Lore:Ghost Stories

"And my vanquisher will read that book, seeking the weapon, and they will come to understand me, where I have been and where I was going."The following is a verbatim transcription of an official document for archival reasons. As the original content is transcribed word-for-word, any possible discrepancies and/or errors are included.

Ghost Stories is a Lore book in Forsaken that contains tales about Ghosts and their Guardians. Entries are unlocked by finding dead Ghosts scattered throughout the game.

Pressure

She was the first Ghost to arrive, but it wasn't long until there were dozens of them, scanning every pile of debris that remained of Tower North. They came in search of the one who guided their journeys, the one who once spoke for the Traveler.

"He called me Dejana. Before I met him, I didn't know what to call myself." She was speaking to a red-shelled one, who hovered where the Speaker once studied the Light. His eyes were ever fixed on the new brilliance of the Living Traveler.

"He called me Anwar. You never found yours either, did you?"

"No." Her journey had spanned centuries—on Earth, the Moon, and Venus—but she never unearthed a single soul she felt worthy of the Light. "I used to think it was me; perhaps I was too picky, but… he assured me, humanity was vast. The gift of the Light must be deserved, and it was better to be thorough than to end up with someone too weak to bear the burden, or worse, misuse it. He, at least, made me feel… useful. I put my search on hold and served him as a cartographer. You?"

"Deconstructionist." Anwar paused. Drifted a few feet toward the luminous Living Traveler. "Dejana, can you feel it?"

Dejana followed Anwar's gaze up to the Traveler. "Feel what?"

"The pressure."

Ghost Hunter

The Speaker's warnings were clear: Always mind the Light. If you feel it fraying, you've strayed too far. There are places even the Traveler's Light cannot reach.

Now, here I am, lost in the shadowy pastiche known as the Reef. And not a single tether of Light touches me. But that… that is what my Guardian wanted.

His name is Cyrell; and Cyrell called me Strain. I found him on the far edges of Mercury, in a valley that the Vex transformation had never reached. He seemed resilient, unwavering, old, and wise. I'd searched so long for my better half that I didn't hesitate. If I had considered but one moment more, I might have sensed how tired and burdened and tangled his soul truly was, and I would have left him in peace. And I would not be a murderer of my kin.

Cyrell told me we came to the Reef in search of Awoken. He had heard stories of how this far-flung offshoot of Humanity had returned to Sol with unparalleled knowledge. He believed they had the answer to a question he refused to share. I know now, however, that he really came here to spare me.

He confessed he could not bear another battle nor fight in the name of something no one could possibly understand. Though he could not remember his past, he knew deep down that he had already fought his last war.

He couldn't kill me. I was his friend. He doesn't kill friends. He wouldn't kill himself, either; that was cowardly, weak. And if the Ghosts' sole purpose was to raise the dead to kill in the name of unexplainable forces, he could no longer let that happen. He would end the cycle. He would spare his brothers- and sisters-in-arms. He would let the dead rest.

Years later, I saw Cyrell again, clad in wretched-looking armor, dragging a chain of dead Ghosts in the name of peace. Still searching for an Awoken who could answer the one question that has haunted him since his rebirth.

If you are a Ghost who has not yet found your Chosen, let this be a warning: Cyrell, the Ghost Hunter, will end your search for you. If you are Awoken and perchance have the answer he seeks, please, do not keep your secrets from him.

Your life depends on it.

The Chosen's Choice

She focuses herself to resurrect him once more, only this time—she hesitates. She looks around, taking in the human carnage surrounding her.

She thinks back to their arrival into this village. How its population lauded him and showered him with gifts, begged him to stay, to defend them, to keep them safe.

At first he seemed reluctant, but the longer he remained, and the more Fallen he slew, the more they praised him. That praise emboldened him; he grew expectant, addicted to their exaltations and gifts.

The more he consumed, the more the village's resources dwindled. He led expeditions to take from others—no warning, no diplomacy. He showed his might as one of the Risen and demanded he be lauded as savior. Those he once protected now died under his charge, and they venerated him all the more for it.

