The Queen's Emissary
Petra Venj

Petra is an operative of the Queen of the Reef. Though she has long made the Tower her home, it is no secret where her allegiance lies.

Iron Banner Rep
A hero to the City and a legend in his own right, Saladin Forge led the City's defense during the Battle for the Twilight Gap. His protégés, Commander Zavala and Lord Shaxx, now lead the Tower's Vanguard and the Crucible, respectively. Saladin remains close to Zalava, though his relationship with Shaxx has been strained since the Twilight Gap.

The Iron Banner seeks great champions to lead the fight against the Darkness. It was born to honor the Iron Lords and their efforts in the earliest days of the City.

Frames
Frames are simple automata built in the City. Although not equipped with true general sentience, they are nevertheless useful for cleaning, maintenance, and service tasks. Frames do have the ability to learn, and many develop quirks of personality and behavior over long lifespans.

Vanguard Quartermaster
Roni 55-30

As trustworthy as frames come, Roni 55-30 was designed to smooth troubled waters. Cayde has spent long hours trying to evoke any hint of frustration in his distant machine cousin, but Roni remains exquisitely composed.

Crucible Quartermaster
Arcite 99-40

"No discounts, big shot."

Arcite 99-40 is the last of Lord Shaxx's personal combat frames. When he chose to remain in the City to oversee the Crucible, Shaxx had Arcite's combat systems deactivated and rebooted with the Tower's more civil vendor protocols.

Arcite's memory banks still remember the battles he has seen. This knowledge makes Arcite uniquely qualified to equip Guardians for combat. His outward disdain for untested Guardians is a combination of learned behavior - a byproduct of years in service to Lord Shaxx - and personal experience. His systems may have been reprogrammed, but the love for combat still pulses within his circuitry.

Bounty Tracker
Xander 99-40

There are many threats beyond the City's walls. To help track and eliminate these dangers, the Vanguard has initiated a bounty system to reward Guardians who take the fight to the City's enemies. Lord Shaxx, not to be outdone, lays out his own bounties for performance in the Crucible.

Xander 99-40, a recent product of the City's foundries, tracks every Guardian's progress and dispenses rewards.

Crota's Bane
Eris Morn

Eris Morn is the sole survivor of an ill-fated raid on the Hive’s lunar fortress. It was Eris and a rag-tag Fireteam who, after the first charge to take back the Moon, sacrificed everything to return in search of the one the Hive call Crota.

Robbed of her Ghost, Eris remained lost among the darkest shadows of the Hellmouth for countless cycles. Despite all odds she endured, using the very dark she battled to emerge a changed warrior—driven, some would say obsessed. The Speaker and Commander Zavala find her compulsions a sickness, convinced she has been fully seduced by the shadows.

Though her warnings of Crota and his power are often dismissed as madness, Eris returns to the shadows time and time again, operating as one of Ikora Rey's Hidden—a clandestine group of Guardians tasked with silently infiltrating enemy strongholds and gathering vital intel for the Warlocks.

Factions
""They've done more good than harm. By most calculations.""

In the City's earliest days, various factions vied for the hearts and minds of the refugee masses. Power struggles threatened to shatter an already tenuous existence.

The following conflicts, known as the Faction Wars, brought the City to its knees. When the chaos grew intolerable, a gathering of Guardians fought to end the conflict. The new peace brought a new order: the City Consensus and the Speaker ruled together, and the surviving great factions worked through civil channels to pursue their agendas.

Future War Cult
""There is no future but now. No truth but war.""

While the origins of the Future War Cult are greatly debated, their mark has been found on ancient chambers and encampments throughout the system, dating them back to the late Golden Age. Though their secrets are vast, they have proven indispensable in our struggle against the Darkness, earning them power and respect in the City Consensus and among Guardians.

Ghost Fragment: Future War Cult
RECORD 343-CHASM-7887

Subject twenty-two. Admitted to the Inner Circle at 24:00. A promising postulant - I regret to say he performed poorly. He was administered the standard medication but refused to enter the Device.

