#Destiny Forsaken Spoilers

[crispy0nion]

Forsaken and Season of the Wish parallelism

[theforsakenprince]

Forsaken // Season of the Chosen // Season of the Wish

"The line between light and dark is so very thin... do you know which side you're on?"

[dreamingriven]

forsaken // the final shape

[fandom-geek]

...don't mind me, i'll just be over here crying

[screenshotserenity]

Destiny 2: Forsaken (2018) vs Destiny 2: Lightfall - Season of the Wish (2024)

[clovis-bray-ate-my-son]

I'm calling it now that's not the real Cayde it's just the witness fucking with us

[thefirstknife]

The destiny reddit is an absolute warzone right now. Do yourself a favor and avoid it like the plague

Oh no. I saw a lot of negative comments overall and while I understand where they're coming from, I think at some point, some people should calm down.

I mentioned some of the issues I had with the campaign and I stand by them, I think some of this stuff definitely felt rushed and that we're sorely lacking basic information to understand the plot. But I can get over that if it's fairly reasonable to believe we'll find out eventually (and it is) and if the rest is solid. And to me, the rest is solid.

I know people have issues with strand taking too much time from the campaign, and I get it. But also to me, strand being such a huge part of the story made the campaign feel more personal and invested for US, the Guardian. To me, that was the point. I do wish the campaign was a bit more expansive, perhaps another mission or two would've been perfect imo. An extra mission could've delved into the history of the Veil and what it means. It's a legitimate complaint that I share, but also some people online have been expressing it... rather explosively.

I'd also add a counter to my own complaint; when it comes to the plot about the Veil and the Witness and the Traveler, it's clear that this isn't the end; it's a setup. Everything that happened here we can learn about retroactively in a month or six months or a year. It may suck because it's content for THIS expansion so we want to know now, but it CAN be explained later.

But strand? Strand can't. We have to learn it NOW. We can't get strand and then have a really cool personal discovery quest about mastering it in a month or six or a year. So if they didn't have time to fit another two missions into the campaign, it's fairly obvious what is being cut.

Is it clumsy? Yeah, definitely. I definitely feel like some crucial information has been deliberately cut away and removed, possibly waiting to be delivered during the year to prepare us for The Final Shape. I'm not a fan of that method, I would prefer a solid chunk of lore about the current story to be delivered in the current story. If anything, then for clarity. Especially because the majority of the players will not be waiting around to read 15 lore tabs during the year to figure out what's the Veil. A major expansion should be self-contained.

But for the love of god, some of what I've seen online is basically some players acting like we have E.T. (1982) on our hands. Like, I agree that there's issues and I've spoken about them and I can do it again at any point, but at the end of the day, I had fun and the good stuff was good. Literally my only true complaint is that it feels like a mission or two are missing. Pretty much every problem I have would've been solved with that. But that's an unknown amount of extra time of work so I cannot make a comment whether they could've done that or not. I will assume they couldn't so they didn't. Generally don't like assuming that they did it maliciously because then we go into dev harrassment territory.

[baede-6]

*uses strand on Cayde so we never get separated during the "Cayde's Fate" quest*

[brittleskyblue]

Ngl, I wasn't too surprised by what happened in the new seasonal story update (it just went down a bit differently than I thought it would), cause I saw that one coming a mile away.

But also, now I'm having more oc thoughts that will inevitably show up in fics.

(Put bellow the cut because of spoilers)

* * *

(Context note: in my lore for my oc group, Tyrell-3 ends up getting together with Crow at the end of Season of the Hunt. So the fact that Crow might go down this vengeance path is... quite worrying for Tyrell. He’s seen it happen before..)

"Is that what you really want, Crow? Vengeance? It doesn't-"

"Don't you? She was your friend too. You've known her longer-"

"Of course Amanda was my friend and knowing that she's gone fucking hurts! But I can't just- argh, Crow just, please hear me out."

"We can't just sit here and do nothing."

"....I know. You may not believe it, but I have been here before. Crow, I was there. On the Shore when Nelan was...."

".....You can say it, you know."

"Look; you want this so badly? Ask Nelan how well that worked out for them."

[14cookiesinajar]

Is this why we finally got the Cayde memorial?!?!

[gothbard]

spoilery and disorganized thoughts for the end of this season of destiny 2 under the cut

HOLY SHIT Y’ALL!

like i didn’t expect rasputin to die, but i really didn’t expect a self sacrifice like that! i thought it would be something more like permanently shutting down his network and just remote detonating the warsats. which i also had no idea had those laser cannons, i thought they were basically just big bombs that he could throw around if need be. but it just so tragically and wonderfully showed how much ana helped him grow into his own person (i’m not crying, you’re crying!) and everything that went into it, today and over the season, the writing, acting, music, and animation was just *chef’s kiss*

also it feels a lot like they’ve been hinting that eramis isn’t so loyal to the witness after all. between how she talked with and saved eido, the way the witness punished her, and the fact that there’s no way she’d become a disciple, it really seems like this is more a matter of just having a shared enemy and needing a way to get an edge on the guardians. like, she almost seemed hesitant to fire on the traveler until she saw the witness on the screen and her surprise that it stayed by earth instead of fleeing makes me hope even more that she’ll wind up joining us eventually

and the veil? wasn’t that an old name for a faction that would have served the darkness even more directly than the hive or even have been born from it? but it’s some kind of “object of immense paracausal power”? since that’s something people have struggled to replicate it could be some kind of relic, but neomuna was created with golden age tech and has only advanced from there so maybe it’s something they created? a name like that doesn’t sound like any sort of weapon unless it’s meant to be evocative of the veil between life and death. or it could be more like peeling back the veil as an expression to learn more about things? no matter what it is i CAN’T WAIT for next season!

i do feel bad for people that are gonna have to do that last mission solo though since that boss battle can be pretty tough

[zalia]

Truth to Power, Chiasmus, and the Final Shape (or, has anyone else noticed we're playing the story backwards?)