As much as she tried to guide him back into the Light and remind him why he was Chosen, he could not hear her over the adulations of his newfound vassals. Resurrection after resurrection, his legend flourished while the dead remained dead; he grew ever more covetous and unforgiving. He stopped learning from his losses and came to feel entitled to his immortality.

One winter night, clad in golden armor, he made war on a seaside settlement of fishers and spiritualists. Not a man, woman, or child survived. Flushed with the high of easy victory, he and his followers were ill prepared for the Fallen war party that had been stalking them the last few moons. It was a massacre atop a massacre. And only he, one of the Risen, would walk away from this.

She looks away from the human carnage surrounding her. Looks down upon the one she chose. His golden armor, dulled with the blood of his victims and his adorers, still reflects back to her the light of her single eye.

He made his choice. And thus, so will she.

She turns her eye away from him, away from herself, and floats eastward toward the rising light.

The We Before Us

I remember the moment we were born.

There was pain, and loss, and a feeling of falling. Was this the end? The shadows gathered, colored bruise-purple and gray in Our fading consciousness.

Our shell cracked and splintered. Parts of Us were lost, or carried away. We felt those wounds, jagged and sharp. We could feel them still, attached by a gossamer-thin strand of understanding.

We felt a garden with no blooms. A valley shrouded in gloom.

We felt ourselves dying. We didn't want to go.

Then there I was, separated from the whole. I could feel it shrink, slip back into itself, dim and unseeing. I knew it was waiting. Resting. Watching. Considering.

And I knew what I needed to do. Somewhere in this wide, amazing galaxy there was a person. They were quiet and dead, like We had been, but I could bring them back. I could share what was inside of me, this glorious warmth and life and breath and being.

Together, that person and I would do what We, the We before me, could not.

I wrapped the spark that was me in metal and glass, a tiny bit of something that reminded me of the home We had shared. Then I set out to find my person. The keeper of my Light.

There were so many people. So many still, fragile things, decaying into dust, lost to memory. I touched each one, looking for… something? A fragment of ember under the ash?

I didn't find it. I know now that there is one person, only one, that is mine. I have been to many planets. Seen things I never knew were possible. Hid from monsters. Followed dreams.

I have seen others of my kind, the other pieces that were once Us. Their search is over.

They are complete. Stronger. Braver because they found their counterpart.

I am alone. I know you are still out there. That you're waiting for me. But it has been so long, and I am so…

Very…

Cold…

I will rest here and think about Us.

For…

A…

Moment…

Cold…

Where…

We…

You!

Don't Call Me Ghost

"I want a name."

"Is this because of Sagira? She is a terrible influence on you."

"She has a name. People don't just call her 'Ghost.' It's insulting being called 'Ghost.' I'm not a thing. I'm me."

"Who are you, then?"

"I'm… I don't know. I'm me."

"And you want me to define you? That sounds like you're a thing."

"You're insufferable, do you know that?"

"You didn't have to bring me back."

"You know that's not true."

"Is it?"

"There you go again, Tyra, questioning everything. Treating the entire world like a puzzle that you have to record, and analyze, and put in your files."

"I cannot do anything else. If I do not question, do not study, do not learn, I have no purpose. 'Every mind has its own form.'"

"You've been reading philosophy again."

"Rousseau. Ikora lent me a copy."

"Hmmph."

"Don't pout, Ghost. It's annoying."

"So is being called Ghost. Might as well cover me with a sheet."

"Choose your own name. You don't need me to define you."

"I will!"

… … …

"Well? What is your name, Ghost?"

"Don't call me Ghost."

Compliments

I remember talking to Ophiuchus one day about the connection between Ghosts and Guardians.

This was years and years ago, back when we were still in the City and Osiris was Vanguard Commander. Osiris and Ikora would talk for hours—days, sometimes—and frankly, it was pretty boring. Especially when I got stuck entertaining Ophiuchus. Seriously, that Ghost is not a conversationalist.

Anyway, O said he had a theory why there was one Ghost for one Guardian. He thought that each of us had strengths that complemented weaknesses in our Guardian, and vice versa. That we needed to be together, or neither of us would be whole.

"Like soul mates?" I asked. "Because I'm not in love with Osiris or anything. Not only would that be really weird, he kinda gets on my nerves a lot of the time."

