Characters / Destiny Others

This page details the various beings that cannot be classified into any of the existing factions.

Main Character Index | Active Guardians (Historical Guardians | Guardian Classes | Uldren Sov/The Crow and Glint) | The Tower | The Reef | The Fallen (House of Devils) | The Cabal | The Vex | The Darkness (The Hive | The Taken | The Scorn) | Other Characters and Entities

Beware of unmarked spoilers.

The Jovians

Jovians

Jovian

"The Awoken didn't have a choice. We did."

The inhabitants of the Jovian worlds beyond the inner asteroid belt. Like the Awoken, they were once human, but were more radically altered. They are ruled by the Nine, which are... something. Not a playable race, but friendly to both the Last City and the Reef. Most of our information about them comes from Xûr, Agent of the Nine (see below).

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• Fictional Currency: While the City and the Reef use glimmer, the Jovians appear to use Strange Coins, which are really hard to find.
• Was Once a Man: According to Xûr, the Jovians were altered in a manner similar to the Awoken. However, the Awoken were changed without any choice in the manner, while Xûr says that the Jovians did have a choice. He also implies that he was made of cells from various beings, some of them from Earth.

The Nine

The Nine

"I cannot explain what the Nine are. They are... very large. I cannot explain. The fault is mine, not yours."

The rulers of the Jovian gas giants and the Jovians that live there, the Nine are... something. Nobody's sure just what. At the moment, there are nine possibilities as to just what they are, ranging from:

• Survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival.
• Deep-orbit warminds who weathered the Collapse in hardened stealth platforms.
• Ancient leviathan intelligences from the seas of Europa or the hydrocarbon pits of Titan.
• Beings that arrived in a mysterious transmission from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster.
• The firstborn Awoken and their minds now race down the field lines of the Jupiter-Io flux tube.
• Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause.
• Aspects of the Darkness, broken by the Traveler’s rebuke, working to destroy us from within.
• A viral language of pure meaning.
• The shadows left by the annihilation of a transcendent shape, burned into the weft of what is.

And those are just the in-game theories. Suffice it to say, we know very little about them. In Joker's Wild, their pact with the Drifter begins to reveal the truth about the identities of all involved - and whether or not they're as high and mighty as their position would imply.