Through a set of circumstances, I ended up getting onto an unhinged rambling session at 3am so thanks to my friend who let me (one time when different time zones was actually useful).

Some of this may be a little bit of a reach, but I think it bears out, and i've put the truly out there thoughts at the end.

Contains spoilers for Season of the Wish finale, and basically of Destiny, including the Final Shape trailers and ViDocs.

Okay, lets talk about Truth to Power and Ikora and Arach Jalaal's discussion of it in the Witch Queen CE.

Truth to Power is a lore book from Forsaken and it is... odd to say the least. It starts out as a message from 'Eris' and then cycles through other characters Eris > Medusa > Quria > Dul Incaru > Savathun, and then back again. It includes a 'choose your own adventure' section, a hidden challenge to defeat Shattered Throne solo at light level 999, a hidden note to data miners, and talks a lot about Ahamkara, the Distributary and the Dreaming City, black holes, and Savathun's (potential) plans regarding it. Especially the idea of moving through worlds contained within worlds via black holes.

In the Hidden Dossier decoded from the Witch Queen CE, Ikora and Arach Jalaal discuss this book, it's many readings, and what it might mean.

One thing that comes up is that the story uses a literary device called 'chiasmus'

REY >> JALAAL Look at the structure of the text. At first, Eris is real. Then we learn Eris's voice is a deception by Medusa. Then we learn Medusa is nested inside Quria. Then we learn Quria is a fiction of Dûl Incaru. And at the center, Savathûn reveals herself to be the parent of it all. We are headed inward, as if moving from parent to child universe. Then we proceed in reverse. Savathûn is revealed to be a fiction of Dûl Incaru. Dûl Incaru a simulation by Quria, and so on. So in the end, Truth to Power moves outwards. Just as Savathûn plans to move. In from our universe and out to the Distributary— Or out from our universe to its parent. JALAAL >> REY Oh. I see. I see! A literary structure like that is called a chiasmus, and chiasmus means "crossing point"! Like a wormhole or a portal! It was hidden in plain sight.

They can also be thought of as ring structures. We end at the beginning.

Which incidentally is the tag line for the Akashic Revelation lore from Season of the Deep about a Guardian trying to enter the portal in the Traveller and getting visions of his original human life!

Which will become relevant i swear.

Lots of people have commented about the finale cutscene from Season of the Wish, and how it mirrors Forsaken - with Crow at Cayde's mercy, vs Cayde at Uldren's mercy. And you can kind of look at Crow's story in general as a reflection of Uldren's. Crow resurrected > Imprisoned by Spider > Manipulated by Savathun > Growing into himself and his freedom as a guardian > Reconciliation with Mara > Jumping through a portal to another facet of reality

vs

Uldren following Mara out of the Distributary > the growing distance between him and Mara > Prince of the Awoken, tricking Guardians, visiting the Black Garden > his growing madness leading to his imprisonment in the Prison of Elders and manipulation by Riven (who was controlled by Savathun) > Death

There's another cycle (there are many cycles) I noticed with Saint and Osiris.

Vanguard Commanders > Separation+Exile > Saint's loss of the Light + death > [Sundial Incident] > Osiris' loss of the Light and imprisonment > [Nezarec Tea Incident] > Recovery+being reunited > Vanguard Commanders

We've also had in the ViDoc the mention of receiving the Khvostov because it's the first weapon we ever use in D1, returning to the freeway we were resurrected at, returning to the beginning.

With me so far?

We've ended Season of the Wish with a redux version of the final fight of D1 Vanilla - the destruction of the Black Heart. Symbolically bringing us back to the start of our journey. But if you look at a lot of the themes of recent seasons... we've been travelling backwards loosely through a reflection of D1's storylines.

Season of the Wish/D1 Vanilla

In D1, we are guided to enter the Black Garden and destroy the Black Heart created by the Vex. This is the story where we first encounter Mara and Uldren who send us to get the eye of a Vex Gate Lord to enter the Garden. Which involves us going to the Ishtar Academy on Venus to find out more about the Vex (incidentally this is also where the Vex Citadel is located - something which has been very prominently visible in the Starcrossed Mission).

In Season of the Wish, we are following up work done by Maya Sundaresh and Chioma Esi of the Ishtar Collective on the Veil which was revealed to be what the Black Heart was trying to recreate. We're working with Mara and Crow (and Crow even lampshades the original story in a joke about the eye of a Vex Gate Lord!). Eventually we end up confronting the Vex and destroying a new copy of the Black Heart.