"It is not a romantic attachment," O said. If he had eyes, he would have rolled them at me. "It is my belief that the Traveler understood that normal people would not be enough to protect humanity. That it would take those who are extraordinary in both body and spirit. And that only by the merging of Ghost and Guardian into a single unit could this be accomplished."

"I don't know where Ikora keeps you," I told him, "but Osiris and I are not 'a single unit.' You've heard us argue. A lot."

"And why do you challenge him?" O asked.

"Because no one else will. He's the great and powerful Osiris: hero, scholar, savior, yadda yadda. And no one, I mean no one, not even Ikora, really challenges him. They do what he wants, even if it's a terrible idea. Not me.

"Everyone needs someone to tell them to get over themselves once in a while. Especially Osiris."

"Would you say that is a strength that complements a weakness?"

I didn't answer. I hate it when someone else is right. Good thing it doesn't happen often.

"All right then, smarty Ghost," I finally said. "What about you and Ikora? You're both rigid and stuffy, read too much…"

"I am a calming influence. I encourage her to think before she acts and not to let her emotions get the best of her."

I couldn't help it. I cracked up. It actually took me a minute to get under control. "Ikora?" I said, laughing so hard I could barely talk. "Have you met Ikora? All she does is think!"

"You don't know her at all," Ophiuchus told me.

No Rez for the Weary

My Guardian is immortal. My Guardian is forever lost to me. He boarded the derelict Almighty with his fireteam, hoping to salvage Cabal secrets from the star murderer.

I should have seen the trap. Was it Cabal? Was it some Vex infection from Mercury? I don't know. It's all my fault. I remember how the moment of activation felt like falling. He lunged for the center, crying out to his friends, "I'll disarm it!"

He is still lunging. Fly to the Almighty and you will find him there, caught in the amber of slow time, reaching forever. I have observed his motions carefully. He will arrive at the mechanism and deactivate the trap in only a little more than fifty thousand years.

I cannot resurrect him. I have tried so hard. The City's Warlocks and thanatonauts answered all my desperate questions, even when I began to ask if he could be destroyed. At least if he were gone, unmade, then I could make him again…

Why can't I bring him back? If a Guardian falls into Titan's methane sea, they do not die instantly, but we can still bring them back on the arcology. If a Guardian hurls themself off their ship into space, do we need to wait for them to disintegrate in the solar wind before we bring them back? No. No. It was never hard before! I see him right there, and he seems so close! All I was ever meant to be was his Ghost!

But all Ghosts know there are places where we cannot bring our Guardians back to life. And this is one of them. Why? Is the Darkness gathered against us here? Is the Light too weak?

I think I know why. Some share my theory. What do we do when we bring our Guardians back? What is the magical heart of the process? Are we like the City's probability kilns, twisting the quantum vacuum in our favor to yield matter?

Perhaps. Perhaps. But certain members of a cult I shall not directly name have their own specific interpretation of this process. "When you bring him back," they told me, "you must have a template… an image to provide you with the information you need. Where do you find that template?

"Simply in a neighboring timeline. A place where he is still alive and intact. And wherever there is great danger, wherever the probability of death is too high, then those timelines become scarce and hard to reach. And so you find the zones where Guardians cannot easily be remade."

If this is true, then I am doomed and free. There will be no alternate worlds in which my Guardian escapes that trap. There will be no hope of resurrection.

I will be a Ghost alone.

But the thought haunts me that I might be wrong, and that he is still waiting for me…

Confession of Hope | Part One

The choice haunts me.

It was not reasoned. I let emotion get the better of me. The Fallen had moved on. The few survivors were huddled close in the dark of a cave, muffling their heavy, quick breaths, stifling their sobbing.

When I found them, many nights before, I also found renewed purpose. I had traveled these dead and dying worlds for longer than I cared to remember, all the while in search of a spark worthy of ignition.

Over time I'd grown weary, but in this small band of survivors, I found hope. If I couldn't find a lost soul worthy to be touched by the Light, then I would find another way, a smaller way, to be of service. I would lead this small gathering of desperate men, women, and a single child to the growing sanctuary beneath the Traveler.