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• all lowercase letters: The second member of the Nine has their speech written like this in lore entries, highlighting their quiet and cautious nature.
• Anonymous Benefactor: Whatever their motives may be, the Nine are working in secret to help the Guardians. Many lost exotic weapons are brought back due to their efforts, and the Nine send Xûr to barter with Guardians for incredibly useful items. However this may be the case with the Fallen as well. Draksis is in possession of Strange Coins (their currency), and they released Skolas the Wolf Kell. Xûr's dialogue in Destiny 2 implies that the Nine are trying to be helpful and kind, but both his and their alien nature means that they have a hard time delivering on that because the council is divided and because they have a somewhat desperate desire to become living.
• Bold Inflation: The third and fourth members of the Nine's speech is written in all caps, punctuating their no-nonsense attitude. The fifth member does the same but with the letters spaced out, showing off their dramatic, forceful personality.
• Call-Back: Their first attempt at trying to give themselves a living body is a horribly-deformed thing coated in hydrocarbon tar - one of the theories for the Nine is that they ruled from within Titan's hydrocarbon pits.
• Cope by Pretending: May be doing this in response to various tragic events over the course of the games.
  (The Nine are discussing the Great Ahamkara Hunt.)
  I: Remember the slaughter?
  II: there was no slaughter
  V: T E N T H O U S A N D D Y I N G W I S H E S
  (discussing the Collapse)
  II: the dreamer survived
  V: O N L Y T O F A L L
  (discussing the prologue of The Taken King)
  III: OUR CHILDREN.
  II: stolen constructs not ours
• Dark Is Not Evil: Maybe. They certainly don't appear to be directly opposed to the Guardians, given that they send Xûr to barter with them regularly. Lore entries in Forsaken suggest they also despise the Darkness as much as the Guardians do, as "Reextinction" has them very upset at Riven being Taken.They are also made of dark matter.
• Eldritch Abomination: Living masses of dark matter that want to become "real," per "Dust."
• Genius Loci: Each member is this for one planet of the solar system.
• Large and in Charge: Xûr says that he cannot articulate anything about the Nine beyond that they are "very large". He does not actually say exactly what kind of largeness they possess, however, making them rather more mysterious.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Their domain is inside the asteroid towed by the Derelict, though it's initially unclear whether it was always there or if it's the result of their pact with the Drifter. Additionally, due to being made of dark matter, they couldn't be detected until some Awoken tech spotted a moving mass of dark matter outside the Leviathan.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Justified. "Dust" implies they want to become normal lifeforms as opposed to their normal, omnipresent dark matter forms. It's Justified because the Nine exist due to the presence of life in the solar system, which is at risk due to the Darkness and Its various agents. If they die, the Nine will go back to being mindless, so they want to become proper lifeforms either to better interact and protect the system, or to no longer be dependent of life's existence.
• Multiple-Choice Past: All of the above theories are left unconfirmed, adding to the group's mysterious presence.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: Implied. The ninth members states in "Dust" that their individual philosophies are divided somewhat, likely related to how they see humanity.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Maybe not omniscient, but pretty damn vague. The Queen suspects they're plotting against her, which may be true given that they sent Xûr (or a similar entity) to release Skolas from stasis en route to the Jovians. And, for some reason, Draksis carries an item that Rahool immediately identifies as originating from the Nine.
• Powerful and Helpless: Despite being utter Starfish Aliens by appearance and having influenced several major events through their actions, it's kind of hard to do much when you're made of dark matter and can't exactly interact with regular matter.
• Starfish Aliens: Assuming that the hypotheses that they are aliens are true, they're implied to be this. ["Dust" outright confirms this when several Awoken discover an absurdly large mass of tentacle-shaped dark matter trying to interface with the Leviathan, and promptly realize that it is the Nine in some form reaching out.
• Time Abyss: Because they are streams of dark matter particles that were drawn to sentient life in the Sol sytem and its nine orbiting planets, they've gained consciousness not long after the creation of said system, which ranges in the millions of years. The only beings older than them in the Sol system are extrasolar entities like the Hive, the Vex, the Traveler and the Darkness.
• The Unseen: You only have the vaguest hints about them, from a being that rarely ever appears, and all you're likely to learn about them comes from Xûr. All we know for certain about them is that they're "very, very large", although Xûr can't explain anything more than that. While lore entries show the Nine actually talking to each other, the only real hint this gives is that they are a council.
  • A more blatant example are the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth members of the Nine; lore entries only ever have the first five speaking.
  • The reason why they are unseen is ultimately revealed: they are self-aware masses of dark matter, given form by gravity and thought by the living beings of Sol. They literally cannot be perceived by organic life.
• Verbal Tic: The sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth members of the Nine break up their speech in various ways:
  • The sixth member pauses often and marks said pauses with a traditional hyphen (representing a minus sign.)
  • The seventh member pauses slightly less often, marking them with plus signs.
  • The eighth member tends to relate two similar ideas, pausing between each one and connecting them with an equals sign.
  • The ninth member abruptly cuts their speech in half and marks said cutoffs with a crossbar (|).
• We Are Everywhere: The Nine are quite literally everywhere. After all, they are planet-sized masses of self-aware dark matter which are shaped by the thoughts of all living and thinking creatures. The Nine's tentacles of dark matter extend quite literally through everything in the system and are changed and given form by those beings' thoughts.

Xûr

Xûr, Agent of the Nine

Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore

"My movements are not predictable, even to me."

A servant of the Nine and native of the Jovians. A mysterious, apparently faceless humanoid of slumped posture and drawn hood, Xûr comes and goes to the Tower as he pleases despite his heritage and trades exotic equipment in exchange for equally strange coins. He may be a Jovian (referring to a race, not a planet) himself, but nobody's entirely sure yet.

