Destiny Lore: Rise of Iron – The Iron Lords

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Lord Saladin took center stage for the new Rise of Iron expansion and with that comes a whole host of new questions, and lore around the Iron Lords and a new mysterious guardian we get to meet in the Iron Banner!

With the Guardians well into the journey of the new Rise of Iron expansion I thought it fitting to stop and take a look at the Iron Lords and some background on them.

The Iron Lords & The Iron Wolves

If you’ve played Destiny then you have probably heard the names of the Iron Lords and didn’t realize that’s what they were.  The Iron Banner weapons and armor bear the names of the Iron Lords.

Efrideet – Once thought dead, she has returned as our newest Iron Banner vendor!  She is a Hunter who was a talented sniper. Of her it is said, “Every time she pulled the trigger, an enemy of the City died” and that her “keen eye never missed her mark.”
Felwinter – A Voidwalker Warlock, described as “he who stared into the Void.”
Gheleon – A Hunter, and he was called a true Guardian of the people.
Jolder – A Titan “whose mighty hammer taught the Darkness fear.”
Perun – A Hunter. “She who hunted the Darkness where it dwelt.”
Radegast – A Titan, and the leader of the Iron Lords — “He who was first among the peers of the Iron Banner.”
Similar – A Titan, called “he who was the Last City’s first wall.”
Skorri – A Warlock. “She who sang out the Iron Song” in honor of her lost companions.
Timur – A Warlock, recognized as “he whom the City’s enemies dreaded most.”
The Iron Lords are “ancient warriors from the City’s founding” who played a key role in the Battle of Six Fronts and the building of the Last City’s walls.

You may have not realized there is another group related to the Iron Lords called the Iron Wolves. Not much is known about these Guardians besides their names and the vague lore that “In our darkest hour, nine Iron Wolves emerged from the ruins” and “And beneath its branches, the Iron Wolves forged an unbreakable oath.” Here are their names, which should also be familiar:

Ashraven
Bretomart
Colovance
Deidris
Finnala
Haakon
Nirwen
Tormod
Weyloran

The Battle of Six Fronts

A great battle when the Last City first faced an overwhelming attack, and repelled it decisively. The Fallen marched on the Last City and led by four orders of Titans, the City’s defenses held back the enemy on six different fronts—”and not one front broke.”
Also present at the battle was Osiris, a Warlock who rose to the ranks of Vanguard Commander until it is said he went mad with obsession trying to discover the truth of the Vex and the Darkness.

 

The Greatest of Them All

Lord Saladin Forge runs the Iron Banner tournament, a way to test Guardians and find the strongest among them. The Iron Banner seeks great champions to lead the fight against the Darkness. It was born to honor the Iron Lords and their efforts in the earliest days of the City.”

Lord Saladin gained his fame at the Battle of the Twilight Gap, where he led the City’s defense against an army of Fallen. He’s not just an advisor in the Tower, but a battle-tested Guardian who’s legacy holds true to Guardians all over the galaxy, and he’s no longer alone!

 

The OWL Sector Returns – SIVA Sim ARG

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First we had The OWL Sector ARG hit the Destiny community a week or so before Rise of Iron launched.  A strange “Virus” was infecting the guardians, and once ROI hit it all seemed to go back to normal.  Now about a week after the launch of Rise of Iron, something new with the mysterious ARG has risen and has the community rushing to figure out it’s secrets.

This new ARG that everyone thought was over hit just the other day as fans noticed a new microsite on Bungie’s website which the OwlSector ARG site was updated and pointed fans to a new page with a very curious puzzle.

When this mysterious new link is clicked, it takes you to a page that shows a couple of lines of text, and a command prompt of sorts.  When you hit enter the page begins to scroll and ASCII art of the SIVA logo appears.  When just glancing at the codes that scroll across the screen it looks like a bowl of mush, but it didn’t take the Destiny community long to realize that different users were getting different codes and sequences, based on signing into their profiles on Bungie.net. .

