Darkness
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Deep Black |
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Paracausal force |
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- "Darkness is not inherently evil. Some among you already discovered this on Europa. In my travels, I have seen true evil. It is the worm gods that the Hive serve. It is the Black Fleet, waiting to strike. It is the Entity that commands them all: the Voice in the Darkness."
- — Mara Sov[1]
The Darkness[2], also known as the Deep, is a paracausal force associated with the Veil. It serves as one of two fundamental [3] forces of the universe and is the opposing counterpart to the Light.
Overview
Like the Light, the Darkness is a cosmic paracausal force that has existed since before the beginning of time. Similarly to the Light, it manifests in a variety of aspects, among them elemental powers such as Stasis and Strand.
For centuries following the Collapse, the Darkness was believed by scholars of the Last City to be an inherently evil force, with its usage inevitably corrupting the wielder. This is now known to be untrue: just as the Light can be used for constructive and benevolent purposes as well as destructive and self-serving ones, the act of wielding the Darkness has no moral valence on its own, and it can be used for good or ill. Ancient civilizations such as the Ecumene and the Qugu used the Darkness for peaceful purposes, such as communing with the memories of their ancestors.[4][5] In contrast, the being known as the Witness and its Disciples, who collectively led the armada known as the Black Fleet and exterminated countless civilizations uplifted by the Traveler, wielded the Darkness as a weapon against their enemies. Most of humanity's knowledge of the Darkness has come from the Collapse and subsequent conflicts with those aligned with the Witness and its cause, such as the Hive, Taken, Scorn and the Vex of the Sol Divisive, which has led to a prevalent but one-sided view of Darkness as a destructive force hostile to life and peaceful civilization.
The nature of the relationship between the Light and Darkness remains somewhat ambiguous. The Witness and its followers clearly believe the Darkness to be superior to the Light and oppose all who would use it, and the Darkness itself is presented in Unveiling as having opposed the Light since before the beginning of time. However, in Inspiral, a slightly more nuanced picture is given in the entry "Winnowing", where the Darkness is portrayed as playing a necessary and complementary role to that of the Light in helping to maintain the stability of life and civilization.[6] After having gained insights into the Darkness from his studies of Strand, Osiris states that the Light and Darkness are not truly antagonistic forces, but merely different.[citation needed]
History
Origins
- "Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.***
* It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun.
** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.
*** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence."[7]
According to the Lore Book "Unveiling," both the Light and the Darkness have existed since before the beginning of time, and thus before the universe came into existence. Being unbound by the laws of causality, neither the Light nor Darkness can be said to have a beginning. Rather, they are emergent properties of even more fundamental "mathematical structures" that in turn underlay reality itself.[7]
In the allegorical story recounted in the Lore Book, the Darkness and the Light are referred to as the "winnower" and "gardener" respectively. The winnower and gardener occupied themselves by engaging one another in a game, analogous to a vastly more complex version of the "Game of Life" devised by Earth mathematician John Conway. This game would consistently arrive at an end-state dominated by a single, self-perpetuating pattern, which subsumed all others in the game. The winnower found this to be a pleasing outcome, but the gardener felt the pattern to be boring and desired that the game endlessly produce novel patterns instead.[8][9] To promote this novelty, the gardener transformed itself into a new "rule" within the game; the winnower did the same, to counteract the gardener's efforts. These new rules were "set aside" from the other rules of the game, so that they could not be limited or influenced by them, but could manipulate the other rules to bring about their intended outcomes.[10]
While the story above is laden with metaphor and open to interpretation, it appears to suggest that the universe is the "game" that the Light and Darkness played in the garden, that the rules of the game are the laws of physics as they are commonly understood, and that the "new rules" that the Light and Darkness became are the basis of Paracausality. The narrator of the Lore Book identifies themself as the winnower, seemingly indicating that the Darkness, in addition to being a cosmic paracausal force, is sentient and driven by its own goals and motivations.
The Veil
The entity known as the Veil is a powerful source of Darkness and appears to act as a Darkness-affiliated counterpart to the Traveler, with which it is connected. Its origins are unknown, although it is known to have existed for billions of years, predating the Witness and the Black Fleet.[11]
The Witness
Billions of years ago, a nomadic humanoid species discovered the Traveler lying dormant and half-buried on their homeworld. The Traveler awakened and began to terraform the planet and grant paracausal gifts to the species, uplifting them into a golden age that lasted for millions of years. Despite their prosperity, however, the civilization became dissatisfied with the Traveler's silence and refusal to impart guidance or wisdom, and sought a greater purpose in which they could find meaning; in the words of Ahsa, they desired a "winnower" to shape the otherwise formless garden of their existence. In addition, they came to view the Light as a fundamentally chaotic and capricious force, equally capable of bringing life or death with no ultimate justification for either.[11]
In studying the Traveler, the civilization discovered that it was connected to another entity in a distant star system, which they named "the Veil". They determined that the Veil was the source of a power that was the opposite of the Light, one tied to the mind and consciousness rather than the physical universe: the Darkness. Furthermore, they determined that by bringing the Veil into close proximity with the Traveler, their powers could be used together to reshape reality as they saw fit, enabling them to convert the universe into a perfected, eternal form they called the "Final Shape".[11]
Seeking to achieve this outcome, the civilization traveled to the star system where the Veil was located and brought it back to their homeworld, where the Traveler had remained since its discovery. However, the Traveler responded by leaving the planet and fleeing into the far reaches of space. Unwilling to give up their quest, the civilization used the Darkness to bind their consciousnesses together into a singular, unfathomably powerful entity, which became known as the Witness. This being then left its homeworld with a fleet of pyramidal ships, seeking to find the Traveler and unite it with the Veil by force, and in so doing bring about the Final Shape.[11]
Rise of the Worm Gods
Billions of years ago, a species of aquatic, paracausally-empowered serpentine creatures lived on the planet Fundament, where they led a peaceful existence. However, at some point, they became seduced by the philosophy of the Witness and began to fight and kill each other to achieve ascendancy through the Sword Logic. As they fought, they called upon the Darkness and used it as a weapon, an act once considered unthinkable among their kind. Many of the creatures died in the planet-wide bloodbath that ensued, with at least one individual, Ahsa, managing to escape and leave Fundament entirely; others transformed, becoming the powerful Darkness-aligned entities known as the Worm Gods.[12]
Lubrae's Ruin
Billions of years ago, the Witness visited the planet Lubrae, where it met a young warrior named Rhulk who had become disillusioned with his family and clan following a series of perceived betrayals. The Witness granted Rhulk the use of the Darkness, which would later enable Rhulk to bring about the total annihilation of his own people by causing his homeworld's Sapphiric Sun to implode. Rhulk was subsequently taken in by the Witness and anointed the first of its Disciples.[13]
The Ecumene
The civilization known as the Ecumene were attuned to the Darkness, though they did not seem to share the violent and destructive goals of the Witness and its Disciples, and indeed would later come into conflict with the nascent Hive.[4]
The Qugu
The species known as the Qugu were attuned to the Darkness, and used it to commune with the memories of their ancestors. Much like the Ecumene, they seemed to be a peaceful civilization, in stark contrast to the Darkness' self-proclaimed tenets.[5]
The Birth of the Hive
- "Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet.
He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying:
I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.
And it arrived, the Deep Itself.[14]"
One of the earliest recorded mentions of the Darkness known to the Guardians comes from the Books of Sorrow, a collection of records discovered aboard the Dreadnaught of Oryx, the Taken King. The books describe the origins of the Hive on the gas giant Fundament, where the three daughters of a deposed king, Aurash, Xi Ro and Sathona, set out to save their world from a prophesied apocalypse.[15] In their quest, they encountered the massive being known as the Leviathan, who warned them against the temptation of "The Deep," a philosophy which held that "existence is the struggle to exist," and which it claimed would lead them only to ruin and calamity. It instead told them to pursue the philosophy of "The Sky," which encouraged collaboration to build a kinder, more prosperous world, even if it meant that some deaths and misfortunes must be allowed to occur. The sisters rejected the Leviathan's advice, and dove deep into the core of their world to find the five Worms: Eir, Ur, Yul, Xol, and Akka.[16][17]
The Worm Gods promised to lend the sisters their paracausal powers, which they drew from the Deep, in return for the sisters becoming hosts for the Worms' larvae. The sisters agreed and became the founders and God-rulers of what would one day become known as the Hive.[17] The Worms taught the nascent Hive Gods of the Sword Logic, which they used to become ever more powerful.[18]
Much later, the Hive God Auryx (who was once Aurash) slew the Worm God Akka to obtain enough power to learn more about the secrets of the Deep, and in doing so he obtained the power to Take,[19] a power wielded by the Witness. He became thereafter known as Oryx, the Taken King. Sometime later, he sought to commune with the Witness directly and prepared an Ogre as a sacrifice, which the Deep inhabited and used to converse with Oryx.[14][20]
The Cambrian Explosion
- "And then—one day—the fall occurred. So much earlier and so much more necessary than your myths remember. (…) This was the Cambrian Explosion, the great birth of complex life on your world. I caused it. I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes."
According to Unveiling, the Cambrian Explosion (i.e. the rapid appearance and diversification of complex life on Earth) was one of innumerable examples across the history of the universe where the Darkness played a role in bringing about complex life, by virtue of curtailing the existence of weaker organisms and thereby driving biological evolution.[21]
Riis and The Whirlwind
- "Where is the Great Machine? Where is the Great Machine?"
- — Chelchis, Kell of Stone
At some point during the Golden Age of the Eliksni on Riis, a young Eliksni named Haaksis stole a scout-ship and became lost, eventually finding himself on an abandoned, airless world. He discovered an ancient, abandoned city, at the center of which was a "ship like a blade". Haaksis retrieved a spherical metallic artifact from the city, which spoke to him in his mind and showed him how to find his way home. As Haaksis grew into adulthood, the voice within the artifact continued to speak to him, telling him of the pointless struggle of life, and of an impending doom that would befall the Eliksni.[22]
Years later, Haaksis became a Baron of the House of Rain and attempted to rid himself of the artifact's visions by casting it away into a river. However, the artifact was swallowed by a local predator known as a "river-catcher," which became corrupted with Darkness and began attacking Haaksis' people. The Slayer Baron Kiiraskes was sent to slay the beast, and upon dispatching the creature, she and her apprentice Irrha discovered the artifact within its remains; upon examining Irrha's memoirs untold centuries later, the scribe Eido of House Light inferred that the object was of the same kind as the mysterious artifact given to the Young Wolf by the Witness during their exploration of the Lunar Pyramid.[22] Kiiraskes later mentioned that Chelchis, Kell of Stone had recently been delivering "strange reports" to the Houses of Kings and Judgment, which Chelchis felt signaled an impending catastrophe. However, Kiiraskes stated that Chelchis believed the true danger would come from within Eliksni civilization, not from the outside.[23]
Some time after this, Riis was attacked by the Witness and its Black Fleet, as well as Oryx's Hive, resulting in a cataclysm became known in Eliksni history as the Whirlwind. As it had so many times before, the Traveler fled Riis rather than face the Black Fleet, and the Eliskni were reduced to a race of interstellar nomads.[citation needed]
Pre-Collapse
- "Heaven is invaded and its territories are afire and all its mountains have been shattered into thrones. This is the inevitable and perfect shape of the truth.
It is magnificent. Majestic. Majestic." - — Thoughts of a K1 researcher meditating in the presence of the Anomaly
Before the Collapse, a Human mining expedition on Luna was commissioned by Clovis Bray I to discover the source of a mysterious signal buried beneath the Moon's crust. Nearly twelve hundred meters deep they discovered a black sphere, whose emissions caused neurochemical cascades that induced intrusive thoughts, insomnia, narcolepsy, nightmares, and auditory and visual hallucinations. The sphere was studied due to an outbound signal that was believed to be connected to a second Traveler, or even the origins of the Traveler. However, the expedition team, despite their best efforts, were eventually driven to madness and perished.[24][25]
Clovis Bray I later communed with the artifact, which urged him to go to Europa to seek the secret of immortality.[26] He mounted a personal expedition to the icy moon, where he discovered the source of the paracausal power he called "Clarity": an entity he named "Clarity Control".[27]
The Collapse
- "Something hit us. Killed our Golden Age. Nearly wiped us out. Only the Traveler saved us, and at a shattering cost."
- — Grimoire description.
The Collapse was long believed by the Vanguard and the people of the Last City to have been caused by the Darkness itself.[28] In reality, it was brought about by the Black Fleet, led by the Witness and its Disciples, who wielded the Darkness against humanity and the Traveler. During the Collapse, the colony ship Yang Liwei (call sign Exodus Green), was ensnared by the Darkness projected by the Black Fleet as it attempted to escape the Solar System, but was "rescued" by the Traveler projecting a beam of Light to push back the Darkness, which in turn generated a kugelblitz that swallowed the Yang Liwei and transported it and its occupants to a new universe.[29]
Rise of the Young Wolf
Centuries after the Collapse, a lone Guardian encountered the Exo Stranger on Venus and was subsequently sent on a quest to find the Black Garden.[30] After battling through the Sol Divisive Vex and reaching the center of the Garden, the Guardian discovered an entity, the Black Heart, that the Vex seemed to revere as an object of worship. The entity could not attack the Guardian directly but attempted to defend itself by taking control of the Sol Progeny, three enormous Vex Minotaurs. After a protracted battle, the Black Heart was destroyed along with its three Sol Progeny vessels. Upon the defeat of the Black Heart, the Black Garden was relocated to Mars from its prior location, and Light began to return to the dormant and damaged Traveler.[31]
Following the battle in the Black Garden, Ikora Rey hypothesized that the Black Heart had been an aspect of the Darkness itself.[32] It would not be until much later that it was revealed to in fact be an attempt by the Sol Divisive to replicate the Veil, an equally mysterious paracausal entity associated with both the Darkness and the Traveler.[33]
Hunt for the Scorn
The Scorn, a faction of undead Fallen first encountered by the Guardians in a mass breakout from the Prison of Elders, were created through the use of Darkness-tainted Ether by Fikrul, the Fanatic. This "Dark Ether" was first generated when Riven drew upon Uldren Sov's internal Darkness and infused it into Ether, bringing Fikrul back from death.[34]
Haunting of the Moon
- "Don't you recognize us? We are not your friend. We are not your enemy. We are your… salvation."
- — The Witness
Eris Morn, after going missing prior to the Red War, stumbled upon a derelict Pyramid beneath the surface of the Moon that once belonged to Nezarec.[35] She discovered that the Darkness originating from the Pyramid was triggered into unleashing phantasmal Nightmares, and that the Hidden Swarm was harnessing them in a crimson citadel built above the ancient ship, near the Hellmouth, dubbed the Scarlet Keep.[36] With Eris Morn as their guide and having the Vanguard's approval on handling the situation, the Guardians fought the Hive and the Darkness-powered Nightmares. Using the Hive's knowledge and the essence of the most powerful of Nightmares, Eris was able to forge armor that was capable of resisting the Nightmares.[37]
Now prepared and with the Nightmares pushed back, the Young Wolf descended beneath the Scarlet Keep to the Pyramid. There, the Witness possessed the Guardian's Ghost and opened the Pyramid, drawing in the Guardian. Inside, the Guardian faces off against Nightmares of their most dangerous foes: Ghaul, Crota and Fikrul. As they combat the powerful Nightmares, the Witness lectured the Guardians through their Ghost on the Light's failures and weaknesses. Despite this, the Guardian managed to overcome the Nightmares and reach the center of the Pyramid, where a veiled statue stood.[38]
The Guardian received an Unknown Artifact from the statue and was subjected to a vision in which they stood within the Black Garden and encountered the Witness taking the form of themselves. The Witness addressed the Guardian, saying that it had heard humanity's "cries for help" and that it would soon answer, and stating that it was neither the Guardian's friend nor enemy, but instead their "salvation".[38]
The Guardian brought the Unknown Artifact to Eris and reported what they encountered in the Pyramid to the Vanguard, which they took as confirmation that the force that caused the Collapse was preparing to return. At the same time, Eris identified a signal emitting from the artifact that led deep within the Black Garden, to which a fireteam of Guardians was sent to investigate. They discovered two Axis Minds that seemed to have been warped by an unknown force, the Consecrated Mind and Sanctified Mind, and found another veiled statue identical in shape to the one on the Lunar Pyramid.[39]
The Guardian began receiving messages through the Unknown Artifact, seemingly from the Darkness itself; Eris dismissed the messages as attempts at manipulation,[40] but they provided potentially valuable information into the origin of the Light, the Darkness,[7][8][9][10] the Vex,[41] and the Universe itself.[42]
When Osiris confronted Rasputin regarding his allegiance to the Light or the Darkness, the Warmind directed him to an anomalous signal located in the Kuiper Belt. Upon arriving at the coordinates, Sagira reported feeling strange, like the Guardian's Ghost when approaching the Pyramid. Osiris then entered "an anomalous Maw" and returned with a "cold metal seed" before setting his ship on a course to return to the inner Solar System.[43]
The Arrival
- "The day we've been dreading has finally arrived. The Darkness is here."
- — Commander Zavala
Several days after the Almighty's destruction, the Black Fleet arrived and began to push into the solar system. One Pyramid went to