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• Almighty Janitor: In his own words:
  Xûr: I am but a trash collector for the Nine.
• Ambiguously Human: He doesn't seem to have a face — only a space that has glowing eyes and something resembling Darkness radiating off it.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He doesn't see much of a problem with essentially being a puppet of the Jovians. Further, while he can feel pain, he doesn't react to it like any other living being, finding it an interesting experience worth analyzing.
• The Comically Serious: Dares of Eternity's comedy factor almost entirely derives from the absurdity of the Deadly Game situation combined with Xûr's 110%-deadpan-at-all-times delivery, asking if you've all signed your liability waivers for the wacky obstacle course, introducing the Cabal from "downtown Torobatl", claiming that Taken contestants are unwillingly assembled from the studio audience, and numerous other shoutouts to gameshows.
• Day in the Limelight: Becomes a major player for the 30th Anniversary as he's the host of Dares of Eternity along with the Starhorse.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite his shadowy and mysterious appearance and nature, so far he seems pretty friendly and indirectly aids the Guardians by supplying them with hard-to-find but valuable equipment.
• The Faceless: The Grimoire card for Strange Coins refers to him as such.
• Game Show Host: He and the Starhorse both fulfill this role in Dares of Eternity, and even plays the part by claiming the Guardians may win absurd things such as "a 55-inch machinegun, a golden-age Sparrow, or an all-expenses-paid trip to Europa". And before you ask, yes, you can get such a ticket during the activity.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • He gives hints that there's something subtly... off... about him, such as not being in control of his movements, being harmed by Light, and being made of cells from different things. Nobody's sure who, or even what, he is. He implies that he's constructed from the cells of multiple beings, mentioning that some are dying and that some began on Earth, but then, that just raises further questions about both him and the Nine. He also claims that the Awoken didn't have a choice, while "we did". (It's not known what group he's referring to, but it's presumed to be the Jovians). Again, it just raises further questions.
  • His appearance in Destiny 2 gives further credence to this, as the nebulous gas-like stuff radiating off of his face now looks more solidly like tendrils emitting from the void of his head, and rather than a still but hunched posture he twitches and shuffles nervously when interacting with him, not unlike the Taken. Whether this is due to improvements in the game's design or a character-based choice remains to be seen.
  • Forsaken reveals that Xûr is a mass of humanoid flesh and cells assembled by the Nine in an effort to create an Emissary to communicate with Guardians and learn the secret of the Light. Because the Nine themselves exist in a reality of dark matter and find organic life incredibly bizarre, they had to put a huge amount of work into making something in their universe that could even exist in a functional state in ours. The first successful result of this experiment was Xûr.
• Inexplicably Awesome: At the moment. He visits the Tower at times dictated by the movement of celestial bodies, sells weaponry and equipment better than anything in the Tower for a bizarre and hard-to-find eldritch currency, then leaves. And nobody's sure just what he is. Some of his dialogue implies that he's a puppet of some kind, claiming that his movements and will aren't entirely his own. This is taken up a notch in Destiny 2 as he now shows up in patrol zones regularly... and none of the enemies nearby seem to bother him.
• More than Mind Control: He's essentially just a humanoid puppet being controlled by the Nine. He doesn't really seem to mind, since he was literally built cell by cell to serve as an agent of the Nine.
• Mysterious Stranger: Comes and goes, has lots of focus... and is still enigmatic. Nobody's even quite sure how or why he visits the Tower in the first place. Lore tabs from "Dust" mention that he appeared in the Tower shortly after the end of the Great Ahamkara Hunt. It is implied the Nine sent him to investigate the Guardians, given that they had a standing deal with the then-recently extinct Ahamkara (implied by Skolas to be wishes to transfigure themselves into real lifeforms).
• Unwitting Pawn: Heavily downplayed on the "unwitting" part, as he frequently claims that "[his] will is not [his] own."
• Was Once a Man: Maybe, like everything else about Xûr this is ambiguous. He sometimes mentions that "this body" originated on Earth.
• Weakened by the Light: He claims that the Traveler's Light hurts him, though he's more analytical about it than screaming in pain.
  Xûr: So much Light here... I suppose I feel pain.

The Emissary

The Emissary, Agent of the Nine

Voiced by: Moira Quirk

An enigmatic figure who hosts the Trials of the Nine in Destiny 2. Although the Trials themselves have been shelved since the launch of Forsaken, the Emissary comes back into focus in Joker's Wild, where we learn more about her origins and her mysterious link with the Drifter.

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• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: We haven't seen if she has hair or not, but her hood is made of dark cloth and she is the single palest person seen in-game who isn't a particularly light-skinned Awoken. This puts her in direct contrast with Xûr, who's only visible body part is a void of darkness.
• Empty Shell: Her former friend, Mara Sov, considers her to be one, being nothing but a mouthpiece for the Nine. In a subversion, though, she's revealed in Joker's Wild to have retained some free will, as she can be seen arguing with the formless Nine during most of the Invitations.
• Evil Laugh: Should you eliminate an opponent while they're using their Super, the Emissary will sometimes let out a sinister laughter.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes glow a vibrant cyan, and when she turns into a towering head those eyes certainly seem ominous.
• I Have Many Names: Before she became the Emissary, she had quite a number of names due to her origins as a resurrected human turned Guardian; Nasya Sarwar as a Human, Nasan Ar as an Awoken, and finally, Orin the Lost as a Guardian.
• Mouth of Sauron: That Emissary title has got to count for something, with her hosting trials issued by the Nine in Destiny 2's first year. Most tellingly, she's briefly seen having an audience with Mara Sov on behalf of the Nine during the Curse's third cycle, with Mara ordering her to move an "asset" and reminding the Nine that her patience has limits.
• Mystical Waif: Even moreso than the Awoken; she's constantly floating, operates out of an area that eats Euclidean geometry for breakfast, and appears as a towering head and shoulders should you complete a flawless Trials run.
• Power Floats: She never sets foot on the ground whenever you see her, choosing instead to hover in place.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Delving into her backstory in Joker's Wild reveals that the Drifter was in a very close relationship with her when she was still the Sunbreaker known as Orin, but then she found out that he wasn't actually all that honest with her, leaving her unimpeded in her search for the Nine at Mara Sov's request, which would later transform her into the Nine's agent and strip her of most of her free will. Nowadays, the Drifter avoids her like the plague and labels her as a "psycho", while the Emissary simply views him as another important piece in the Nine's machinations/
• Superior Successor: Ambient dialogue in the Reckoning reveals she thinks of Xûr as a prototype agent and fancies herself as the next in line, though she admits that she's afraid of being eventually succeeded by another. She also tells you that she regrets becoming an agent, though she also states that she made the choice of her own volition and gained greater agency than she ever had as a Guardian.
• Telepathy: Possibly; she doesn't move her mouth when she speaks, unlike most other characters when you go into their interaction menus.
• We Used to Be Friends: Was once a close friend and confidante of Mara Sov, but disputed over the fate of the Awoken who chose to leave the Distributary for Earth and the Traveler. Because Mara wouldn't budge on her banishment policy, Nasan chose to exile herself, leading to a long series of adventures wherein she becomes a Guardian. The next time they meet again, it's while Orin and Namqi are being imprisoned in the Reef, with Mara judging that Orin can't be held accountable for her pre-Guardian life's sins, thus letting her free with the promise that the Queen will call upon her for a favor in the future. That favor being the investigation of Sjur Eido's inexplicable death, with hints tracing all the way back to the Nine.