This has the community jumping and hard at work to try and solve this new found mystery, which looks like a lot of the main work is being headed up by the Destiny subreddit.  As one Redditor put it, “So, to be clear, I’m pretty sure the ARG is ‘solved’. We just lack coordination/data. This is like raid-tier ARG.” Speaking of raids, this outside-the-game mystery is on top of players trying to discover all the mysteries of the new Wrath of the Machine raid. It appears that all the pieces of this ARG puzzle, being called “SIM,” are out there, and only need to be put together in the right way.

Rom what i’m hearing the majority of this puzzle has been solved and basically you have to decode the shapes, numbers, and sequences from the users who have logged into the ARG, there is a high level of coordination and matching of the data.  It’s a giant puzzle piece and each piece of code the users have has to be fit together in the correct order to figure out the puzzle.

All those who have been hard at work cracking this ARG code discovered some vital information as in directions of the code, and shapes that were being left out when people were copy and pasting information.  That being said the Destiny community guru’s figuring this information out created a Google Doc form which allows all those guardians to keep track of the information accurately.

The theory to this mystery is that all of the codes being deciphered will help unlock the final monitor in the Wrath of the Machine raid, which looks to be tied to the hidden raid chest and “Surprise” a quest for an exotic weapon.

I am excited to see where this mystery takes the Destiny community and what all the secrets reveal.

Until next time

Destiny – Rise of Iron: The OWL Sector ARG

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Strange things are stirring in the Destiny realm as players began noticing a very odd colored swarm surrounding their heads a few nights ago.  What is this mystery, and where did it come from?

Clearly it has something to do with Destiny’s newest upcoming expansion, Rise of Iron, but is this thing harmful, helpful, what is really going on.  One very popular Twitch streamer, SayNoToRage, looks to be Patient Zero who was infected with this strange Destiny virus which has begun to spread through the player-base of Destiny by simply interacting with someone who already has one of the viruses. A number of ways have been confirmed so far, and players have reported a boost to reputation and experience once they have been infected. But what could these Owl Sector infections mean?

These viruses – Brilliance 3.2, Glory 2.1, Splendor 2.6, Magnificence 2.0, and Fortitude 3.1 – seem to be unlocking additional details to the lore of Destiny.  Owl Sector appeared as a subpage on Bungie’s website a couple nights ago shortly after SayNoToRage noticed he had contracted the virus.

You can checkout Bungie’s Owl Sector website which shows a world map with multiple colored nodes on it. Each of these nodes seem to represent a player’s location whose character has been infected by one of the viruses. These different colors correspond to the five different viruses previously mentioned. Ever since the initial outbreak with SayNoToRage, the website looks to have a real-time update and feed showing each infection across the globe.  This has also led to more information getting released through chat logs of the in game NPC’s, like Cayde-6, Ikora Rey, and Zavala who seem to be studying these viruses to determine for themselves what they are.

From what can be gathered from some parts of the chat logs, it looks like the viruses, along with SIVA, were developed on Mars in the Dust Palace by the exoscience group, Clovis Bray.  With Rise of Iron right around the corner and considering how this looks to be a very technologically advanced element of Destiny’s lore, it’s hard to think the SIVA tech wouldn’t be involved somehow.

Guardians look to have quite the adventure ahead of them as Rise of Iron plots a story about the lost SIVA plague, so these viruses we are seeing now could be a precursor to our next journey and potential dangers that are just around the corner.

As for the Owl Sector, it appears that they’re a reconnaissance group responsible for looking over these types of outbreaks. This would tie into the Owl Sector Twitch account’s message that was in SayNoToRage’s Twitch stream when he first contracted the virus. The message read “We’ve detected an unidentified foreign intrusion into your systems, Guardian. Stay calm, we will investigate.”

One question does come up and that is will we see these “Viruses” once the Rise of Iron content releases next week?  At least we won’t have to wait long to find out what is in store for the Destiny realm, and it’s Guardian protectors.

Be safe Guardians and I’ll see you next time.