Season of the Witch/The Dark Below

In the Dark Below, we are guided by Eris to stop the resurrection of Crota by disrupting a ritual, and eventually kill him in his Throne World in the Crota's End raid.

In Season of thr Witch, we take part in a ritual to tithe to Eris to help her ascend into becoming the Hive god of vengeance so that she can cut Xivu Arath off from her Throne World

Eris: Crota's soul is banished. You have given me the gift of vengeance. I thank you… - D1

Season of the Deep/The Taken King

I admit that this is out of order and a little more of a stretch, but chiasmus is not necessarily an exact thing and I think the parallels are there.

In The Taken King, we are confronted with Oryx's fleet arriving in the system to get revenge for the killing of Crota. He destroys a large portion of the Awoken Fleet who were there to buy us time, including killing Mara Sov (she had a plan and got better!). We have to pretend to be Ascendant Hive to face him on the Dreadnaught (which is created from the body of one of the Worm Gods) and we take shards of his sword to create our own. Eventually we face him in King's Fall, use his hoarded stolen Light and free it to defeat him.

In Season of the Deep, we have the sudden reappearance of Titan in the system sent by Xivu Arath. We have Sloane who has willingly become half Taken to learn about Xivu's plans and undermine them, and she is supported by Ahsa, one of the proto-worms who is seemingly akin to the Worm Gods (Eris uses her name and the name of her slaughtered family in her ritual in Season of the Witch, alongside the names of the Worm Gods). We save Ahsa, Sloane is possessed briefly by Xivu but recovers. We also enter a pyramid and take a gift of Darkness (Wicked Implement) left to us by Xivu.

Also we have a whole dungeon about the Lucent Hive trying to resurrect Oryx and Xivu's voice memories regarding him and everything about the Hive.

Season of Defiance/House of Wolves

In House of Wolves, Skolas, Kell of Wolves, is freed from his imprisonment by one of the Nine. he declares himself Kell of Kells, frees his followers from the Prison of Elders, attempts to assassinate Mara Sov. Mara, angered by this, gives Guardians the freedom of the Reef to hunt Skolas down as he tries to unite the various houses. He eventually breaks into the Vault of Glass to bring Wolves from the past to aid him. We stop him, capture him, and eventually kill him in the Prison of Elders. This leads to a very slight improvement of relations between the Reef and the City, although the Awoken, barring Petra, are still mainly ambivalent and Mara is absolutely only interested in us as a means to an end.

In Season of Defiance, the Shadow Legion are capturing humans and Eliksni and imprisoning them on the pyramid ships. We are aided in their rescue by Misraaks, once of the House of Wolves (as was his mother) now Kell of Light (and potentially Kell of Kells eventually???), and Mara Sov, who comes to aid us, willingly using her power to let us walk the Ascendant plane in order to rescue our people. It very much solidifies the alliance between the City and the Reef.

So essentially, House of Wolves is former allies of the Reef turning on them to destroy them. Season of Defiance is former enemies banding together to save their people.

Also Taniks is in House of Wolves, and conspicuously mentioned in Season of Defiance.

Lightfall/The Red War

Again, out of order slightly, but the more I think about it, the more I see the parallels.

In the Red War, the Last City is attacked by the Red Legion led by Dominus Ghaul who is obsessed with claiming the Light, and captures the Speaker. The Guardians lose the Light and are driven out of the City. We have to regain our Light abilities from the Shard of the Traveller that we are guided to. The Speaker is killed after admitting the Traveller doesn't speak to him. We go to gather our allies once more, assault the City, fight Ghaul who is then destroyed by the Light when the Traveller awakens. The Black Fleet is shown to activate at the edge of the System.

In Lightfall, we follow Osiris who has had a vision of Neptune. We arrive in Neomuna which is a City under assault from the Shadow Legion led by Calus (who was exiled and deposed by Ghaul). Our Light abilities are suppressed so we have to master Strand which is seemingly a product of the Veil. We gather our allies, including Caiatl who had taken over command after Ghaul's death, and combat the Shadow Legion's assault on Neomuna. We fight and defeat Calus who has been granted Darkness abilities. But the Witness communes with the Veil, damages the Traveller, and most of the Black Fleet leaves the system to enter the Traveller.

Season of the Seraph/Rise of Iron

In Rise of Iron, we're called by Saladin Forge, the last of the Iron Lords, to stop the Eliksni House of Devils from taking control of SIVA, the nanomachine plague which killed the other Iron Lords when they went to seek it to save humanity, because Rasputin got mad that the Traveller resurrected his son as Felwinter. We fight the SIVA animated corpses of some of the Iron Lords and destroy the replication chamber. We fight the Devil Splicers who have been augmented by SIVA.

In Season of the Seraph, we are working to recover a damaged Rasputin and stop Xivu Arath from taking control of Rasputin's Warsat network and weapons. We enter bunkers to recover his data, including returning to Felwinter Peak to recover Felwinter's memories which leads to Rasputin sacrificing himself to save humanity, where before he had sacrificed the Iron Lords for his own selfishness. We also fight Witness animated corpses of Eliksni (the Scorn) and Eliksni Wrathborn infected by Xivu Arath's cryptoliths (which can also infect computer systems). Eramis, once a Baron of the House of Devils has to see and grieve her friends and comrades turned into mindless puppets, as Saladin once had to see the Iron Lords turned into puppets by SIVA.