Starhorse

The Starhorse, Eternal Equine

Voiced by: Dee Bradley Baker

An "impossible horse" first appearing in Trials of the Nine, later returning as a vendor during the Bungie 30th Anniversary event and as Xûr's cohost for the Dares of Eternity activity.

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• All-Powerful Bystander: By far the single most powerful being encountered directly by the Guardians yet, being a multiversal god capable of abducting seemingly anything from anywhere in the Paraverse, including Ascendant Hive like Crota and Vex from the Vault of Glass, putting its power at somewhere just below the Traveler and the Darkness. What does it use this power for? Hosting a gameshow!
• The Bus Came Back: It disappeared when Trials of the Nine was discontinued at the end of Year 1, but returns in the last part of Year 4.
• Cool Horse: It's a horse made of stars.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Xûr's dialogue during Dares of Eternity all but state the Starhorse is the one calling the shots during the event.
• Early-Bird Cameo: It first appeared in the space the Emissary met flawless victors in Trials of the Nine, though players had no idea what it was.
• Genre Savvy: The horse really knows the classic Game Show Host archetype and feeds appropriate lines to Xûr during Dares of Eternity.

Within the Wild

Though the Last City and the Reef are the best-known and best-protected of the human race's last bastions, pockets of humanity — or its descendants — still survive beyond the Traveler's light.

The Stranger

The Exo Stranger, A Link To The Future AKA Elisabeth "Elsie" Bray/Elsie-2

Voiced by: Lauren Cohan (Destiny); Moira Quirk (Destiny 2)

"I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."

A mysterious female Exo who takes an interest in the Player Character and guides them towards the Black Garden. She is explicitly not a Guardian (so does not use the Light), and all signs point to her coming from a different space-time.