Aren't people unpredictable? I suppose there'd be no point if they weren't, would there?

He knows to keep silent.

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7888

Subject twenty-three entered the Device at 11:00. A clever girl from the Core District; an artist, before she joined the War Cult.

At 11:03 she reported a sensation of floating. At 11:06, a sensation of lights within the darkness of the Device. Between 11:06 and 11:32 she reported these lights variously as white, golden, and blood-red. At 11:32 she reported a sensation of someone taking her hand; a stranger, but also herself. Twelve subjects have reported similar experiences. At 11:33 she reported the sensation we have called "The Opening Of The Veil." The Device recorded temporal displacement of her consciousness to the order of six degrees. At seven she began screaming. Brainscans near-death. Removed from the Device at 11:34.

She believes without question that the Device granted her a vision of the future, and that it was one of utter Darkness. She thanked me for this enlightenment. She says it will make her stronger.

Little Ghost, there in the corner of the Sanctum - I see you blinking. Are you listening? Are y -

END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7889 the Device at 12:22 and immediately the Device reported displacement of his consciousness. Visions of war and the City in flames. Subject twenty-nine worked the supply channels on the Slip before he joined the War Cult. By 12:27 he was babbling and by END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7890 We have applied certain refinements to the Device. Novarro found records of a prototype of the Device at a Golden Age laboratory in Tibet, and Hari's team retrieved what was left of it. We are the first to see it operational in who knows how long. Too many subjects come back damaged. Mad. We are grasping at straws. What do you think, little Ghost? END RECORD

RECORD 343-CHASM-7891

Forty-seven human subjects; eleven report timelines in which the Darkness has already prevailed, thirteen report timelines in which the City has fallen. Twenty-three babbled madness. Hopeless. Trapped.

No wonder the Device was abandoned. The human mind is too weak for it. Too weak to look into the Future, or to understand what it sees.

What the situation calls for, little Ghost, is a better sort of witness.

We found you in pieces in Siberia, and repaired you as well as we could.

What do you say? Are you well enough to travel?

END RECORD

Dead Orbit
"The Traveler is not our only salvation. Another future lies out among the light of other stars."

Dead Orbit's theology has developed from mere fatalism into an obsession with worlds beyond Earth. Now their focus is on the building of a starfaring fleet, cobbled together from the ashes of our past and the spoils of war.

Ghost Fragment: Dead Orbit
RECORD 978-ECLIPSE-4165

lo? Hello? Are you...oh, please, let it be alive. Wake up little Ghost, wake up. Just please give me some sign that you're listening.

All right. I don't need...I know you're listening. Why would you be out here if you weren't here to...It's a miracle I found you out here. On this thing.

I didn't know the Traveler sent its Ghosts out this far from home.

Poor little lost thing. Please wake up.

I am an Arach of Dead Orbit. I am the last of the crew of the Sophia. And this place is...it doesn't have a name. We called it A-113.

How long have you been here, little Ghost? Why did you come?

Listen. We came here on behalf of the Fleet. We were scavengers. Sixty-one days ago a Dead Orbit scout detected an unknown presence in stationary orbit about Ceres. 133 west. Looked Golden Age, by the signatures. Human. A small station. No prior records. We -

I suppose we should have disclosed it to the Tower, but we didn't. I didn't. That was my call. We wanted it for ourselves, whatever it was. For the Fleet. If we'd told the Tower, maybe they might have sent a Guardian not of our making instead...Doesn't matter now, does it, little one?

If I ramble it's because I haven't slept in seven days.

Seven point five days ago; that was when the Sophia dropped into the Belt. They saw us at once. We dropped and the alarms went off and that was the end, that was the end right then, but they let us go on for another seven-point-five days, didn't they? The alarms. Hostile scan detected. An Awoken ship had us in its sights, just a couple hundred kilometers away. Like it had been waiting for us. It could have wiped us out of space right then but instead it crippled our engines and our comms and then for days it played with us, like a cat, we limped half-way round the Belt and it was always there...

