Lore:Chirality
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Chirality is a Lore book introduced in The Final Shape. Entries are unlocked by completing the Final Shape campaign. It tells of various characters' perspectives on the nature of Light and Darkness, and how their understanding evolved over time.
Foreword
// VanNet—Secure-00 // SYMMETRY_STATUS_REVIEW_07.017831 // I. Rey
The Symmetry: a faction considered a dangerous fringe group at the time of Ulan-Tan's life. While he and the Symmetrists seem more likely now than before to have comprehended some essential truth of the universe, at the time their beliefs were justly considered alarming.
Little wonder that other opinions on Light and Dark were more attractive, with walls beset from all directions and few allies to be found. While none was official Vanguard doctrine, the Praxic Creed and the Pujari Position were much more in line with attitudes in the Tower and the City at large.*
The Praxic Creed holds that the nature of Darkness is not worth investigating; one should focus on combating the Darkness rather than knowing it. The Acataleptic Clause holds that Darkness cannot be understood at all. The two are convenient bedfellows, and we long held the notion that to study the Darkness was to risk being subsumed by it.
I am still not wholly convinced that these theories are inherently wrong. Only that those of our allies who have succeeded in that study are both skilled and fortunate.
The Warlock Pujari's position, on the other hand, holds that Darkness has a moral valence, that it is an actualization of evil. We have been forced to wrestle with such moral standing again and again these past several years. Purity of purpose compels—to see evil and defend those who cannot defend themselves is righteous, but to assume that this act of defense confers righteousness upon us and villainy upon our opponents is a fallacy. It is a slippery slope. I have come to believe this mindset must now be discarded. Pujari's dreams and comprehensions of Darkness should, in fact, be attributed to the being known as the Witness.
For now, I return my focus to the Symmetry.
To acknowledge the Symmetry at the time of their origin would have required a systemic change in our approach to Darkness—something impossible at the time, with the Dark Age still haunting the hard-won progress of the City Age. To insist that Darkness, our enemy, would be eternally undefeatable, required to exist forever by virtue of our Light? Unthinkable then.
Now we begin to accept that with Light, there is Darkness; and with Darkness, there is Light. It almost seems a comfort now, to think that the two forces require each other. Even in the depths of these uncharted waters, when the Traveler is injured and the fight for survival more critical than it has ever been, it is on us that our future hinges, not something incomparable and unreachable.
Light and Darkness will continue. Whether or not we will do so is up to us. We must make it so. That is all that matters.
—
* Saint-14's Position is the most eminently practical of the bunch, no matter how the man himself protests that such an obvious facet of the truth doesn't require a formal philosophical stance to be named for him.
Symmetry
Excerpt from a VanNet letter to Ikora Rey, sender multiply anonymized over relays:
… the Symmetrists even still are viewed as something from the edges of society. City regulations hold that our philosophies are dangerous to permit, though Guardians in prominent positions or public blood-sport are less reserved than ever about using Darkness-based abilities, happy to wield Stasis without a second thought.
I write today to suggest that, should the Consensus be re-formed, or some other non-military governing body be formed of a representative portion of the City, the Symmetry and its students and followers ought to not only be included, but embraced.
The Praxic Order may have their duty to combat Darkness all they want, but basing political and military positions on the fever-dreams of one Warlock—yes, I speak here of the Pujari Position—is misguided at best. Since when have dreams been acceptable testimony, save perhaps from the Speaker? If you wish to tell me that Pujari was in direct communication with the Traveler, you will have to bear the due burden of proof in its entirety.
It is more than clear that the idea of Darkness as a morally evil force without room for compromise is hopelessly outdated, and policy must be revised. Does a shadow have any moral attributes because it may obscure where we are going? Is the sunshine inherently good because it illuminates a path? They are both required to delineate one from the other. And even if they did carry intention, if the blotting out of the sun every night was an act of unspeakable evil, such concepts as good and evil are still defined by their relationship to each other. What is evil? It is not good.
Light and Darkness, the paracausal forces known to the Traveler and the Witness, these are not as simple to define as sun and shadow. But an understanding of Darkness is required no matter if one chooses to remain immersed in Light or balance both. Refusal to accept that understanding will forever render the truth unclear.
If Light ever truly defeated Darkness, that defeat would be our fate too. Our best hope lies in understanding Darkness and its balance to Light, in seeking the perfect symmetry that will right our universe. Perhaps you will read this as a cultish devotion to a deceased figurehead. Perhaps there is no convincing anyone that Ulan-Tan was undoubtably right…
But I digress. In purely practical, non-debatable matters: public attitudes toward Darkness and its forces no longer match long-held City positions about the Symmetry. I would see our theories and teachings be made publishable; our adherents welcomed to the table where the end of all things is addressed.