Destiny Lore – Fundament: A World Changed

FundamentLong long ago, a rocky planet inhabited by the proto-Hive collided into a gas giant named Fundament and shattered.  All of the rocky planet shards that were left scattered across the Fundament ocean, within one of of it’s many layers, and became “continents” in which the proto-Hive took refuge and lived out their existence.  This vast world was filled with five hundred and eleven other intelligent species who also inhabited Fundament’s sea through seemingly similar circumstances.  Surrounding Fundament and within it’s great orbit were fifty-two moons inhabited by a race called the Ammonites.  The Ammonites were bony, six-armed cephalopods who evolved on an icy moon of Fundament. At some point, the Traveler arrived at the planet and became a patron of this race, who helped them build an advanced space travelling civilization with paracausal technology that spanned all of Fundament’s fifty-two moons.  Deep beneath the Fundament ocean dwelled a massive creature called the Leviathan, a great disciple of the Traveler, and one who plays a larger part in this races existence, as it’s a gatekeeper for the darkness being imprisoned in the depths of Fundament.

Life was quick and harsh for the proto-Hive. Their natural lifespan rarely exceeded ten Fundament-years, though proto-Hive who ate “mother jelly” became able to spawn and live longer.  Fundaments environment was harsh and relentless, as the ocean was toxic, the storms constantly raged through the skies, the rain was poisonous and corrosive, and living clouds called Stormjoys would prey upon the populations causing mass conflict amongst the proto-Hive.

The+Alien+Base-Sung+Choi_1920This world was filled with torment and a great fear of a catastrophic event called the “Syzygy” an artificially induced alignment of Fundament’s moons that would create a devastating global tidal wave, the “God-Wave” as the Ammonites called it. One kingdom of the Fundament Ocean was the Osmium Court, ruled by the Osmium King. When the King went mad out of fear of the “Syzygy”, Taox, the teacher of the King’s three daughters, invited the rival Helium Drinkers of the Helium Court to invade and install her on the Osmium Throne. The Helium Drinkers did so, but failed to kill the King’s three daughters: Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro. The sisters escaped on a ship, swearing an oath to avenge their father by overthrowing the Helium Drinkers and bringing revenge to their family by hunting down Taox.

Through plotting and planning their revenge the sisters eventually salvaged and reactivated “the needle”, a high-tech ship which had been neglected over the years, but was designed to explore Fundament’s darkest depths. Deep below the sea, the sisters encountered the great Leviathan, who warned them away, and tried to convince them of the darkness the planet had imprisoned, but they continued on and encountered the Worms and made a pact with them to gain immortality and power, taking on the Worms’ parasitic larvae and spreading them among the other proto-Hive; thus the first true Hive were created, and so the sisters were transformed into their new creations as Xi Ro became Xivu Arath, Sathona became Savathun, and Aurash became Auryx.

tumblr_ny4d5t9Q7u1u7keg4o1_1280In just a few short years after the sisters transformed they took the Hive and conquered a large portion of Fundament’s surface population, reclaiming the Osmium Court and harrying Taox off-world. After building their first starships, the Hive followed Taox and encountered the Ammonite civilization that lived among the moons, as well as the Traveler. The Ammonites were far more advanced than anything on Fundament’s surface and were initially able to drive back the Hive’s attacks, especially as Auryx held the Hive back in the hope of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict.  Savathun denounced her brothers weakness and killed her brother for his futile efforts of peace.  The great Worms hidden in Fundaments depths then vested Auryx and his sisters with the power to defy death so long as they continued their conquest and fed their worms. Auryx returned to life and together he and his sisters defeated the Ammonites, killed the Leviathan, and forced the Traveler to flee.

The three leaders of the Hive transformed Fundament’s fifty-two moons into great colonies for the Hive and set out to conquer the universe in the name of the Darkness and find Taox, who still eluded them. Fundament’s fate afterwards is unknown, though the Syzygy had already taken place before the Hive had begun to war against the Ammonites. It’s likely the “God-Wave” wiped out the remaining of Fundaments surface population. However, the ultimate cause of the Syzygy is unclear. The Worms claimed that the alignment of the moons was caused by the Traveler to prevent the surface civilizations from contacting them, while the Leviathan claimed that the Worms were behind the event in its final plea to the Hive.

We may never know the truth about what causes the Syzygy, or who causes the Syzygy, but one thing is clear, the Hive are still out there and we will see more of them very soon.

Until the next episode Guardians