User:Masem/drafts/Universe of Destiny

Destiny and Destiny 2 are massively multiplayer online first-person shooter video games developed by Bungie.

Setting
The present of both games take place roughly 700 years into Earth's future.

Sometime in the late 21st century, humanity is visited by the Traveler, a white, moon-size sphere that serves as an embodiment of the Light, a paracasual force in the universe. The Traveler provided humanity with technical knowledge to travel readily within the Solar System and terraform and colony other planets and their moons, leading to a Golden Age that lasted for about three hundred years. However, forces of the Darkness, an opposing paracasual force to the Light, followed the Traveler to Earth, and brought about the Collapse, decimating most of humanity outside those few that the Traveler could protect. Earth entered a Dark Age that lasted for another four hundred years as alien species arrived throughout the system to scavenge from the remains of its colonies.

In the decades prior to main events of the games, the Traveler, though mostly dormant, had been able to gift certain humans with Light, giving them the ability to harness certain powers, regenerate damage, and even be resurrected through the power of Light supplied by their personal Ghost. These individuals became known as the Guardians, and helped to gather the surviving humans into the Last City under the Traveler, protected from the forces of Darkness. They formed the Vanguard, a force organized to protect humanity and to try to reclaim Earth and the Solar System from the alien forces that have ravaged it.

Humanity
Humans have descended into two additional species by the time of events in Destiny.
 * The Awoken are descendants of humans from a generational ship that had fled Earth at the time of the Collapse. Their ship was caught in a conflict between the Traveler and the Darkness and pulled into an alternate dimension, causing the passengers to lose their corporeal forms. They were able to find a way to regain human forms in the known universe, but now as blue-skinned, star-eyed bodies. Most Awoken have become recluse and reside at the Dreaming City in peaceful conditions under Queen Mara Sov, the first Awoken, while others, like Commander Zavala, have joined in the fight against the Darkness.
 * The Exo are human consciousnesses stored within robotic bodies. They were originally created during the Golden Age by their inventor Clovis Bray as to help mankind achieve immortality. The interface between the human mind and robotic body was not found to be perfect, and Bray found it necessary for Exos to be periodically reset, forgetting their long-term memories to avoid the mind rejecting the interface. As such, during the Collapse, the Exos forgot much pre-Collapse time.

The Traveler has granted those members of humanity (including Awoken and Exo) the power of Light to become Guardians to fight the power of Darkness. They are aided by Ghosts, robotic shells that house small fragments of the Traveler with their own artificial intelligence personality that can use the power of Light to revive their Guardian, communicat across the System, and interface with various computer systems.

The Vanguard
The Vanguard consists of the Guardians and their allies in defending the Last City, Earth, the Traveler, and other interests of humanity in the System.

Commander Zavala is an Awoken Titan and the commander of the Vanguard. He is voiced by Lance Reddick.

Ikora Rey is a human Warlock and the head of the Warlock faction of the Vanguard. She also commands the Hidden, a covert network of Guardians and allies that spy on their enemies to track their actions as to prepare the Vanguard for action. She was an acolyte of Osiris, respecting him as her mentor, and took his position within the Vanguard following his exile. She has since remains highly caution and wary of actions without fully planning out their consequences, generally at odds with Zavala's more direct orders. She was originally voiced by Gina Torres though the first game and early content in the second, but started with Season 14 in 2021, she was subsequently voiced by Mara Junot.

Cayde-6 was an Exo Hunter and had led the Hunters of the Vanguard. While often a wisecracker and did not take his job seriously at times, he was an expert marksmen. He, along with Petra, had led the capture of most of the Scorn to the Prison of Elders. When Fikrul the Fanatic and Uldren Sov engineered the prison break, Cayde-6 and Petra had raced to try to contain it, but Cayde-6 had been caught separated by Fikrul, Uldren, and the Barons. They disabled his Ghost, and Uldren permanently killed Cayde-6. Following this, Cayde-6 is paid tribute by the Vanguard with a memorial in the Tower. Cayde-6 was originally voiced by Nathan Fillion for Destiny and the original Destiny 2 content, while Nolan North provided Cayde-6's voice in his final appearance within Destiny 2: Forsaken due to Fillion's scheduling issues.

Osiris is a human Warlock, and former head of the Warlock faction. After the Vanguard was formed following the construction of the Last City, Osiris remained in question of the origin of the Darkness, particularly in the Vex, and his quest to seek answers drove him mad, leading to him being exiled from the Vanguard. He gained a small number of followers, the Cult of Osiris including Brother Vance, who believed in Osiris' research. Osiris disappeared for some time, having entered the Vex's Infinite Forest on Mercury, exploring all the possibilities that the Vex were seeking. Upon coming across one future where the Vex have dominated the Vanguard, he sends his Ghost to warn Ikora, and with the Vanguard's help, put a stop to that future. Now welcomed back to the Vanguard, Osiris continues to monitor the Vex and any other forces that attempt to use time travel to manipulate.

Saint-14 is an Exo Titan and one of the first Vanguard Titans. His heroism in the war with the Fallen was renown. Following Osiris' disappearance, Saint-14 himself entered the Infinite Forest to look for his friend, but ultimately met his fate within one of the situated futures. When Osiris returned from the Forest, he is able to use the Sundail to help locate Saint-14 within these alternate realities before his death and bring him back to the present. With his return, Saint-14 now manages the "Trials of Osiris" contests and oversees other Vanguard operations.

The Cabal
The Cabal are a humanoid, heavy-set warrior race. Their society is structured similar to that of Ancient Rome, generally have been ruled by a single Emperor. Like Ancient Rome, the Cabal have generally been an expansive empire, continuing to expand across the stars.