When you are ready to open further dialogue, signal the philosophers' message board I am sure you are already monitoring.
Omnivorous
You might say, now Drifter, what do you know about Light and Dark? You've been around this old galaxy and back again. You gotta have some wisdom you can put into simple words for a Guardian who just wants to get to punching.
Maybe… maybe. You'll owe me a round, hotshot.
All right. Now we're talkin'.
Light and Dark. Lots of prissy words people throw around with 'em: "hypothesis" this, "position" that. "Clause" my left toe. Waste of time, all of it, if you ask me. Because ain't much difference out there, when you get in the thick of things.
Oh, don't look at me like that. Sure, you got creation and destruction, got your Solar and Stasis, yeah. I ain't saying there's no difference at all. The way you feel about 'em. The things you see when you look at 'em. But cold and hot are both still temperatures, you see? And ice still burns when it's cold enough.
Void's Light, you know. Of course you do now. People used to think it was too close to the Darkness, and for what? Because it was a little purple? Warp a bit of gravity, consume a spot of fire, and suddenly everybody's a critic. You know what I think?
Harder to cook with Void.
Don't like that comparison? Fine, fine, how about this: Thrall are just as dead whether you set 'em on fire or break every individual plate of their exoskeleton. Better?
People got friendly with the Light. Thought just because it was what raised them that it'd never raise a hand to them. Shaw Han down in his Cosmodrome teaching new lights that the Light's no more dangerous than a puppy.
Listen. When I say Light and Dark are closer than people like to think, what I mean is this:
They'll both eat you if you give 'em half a chance.
Now that's symmetry, ain't it.
Transformations of Matter
Would that I had more texts from the philosophers of Riis!
But time is limited in the frenzy of an evacuation, and so, too, is space: data itself is not negligible. The first to go is that without practical value—or should I say, immediate practical value. Art and philosophy are vital to a culture, to a people; their losses are always keenly felt. But in immediacy, art cannot distill Ether, and philosophy cannot propel a ship.
Such is the required brutal practicality of preserving a people.
But something has occurred to me, and I am putting out a request in my capacity as Scribe to gather information from any Eliksni who may be capable of answering. (For every brutal practicality, there is a tender sentiment that arises in exchange, the new sprout beside the culled stalk. There is always something that someone cannot bear to part with.)
The point. The thing that I have lingered on:
We Eliksni and our Human compatriots have a view of the Light that is built on different foundations, and it has resulted in such similar concepts as to be difficult to distinguish. In retrospect I think perhaps there have been hints, but there is always something else requiring attention. The pursuit of relics, the safety of House Light. The imminent apocalypse brought upon us by the Pyramid Fleet and the Witness.
Now, as those of us who cannot forge forward wait and hope, I turn to philosophy.
This is what I have been pondering: It seems that the Human view of Light is based on the creation of something from nothing, while the Eliksni view of Light is based in the transformation of one thing into a different thing.
The two overlap more frequently than not. Take for instance Mars: did the Traveler itself create the oxygen Humans need to breathe, or did it transform carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it was? Does the difference ultimately matter?
An additional thought. The idea of the Traveler as Gardener seems to have gained traction among the Humans of the Tower, and of the City. It is of interest to those who have read the "Unveiling" texts especially. Gardening is in its own way transformative— a gardener, four hands in rich earth, coaxes something forward that had once only existed as a possibility. The seed, given the right resources, becomes a tree, with the core of the seed remaining at the heart of the new growth. I find the image particularly compelling.
The Eliksni of Riis thought of the Traveler as a Great Machine, and while it gave them gardens, that most vital thing it did was to allow Ether to flow like water, free and plentiful.
Ether, we know, does not come from nothing. The machine takes that which it is given and makes of it something else. Servitors still do this today: they require something from which to create Ether. We know this intimately, inescapably.
I think neither of us is right. I think neither of us is wrong. I think, as we walk into the future together, it is beyond vital to preserve the many facets of Light seen through our many eyes. Machine and Gardener and Traveler all.
—Excerpt from one of the many journals of Eido, Scribe of House Light
Preservation
For some Eliksni, Darkness is no material thing, no crashing wave or vicious force to struggle against. It is an impulse, an urge to do that which serves you best and discard all the rest. I recognize this well. It was an opinion I shared for much time.
Humans–Guardians, at the least–view that same Darkness as something that can be fought in battle, handled as a weapon. The powers arisen from it would say they are not wrong, either.
I do not wish to call to the Darkness in that manner. But of late I have come to know the feel of the things in it. I can no longer help it. I consider Darkness now as a suspension—or perhaps a colloid. Carrying some solid along with the flow of the river. Difficult to extricate, flowing as liquid does, but still… there is something not of the Darkness itself.
