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| Second Collapse | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Enshroudment of the Solar System | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The Second Collapse (also known as the Shadowkeeper's Apocalypse) was a massively cataclysmic system-wide conflict fought between the unified forces of the Solar System and The Black Fleet. The conflict began after Pyramidic fleet-elements started arriving en mass into the system. After the Outer System was taken without any meaningful resistance, the Fleet moved into the Inner System, shrouding world after world until only Earth and its Moon remained.
There, in orbit around the dyad worlds, the Fleet deployed the Shadowkeepers and its commanders, the Black Swordsman and its Angel. Most of Earth's landmass was quickly claimed by the Shadowkeeper armies except for the entirety of the southern American continent, where the Last City has grown into a megapolis of unimaginable proportions. Here the enemy forces were stalemated until The Guardian was lured away to the EDZ and subsequently corrupted. The Black Fleet claimed victory, broke the Traveler, and slew most of the Solar System combatants, with few survivors fleeing to new worlds. The enshroudment of Sol complete, the Black Fleet withdrew its forces into its home dimension, where secretly a hidden fortress had been constructed.
Prelude
(To be updated)
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.
Overview
Fleet's Arrival
Many months after the destruction of The Almighty, during which the remnants of the Cabal empire trickled in after the sudden loss of Torobatl and their core worlds, the Black Fleet arrived en mass into the system. Multiple pyramidic fleet units entered from all areas surrounding the system, taking up holding positions around the major Jovian worlds, and began converting all local matter into gigantic constructs called "J-brains". Uranus, Neptune, and most of the Kuiper belt bodies were absorbed in this manner. Saturn was the next to fall, the inert Dreadnaught becoming a seed for the new J-brain, and Jupiter soon followed almost simultaneously.
None of this happened without major resistance. The House of Time launched several attacks upon Saturn's growing brain, utilizing hundreds of thousands of ships in its greatest offensive since the Red War and the Viral conflict. To a ship they were summarily executed, their forces no match for pyramidic scales. The forces of the Nine also launched a similar assault on the invaders of Jupiter in conjunction with the Reef and, bizarrely enough, a Cabal warfleet that had been intent on conquering the asteroid belt. These too similarly failed to catastrophic effect; the survivors universally fled to Earth and cis-lunar space, Mars having been swallowed up completely.
The Traveler was the final stand against the onslaught. Venus and Mercury disappeared, and the very Sun itself started to go black from the first stages of enshrouding—for the construction of each J-brain projected an unfathomable amount of physical Darkness. Soon it became a literal battle between Light and Dark, as the Traveler's form grew visibly brighter with pulsations of energy, and the boundaries of its influence mingled with that of the pyramids on the Moon, where horrors were birthed out of the twisted graves of the First Collapse. In the outermost limits of the atmosphere, the fleets of Caiatl's regime and the House of Time battled against endless sorties of scales.
Upon Earth itself blights appeared everywhere except where the Traveler's shield of light was strongest. Hordes of horrors poured forth—Nightmares conjured out of the collective psyches of many species. Cabal and human fought side by side, Eliksni and Awoken defended the walls of the Last City, which had grown to encompass most of South America and parts of Central America, against the armies of the Dark. The Guardians themselves numbered in the hundreds of millions, the greatest concentration since the Twilight Gap; nary a free Ghost remained Unpaired. It seemed it would be an endless stalemate, the Traveler still recovering from wounds both deep and ancient, and fresh and recent, and the Darkness in the fullness of its strength.
The Betrayal
The Darkness had a backdoor. Through the power of Stasis it wielded an undue influence over the minds of those Guardians who adopted its usage, and gradually began to sow discord within the ranks of the Alliance. Those Guardians who hadn't fully embraced Stasis were less affected than those who did; and they who were most affected began to forsake using the Light, preferring to fight fire with fire. They started exploring the rifts and portals created by the Darkness, ending up in strange and mysterious places, and some became lost. When they returned, they had become twisted—the first harbingers of the Shadowkeepers.
Among these were the Guardian themselves. A notable figure in the history of the Last City, who felled numerous godlike beings and slew countless lieutenants of evil, they were among the first targets the Darkness attempted to subvert to its own side. After Stasis was gifted to them on Europa, through the siren song of the J-brains, the Guardian began to lose sight of their mission and started becoming despondent. Their Ghost obviously noticed this and was concerned, only to have it waved off. Though they remained mute their neurological patterns became nigh unintelligible, rendering them effectively mad.
What Ghost could decipher was a consistent sense of urgency; at first this was assumed to be the destruction of the Pyramids, however impossible that sounded. What was not clear was that this urgency was actually directed towards getting closer to the source of the songs. After long last the Guardian volunteered on a solo mission in the depths of the European Dead Zone, where the Shard of the Traveler once lay, and subsequently disappeared. The Vanguard were too busy to be concerned when they did not return; Elsie Bray, however, went after them with Eris Morn.