I think there's also a note to be had about how we're doing these repeats. In D1 the vast majority of the time, we are alone. We are not yet the Young Wolf, the Godslayer, the hero. We are just one random Guardian.

In D1 vanilla, there's no real mission control. You have Elsie Bray tell you to follow a signal and give you some info, but then you are on your own. Mara and Uldren are quite relaxed about potentially getting you killed. In Season of the Wish, we are guided by Osiris and Mara, aided by Crow. We have people with us every step of the way. At this point in D1, Petra was more or less exiled from the Reef. In Season of the Wish, she is one of Mara's greatest supports, and you can hear how much Mara cares about her.

The Dark Below has you guided by an Eris who is alone, untrusted and seen as crazy at best, or a genuine threat to the City at worst. She has nothing in her life but vengeance. In Season of the Witch, we have an Eris who has Ikora and Drifter and Mara there to support her and who trust her. The worry is mostly for her rather than about her.

We have gone from the Last City being a last bastion of humanity with the whole universe against us, to one of two cities, filled with those we had once called enemies.

Conclusion

So yeah, a theory that we're travelling back through our story, a chiasmus (there may well be other parallels in previous seasons too) which is taking us right back to the start of our story.

Except here's the thing... Elsie Bray is the one who starts things off by having us destroy the Black Heart. It's implied to be the major event that changed things. But Elsie's timeloops are stated to always take her back way before our resurrection, to the moment when Cayde becomes Hunter Vanguard.

Well, we're just about to get Cayde back.

So what happens when you reach the beginning/end of the story and yet it continues? We're outside the boundaries of this story now! Off the path we've been following!

But unlike when we were resurrected, alone save for Ghost, when we go into the Pale Heart, we will not be going alone. We've come through the chiasmus and we've done things better, built alliances, made friends, united the Light and the Darkness.

So when we step beyond the boundaries of the storyI would suggest one thing – Guardians make their own fates.

The actual unhinged theorising

So, there was one connection my mind made at like 7am when I briefly woke up after going to bed at 4am. A Chismus is kind of like a labyrinth.

In English, Labyrinth is often synonymous to maze, and it can be! However maze and labyrinth are also used as specialised terms - a maze is a multicursal puzzle with many branching paths, while a labyrinth is unicursal, and has only one winding path to the centre and out again.

You can see them in lots of places, including places of worship where they can represent symbols of pilgrimage, or a path to enlightment/salvation. Walking them can be used as a form of meditation. And historically they've also had sometimes been used as a way to trap evil spirits, or turn away evil.

So a Chiasmus is a ring structure, and you follow it from start to finish then back to start, and a labyrinth is a unicursal winding path that takes you to the centre and then back out again, and the story of Destiny is (loosely) following that structure.

There is one specific labyrinth I think it's worth looking at.

This is a labyrinth carved into the portico of Lucca Cathedral in Italy. The inscription is Latin and translated reads "This is the labyrinth built by Dedalus of Crete; all who entered therein were lost, save Theseus, thanks to Ariadne's thread"

This is the seal for Season of Arrivals... oh hey that... that looks familiar.

This is from the Live Action Witch Queen trailer showing the Cradle on Mars with... oh wait... is that... the same fucking labyrinth?

It crops up in a lot of places in Destiny. You will see it everywhere.

Where am I going with this?

Look at the inscription for the Lucca Cathedral labyrinth: "This is the labyrinth built by Dedalus of Crete; all who entered therein were lost, save Theseus, thanks to Ariadne's thread"

We know the story of Thesus and the Minotaur. He was able to find his way through thanks to a spool of thread given to him by Ariadne (oh hey, guess what subclass we just got in the last expansion...).

Well, Ariadne's Thread is the name for a method of solving puzzles by an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes. Wikipedia says about this method:

At any moment that there is a choice to be made, make one arbitrarily from those not already marked as failures, and follow it logically as far as possible.

If a contradiction results, back up to the last decision made, mark it as a failure, and try another decision at the same point. If no other options exist there, back up to the last place in the record that does have options, mark the failure at that level, and proceed onward.

That sounds kind of Vex-like huh? Or even more specifically... sounds almost like what Elsie Bray has been doing. She is reset each time to the last set point (Cayde becoming Hunter Vanguard), and in each loop she tests paths up until destruction. It's how she comes to realise that she has to be the person who finds stasis first.

Each loop cuts off a branch of the maze, a set of possibilities that do not lead to the right outcome. And cutting off each branch until there is only one path turns it into a labyrinth.

I've thought for a while that it feels like something is iterating, working through every option until all the pieces align and there is only one path. Making sure the chiasmus works.

Piecing together a perfectly constructed bomb to take on the sword, which will detonate into the exact kind of chaos that Guardians are good at.

I apologise for the extreme longness of this post. I really hope it is semi-coherent at least?

[pizza-tower-fracture]

Introduction

( Spoiler alert : game ending )

I’m-a not sure how long I stayed in this forsaken tower, but let-a me tell you, all the stress I endured during my whole stay was worth it, when I saw John giving Pizzahead the probably biggest uppercut in his entire career.