I took something upon me when we strove to bring Osiris back to the waking world, when we collected the relics of Nezarec once more. I imagine I feel it sometimes, under my exoskeleton. Fluid that stirs and settles, moving sediment with it.
When I wake from nightmares, that sense arises, as though it has been waiting for me to wake.
I hear talk of Darkness among Humans now as a force of consciousness, of minds rather than matter, of connections and flow. Not evil; not cruel in itself. But if it is that thing which spins between peoples, hums string-plucked when ideas and emotions touch each other, no wonder that it may carry more with it as it moves.
No wonder that it may be named as that voice of our worst impulses, knowing all those who have used it, who have given themselves to it. I hear that voice more clearly than I once did.
If your enemy carries a rifle, you may take it from them: but what if their hand remained on the stock? If you would ever have a trigger that yearned to be pulled by another's thoughts? If you might come to believe that it was you, after all, who wished to pull that trigger?
Will I leave some part of me in that Darkness? And what will that part be? I struggle to believe that it might be the best of me.
I would like to leave Eido with something better.
— Partially recovered overwritten data sectors from personal logs of Misraaks, Kell of House Light
Old Friend, Beloved
Here is a sorrowful book. Read it well.
Once more, for understanding.
The oceans of Fundament. The translucent waves reflect the surface. Dip your hand, and it comes up trailing liquid clear as glass. Dive deep, and the weight of it mounts upon itself, exponential and inescapable. And in those depths is pressure and darkness, and all that is becomes stripped down to simply that which is essential to survive.
An elegant thing. You may see why we loved the Deep.
And what of the Sky?
The delicate arch of the firmament, the color of the ocean reflecting back at itself. Soar high enough, and far enough – dodge enough bait-stars, enough membranous predators floating lightly on the wind – and there, too, is darkness. What may survive in that empty space between stars?
Only that which has clawed its way up.
The Sky should have reached harder if it wanted us.
Now I am abundant with Light: it fills the empty hollow where a worm once burrowed. The trifling matter of a restoration of memory has made little difference. My nature is coded into my morph, from the chitin of my thorax to the scales of my wings.
If the Sky and the Deep were so different, should not rebirth from Darkness to Light have made of me something sweet and gentle?
Don't bother to answer. We both know already.
Empty-Handed
As a Ghost—even Savathûn's Ghost, yeah, yeah—I think I have a little more authority to speak on Light than some of you chuckleheads. You want an opinion, you got it.
Listen, it's pretty clear by now that whatever's evil is what you Humans happen to be fighting against at the time. Don't think I don't admire the grift, pal, but it's less entertaining from this side. We had that good old-fashioned time with "the Hive use the Darkness, so Darkness is evil." Except now, it's "the Hive use the Light, so maybe Light is also evil?" Yeah.
Let's take good and evil out of it for a minute.
So the Hive. My Hive. Me and this crew of Ghosts decided we were going to give the Traveler's better choice a real shot. Worms gone. Light remains. It shines on what's there, so what'd the Hive do? They didn't all develop a burgeoning case of rugged individualism the second they were reforged in Light. And the Light didn't burn the Dark out of them, or whatever nonsense the Praxic Order has been cooking up. They kept being Hive.
It's just about choice.
Everyone's got one. Always. Whatever you're doing, wherever you are. Not finding a choice acceptable isn't the same as not having one. Hive had a choice even under worm management—but hey, a final death isn't exactly an alternative a lot of them would want to pick.
What I'm getting at is that the Traveler made a choice too. Chose to uplift the Hive just as it did the Humans; chose to stay when it could have fled.
I respect that. Even now, I'm carrying out its will, across the divide from you lot.
And what are the Lucent Hive choosing now? I'm sure not telling. But whatever it might be, it's a whole different ball of hemolymph than your facile dichotomy of the past. And good or evil, they still get to choose for themselves.
Just like I did. Just like the Traveler did.
Cacosmia
[Report by VanNet encrypted router]
[A-Mahal]//Link: C-Yong]
[Mail-Archive//0071292//excerpted]
… Where there is smoke, there is fire, they say. The sign of a thing does not come to pass without the thing that made it. Footsteps require a being walking to be made.
So then, why the recent move toward acceptance of Darkness as a morally neutral force? Are we expected to believe that the Collapse, that all our battles against the Hive and their Darkness, have been nothing more than an elaborate false flag operation? How is it that none of the enemies of humanity have, until now, come to us wielding Light?
It is not… impossible.