If I could not find a hero to challenge the Darkness, I would be a guide to those in need of salvation.

It took some time to gain their trust. I was odd—other. They thought I was an angel. I told them I was not. They named me Tiānshǐ. I did not object.

The child marveled at me. Still too young to speak, much less comprehend, he had a presence that was a burden and a boon. His parents did all they could to nurture him, protect him with the aid, comfort, and care of their traveling companions—once strangers, now bound deeper than blood by their shared experience in this new life after the end of the world.

On that day, in that cave, huddled in fear as the Fallen Skiff's roar faded over the tree line, the mother wailed—a sound I had never before heard and hope never to hear again.

Such pain. Such sorrow.

Grief. Suffering. Loss.

Her cry echoed through the forest. Her husband, weeping and on the edge of breaking down, simply held her.

And the dead child in her arms.

The others tried to calm them, out of fear that the Fallen would return. The attack had been swift and brutal. Twenty dead. Only nine survivors, here, in this cave. I watched the tree line, anxious and afraid.

The mother's pain filled the space between the thick trees. I turned back to her and saw it for the first time: the child's spark.

Faint. But there.

This little boy was not my charge. Those selected to return were champions. This child was so small, so frail. What devotion had he shown? What bravery? What had he sacrificed? But a thought lingered…

Was it not my purest purpose to deliver hope? Every hero raised fought not for themselves but for the whole of humanity. If saving one life—if redressing this one terrible loss—was not a worthy cause… what was?

I watched the mother as she cried.

I felt myself expand. Felt the Light that was me intensify. In a way, it was outside of my control, as if something had reached inside of me and flipped a switch. A beam erupted from my core and bathed with Light the child's small, broken body.

A second passed—

And he began to cry. All fell silent. The Traveler's gift had been given. A child, returned. And with him, the beginning of my journey's end.

Did I do the right thing? Would the child grow to reach his peak physical self? Would he, like all returned, be ready for the wars to come?

But then a thought came over me, one I had never before considered: maybe death would have been better.

Had I saved the child, or doomed him?

As his cries echoed, the survivors looked on in shock. There was joy in their silence—wonder.

I looked down on him, and pride began to well inside of me. I had done what was right.

But that was then—only months ago, but long enough to seem a lifetime.

Now the Fallen are back, and we are running. And I fear the promise of a gift given is far from enough to save us from a pirate's blade.

—Fragment of the last transmission from an unknown Ghost

The Watchful Eye

I've made my peace. If my other is not out here somewhere—if my Guardian can't be found—then I will find ways to be of value to the greater good.

It's been cycles since I told myself to be useful in any way possible, but it is a mantra I repeat, a constant reminder: "If I have no other, MY actions must be enough. If I have no other, I will become the hero I cannot find."

It sounded noble at the time. Turns out nobility is the kind of thing that places the well-intended in harm's way and, apparently, I'm fine with that. Maybe we all are. Maybe that's what makes us heroic—accepting risk as a consequence of doing what's right.

I've been tracking Fallen crew movements along the edge of the EDZ for some time, careful not to venture too deep into their territory. After all, I'm only one Ghost. Without a Guardian, I'm no use in a fight. But I can watch and learn and report. I can find my own ways to combat the enemies of the Light.

All Ghosts keep an eye out—we chronicle and share the highlights of our travels. It helps us and our charges navigate the frontier, though the vast majority of these wild lands remain unexplored.

The only difference between the Ghost I am today and the Ghost I used to be is my focus. Whereas I used to be driven solely by the need to find and sync with a Guardian, I am now fully dedicated to spy craft—the art and execution of information gathering.

And I am not alone.

There is an entire network of Ghosts like me. Should we find our others, we shall rejoice and shift our mission to serve as the right hands of the true warriors of the Light. Until then, we move swift and quiet through the vast wilds of the frontier, scouting our enemies' movements and cataloging their every action so that the Vanguard, and others, may better assess and confront the dangers beyond the Last Safe City.

We are small. We are few. But we are brave and we are heroes.

—Link, an unconnected Ghost, part of the Vanguard's covert spectral network