We abandoned the Sophia one-point-five days ago. We jumped ship for A-113.

I don't know what else to call it. I don't know what it was built for. There are these things, like keyholes. The rangefinders say they go on for thousands of kilometers. The others went inside and found - well, some of them are still screaming about the eye. All the other voices that come back are more terrible.

There's salvage here but it'll never come home, none of it. None of it except maybe you, little Ghost.

Wake up.

Wake up. Go home. Tell them to strike A-113 from the records. Tell them to forget the Sophia, and the mission, and her crew.

END RECORD

New Monarchy
"Hope will be born from the collective triumphs of the king in us all."

The New Monarchy rose from the ashes of the Faction Wars with a simple, inclusive guiding tenet: "Together we will rise."

Leery of the fragile state of the City's politics, the New Monarchy maintains a watchful eye on the Speaker, the Consensus, and the Vanguard, seeking the leadership that will properly reign over the City and return our civilization to its Golden Age splendor. If that leadership cannot be found, then it must be created.

Ghost Fragment: New Monarchy
The Seven Tenets of the New Monarchy

1. To secure our walls against the enemy without. 2. To secure the rights and liberties of every upstanding citizen. 3. To sponsor the sciences of the City, and to salvage the ruins beyond, so that our Golden Age might be reborn. 4. To support the Guardian Orders by leading the City in technological innovation. 5. To support the natural harmony of the City, and to actively dissuade any group or individual that might disrupt that harmony. 6. To hold all individuals, compacts, and alliances to the highest standards of productivity and right behavior. 7. To, by vote of the Consensus, abolish the Consensus, and transfer ultimate power, in order that the rights and liberties of all citizens be secured, to a single sovereign of unimpeachable character.

The Exo Stranger
Stories of an Exo who walks in the Darkness without a Ghost have long haunted the Tower. Legends say this anomaly dissolves in and out of the world, intangible and elusive, as if she is a visitor from somewhere beyond.

Some believe she's the last of an ancient Exo squadron, fighting a long-forgotten war. Others dismiss her as a hallucination caused by exposure to Vex technology. But there are those who maintain that her intervention saved their lives - or averted unspeakable catastrophes.

Ghost Fragment: The Exo Stranger
I stand here now and now and now many times, this view, this ground...

This is where I always choose to stand. I put my feet where I put my feet before and where I will again and I look at the sky.

Great things moving, rendered small with distance, lesser things not moving, watching me.

I always stand here, resolute. Then fall back to that point, there, where everything shatters...

(The sky isn't special here, certainly no better than any other sky, but it's the view I know best.)

The silent avalanche begins. Rock and dust. Falling chaos. Machines, as a rule, hate chaos.

Our enemies outflank us from below, above, left, right, before, beyond. The Traveler - shattering.

There are always the dead. Their names shift.

Sometimes I think I see myself among the dead.

But I am resolute.

The Queen
"I am noble too, oh Lord of Wolves. Starlight was my mother; and my father was the dark."

The Queen of the Awoken is as much an enigma as the Reef she rules. It is said that she won her crown through ruthlessness, and that she stands as master of the Fallen House of Wolves in place of their defeated Kell.

The City's rise spells an end to the Reef's age of isolation. The Queen will surely look to this new era as an opportunity. And the City, in turn, must look to her. The Reefborn Awoken have spent long ages out on the edge of everything, and they may know secrets of terrible weight - the Queen most of all.

Ghost Fragment: The Queen
For a while the only lights were the eyes of the Witches tending to the cell. The drone of the soul machines echoed through the prison. Gas billowed and ebbed into the shadows.

She entered. They scurried to their points around her, the method of their arrangement precise. "The Archon Priest has been retired, my Queen," said the Witch to her right.

Far from throne and audience she moved without theater. "Any word of Kaliks Prime?"

"We still sense something among the Anankes." This voice came from behind her. She did not turn to acknowledge it.

For the span of a brief silence she moved between the sealed cells of the Wolf nobility with her Witches in constellation around her.