There, I have said it, though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to do so. While I sincerely doubt any genuine conspiracy, I will concede that it is technically possible that nearly every enemy of humanity has simply happened to take to hand the cosmic force that opposes the Traveler, the one force which was used to end the Golden Age and decimate humanity.
Savathûn is known for deception and trickery. Are we so certain that she was given the Light? Truly?
And even if it is true that the Darkness is itself as safe as the Light, that our greatest enemy had only taken it as its cloak, should we truly encourage Guardians to reach for it? A force of consciousness with the Witness lingering within? From where I stand, nothing seems riskier.
I have never thought that we needed to understand the Darkness to defeat it. Doing so has only brought more questions and uncertainty in a time when clarity of purpose is required.
Have we all forgotten the reasons Osiris was banished? In his obsession with the Vex, he spoke freely of morality, decrying the concepts of good and evil as foolishness; he spoke of a willingness to choose Darkness above whatever fate the Vex might bring. At the time, it was thought so dangerous a viewpoint that he was sent away from the City, and his return has only brought more doubt.
I will still fight the Darkness. That is of paramount importance. Perhaps, if there can be peace, the Creed can be revisited to prioritize the defeat of humanity's enemies.
That time is not now.
Collective
From the writings of Ulan-Tan, recovered after his death:
… It is because Light and Darkness are connected that great sacrifice was required of the Traveler: that which was once in balance was no longer, and to equal Darkness with its Light would take more than had ever been given before.
So the Traveler created Ghosts; Ghosts created Guardians. And afterward, the Traveler became quiet. Dead, some thought, or dreaming.
When a Human being commits an act of great cost, we know this as injury, as muscles torn and bones broken. It requires rest; frequently, it requires intervention to heal. As simple as the helping hand of another to lean on, or as complex as deep surgery: the constant theme that it cannot be done alone. Even to rest safely in quiet requires another to take over the matters of life that cannot be put off, which do not pause themselves simply for the fact of being asked kindly.
So: the Traveler strove greatly, and then became still. How do we believe that it is anything but injured?
The Speaker tells us the Traveler is not dead, and I believe this. It is sleeping, resting from its great deed. The sacrifice made for us, to create us.
There is a debt thus owed.
If we understand that Light is connected to itself—that the Light in Guardians is the same Light as that in their Ghosts, which in turn is the same Light as the Traveler's—then the answer is clear: that those possessed of the Traveler's Light, defended and upraised by it, stand in the best and in fact only possible position to pay back that debt. Who else could even hope to do so?
I argue that our duty is to try. Even the act of defending the Traveler so it may heal is some measure of action. But if there is more that can be done, then we who it has defended owe it to the Traveler to do so.
Remember that, in Light or in Darkness.
Bird in the Hand
I'm the last guy you'd accuse of being on the straight and narrow, right? Right. I mean, come on, look at me. Hunters aren't exactly the noble knights of the Guardian world.
Look. I'm not a square. That's Zavala's job. I'll break all the rules that I shouldn't and keep the ones no one expects me to. Which is why, in part, I've never been much of one for nosing into the Darkness. Take the three of us, huh? Who would you expect to get their hands into the goop? The honorable commander, the wise wizard, or… me?
I keep hearing how Light and Dark are connected. Not sure I'm into it. Maybe it has something to do with being reborn here, with being all made up of Light now.
Maybe not.
I like the Light. Simple as that. I know what to do with it. I've got hundreds of years of rolling around this old solar system with fire in my gun and Light in my heart. And let's face it, how can you live with yourself if you can't be light-hearted?
…I'm rusty. That was awful.
Anyways. The Traveler's like a good old friend. Dependable. Doesn't talk much. Doesn't need to. Just… there for you.
Spent a while as part of that Light. Me and the Traveler. The Traveler and me… and Sundance. So I've got a sense for it these days. Guess you could say I'm biased in its favor, so take that into account if you're doing a detailed survey.
But Darkness, I hardly know it. Apart from the Witness, what is it? Doesn't have a friendly hand at the helm. Seems to me more like a crowd of folks whispering while you fight for your life. The audience or the mob. Could go your way if you impress them, if the mood flows the right way. Might not lift a finger for you. Wouldn't want to depend on 'em either way.
This isn't faith; it isn't dogma. It isn't me sitting down with an agenda and telling people just to believe in the Traveler and everything will work out just fine. But it's what works for me, rules or no rules. It's what I've lived, what I've touched, and a little helping of thinking about what my girl Sundance might say.
I think about her now, out here, nothing but the Light in me to guide my way. I'm a ghost of what I once was—pun intended, thank you very much—but Light is Light. It still sings, just differently. I'll work it out, even if there's a great big hole where she should be.
But enough about me.
Look. Trust what you want, I'm not your dad. Just make sure that trust is well placed.