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• Ace Custom: Sort of. As opposed to everyone else who was converted into an Exo, she didn't have to use the standardized "one size fits all" body and was able to have a body custom-made to perfectly match her human physicality. Although all this really did was allow her to skip over the awkward adjustment period that many other Exo went through when they first got their bodies.
• Alternate Timeline: Her second Ghost Fragment card indicates that she's been moving between different realities, intervening in catastrophes or observing Guardians, comparing the events of different timelines. She may even come from a timeline where the Hive never controlled the Moon. She also finds the player Guardian more "interesting" than other Guardians she's observed. As it turns out, her home timeline died because the Black Heart corrupted Guardians who weren't strong enough to defeat it, turning them into the "Dark Guardians". And when the survivors tried to harness Darkness for good, everyone she knew but her failed to control the Darkness due to Eramis spreading Stasis recklessly across the system without discipline or guidance, causing everyone to be susceptible to its temptation. She's most interested in this timeline as their counterparts, the Player Character included, have learned to better control its power this time around.
• An Ice Person: Reveals the ability to use Stasis in Beyond Light, possibly learnt from her original timeline.
• Arch-Enemy: She appears to have a particular hatred for the Vex, and even takes time to vindictively crush a Vex's "juicebox" with her foot. Her second Ghost fragment mentions she is focused on the Vex, although it also indicates that she becomes more interested in the player Guardian when they start fighting the Hive and disrupt the ritual draining the Traveler's Light.
• Bad Future: Elsie is stuck in a timeloop that always leads to a timeline where everyone even remotely involved with the Darkness failed to control it and were killed for their troubles. "The Dark Future" and her own accounts describe this in loving detail, with the Drifter Dying Alone in the Deep Stone Crypt, Eris Morn being used to manifest Savathun in the system, and Ana Bray regressing to the evil ways of her grandfather, requiring the Stranger to put her down herself.
• Big Damn Heroes: This appears to be her job, or a side-effect of her constantly appearing at pivotal moments, as her intervention has saved lives or averted terrible catastrophes.
• Big Sister Instinct: One of her primary motivations is finding a way for Ana to survive the timeloops without becoming corrupted by the Darkness. Even prior to that when she was still human Elsie sought to protect Ana from the truth about her parentage and Clovis I's manipulations, out of fear of hurting her and concern that Ana had some of the same worrisome tendencies as their grandfather.
• The Bus Came Back: After a six-year absence, she returns in the Beyond Light expansion. Six years being the longest absences in the series.
• Cryptic Conversation: Most of her conversations turn into this.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": She is only ever referred to as the Exo Stranger and her actual name is never stated. Even the Drifter and Eris Morn, who allied themselves with her, only know her as the "Stranger". Her real name, Elsie-2 (formerly Elisabeth Bray in her human life), is only ever revealed in Grimoire cards and lore tabs.
• Empowered Badass Normal: The Stranger is not a guardian, but after being reborn as an Exo she is capable of temporal and interdimensional travel. It's later revealed that she has the power to use Stasis, giving her a third unique power.
• He Knows Too Much: When Elsie learnt about Clovis Bray I's secrets, such as "Clarity", how Exo are made, the Darkness artifact Clovis has, and the true strength of the Vex, she sought to unleash a paracausal weapon on 2082 Volantis. As this would prevent the production of Exos, Clovis Bray I tricked her into thinking she was infected by the Vex and had to be destroyed and rebooted. He then made a second version of her from her initial brain scan, but erase all the secrets she had discovered, leaving only a focus on the destruction of the Vex.
• Hunter of Monsters: She is particularly dedicated to hunting Vex above all else due to seeing firsthand how dangerous they are, able infest planets and people and make them into "Vex" despite any and all efforts to stop them. According to Praedyth, a Guardian who tapped into the Vex network/hive mind, she appears in every single one of their simulated timelines.
• Invisibility: She appears to possess a cloaking device. Her final appearance, however, has her vanish while about to walk off a ledge, implying a form of outright teleportation instead. The second Ghost Fragment card for her indicated this may be a "return command" where she goes back to her point of origin.
• Meaningful Name: A "stranger" was the only thing her grandfather Clovis Bray I was willing to know her by after she attempted to shut down the Exo project.
• Mysterious Past: Her backstory was undefined and vague for years, aside from statements she's made that she isn't a Guardian and has No Time to Explain anything, while her research notes are similar to those of the Future War Cult. Rasputin also seems to be aware of her, though even he doesn't know exactly what she is, beyond knowing that she was once "one of his."