I can understand John. I would‘ve been-a angry too, if I was cloned and used as some kind of pillar for an old tower.

…I mean…I got cloned too (still processing that), but at least I was not forced to stay in there to hold the structure of a whole-a building. John surely deserved a good hit on Pizzahead after all this…

For me, this whole tower nightmare was thankfully over…and I was eager to return to my old life.

But it seemed like destiny had other plans for me.

Sometimes I really wished I‘d never picked up this forsaken amulet…but here I am.

Santa Maria…Peppino, what did-a you get yourself into?

A mysterious voice is ringing out to you.

Your prying questions will soon be answered. Just have a little patience, my friends. Two more...then our voices will reach him..

[itsnotthesam]

Destiny 2 The Final Shape Spoilers!

The campaign was slightly disappointing because it felt like it stopped just as it was getting good, but tbh I forgive everything in the main campaign for Wild Card.

I’ve loved Crow and his story from when he was first teased in Forsaken. I’ve loved the drama of how he’s technically the hunter vanguard this whole time because of the dare. I loved when we would get little updates on how miserable he was and how much of an outcast he was when he was a new light. And I’ve loved him even more ever since he’s been on screen, from his reunion with the guardians proper, to his weird relationship with his sister, it’s all been incredible, and rough and great.

The scene where Cayde names him vanguard, and tells him that it’s not because of the dare made me cry. It was such a perfect payoff for the 5+ year journey this character has been on. I can’t get over how happy I am at this outcome. It’s soooo good I can look on the narrative stuff in this dlc I’m less extatique about with better feelings because of how good this was

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

"You must learn to tease apart the hues of your own heart." —Parables of the Allspring.

Hey all! I'm a Warlock main named Matt and I've been posting my scattershot Destiny musings, ramblings, and theories since Lightfall's release. In that time, I've really enjoyed exploring the mysteries of the lore and honing my thoughts on Destiny's story through various posting styles. Particularly, I've loved exploring topics like the nature of the Darkness and the Veil, and their place in the story, as well as the generally rhyming, looping, spiraling structure of the game's narrative. I also love Eris, Drifter, Savathûn, and Osiris!

Sometimes I get a little all over, especially in those early posts, with big leaps and a lot of my own writing connecting the dots in an attempt to see a bit into the future. You'll have to pardon some of them, as I'm sure a few have aged pretty poorly or are just straight up bad. But as we've gone through the seasons and learned more, I've tried a sort of variation on web-weaving and assemblage by using lore entries, images, video, and sometimes song lyrics and poetry in a particular order and context to evoke specific moods or convey big, hard to articulate ideas and speculation. Sometimes, I just explore a theme or specific lore nook that fascinates me. It's a weird little practice in meaning-making I really like and the process has helped me unearth possible connections between things I've never considered in my many years following the lore.

As we move through The Final Shape, I wanted to finally compile a list of links to all my posts. Pardon the amount of repetition and, probably, off-the-wall speculation, but I hope you find something interesting if you decide to check them out! Also, keep an eye out for links. Sometimes it's simply the source text on Ishtar, other times.... something more. Please keep in mind that all these are products of the moment in time they were posted in, so topics I explored in early ones may have questions answered in the seasons since, or theories may have been proven unequivocally wrong. The list will largely go from earliest to most recent, and I'll put a * next to my favorites!

The Veil, Nezarec, and Jakob Bohme

Seeing the murals above the Veil enclosure

EMBRACE THE DARKNESS

Thank You, Verse 154i:4 - Call the Thrall

MCXLLII-I, forthcoming.

The EDZ saw paracausal conflict long before the Collapse

Pattern is system and system is sequence, but what is sequence?

Forsaken Lightfall

Deterministic Chaos

Eight

SALVAGE THE TRUTH

Aren't they beautiful?

"What is this feeling? I do not want it."

"They desired meaning. A Winnower to shape the garden."*

"How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?"*

The Sundial

The Dreaming Cities

Not Light, not Dark: Power.*

Chiasmus*

Conspiracy Theory-D

The Truth in the Darkness...

Have you ever been afraid of your own Shadow?*

[I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?]*

©0RrUptIôN.*

Prismatic Hearts*

"We are unique emanations of the same shared Light."

Kugelblitz

Final attempts to understand before the Shape is unveiled*

[The following posts contain entries, imagery, and spoilers for the Final Shape and Echoes]

Paradrome

Speaker's Sight — Study the voice. Gaze into the heart.

"Focus. The Pyramid distracts. Nothing more."

It all means one thing

DECRYPTION KEY: 3136664202-777

Ruinous Effigy

There is only SUFFERING

SPOILER ALERT

Hope for the Future

It's not over

Echoing

Echoes of Deep Hidden Truth

Solipsism

Anima Mundi

Caught up in a web

II. Theory**

Gardener|ɿɘwonniW**

Cipher**

Eclipse**

"What is 'OXA,' and who was 'MSund12'?"

I know you're not afraid of a little dark...

How do I live?