During the events of Destiny, the Cabal's current leader, Dominus Ghaul, has sent early invasion forces to Mars and Phobos in preparation to take over the Earth and capture the Traveler. The Vanguard are able to stop these attacks, while the Taken also launch their own attack within the Cabal, turning their forces against each other. Destiny 2 opens with the Red War where Ghaul himself leads a direct attack on the Last City to seize the Traveler as to capture the power of its Light for himself while using the power of the Almighty, a spare-faring weapon that can destroy suns, to wipe out the System. The Vanguard successfully repel the attack, and while Ghaul takes the Traveler's Light, the power overwhelms and obliterates him and freeing the Traveler, ending the Red War.

Shortly after the end of the War, the deposed Cabal leader, Emperor Calus, arrives in the System on his prison ship-turned-luxury ship, the Leviathan. Having been exiled to the depths of space by Ghual aboard the Leviathan, Calus and his loyalist forces encountered a strange force that gave Calus visions related to the Darkness. Seizing control of the Leviathan, he returned to the System as to seek an alliance with the Vanguard, though remains wary. Upon the arrival of the Black Fleet in the System, Calus and the Leviathan flee to an unknown location. Later, Calus' daughter, now Empress Caiatl, continues the Cabal's battle with the Taken and the Darkness behind them, and believes it best for the Cabal to ally with the Vanguard. After Commander Zavala and the Vanguard demonstrate their skill in the Cabal's ritualistic means of combat to prove their honor, Caiatl agrees to a truce with the Vanguard.

The Fallen
The Fallen are an insectoid-like species with four arms and two legs, and while they generally walk bipedally, they can easily skitter while on four or all six appendages. The Fallen are segmented in various dynasties known as "houses", ruled by a Kell.

They are remnants of a species known as the Eliksni from the planet Riis who, like humans, had once flourished in a Golden Age under the Traveler and worshipped it as the "Great Machine", achieving even a wider spread across the galaxy than humans had done. However, during an event called the Whirlwind, the Traveler abandoned them, and their society collapsed. After a long period of civil war between their houses, they regained a tenacious form a peace and decided to return to exploring space and seek out the Traveler. When they find it at Earth during the Collapse, many of the Houses seized Earth's former colonies as homes, scavenging them for their technology.

The Vex
The Vex are a cyber-organic species; their robotic bodies serve as vessels for radiolaria, microscopic organisms suspended in an organic fluid that share a collective intelligence. Because of the expanse of their mind network, the Vex seek to convert the universe into a form where the Vex are the only dominate life form, and achieve this through invasion and conversion of other worlds. They have been able to construct planet-sized computers (such as the Infinite Forest within Mercury) as to be able to simulate the past or the future which they can use to alter their behavior in the present to achieve this goal. They have also been able to travel through time to try to make alterations in the past. They are considered some of the oldest beings in the universe, a byproduct of the original conflicts between Light and Darkness but have taken their own route by this point.

The Hive
The Hive are a eusocial collective race of undead-like creatures that worship the Darkness, and generally fight against any force that aligns against it. The Hive originated from a gas giant called Fundament in which the homeworld of the proto-race of the Hive had been crashed into, creating a island of landmasses throughout the planet which none could escape from. Within the core of Fundament were three Worm Gods that had been trapped by the Traveler. The three sisters of the Osmium King, Xi Ro, Sathona, and Aurash, had heard the callings of the Worm Gods, and were offered great power if they took their lavrae and help spread them among their people. The sisters accepted the pact, and were transformed to Xivu Arath the God of War, Savathûn the Witch-Queen, and Auryx the King of the Hive, respectively. As the larvae were spread to others, the Hive grew and were able to build spacecraft able to escape Fundament, upon which they began invasions of other worlds.

By the start of Destiny, it had been discovered that the Hive had been amassing forces on both Earth and the Moon as well as other System colonies for an invasion.

The Taken
The Taken are not a race themselves but beings that have been converted by the power of Darkness into a more powerful form, analogous to the Light power granted to Guardians. The power to create Taken is given by the Darkness to its most powerful followers, allowing them to open portals to an alternate plane of reality, the Ascendant Plane, through which they can pull their targets through to convert them to new Taken warriors.

The Scorn
The Scorn are an outcast group of Fallen, corrupted and made undead by their leader Fikrul, the Fanatic through the power of Dark Ether. Fikrul initially created the Scorn from the lowest caste of Fallen warriors to rise up against them, but soon their hostilities towards humans drew the Vanguard's attention. Most of the Scorn had been captured by Petra Venj and Cayde-6 and were locked away at the Prison of Elders, though Fikrul had escaped. Fikrul was aided with help of Prince Uldren Sov, who had been corrupted by the Darkness, to release the Scorn, during which Uldren sabotaged Cayde-6's Ghost and then fatally killed Cayde. Fikrul, his Barons, and Scorn then took to the Tangled Shore and nearby Dreaming City.

The Nine
The Nine are a set of dark matter beings that had become trapped in the gravity well of the Solar System, gained consciousness as life evolved on Earth, and have seen the rise and fall of Humanity through the Golden Age and collapse. They have little ability to directly affect reality outside of dark matter, and instead act cryptically through their selected agents such as Xur, a humanoid alien that sells exotic gear to the Guardians, and the Emissary, who helps to translate messages from the Nine to the Guardians. The Drifter also has a unknown connection with the Nine. The Nine have become curious as to humanity but they are divided over any help to provide them; five of the Nine believe they should help humanity and the Light, while the other four believe they should continue to work towards leaving the System.