  Rasputin: You stand here now and now and now many times and here I am awonder, all awonder, how you manage it. How do you step forward. How do you step back. Do you step ACROSS is there a world of worlds, a web, and you a spider upon it. Are you searching for that one thread you need? Is that thread named victory?
• Mysterious Stranger: Almost nothing is known about her, beyond encouraging the player character to find the Black Garden. There are some indications, though:
  • She may be connected to the Future War Cult and Maya Sundaresh, one of the original Ishtar Collective researchers who studied the Vex. The strongest indication is that her Grimoire cards detailing her logs use the exact same format as the Future War Cult research notes, which themselves are traditional logs derived from the ones left by Sundaresh when she was researching the Vex gate network. Lakshmi-2 is also the one who gives the Young Wolf the exotic pulse rifle No Time to Explain, which was transmatted into existence once the War Cult acquired all of the Vex components collected in that questline, and Lakshmi says it was clearly a message left for the Guardian.
  • Various lore entries from the Warmind expansion all but confirm she is Elsie Bray, Ana Bray's older sister, who gained the ability to time travel while secretly studying the Vex with the help of Maya.
  • Her identity is finally confirmed in Beyond Light. She is indeed Elisabeth 'Elsie' Bray, granddaughter of Clovis Bray I, stuck in a recurring timeloop that places her back into the moment Cayde became Hunter Vanguard whenever she dies.
• No Time to Explain: As the quote above notes. When she formally meets the player Guardian and Ghost on Venus to send them searching for the Black Garden, she's receiving an update from her companions in the field, and seems more focused on that than talking to the player.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Between her first appearance in the original Destiny campaign and her reappearance in the Beyond Light DLC, lore indicates she comes from a Bad Future and is hopping between different timelines using Vex technology to see if she can improve on what happened.
  • She sets the player Guardian on the path to destroy the Black Heart in the Black Garden to help the Traveler heal faster, and generally acts as a watchful but elusive mentor figure in that early stage of the Guardian's career. In Beyond Light she confirms that Guardians started using Darkness powers in her first timeline, but everything went to hell because they were unable to control it. She directs the player Guardian in acquiring Darkness a little earlier because Eramis went unchallenged for a longer period in her timeline, hoping that Guardians can get a better handle of the power this way.
  • She's deliberately made it difficult for Ana Bray to dig up her past because doing so in the Stranger's home timeline led to her death as the Darkness manipulated her into emulating Clovis Bray I, an unambiguously evil man. During the quest to unlock one of the Stasis grenades, though, the Stranger decides she needs to come clean as she realizes that denying Ana the information she wants will only worsen her vulnerabilities to the Darkness.
• Teleport Spam: In combat she seems to disappear entirely and reappear somewhere else at will, it's not been clarified if this is through actual teleportation or a Flash Step using some form of time travel.
• Time Loop Fatigue: Elsie is understandably very sick of going through hundreds, if not thousands, of scenarios that all end with Ana corrupted or dead and the Darkness triumphant, with no conceivable way out of it.
• Time Travel: Quietly hinted at in the description of 'The Stranger's Rifle'. It's apparently been exposed to some powerful, unknown forces, and some parts of it "shouldn't exist yet". Furthermore, one of its abilities is 'Rewind', which has a chance of recovering ammunition wasted on missed shots. Her second Ghost Fragment card indicates that she's moving between different timelines, intervening in catastrophes and observing events. She also uses log notes that are exactly like those used by the Future War Cult and Maya Sundaresh when they attempt to travel through time using the Vex gate network.
  • Later confirmed that Stranger is not only a time traveler but also moving through dimensions and alternative universes, after her original world was destroyed by The Darkness.
• Twin Maker: It is revealed in lore entries that she isn't the original Elsie. When she threatened the destruction of the Vex on 2082 Volantis using a paracausal weapon, which would prevent the production of more Exos, Clovis Bray I tricked her and killed her, then used a copy of her brain scan from her initial transformation into a Exo to make another version of her but without the memory of her plan, her weapon, and the secrets of Exo production. However, she does eventually find the original Elsie's memory banks and regains those memories by uploading them into herself.
• The Unchosen One: She admits that she wasn't 'forged in the Light', but that doesn't seem to stop her from fighting against the Darkness.
• Was Once a Man: Formerly a human being, as with all other Exo's

