Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume II

Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume II
Author(s):	Bungie
Publisher:	PGW Ingram
Publication date:	12th November 2019
Media type:	Hardcover
Pages:	168
ISBN:	978-1-945683-69-5; 978-1-957721-01-9

Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume II (subtitled Fallen Kingdoms) is a hardcover collection of Grimoire material in printed form, released during Fall 2019.^[1] The book primarily focuses on Humanity's war with the Fallen, offering perspectives both from Fallen and non-Fallen alike.

Description[edit]

Bungie presents the Destiny Grimoire Anthology, a must-have collectible lore compendium designed and assembled for Destiny's devoted and enlightened scholars and lore lovers, as well as fans of fantasy and science fiction storytelling.
Until now, the myths, mysteries, and machinations of the Destiny universe were found hidden throughout the worlds – enticing threads that hinted at a greater tapestry. The Destiny Grimoire Anthology weaves tales from multiple sources together for the first time, casting new light on Destiny's most legendary heroes, infamous villains, and their greatest moments of triumph and tragedy.
Each unique volume intends to illuminate a facet of the world, and the complete anthology will confirm and challenge players' thoughts and assumptions on what it means to be a Guardian, offering new and differing perspectives on the cosmic war that rages between the Traveler and its ancient enemies.^[2]

The book is divided into three major parts, which are then further divided into variable numbers of chapters. In total there are nine chapters, composed of lore tabs, grimoire, mission dialogue, and new written content.

Part I, "Pursuit", tells the story of the Iron Lords, from their fights against the Warlords, to their destruction at Site 6; and of the Fallen, outlining their units, Houses, and a new Dream of Alpha Lupi. Part II, "Resilience", is a telling of the Battle of Six Fronts, the Battle of the Twilight Gap and The Reef Wars, the grimoire entries on Gjallarhorn, Lord Shaxx, Lord Saladin, abstracts from The Maraid, and a Fallen war song titled Onslaught. Part III, "Evolution", is the largest and encompasses most of the war with the Fallen. The part includes entries on the Wolf Rebellion, the SIVA Crisis, the formation of the House of Dusk, the rise of the Scorn, and Variks, Kell of Kells. Additionally, Part III includes the entirety of the lore book Most Loyal, as well as nine entries from The Lawless Frontier.

Lore[edit]

Introduction[edit]

They say nothing lasts forever.

That no matter how strong you think you are, there are forces in their own pursuit that won't even regard your effort to steel yourself against oblivion.

That for every great society that has ever risen, another thousand have fallen, swallowed and forgotten by the great maw of time.

But in those shattered remains, new gardens grow, sown across the blood and stories great wars were fought to destroy.

If you look closely—and honor history well enough—you'll see that nothing ever dies... completely.

The energy alters form, the name changes, but the story remains the same. The chain is infinite, far beyond our meager comprehension.

There are lessons in every link—they morph into myths, legends, forming a circle where true meaning is too often lost to a claim of righteousness. Then they hold their claim to truth over others, like it was theirs all along.

They offer cautionary tales of how to stand against destruction, processes of how to find alliances among enemies, or teachings of how to balance your existence between two powers that care nothing about claims of any kind.

Whatever they call themselves, or others choose to call them, we are forever one, for better or worse—until a new god rises and another kingdom comes.

From,

A Lightless One

Forever in Service to the Last Speaker, Who Dared to Speak the Ineffable

Riis[edit]

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

This world is rich with family.

You pause to rest. Life is a balm. You must cherish it where you find it.

You do not mean to stay, but longing and kinship forestalls your departure time and time again.

These little gardeners are such careful stewards of fragility. They sing songs of disasters averted and loved one lost. They fashion heavy elements combed from the bones of old stars into objects of peace and beauty.

You must force yourself to be cruel. Your presence is portent.

Onslaught[edit]

Verses 60-70

Kell Drifis the Daring declaimed to the dread-makers:
"Whirwind whisked us to this war-weary world;
We galloped the galaxy to grasp the Great Machine.
It is not our fate to fail on this field!"
And they went, war-whooping for the white orb, to the wall.

Mark the marvelous manslayers who that day marched: Vililiks the Unvanquished, Vithriks and Vithiliks,
Pirthis and Pithax, called Peerless and Psirris-Slayer,
Rilliks the Revenger and Erivir the Righteous,
But the brutal ones with their bodies barred the way,
The deathless dead ones they call dih-dans.