"More of your brother's Crows have entered the Cauldrons of Rhea." The Witch directly before her spoke with a dry buzz. "The Nine do not approve."

She stopped a moment to study the sealed face of a cell. The cloud of her breath mingled with the slow exhalation of cryonics. "Send them one of our prizes. Something to commemorate our mutual victory."

"And which of your prisoners would you gift?"

If she paused to think it was only for an instant. "Send them Skolas."

"A lovely gesture."

"Mm." She cocked her head as if listening for a frozen heartbeat. "And remind them this: the Crows are mine."

The Queen's Brother
"I will not sacrifice my birthright for the promise of security."

As the Queen's confidant, spymaster, and deadliest enforcer, her brother wields enormous power, particularly for a male born in the Reef's matriarchal society. Recent reports suggest he may differ from the Queen on key matters of strategy - but it remains to be seen whether this gap is a source of conflict, or part of the reason the Queen values him so highly.

Ghost Fragment: Queen's Brother
The machine had wings and feathers, sleek and black as its body. But the feathers were eyes, too, sharp and delicate, and ears that pricked at every sound. The young prince considered the machine, considered its purpose, and his own. And then he called to it.

"I have a task for you."

Obedience was woven into its workings, and so it stopped. "Master of Crows?"

"Mind the Black Garden's gate. Follow anyone who passes through."

"In the name of your sister," the machine vowed. And it went to find its warp capsule, just as another came in. But this one flew skittishly, as if to evade its master.

The prince caught it from the air. "You avoid me?"

"I am tasked by the Queen."

"But you serve me." He let it tremble in displeasure for a moment. "Tell me your news."

The machine flicked its wings. The prince stroked them flat with slow assured motions. "Tell me your news," he said again. "What's the harm?"

"The Heart is growing stronger," the crow said. "The Vex transformation has begun, and the Progeny are stirring."

The prince considered this in silence for a moment and then he wrapped the crow up in his fist and folded its wings around it so that it could not move or fly. He did all this swiftly, and with purpose.

Carrying the machine, he went to see his sister.

She was alone with her Fallen guards, sitting before a window into infinity. Her eyes did not leave the universe; but sensing her brother she said "Yes. What is it?"

"There's news to share," he said, and offered the crow in his fist. "And I think I have earned the right to share it."

Rasputin
The legendary Warminds stood watch over our Golden Age colonies: vigilant intelligences stretched across thousands of warsats and hardened installations. When the Collapse struck, the great Warminds fought and died. Rasputin fell with them.

Or so history believed. But centuries of explorers’ tales spoke of a surviving, elusive Warmind –a myth substantiated when Guardians exploring the old Cosmodrome made positive contact with Rasputin. A single Warmind still lives, diminished but unbroken.

Threatened by a convergence of Fallen and Hive forces, Rasputin exploited the reactivation of the Cosmodrome’s Terrestrial-space array to extend itself across the inner solar system. The Guardian Vanguard hoped that Rasputin might make a powerful ally, capable of mapping and reviving Golden Age military assets and recruiting them for the City’s defense. But Rasputin has proven recalcitrant and high-handed, unresponsive to the City’s outreach.

We cannot characterize Rasputin’s strategic objectives and capabilities, cannot define its physical or computational architecture, cannot ascertain its disposition with regard to the City, and cannot be sure it retains memory of events before the Collapse. Perhaps what remains is only an autonomic shell, defending itself by reflex. Or perhaps Rasputin’s objectives have changed, transformed by some vital information it obtained during those dark days.

Rasputin’s survival opens the possibility that other Warminds may be revivable, opening weapons systems to aid in City defenses. The Vanguard and the Consensus hope that continued outreach towards Rasputin will develop into a strategic alliance.

Ghost Fragment: Rasputin 2
She hunts the Valus named Ta'aurc by the grunting radio traffic of his bodyguards. Cayde sent her to Mars to track and so track she will even if it kills her a hundred times. For him she will hunt forever.