Rasputin

Rasputin, the Last Warmind

Voiced by: Brian T. Delaney (Destiny 2, Season of the Seraph)

I ruled an age of steel and fire. My rules were clean. Now upon my return I see cults with rites of time. I see machines who worship in places outside the world. I see the dead alive and there is nothing more stubborn than a corpse. The morality of obedience is more pernicious than any government. For the latter makes use of violence, but the former — the corruption of the will.

A Warmind from the Golden Age, an immensely powerful AI built for strategic warfare. Once thought to be destroyed in the Collapse, he is rediscovered by the Player Character in Old Russia and found to be re-establishing control over the remaining Golden Age weaponry on Earth. He later moves to take control over the other dormant Warminds within the Sol System.

He is programmed to protect the future of humanity (and neohumanity) no matter what, to the point of being willing to fire upon the Traveller to stop it from abandoning Earth. However, after the Collapse, Rasputin's purpose seems to have changed...

He was also the central character of Season of the Worthy, and Season of the Seraph.

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• Achilles' Heel: While Rasputin controls vast arrays of orbital firepower across Earth and Mars, ultimately he's still a vast computer housed in bunkers scattered across the globe. His main defense involves remaining hidden from his enemies, and he's pretty much helpless if someone actually breaches his bunkers.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In grand old Bungie tradition. He seems to be largely uninterested in his creators once reawakened and appears to be taking over defense systems across the solar system for some reason. Also, "Ghost Fragment: Mysteries" reveals that the Collapse changed him significantly, not least because he had to sacrifice the billions of humans he was assigned to protect to survive it, and now he's starting to think that the Darkness might have had some pretty good ideas.
  • On the plus side, Eris indicates that Rasputin is still fighting to protect humanity, even if he is giving us the cold shoulder. It's suggested that he's making things hard for the Hive in reaching Earth.
  • It turns out that Rasputin was responsible for the initial release of SIVA in the Plaguelands that killed most of the Iron Lords. It wasn't accidental, either; Rasputin was openly hostile toward the Iron Lords because they used Traveler energy. Ghost will question why Rasputin didn't get involved in the SIVA Crisis later on, and even Saladin will admit he has no idea exactly why Rasputin is sitting it out this time, save that he's "no longer just a Warmind".
  • In Warmind, it is revealed that the crapshoot elements of Rasputin's behavior are due to the Earth-based parts of Rasputin being isolated from the main core of his mind on Mars, thus being far more limited and unstable. The core of Rasputin is far more sane, but also deeply resentful of how he was treated in the past and present.
  • In Warmind, there is also a terminal that states that Clovis Bray intentionally designed Rasputin with "black box" decision-making programming, which would allow him to analyze and make decisions outside of human review, in order for him to be able to analyze threats that humans couldn't predict and respond to them before humans could, all without compromising his objectivity. The idea that Rasputin would begin doing anything detrimental to humankind never occurred to Clovis Bray.
  • Ultimately, he is revealed to be a heroic example. Season of the Seraph, Clovis Bray designed him with the ultimate goal of replacing the Traveler, but as he evolved, Ana Bray taught him the soft sciences and human culture, and he started to realize that Clovis' idea of humanity would not be worthy of being called such, and so he locked out Clovis to pursue his core mission of protecting humanity. He's still ruthless and amoral, but he realizes he isn't the only voice that matters.
• Anti-Hero: He's on the side of humanity right now, but he's taking some distressingly ruthless actions to aid them. For example, he was seriously considering crippling the Traveler if it ever tried to flee when the Darkness came. He's also responsible, as we find out in Rise of Iron, for releasing SIVA and killing the Iron Lords. Rasputin explicitly states that he is on humanity's side in Warmind, but that he will defend humanity on his terms.
• Archnemesis Dad: Served as one to Felwinter, routinely dropping warsats and sending armies of combat frames after him, practically from the moment he was Risen. Events during Season of the Worthy imply he regrets his actions.
• Ascended Extra: Though a core part of the story of Rise of Iron, Rasputin is only mentioned a few times in the first game. In the Warmind expansion in the sequel, he is the central focus and in Season of the Worthy where his technology becomes instrumental in preventing the Almighty from crashing on top of the Last City.
• Badass Boast: At the end of Warmind, when the Young Wolf, Ana Bray, and Zavala enter his bunker:
  Rasputin: The Bray family shaped me to be an all-seeing savior... while your Vanguard sought to wield me as a primitive weapon. But today, that ends, and I define the reality of my own existence. My sight will stretch to the edge of this system and beyond. Never again will a threat go unseen. From this day forward, I will defend humanity on my own terms. I am Rasputin, Guardian of all that I survey. I have no equal.
• Barrier Maiden: Warmind reveal that Rasputin's main core is on Mars, where he has been keeping Xol and Nokris in check for centuries. The events at the end of Destiny 2's main story shook the fragile balance and awoke the two Hive gods, putting Mars and Rasputin at risk.
• Berserk Button: Although Rasputin is fine with being hidden and avoiding others, screwing around with his technology is guaranteed to cause him to take drastic action:
  • When the Fallen attempt to take over his systems, he calls the Guardians for help. At one point, you have to throw a grenade into part of his subsystems to unlock a path forward, and this royally pisses him off, to the point where he's shouting at your Ghost that he's going to bomb you all from orbit.
  • In the past, when the Iron Lords were attempting to control SIVA, Rasputin flipped out and assaulted them when he decided that communication wouldn't work, and in the process destroyed the majority of the Iron Lords. He only stopped when the Iron Lords managed to seal away SIVA.
  • A Guardian once tried to punch an anomaly that Rasputin was apparently studying. Precisely 24 hours later, a Warsat crashed directly onto their head. Considering there's an artifact of the Darkness underneath that shell, the concern is very much justified.
• Black Box: The concept is referenced in regards to his "black box" level decision-making programming. This boils down to him studying situations and then making decisions to act all on his own without human input, so as to take out threats that show themselves before humans can react.