—

Verses 315-328

Rahdighask reaved ten rikhas into Rilliks's range,
His death-blows drove back the ranks of Dregs,
No numbers could negate the dih-dan's nerve,
Until Kiriviks King-Killer called out to the crew.
Summoning her shock-shooters, the sly Baroness stood
Against Rahdigask at the twelfth rikha and rallied the rabble.

Gunned down again and again, the gruesome dih-dans grew afraid,
And the dih-dans drew back at last, defied and defeated,
And marched no more into the field of the machine-loyal!

Then the righteous righter of wrongs rallied the rabble;
Yes, Kiriviks King-Killer called for a counter-charge!
I wish you could witness the waves of warm-Ethered warbands!
The dih-dans drew ranks, doughty as walls of durmatter,
Bur Kiriviks carved cracks in their undead configuration!

—

Verses 401-407

Fearful were Kiriviks's Firebreak foes as back they fell.
We thought the white orb, Whirlwind-Maker, we had won!
But alas! Lovely Kiriviks's laughter was not long-lived.
Before the barriers of broad-shouldered dih-dans broke,
She was slain, singing to the sphere, by Osiriks,
The Wirliks who wended his way unwatched through the war-land.
Remember Kiriviks, the righteous who halted ravaging Rahdigask!

– Perinel Fayr's famous alliterative interpretation of an Eliksni war song

House of Dusk[edit]

The betrayer prince spoke the words of the last Kell, and the Fallen burned their banners. A Dreg watched his people die in piles of red, blue, and green. The last of the Eliksni were scraps of cloth alight in bright tongues of flame.

Rain and Scar and Stone were dust. The Kings bent the knee. The Exiles knew nothing but hate. Too many Devils rejected the way of Ether to embrace the hateful red cloud that twisted and shaped them. The Wolves were lost with their Kellqueen. Winter was as silent as snow.

There was no Judgment. The Dreg remembered the stories of the Eliksni. How proud his people had been eons ago! They explored the stars. Their Ketches landed on many worlds and claimed them for their own. They built cities that shone in the glow of a dozen suns.

Then the Great Machine came. It offered everything, and it took more. It disappeared in a Whirlwind, and it left despair and ashes. The shining cities fell.

His people had followed the Great Machine across the universe, beseeching it to see them once more. They had tried again and again to take it from its hateful new children. But it would not speak to them. Cold ether hissed where once there had been warmth. Now the banners were burning.

The Dreg looked up at the night sky, brilliant with stars, but saw only the space between. It was beautiful.

The Fallen would have no more Kells. Only the lowest of the low could lead them. They would scavenge and steal and claim the scraps that were their due. Their banners would fly the symbol of the space between.

There was no Light for the Eliksni. Only Dusk.

Baron of Shanks[edit]

TYPE: GHOST/LEVIATHAN ATHENAEUM NETWORK SYNC [00012] PARTIES: One[1]. Fallen-type, Personal Log ASSOCIATIONS: Emperor Calus, Leviathan, Menagerie, Fallen, Sekris, Shadow of Calus

—

It is the eve of our mission to end the life of Dominus Ghaul. The Shadows are ready.

But my Kell Calus, ever mindful, demands one more record for posterity.

This is a story I have told him over and over; he has cried laughing at it. I do not share his love of it, but he is my Kell, so I shall tell it one last time.

Before I was a Shadow of Calus, I called myself Baron. Of what? Of nothing, really.

I am not special among my people. My generation was born of the Whirlwind.

We are, all of us, misers. And misers learn very quickly to show strength or die. Even false strength is better than nothing.

So I was a Baron. Of Shanks. My speciality was and is in the design and armament of Shanks.

My House and I made our den at the edge of the system. We hoped to be as far from the war against humanity as possible.

It found us anyway. Or, rather, he did.

The Saint, the Violet King of humanity's Last City. The fiercest of all those called Titan.

Along with five other Lights. They attacked our settlement in the night and razed it in a matter of hours.

The Saint was on what his people call a Crusade. He hunted all Eliksni across the system.

And today, it was our turn.

By the time I was awake, I was one of the last few left.

By the time I had activated the defensive schemata hidden across our encampment, I was just the only one.

I watched from the shadows in my stealthed skin as my army of Shanks tore five Lights apart.

And when, to my amazement, the Lights stood up, I set my Shanks to an interminable setting.