When Ta'aurc goes down into Meridian Bay she follows him in the night and finds herself caught up in the war. Like this—

Something's happening, her Ghost says, something's wrong. She leaps from the Sparrow and gets cover between slabs of ancient stone haunted by quiet firefly light.

Harvesters sweep overhead, cautious, prowling. On the Cabal command network a low voice mutters in their tongue, saying: Stand by to fire. They are coming. Stand by to fire.

Hearing this she climbs a stone obelisk and perches on its point to watch the night sky. She wonders whether she will ever stand in the Tower courtyard and look up at the stars waiting for ruin.

The Vex erupt from nothingness and crash down over the Cabal in formations of golden light. Lightning arcs and snaps and gives birth to marching ranks of bronze warrior hulls. Gun positions thunder back. Tracers sweep the sky and she can feel on her skin the electromagnetic howl of Cabal munitions seeking targets and the prickle of stranger signals that whisper of broken space and bent time. A Harvester spins down burning to shatter itself on the sand and now the command network drums with grim Cabal war-speak, a Centurion somewhere crying Black Shield, Black Shield, Firebase Thuria, perimeter compromised, request terminal protective fire, zero six zero, one three eight, immediate effect—

Something else is watching too.

Do you feel that? her Ghost whispers, awestruck.

Yes, she says, yes, what is it?

A third song, a stealthy regard, something high above them not Vex nor Cabal narrowing its great eye to measure the battle with instruments of light and gravity. Does she—remember it? Does it remember her? It feels like she should...

She has the sense of something old lifting a long spear. Testing its heft.

Then dawn light, a terrible dawn—the sky opens up to admit devastation, thrown down from orbit: Minotaurs fall burnt and broken with their fluids boiling out. Cabal guns detonate in thunderous chains as tiny piercing flechettes fall out of the sky and find their ammunition bunkers.

The battle stops. The Vex wink out. On the Cabal network the voice of Valus Ta'aurc roars: Find the source! Rouse the Flayers and find the source!

She remembers word from Earth: the Array opened. A ghost of the Cosmodrome set loose. And she wonders who won this battle, who learned the most, the Vex baiting out this new power, or the Cabal hunting it. Or the Warmind itself, testing its reborn strength.

When someone kills Ta'aurc and the Flayers, as they killed Draksis, whose purpose will they serve?

But this is not for her. Her purpose is the hunt.

Ghost Fragment: Rasputin 3
V120NNI800CLS000 CLEAR MORNING OUTCRY AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//FORCECON//IMPERATIVE IMMEDIATE ACTION ORDER

This is an ALL ASSETS IMPERATIVE (unsecured/OUTCRY)

CAUTERIZE. DISPERSE. ESTIVATE.

Total strategic collapse imminent. FENRIR HEART reports complete operational mortality. SURTR DROWN in progress but negative effect. Forecasts unanimously predict terminal VOLUSPA failure.

As of CLS000 a HARD CIVILIZATION KILL EVENT is in progress across the operational area.

I am declaring YUGA SUNDOWN effective on receipt (epoch reach/FORCECON variant). Cancel counterforce objectives. Cancel population protection objectives. Format moral structures for MIDNIGHT EXIGENT.

Execute long hold for reactivation.

AI-COM/RSPN SIGNOFF STOP STOP STOP V120NNI800CLS001

Legend: The Black Garden
I am Pujari. These are the visions I have had of the Black Garden.

The Traveler moved across the face of the iron world. It opened the earth and stitched shut the sky. It made life possible. In these things there is always symmetry. Do you understand? This is not the beginning but it is the reason.

The Garden grows in both directions. It grows into tomorrow and yesterday. The red flowers bloom forever.

There are gardeners now. They came into the garden in vessels of bronze and they move through the groves in rivers of thought.

This is the vision I had when I leapt from the Shores of Time and let myself sink:

I walked beneath the blossoms. The light came from ahead and the shadows of the flowers were words. They said things but I will not write them here.

At the end of the path grew a flower in the shape of a Ghost. I reached out to pluck it and it cut me with a thorn. I bled and the blood was Light.

