Angry Smithing

We came here to conquer.

We found ruins. Old ruins; stacked on top of older structures. The ones beneath beggared the mind and made a jest of the word ‘ancient’. We thought, in our supremacy, that nothing could contend with us.

First there were the machines: they tumbled from sparking portals that appeared without warning, without pattern. Deep within our established lines. Wakening from sweeps of desert thought empty and abandoned. They swept over our hardpoints, flooded garrisons and firebases.

We held them off. It’s what we do. We build lines, we carve out strongholds and we endure. We were the Siege Dancers. The machines managed a stalemate. We lost much of our foothold on this world, this world of dust and ruin. But we were not pushed away completely and confidence was high.

The machines surprised us. That was all. We were stronger and hardier than metal. More unbreakable than stone. As uncompromising as time.

Then the dead ones arrived.

They were not like the machines. The machines came in their thousands, in orderly ranks, pressed from molds and templates. They came with slaprifles and torch hammers, they came with blares and shouts of static and undecipherable code. They built glass and clockwork and geometric shapes.

The dead ones slunk in.

They crept in like vermin, they slipped through the cracks. A patrol would vanish here. Another there. No pattern. No reason. A psion studying the old technology would be found slain, scorched and torn to pieces, it’s protection detail dead to the last. When we started seeing them in the open they appeared singly, in pairs, sometimes in trios. Never more than six, or seven. So few. 

And they never died. 

We called them undead because we killed them and they never died.

With a swing of my shield I had shattered the body of an undead. I had stomped it into a red paste on my boots, shattering the plastics of it’s armor and soaking it’s robes in gore.

Then it popped back up, hearty and hole, and it killed my entire squad. I survived, barely, gasping past agonizing burns and armor cooked to my flesh.

The undead did what the machines did not. Alone or in pairs, in trios or cadres they slaughtered through a Legion that had held the line for years and years.

And that was not all. In our desperation we mustered our fleet, we gathered all our forces. The undead came from a City, their only City, the last City of their wretched kind. It cowered beneath the corpse of an unknown machine, some vast and great edifice - a relic of their fallen civilization.

We would break them, as we break all things, by striking at their core. Unrelenting, unremitting firepower.

Something found us first. It took our strength, it stole our ferocity. It turned brother against brother, Valus against Valus, oath against oath. It tore our plans apart and took no notice as they burned. In a single night our backs were broken. 

It was a God, a God worthy of the name, a God who came to square off against the Angels of it’s foe. 

In this forgotten, silent little star system, so far from any of importance, there are Gods, there are Angels, and there are Demons. They look at our might and they do not laugh, they do not spit, they do not even deign to care. They are so far beyond us that all our might is as the dust of the world I am to die upon.

I send this message, I broadcast this signal in the hopes it might breach the deep black and find purchase far beyond the bounds of this wretched space.

I am Phalanx Mol’usk, of the Siege Dancers. I am dying.

If you hear this message, do not respond. Do not come. Take note of it’s origin, and if you are wise, if you value what you have built, you will do one thing.

You will mark down on every map, you will take note in every database, you will teach your spawn in their creche, you will tell them one thing:

Here are monsters.

Fear them.

And pray they do not look beyond their war.

An enigmatic white orb resurrects people in order to protect others and preserve hope. Their main enemy is a manifestation of darkness who wants to corrupt everything and torment everyone.

These resurrected heroes are called Guardians.

Yeah, I liked Rise of the Guardians too.

Here’s the thing. How do you know if you can kill an enemy? You try. If I have a gun and there’s an Acolyte charging me - I’m going to shoot at it. The bullets are going to crack its chitin and leave it sprawled on the ground.

There’s a data point. Bullets kill hive. Okay.

Now there’s a Cabal phalanx in my way. I shoot at it. The bullets bounce off.

Data point two. Bullets don’t always kill Cabal.

You use the tools at hand. Sometimes the tools are warsats dropping kinetic impactors onto targets in the Martian dustpan. Sometimes the tools are hard light and encapsulated solar energy.

Sometimes the tools are a piece of rebar, bent around a concrete wedge.

Whatever gets the job done, right?

Warlocks like to be efficient. How can I kill the enemy in the least expenditure of Light and time? What applications of void light can coax the optimal amount of deaths? Shall we bundle it into an enormous, crude bomb? Maybe pulse it from our bodies like a lightning rod? How about solar light? Arc?

What can we use to kill the foes of the Last City before they can kill us?

It’s not a bad position.

Here’s the thing.

You’re not always going to have that void light. You’re not always going to have an IKELOS-forged weapon. You’re not always going to be able to fall back on Tex Mechnica, or Omolon. When your sword breaks, when your guns jam, when there’s nothing left, what do you have?

What argument can you posit against the encroaching darkness when all your trappings are torn away?

There’s just you.

There’s just me.

Against the dark.

When I woke under the ruins of the tower, with Cabal in the streets and in the buildings and in the sky, there was nothing left.

When I was cornered in a drain by a pack of war beasts, what did I have? Not my Light. Not my Ghost. Not my fireteam, or my friends, or the Vanguard.

I had me.

And I had my fists.

I left the war beasts broken behind me.

When the Cabal came after me, again and again, I left them broken in the snow. Faces broken, armor cracked, blood spattered.

I couldn’t open my left fist when I found the farm. The bones were all mashed and the cold had started to freeze the clotted blood. There was plasteel mixed with ivory chunks in the ruin.

Right hand wasn’t much better. Shaxx practically wired a gun into my grip when I said I was going after the Shard.

So here’s the thing.

You can keep testing your loadouts. You can keep finding fancy new abilities.

I’ll keep testing my foes against the one thing that will never leave me.

When it all is pared away, I’ll know what I can face. I’ll know what I can do.

I can punch back.

There are a great deal of excellent breakdowns, indepth descriptions and discussions on the metaphysics of Destiny’s paracausal forces.

But sometimes you see people ask for a simple explanation, something that makes sense and is nice and bite sized.

The universe is a soccer game. Everyone abides by the rules and the referees are physical laws. So you steal the ball, stitch it to your own body, and then barricade yourself inside the goal. No one can get to you, and you’re scoring infinite goals. The referees are pissed, the crowd doesn’t know what to make of it, and the other players have no idea what to do now.

You don’t give a shit.

Because you’re Oryx.

Basically, everyone else is playing football and Oryx and the Hive are playing Calvinball.

>when your queen says ‘guardians suck’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your queen says ‘haha actually go hang out in the tower all alone and make the guardians do things’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when a week later your queen says ‘lol nvm let the guardians in’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when a week later your queen is like ‘lol trust me’ and then gets dunked by a giant flying barnacle man and takes your whole fleet with her and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your queen’s shitty brother shows up high on space bath salts and says your queen is talking to him but you know that wasn’t part of the plan so you chuck his ass in jail like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your queen’s shitty brother breaks out and starts killing all your people so you have to ring up the guardians to come make them fucking knock if off and this is all apparently part of the plan so you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when you finally manage to kick the door down into that shed in the backyard you’d left locked up and holy shit its full of spiders scorn and you finally get to talk to your queen again and she’s like ‘lol give all our shit to the guardians’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your queen’s disembodied voice tells you that falcor the fuckdragon who lives in the middle of your city is a dickhead and you have to kill her and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when you get the guardians to kill falcor the fuckdragon and surprise surprise she fucks your city up completely and the queen is like ‘lmao still part of the plan’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your queen tells you to get the guardians to kill a shitload of scorn/hive/taken to because it makes her tingly and charges her well real good and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when every time your queen takes your calls she’s like ‘uh huh sure ok gotta go really busy war and stuff’ and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when only your guardian friend is invited to an actual in-person meeting with the queen and you have to stand up on some rock somewhere with a gun because everything is shit and you’re like ‘yeah definitely my queen’

>when your guardian friend reports back that your queen was definitely just chilling on a lounge out in space looking like a goddamn screensaver and also she stole your poncho