Half-Truths**

!lettinggo*

Abyssus abyssum invocat***

THE POINT***

Eyes up, Guardian

"The road ahead is unknown, but time tells us many things. The moments that become past in turn become blueprints for the future. In this space, there is no right or wrong. "We find a contemporaneous merging of what is known and what is unknown here. Somewhere between the knowns and unknowns lies the real. The tangible. "There is a weight to it; a feeling that tells you what you hold is true. "But what if the truth hasn't been told? What if the truth is a lie? "New paths present themselves. Blueprints change. We walk the line of truth every day. "But now, the line that holds the gentle balance has been crossed. "The truth is, this won't be the last time."

—Excerpt from the Symmetry pamphlet, "A Place Between"

Reading for world-building is a skill. I have seen brilliant people, laureates, inventors, Ph.D.s, try to read fiction with deep world-building and fail completely, looping back, rereading, never following events, trapped in a sense of muddled wandering. Reading for world-building requires retaining information without context: a term, a place, a coin, a category comes up once and we know what that is—a puzzle piece—and that our task is to gather up these pieces as the author drops them, and to slowly assemble the whole. This is not easy. Human memory needs hooks for facts: a mnemonic, a story, context, something; grueling textbook rote-learning fades quickly, but a story of the statesman or the king, that's what makes knowledge stay. To retain puzzle pieces that don't connect, dropped without context, is a skill that not all have. All had it once: it is how children read, every book, poster, and headline a stream of unknown terms, far too many to ask about them all, but the child retains them, trusting that they will connect to something someday. Kids collect Earth's puzzle pieces every time they read, but as we move to grown-up books they all use the same picture, and define immediately those terms they fear a reader may not know. Thus the skill of keeping puzzle pieces fades, unless we read books set in other worlds, new puzzle pictures which make us retain the skill, as frogs sometimes retain their tadpole tails into adulthood. This—many have observed—is why most F&SF readers come to the genre young, it's hard to start in adulthood when one's puzzle memory skill has sat atrophied. We find dozens of other puzzle pieces—creatures, buried engines, monstrous plants—but they don't connect either, no explanations, no recurrences. We trust. We ponder. We wade through the clutter of clashing technologies, tales of degeneration, glories lost, but there's no fall-of-space-Rome story to connect it up. We can guess at one, as we can guess the missing end of the story of the strange plants, as we can guess at several ways rats could gain language if time passed and—click—we see it. These puzzle pieces do not fit together—rather this puzzle-maker trusts that we are puzzle-masters and know the archetypes that must fill in between (a rise, an age, a destined king.) So we spread our disconnected puzzle pieces out, not assuming that the strange creatures come from one origin, the ruins from one era, and as we spread out, looking not for direct connections but for fragments of arcs and colors, our 100 puzzle pieces let us glimpse an image so vast it would take 100,000—an image large enough to capture true Deep Future, years numbered in millions, where contours that do connect do so at scales which make the layers of Freud's Rome appear shallow as coats of paint.

—Excerpts from The Path of the New Sun by Ada Palmer, introduction to The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

[mail-me-a-snail]

pls i hope you give us your Vance related PL thoughts one day <3 I’m sure he has a normal time of it

oh man. i could gush for hours about phantom liberty. dlcs dont usually engage me--the most "recent" exception having been destiny 2's last dlc with activision, forsaken--but phantom liberty gripped me by the membrane and throttled me within an inch of my life.

i mean, if it did that to me, imagine what it did to vance.

(spoilers follow)

it isn't 't the first time vance has gotten a holo from an unknown number.

that's the biz; most clients want secrecy. the private type don't trust fixers--they don't do middlemen. they cut straight to the point. vance has dealt with these kinds of clients before. they don't know the streets like he does; they don't give a shit to, either.

they give him the gist of what they want done; the finer details don't matter. job's a job--as long as he takes care of the gonk who needs flatlining, or klep whatever needs klepping, the scratch'll come through, no problem.

that's how it's supposed to go.

but songbird opens with this: she knows what's happening to him. she knows about the relic's slow poison; she knows about vance, who he was, is, and pretends to be; and she knows how to help.

the promise of a cure colors her tone, but she knows better than to make it here and now on the holo. so she asks vance to meet her at the gate to dogtown.

vance is fresh off a gig. he's maybe a kilometer from dogtown proper, can see the open, rounded top of the stadium peeking out from behind the buildings in the distance. black smoke rises over the skyline. seems there's always a fire in dogtown.

he had been nursing a cigarette on his bike--jackie's arch--when songbird had called him. he flicks what remains of the cigarette onto the pavement. grinds it out under his heel. he mounts the arch.

private-types always end up asking to meet at a secondary location.

this--this part of the routine that's been ingrained in him for the past year or so--he knows how to follow.