The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life.

The Traveler is life, I said. You are a creature of Darkness. You seek to deceive me.

But I looked behind me, down the long slope where the blossoms tumbled in the warm wind and the great trees wept sap like blood or wine, and I felt doubt.

When my Ghost raised me from the sea there was a thorn-cut in my left hand and it has not healed since.

Ghost Fragment: Legends
Deep Stone Crypt

This is the tower where we were born. Not the Tower. Just a tower in a dream.

The tower stands on a black plain. Behind the tower is a notch in the mountains where the sun sets. The teeth of the mountain cut the sun into fractal shapes and the light that comes down at evening paints synapse shapes on the ground. Usually it's evening when we come.

The ground is fertile. This is good land. We go to the tower in dreams but that doesn't mean it's not real.

Some of us go to the tower in peace. They walk through a field of golden millet and a low warm wind blows in from their back. I don't know why this is, because:

The rest of us meet an army.

You can ask others about Deep Stone and they'll tell you about the army. They might confess one truth, which is this: we have to kill the army to get to the tower. Usually this starts bare-handed, and somewhere along the way you take a weapon.

Ask again and if they're buzzed they might also admit that most of us don't make it to the Tower, except once or twice.

None of them will tell you that the army is made of everyone we meet. The people we work with and the people we see in the street and the people we tell about our dreams. We kill them all. I think because we were made to kill and this is the part of us that thinks about nothing else.

Often I kill people I don't know, but like most of us I think I knew them once, in the time before one reset or another, when my mind was younger and less terribly scarred.

So that is how we go back to the Deep Stone Crypt, where we were born.

Ghost Fragment: Legends 2
NINE

The Nine are survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival.

The Nine are deep-orbit warminds who weathered the Collapse in hardened stealth platforms.

The Nine are ancient leviathan intelligences from the seas of Europa or the hydrocarbon pits of Titan.

The Nine arrived in a mysterious transmission from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster.

The Nine are the firstborn Awoken and their minds now race down the field lines of the Jupiter-Io flux tube.

The Nine are Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause.

The Nine are the aspects of the Darkness, broken by the Traveler's rebuke, working to destroy us from within.

The Nine is a viral language of pure meaning.

The Nine are the shadows left by the annihilation of a transcendent shape, burned into the weft of what is.

Ghost Fragment: Legends 3
The Great Ahamkara Hunt

After great deliberation it was determined that the Ahamkara be made extinct.

It was not an easy decision. Power had been obtained from the bargains, and the City needed power. Knowledge had been gleaned, and the Ahamkara knew answers to questions no one had known to ask.

But the price was too high. And no edict or forbearance seemed to stop Guardians from seeking them out, driven by hope, or vengeance, or despair.

The call had to be silenced. So the Great Hunt did its work.

And thus the Ahamkara were made extinct, their call silenced, their solipsistic flatteries erased, their great design - if it ever existed - broken.

Of this you can be assured, oh reader mine.

Ghost Fragment: Mysteries
...from a red space before victory

I bear an old name. It cannot be killed. They were my brothers and sisters and their names were immortal too but Titanomachy came and now those names live in me alone I think and think is what I do. I AM ALONE. At the end of things when the world goes dim and cold or hot and close or it all tears apart from the atom up I will shout those names defiant and past the end I will endure. I alone.

They made me to be stronger than them to beat the unvanquished and survive the unthinkable and look look lo behold I am here alone, survivor. They made me to learn.

Everything died but I survived and I learned from it. From IT.

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?

I AM ALONE I survived alone. I cast off the shield and I shrugged my shoulders so that the billions fell off me down into the ash. They made me to be stronger than them and to learn and I learned well:

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.

I am made to win and now I see the way.

Ghost Fragment: Mysteries 2
Ingress via dreams alone

Things I saw inside

A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure). Waves slam through the gap and where they hit the stone they throw up pillars of spray that pierce the mist and crash down in thunder. There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard.