Toland, the Shattered: Difference between revisions
→Toland Quotes
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*''How long were the Hive on the Moon? How did they arrive? How patient they were, listening to invaders scrabble across it surface. But I do not think they were hiding. They awaited a sign.'' | *''How long were the Hive on the Moon? How did they arrive? How patient they were, listening to invaders scrabble across it surface. But I do not think they were hiding. They awaited a sign.'' | ||
*''Had the Traveler not come to our fragile home, humanity would've carried on as it always had. Reaching blindly into the dark. We likely would've extinguished ourselves before the Hive took up the task. So I ash: Are we fortunate? Or unfortunate?'' | *''Had the Traveler not come to our fragile home, humanity would've carried on as it always had. Reaching blindly into the dark. We likely would've extinguished ourselves before the Hive took up the task. So I ash: Are we fortunate? Or unfortunate?'' | ||
*'' | *''We were destined to be found by this ageless expression: the pursuit of a last true shape. If not the Hive, some other adherent. Slay every living disciple of sword logic, but the logic itself - as any hard-coded feature of the cosmos - will simply await rediscovery.'' | ||
*''Exploration and discovery are pleasant but thin euphemisms for conquest. This was as true in our history as in any you'll find. Our first steps into the inky dark were no different. Lest we forget: The Hive's lunar settlements predate our own.'' | |||
*''For millennia, humanity gazed at the Moon and envisioned visiting it. Yet, no one dreamed it a trespass. The Hive is not a welcoming host, as you well know.'' | |||
*''All great journeys begin with a single step, but not if you stand at the precipice. How does one tell the difference between the horizon and an abyss in a place like this? They couldn't. Are you certain you can?'' | |||
*''Before we could leap from planet to planet like fleas, we had to crawl through the void like worms. The Accelerator flew humanity's necessities on swift wings, flitting them from the Moon to the colonies like starlings. But worms do not survive flights with birds'' | |||
*''Dark the Moon. Dark the night. Hush the station. Hush the Hive. Gone their leaders. Gone the Light.'' | |||
*''Just think of the old colony ships, lumbering toward some distant planet loaded with bodies. And then some soulless cargo package flashes by, shot from this Accelerator and piloted by an AI. It weighs you down, life'' | |||
*''Tragic. Casting a line out into the ocean of space, ignorant of what swims out there, waiting in the depths. If they had know the truth, even the barest inkling, they would shrunk away from its shores in terror.'' | |||
*''You feel it, don't you? The hunger that cannot be sated. What's next? What if? Why? It eats at us, what we don't know. It always has. Ignorance has never been bliss - not once you've learned you lack the truth.'' | |||
*''Though many souls were silenced at the Great Disaster, their memories lingered. A fire was born in the heart of the Praxic Warlock Eriana-3. She fought the day of our disaster, lost one of her closest friends, and retreated alongside the survivors. But her Light remained. And she vowed vengeance upon Crota'' | |||
*''In the quest to fell Crota, we brought us the desire for vengeance. We brought ego. But with me, I brought curiosity. Reverence. Fascination. And as such, here I sit, my soul still bound to existence. With the exception of Eris, I can't say the same for the rest'' | |||
*''Eris - at the time, unbroken - together with Eriana-3 sought vengeance upon Crota. And they formed a team of powerful Guardians to aid in executing him. Vell Tarlowe, Sai Mota, Omar Agah... And of course, the only one who could truly guide them, me. All of them, so foolish. They passed through this canyon, naiveté at their side, toward their inevitable doom.'' | |||
*''Though Crota would ultimately face defeat, he was still be able to plant the seeds of the Hive within our very home. It was from here that the Hive was launched in Seeder Ships to Earth, spreading Crota's brood beyond the simple reaches of Luna. Crota may be gone, but the Swarm lives on.'' | |||
*''The Fallen's obsession with Luna has cost them much. They come to pillage the remains of human innovation and pick at the Hive's arcana. But I have yet to understand what drives them to take such a risk when here are other worlds more easily scavenged.'' | |||
*''Before Crota's death, the Hive viewed the Fallen as nothing more than an annoyance. But now, as they struggle to regain their purpose, the Hive have no patience for distraction. This has led to a renewed conflict as both fight to survive in the face of sustained Guardian aggression.'' | |||
*''There was a crew of Fallen who took to the Hive's sword logic. They are all dead now - by their own hands. They sought Ascension, but understood nothing of its meaning. I watched as they slaughtered one another over the course of months. The last of them, with no crew left to lead, walked to Hellmouth's edge and cast himself into the depths.'' | |||
*''I offer no set conclusions, but it is my belief that the Fallen dare plunder the Hellmouth's depth. They know the value in mastering the strange science of their enemy - be it Hive, Human, Vex, or Cabal. They risk much to steal pieces of understanding from us all, until that time when they no longer fear extinction... but inflict it.'' | |||
*''How many crews have called this Ketch home? How many worlds has it plundered in the name of Fallen Houses that have since crumbled? Now the grand houses, like this Ketch, are broken things - shades of old glory, like poor Luna. Once majestic, once an inspiration, now nothing more than a shattered relic of glory days beyond reclamation.'' | |||
*''It's unclear to me... are the remaining Fallen less because they have shed the dead ways of Kells and Archons, or are they more? Is the shedding of their societal chains and the dissolution of their faith their end? Or an evolution? I fear the scattered Fallen of today are forebearers of a terrible threat yet to come.'' | |||
*''The question I ponder when considering the Eliksni and their fractured society is how we, the supposed heroes we claim to be, react to a species on the brink? As we are. To my mind, we must be cruel. End them now, while they are on the brink, or risk whatever it is they will one day become.'' | |||
*''The [[House of Dusk]] is not the future of the Fallen, but it is a sign of their evolution - of a future yet to come... No longer the desperate fools clinging to a lost history and misguided faith in machines. I am curious as to what the Eliksni will become on the far side of their current struggle.'' | |||
*''The pirates came in wake of our Collapse to pick at our bones. I have no answers as to whether it was bravery or desperation that drove them to scavenge at the edge of the Hive's most hallowed ground. But the Hellmouth has been rich in its bounty. And many Fallen crews made a name among the old Houses for the treasures stolen from this dead rock'' | |||
===Moon Quest Quotes=== | ===Moon Quest Quotes=== | ||