For as long as the Lights stood, my Shanks would not stop fighting. Their Arc cannons sang into the night.

I was a miser, but I built my Shanks well.

That left only the Saint. And somehow, he could smell me. He knew something or someone guided the Shanks.

He hunted me, and I ran until we reached my final refuge. A bunker I constructed as a last resort. Not for the first time in my life, all my people were dead. I had nothing left to lose.

I made certain to wait for the furious, amethyst divider on his helmet to appear in the distance before I entered the bunker. I wanted him to follow me, and he did, along with his Shank. Through a battery of web grenades and proximity charges.

He finally cornered me inside the bunker, shining armor dented and blackened. The divider on his helm glowed an angry purple, the Light around him a sizzling Void.

Up close, the Saint was a freakish thing, its grace belied in size. It hurtled forward with the armor of a Walker and the speed of an Arc bolt.

Even its movements had movements.

I scrambled backwards, tilting my head back to avoid a slash from his boiling Void shield. I could hear my own breath as I conjured metal sizzled just past my throat and came back around for another slice as it missed.

I ducked. He knew I would, and his knee found my face, cracking the heads up display in my helm and sending me reeling back.

Three strikes in the space it took me to process a single one. My odds to finish this fight were poor.

But I had him.

As I stumbled back, bleeding from several open wounds in my face under the helm, I keyed a control on my waist rig.

A barrier blurred to life between us as the blade of Saint's shield cracked against the space in front of my eyes—and bounced back with a ringing clang. I blinked and stepped back.

He stopped, too, to survey his surroundings. He was struck. The barrier kept him from advancing, and the switch on my belt had shut and locked the plasteel doors behind him.

I sat back, exhausted. Ether and blood dribbling from my face beneath my helmet. Gunfire rang out in the distance.

In those days, I spoke only the language of my people, but I had once stolen a glossator from House Judgment in the event that diplomacy with our Earthborn successors was necessary. (This is an approximation of what was said, recounted from memory and edited for clarity. The glossator is imperfect.)

"Your comrades are still fighting to stand. I did not know the Light could bring you back from the brink." I had heard rumors from other Houses. I had not believed them.

The Saint's boiling shield dissolved into the air.

He stared at me with the expressionless eyes of his helmet.

"It is the quintessential gift of the Light. Your people held it before. What did the Traveler gift you?"

"Many things," I lied. I had no idea. Secrets lost to time, hidden in half-truths.

He took a moment to think.

"What do you hope to accomplish here?" he asked after a moment.

"I have questions," I replied.

"What would you like to know?"

"The Battle of Six Fronts. The sieges of Boyle Pass. The breaking of the Weapons of Rain. You have done so much."

"So I've been told. Everyone asks about those days."

"What do they ask?"

"They ask how I did it."

I laughed. It made me bleed, and I winced. "That is not what I would ask." The expressionless plasteel face stared down at me.

"What gave you the right?" I said.

"If you saw what your people have done to my world, you would know," he replied.

"The Great Machine. Do you commune with it?" I asked.

To this he did not respond. Reality bent with a warbling shriek and his shield reappeared in his hand. He started to look for a way out, scanning corners of the room and the barrier projection system.

"I think, I can kill you," I said, as I watched him. The Saint said nothing and continued his survey of the chamber.

"Your Shank came in here with you. It is hidden now, but I saw it. It is the key to your Light, is it not? There are enough explosives under us to tear a Walker apart."

"Try it," he said, looking at the ceiling. "Kill us both. You'll do my work for me. My friends will be safe."

He stopped. He had found no way out. We stared at each other across the barrier.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked.

I thought about it, and found I could not do it, given the choice. Out of fear? Indignation? Perhaps both. I thought I had nothing to lose. I was wrong.

"Do you think," I said slowly. "That if I allowed you to live, the Great Machine would bless us again?"

The Saint did not respond.

"It loves you, does it not?"

The gunfire of my Shanks echoed faintly outside.

I keyed a switch on my waist rig and the barrier came down. The doors unlocked. Outside, my Shanks ceased firing.

The Saint stared down at me through the dented, blackened helm. He left. I assume he convinced his friends to leave, too.

I keep watch on through the Cabal battlenet. He had continued to lead many successful campaigns against my people.

Archive Note: Sekris, Baron of Shanks, perished in the assassination attempt on Dominus Ghaul.