Instead they encountered the Black Swordsman. They briefly fought him until the Guardian themselves reappeared. Their Ghost was gone, their arms and armor replaced with living Darkness. Before, the Black Swordsman was evenly matched with the Exo and the Hunter; with the Dark Guardian, the battle was turned in their favor, and the two Allies barely escaped with their lives. They were able to make it back to the City in time to relay to the Vanguard and the Consensus the terrible truth before the Descent happened.
Fall of the City
At the head of a great army of Nightmares and twisted beings now known as Shadowkeepers—fallen Guardians among them—came marching the Swordsman and Dark Guardian. In the skies above the unified Cabal and Eliksni fleets broke and fell, and a great Pyramid began its descent downwards. The Moon started to disassemble itself into a J-brain. The Traveler pulsated, and blasted forth a wave of power. The Shadowkeeper host was obliterated—save for two. The Dark Guardian had thrown a shield of Darkness over themselves and the Black Swordsman. When it lifted, a third figure had joined them: the White Angel. More portals were opened and a new host of Shadowkeepers poured forth, encompassing the walls of the City, and began their assault. The Last City's end was nigh.
Again the Traveler pulsed with power—it rose up into the sky to meet its dark mirror, a living sphere of flame against an obsidian diamond. The Pyramid fired an esoteric beam of power and the Traveler halted, shivering slightly, as their ontological energies clashed. More pyramids entered, adding their own weaponry to the fray. Upon the ground the Last City's walls had collapsed and the endless cycle of death and destruction had begun. Millions upon millions were slain, Zavala among them. With a final scream the Traveler split in two with a dazzling burst of light. Its lower half disintegrating completely, the upper was propelled out into space, blasting a hole through the first Pyramid.
As the Shadowkeepers faltered those of the City who were able to slip past fled into ships in secret places, and launched after the Traveler. The pyramids in the skies were not as dazzled—scores upon scores of ships were annihilated as they turned their paracausal weapons upon them. Ketches and Barques exploded like crystals, Cabal warships and carriers fell like stones, City jumpships simply faded away into puffs of dust. Nonetheless over a thousand ships were able to breach the atmosphere and penetrate the almost physical mesh of Darkness now beginning its enshrouding of Earth.
They fled onwards, fleeing Earth, following after the dying guiding light of the Traveler. Pyramidic scales picked off ships like flies, until two hundred and twenty ships remained to exit the realm where the Solar System had once sat in. The age of the City was over, and a new age of Darkness had begun.
Rise of Aincrad
- "My loyal and ambitious subjects, you are here today to finally end your troubles, finally end your griefs over your losses, finally to end your droughts against The Last City's forces...and to finally bring your people's salvation. The wait is finally over, for I, Kirito, Chosen by the Winnower, Champion of the Black Fleet, Bringer to Light's End, will bring you the Salvation and justice that you crave so dearly..."
- — Kirito, addressing the Shadowkeepers and his elites.
Moments after taking over Auradon, Kirito and Asuna set up countless programs and SIVA networks from his computer that the Black Fleet used to rebuild Aincrad as they saw fit and split up the Shadow Army into its six respective groups: the House of Shadows, led by Kotrik, the notorious Fallen Kell of Shadows who formerly worked with the House of Devils; the Shadow Brood, led by Zharves, a surviving Hive Deathsinger who formerly served Crota and his father; the Shadow Divisive, led by Hydrax, a massive Vex Axis Mind Hydra who possessed the ability to stop time; the Shadow Legion, led by Gha'arn, a powerful Cabal warlord who helped restore the Cabal Empire to its full glory; the Reborn, led by Thu'urg, a Taken Cabal commander who sought to seize control of Oryx's army; and the Cult of the Scorned, led by Vayeriks, Fikrul's right hand and a commander of the first Scorn.
Aftermath
After the Sanctuary dwellers forged an alliance with the inhabitants, they decisively repelled an exploratory arm of the Black Fleet, reacting to a reinvigorated Traveler which had forsaken its spherical body for that of a human, and the entrapped inhabitants of Aincrad. Together, with Sanctuary and their allies launching a physical assault on the Solar System and Mallory infiltrating Aincrad to unmake the Black Fleet's interference, the system was freed and Aincrad locked away. Fusion was liberated from Aincrad.
The High Orbit
Remnants of the Shadowkeepers still lurked within the wilds of the freed birthplace of humanity. The Swordsman and the Angel were hunted to destruction by resurgent Guardian forces, with Cabal and Eliksni Lightbearers among them. Only their "son", Tatsuyi Kirigaya, remained strong enough to rally a number of Shadowkeepers and Nightmares, resurrecting his parents as Nightmares along the way, and attempted a direct assault on Mallory. They were defeated by The Guardian.