--

the malfunction tears through his parts with the precision of a ripper's scalpel.

it knows where to curl its long, electric-blue fingers in his internal wires. it knows how hard to tug; it doesn't stop, either. the force of it sours, taut, in the back of vance's throat.

the silver prongs connected to his spine rattle. they shake until they buzz--then that buzz sharpens into ringing. one constant note, ringing into eternity, rising without changing pitch.

it aches from within vance's very teeth. sits heavy on his useless tongue--the same tongue he fears that he'll end up biting during one of these seizures.

there was a time when the relic thought him still human. it's only recently that it's learned the true nature of its host. it's only recently that it's found out how much more it can feed on.

it's only recently that it's started affecting johnny, too.

he doesn't know how it happens--doesn't know if johnny's starting to share his pain, or if they're feeling each other's in a tenuous feedback loop.

either way, the relic is decaying, and it's taking them with it.

vance curls up against the nearest solid mass he can find; remembers he has to breathe; forgets, exactly, how to do that; reaches for johnny, who's seizing right in front of him--

and songbird reaches back.

she touches his shoulder. her hand carries no weight other than that of buzzing static. the sound bleeds into the malfunction's miasma of noise. she speaks, carefully, calmly, but whatever she says, the relic swallows.

her words seem to please it, however--because a few moments later, the malfunction trickles away. it leaves nothing in its wake but a bone-deep soreness and a few blue tessellations crackling across johnny's non-corporeal form.

the large lapels of songbird's jacket curl around her throat. beneath that and a number of colorful pins, she wears a rather nondescript netrunning suit in contrast. vance doesn't miss the cyberdeck attached to her hip.

she looks like any other runner. in fact, vance had traipsed around night city in something similar an eternity ago--only difference being the absence of his team colors of hexagonal red-and-black.

but she's got no symbols of her own. no iconography denoting her allegiance to any one patron. he would've taken her for one of the afterlife's enny-a-dozen netrunners, then--had it not been for the fact that she could see johnny.

she touches him, too. she grasps the ghost's shoulder as easily as if--as if...she were a ghost herself.

data crackles in vance's ear; it's not the relic's tell-tale, almost musical blue purr. he usually welcomes the sound because it means johnny's somewhere around him, some lame-ass quip ready to fall from his lips.

but this data is red and black and angry and alive.

it writhes; spits; it takes johnny with it.

for the first time in the past few months, vance's head falls quiet.

it's so quiet that the absence feels more like a cavity.

it aches like one, too.

she's not like any other runner, if she can do that.

the realization leaves him reeling with more than just the after-effects of a relic malfunction: it's got him dizzy with the idea that she's like him.

--

songbird doesn't win vance over by taking johnny away from him. he can feel her confusion with that underlying her every instruction, but she's got bigger things to worry about.

ask any of the techies from his arasaka days and they'd tell you this: vance is the last person to give a shit about the president of the NUSA.

he's not an NUSA citizen; he's especially not about to lick her heels just 'cause she used to run militech, either. his parents had fought in the war she had started all those years ago--it's in his corpo blood to hate her, or, at least, what she stands for.

but a job's a job, and song's not gonna give johnny up until vance swallows his pride.

he'll do as she says. he's got too much to lose not to.

--

that same red data plays with vance's surroundings as songbird talks to him. she props open doors; gets rusted old elevators groaning back to life; all from the relative safety of--wherever she is.

that takes skill. splitting himself in two like that--he could never pull that trick off, not for lack of trying.

granted, arasaka hadn't built him to be stationary. they had made sure he'd always be on the move. they had grafted an entire torso's worth of realskinn onto him so his machine parts could breathe in the cool, polluted air of night city as he ran through its gutter-like streets.

and that living data--it's as bright as copper and just as conducive; it carries with it that same, rotting taste. it's not just any fancy code. it's not even something that could be called a runner's signature; calling it that would imply it's likely to allow someone ownership.

that code isn't just black with ICE--it is ICE. it's several layers of thick, hostile ICE.

vance had only seen such a thing in cyberspace. way out there, lurking on the horizon, ever-present and closely guarded.

(because of the highly personalized nature of cyberspace, perhaps vance had invited it to stay).

even with his pull in arasaka's ranks, neither the techies or netwatch would've ever let him touch the blackwall.

but song's got it eating out of the palm of her hand.

...which means rosalind myer's been keeping what she doesn't understand on a leash for the past decade, and no one's been the wiser.

not even arasaka.

later, when he looks rosalind in the eye as he digs the tracker out of her neck--his touch comes too soft for someone like her, he realizes, though he doesn't do so on purpose--he wonders if she knows who, or what, he is.

if, if she does, then she must know what arasaka had intended him to be--why wouldn't she, after all, when song had been the one to order him after her?

--

johnny fills their first night in dogtown with doubt.

"this a normal tuesday for ya, v?" he asks vance. the ghost sits backwards on a rusted old folding chair in front of him. "savin' the skin of the fuckin' president of the NUSA?"

"sure," vance answers. he can't sleep. hasn't tried.

they both listen to myers breathing on the next mattress over for few moments.

then, he continues, quieter this time. "way things'll be goin', seems we're punchin' hansen's ticket same time next week."

johnny rests his chin on his crossed arms. his chrome arm gleams in the low, blue light coming from what could generously be called a window.

"think you're gonna be outta here that fast?" johnny shakes his head. "ain't how quick myers and her ilk operate."

"bureaucracy, that it? gotta wait for the paperwork to zero hansen?"

(he's not a stranger to the concept, but he had figured he had left that sort of thing behind.)

the ghost hums as the thought passes through their shared subconscious.

"'s not the NUSA tellin' ya to zero 'im. that's how they do biz: they get an idea in your head, and--'fore ya know it--they're washing their hands of you."

vance sighs; one long, full body sigh, broad shoulders rising and falling with it. this scop again.

he eases backwards into the mattress that he sits on. a spring digs against his back. he runs his hands down his face; the monowire pads pressed into his palms are marble smooth on his cheeks. he sets his hands on his chest.

data purrs--relic blue, this time--as johnny manifests beside him.

the latter turns his head to the former. johnny's eyes remain on the ceiling; his features are hard to discern from the stark shadows falling across his face. his long hair fans out around him. it's easy to forget, sometimes, especially in quiet moments like this, that johnny isn't even really there.

vance takes the illusion as it is, without question, and follows johnny's eyes to the popcorned ceiling.

"don't doubt you know what you're talkin' about," vance offers.

"but you're still gonna help 'er," johnny counters, quickly.

"mmhmm."

he makes a show of sighing. "why am i not surprised?"

"'cause you'd do the same."

"bullshit."

"so, yer sayin'--" vance props himself up on one elbow, dog tags coming to dangle around his neck-- "that even if there's a pretty damn real possibility of gettin' you off the relic--

"--big fuckin' if, don't ya think--"

"--you ain't even gonna stick around to find out if it's true?"

"there it is again--if, v, if."

"but what if it is true?" vance tips his head. "what if song really could help us?"

johnny finally looks at him. his lips are pressed into a thin line; he's not pleased. "what the hell was it that i just said, v? they get an idea in yer head--"

"--then they wash their hands of ya. i know." he lies back down, the motion a concession in and of itself. "heard ya the first time."

"ya got too much hope than what's good for ya, v." johnny turns on his side to face him. "'s how they get their claws in you. promise you one thing, quid-pro-quo, and they'll lead you down a shithole of your own makin'. just can't see how far you've dug yourself 'til you're lookin' up from rock bottom."

"fuck," vance breathes, amused. he meets johnny's eyes with a grin. "run that last line by me one more time, johnny--gotta make sure i got it down for the silverhand doctrine."

"oh--" johnny laughs, dry but warm-- "fuck off, v."

--

vance meets reed in the following days; he had almost missed the pressure of a gun nestling between his ribs. then, alex, if that really is her name this time.

he sees how the years between them have soured--both the time they had spent on the field together, and the time they had spent apart afterwards.

he learns how song had betrayed reed--on rosalind's orders.

just how far does the shithole go?

can't answer that without stopping to look up.

and they can't stop, not yet; hansen's playing diplomat with night city's brightest and boldest, songbird's in her cage, and the black sapphire's looking like the place to be.

--

vance doesn't miss johnny's glance over--doesn't miss how quickly johnny looks away when he catches the ghost staring, either.

the shell of johnny's ear and the red piercings clipped into the cartilage face vance. the latter pale in comparison to the blush dusting johnny's scruffy cheek.

vance sidles up to him--away from reed's eyes--and leans into his space. the black mesh stretching across his stomach and chest whispers with the motion. it's soft against his exposed skin. he tucks his hands behind his back.

"like what you see?" vance teases, in a murmur.

johnny finds the sea of other brightly colored guests very interesting all of a sudden. he's so intrigued by them that he doesn't dignify vance's question with a response.

--

it's at the black sapphire that vance sees so mi for what she really is: little of flesh, all machine. myers had not done for song what arasaka had done for vance; she hadn't deigned to hide the true nature of her prize netrunner.

white, block letters run up song's spine and spell MILITECH. myers hadn't bothered hide the mark of her allegiance, either.

or, perhaps, the mark of her owner.

embossed letters spell ARASAKA on vance's innermost machine parts. when he sees song's back for the first time, he swears he can almost feel those letters start to itch.

--

even after vance learned what song had done to reed; had learned how far she was willing to go; how much she was willing to give; he would have never turned her in.

it's not because reed and alex had needlessly killed the two netrunners they had stolen the identities of. it's not because reed makes his skin crawl, reminding him too much of white, sterile clinics and martyr-like vows of loyalty and the absence of a worthwhile life outside of bureaucratic routine. it's not because of so mi's promise to help him, either.

he doesn't turn her in because if it had been him in her shoes--and it could've very easily turned out that way for him, had arasaka pushed him a little farther--he would've done anything to be free, too.

she is not like him--that implies they're on equal footing.

no, she is exactly what arasaka had wanted. she is what they had spent ten years trying to (unknowingly) replicate. she is the perfection of red and black and angry and alive data.

she had existed this whole time--and vance had had no idea.

he and johnny have a bond that goes beyond flesh and bone and chrome. if there's ever a day where they're finally separated, vance will think that separation only superficial.

but vance and songbird...

songbird is the netrunner vance would've been had arasaka kept going. if they hadn't resigned to throwing him out when they deemed him "obsolete".

if song hadn't chipped through the blackwall of her own volition--would rosalind myers, former ceo of arasaka's rival company militech, still have kept her around?

if vance had gone against arasaka's wishes and interacted with the blackwall--would they have called him obsolete?

would he have even met johnny? so mi?

how deep would they have been willing to dig themselves if it meant having a chance at survival?

it's like johnny had said--can't answer that without looking up from rock bottom.

but all vance sees is song leaving him behind; all he sees is the promise she had never truly made; all he sees are stars.