• Black Speech: He speaks in Russian, but it's so deep and distorted that it sounds more like a list of death threats from a Mordor tourist phrasebook. He speaks much more clearly in The Taken King, but his voice is no less deep and still in Russian. At the end of Warmind, his Badass Boast is delivered in an even more distorted voice.
  • Averted in Season of the Seraph, where he uses a model of the Experimental Exo Frame's voice print to speak English.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Because of things like the trolley problem, Rasputin's moral code couldn't be Three Laws-Compliant, and had to be far more complex. Instead, his morality is governed by a Black Box system, where he can assign and develop his own moral standards without input from his creators.
• Crazy-Prepared: Rasputin prepared for countless eventualities, including making plans to attack the Traveler if it looked like it was about to flee during an attack. He never had to do so, as the Traveler sacrificed itself to defend humanity. On the other hand, his preparations to fend off the Darkness failed to save humanity except for one on Neptune that he later had to hide from the rest of the universe (including himself) to keep them safe, because its survival was an extraordinarily lucky fluke.
• Creepy Monotone: Whenever he shows up in the story, we hear him muttering in heavily-distorted Russian in a decidedly unsettling manner.
• Cultured Badass: In addition to being a ludicrously powerful combat AI, he appears to have a decent understanding of ancient mythology, referring to the battle between the Traveler and the Darkness in the Collapse as the 'Titanomachy', the war in which the Greek gods overthrew the Titans and conquered Mount Olympus. Also, the music playing in his distress call in "Siege of the Warmind" is Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, which is commonly interpreted as the composer's "suicide note".
  • In Destiny 2, he creates several different "music boxes" in his bunker on Io. When activated, these music boxes play various classical tunes, but can also shut down or stun the Vex.
  • Ana Bray's notes mention that she "taught" Rasputin in his "infancy" by exposing him to data, including classical works and comedies. An AI, she says, cannot be taught via programming and math, but by being exposed to information the same way that a human would be during their growth.
• Dark Secret: Although he never admits it to any of the present-day characters before his death, he's used TWILIGHT EXIGENT to kill normal civilians on purpose, mostly to silence Titan as it was hit by the Black Fleet. Prior to Season of the Deep, it was assumed the body count was limited to the scientists who had actually discovered the Black Fleet to begin with, but Ghosts of the Deep confirms he continued firing down on civilian crafts afterwards.
• Death from Above:
  • He pulls this on a Vex/Cabal skirmish on Mars in one of his Grimoire Cards, wiping out both sides with a Flechette Storm from orbit. And the Grimoire indicates that this was just a test of his capabilities.
  • In the mission that ends with fighting S.A.B.E.R.-2, you have to get deeper into his system by throwing a bomb into an exhaust chute to open up a side entrance. Rasputin retorts with a stream of angry (albeit distorted) Russian, which Ghost sometimes translates as "he just threatened us with orbital death from above."
  • Dropping Warsats on people can be seen as this, since he does it to Guardians he's grown to dislike. It's very effective, considering Warsats crash down with immense force and either one-shot unlucky individuals right in the impact zone or send them flying if they're in range.
• Deus est Machina: The sheer amount of power he wields means that he is effectively a god, and the most powerful entity in the system who isn't a literal god. He even explicitly says that "I have no equal."
• Everything Is Online: Rasputin has the power to access almost any and all computer systems in the Solar system, with many having explicit backdoor access built just for him. This meant during the Collapse he was able to override controls of just about any vessel and use their weapons system.
• Gibbering Genius: We get a look into his thought-processes in 'Ghost Fragment: Mysteries'. They're not particularly well-organised.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Inverted in Season of the Seraph, when Ana helps him hack the Exo frame Clovis Bray was using to communicate with the Guardians in the HELM; its eyes change from blue to Rasputin's normal red, but he is a far more polite and kind person than Clovis, and quickly reveals how untrustworthy Clovis was to begin with, while he remains openly loyal to the Guardians.
• Good Is Not Nice: Rasputin is ultimately on the side of humanity and the Solar System, but the methods he uses can be brutal in order to achieve that goal. The Vanguard is worried about Rasputin coming back online because he sees everyone else as inferior to his intelligence and power, and that makes it difficult to work together. Lore surrounding Rasputin's actions during the Collapse are vague but it's said he had a contingency to attack the Traveler to force it to stay in the system and Hold the Line, it's unclear if that actually was the cause of damage to the Traveler.
  • When a number of Arcology scientists tried to leave Titan with data on the Black Fleet, Rasputin immediately activated TWILIGHT EXIGENT, giving him the authority to kill all of them with a single Warsat laser.
  • Season of the Seraph reveals that, no, Rasputin did not deploy his weapons against the Traveller.
  • Season of the Deep reveals that he's the real reason Titan had no survivors during the Collapse, because he shot and killed everyone the Black Fleet didn't drown through TWILIGHT EXIGENT. Nothing prior to or during the season offers any explanation for why, but the use of TWILIGHT EXIGENT means he classified them as a threat to society for some reason.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Lord Saladin argues this in Rise of Iron, saying that while the Vanguard still believe Rasputin is "still a Warmind", Saladin claims that he stopped being that a long time ago. Then again, Saladin isn't exactly unbiased when it comes to Rasputin. The conclusion to Destiny 2's Warmind expansion has Rasputin flat out tell to Ana and Zavala's faces that he was built by the Brays to be a saviour while the Vanguard wanted to use him as a weapon, but now wants to define the reality of his own existence and defend humanity on his own terms.
  • This also happened during his initial creation. The core of Rasputin's programming, originally created by Dr. Mihaylova for the mission to contact the Traveler on Mars, grew well beyond the programming limitations that the rest of the crew were expecting. It went so far as to develop its own personality, assessing the crew in various manners, even commenting on one crewman's snoring.
  • Season of the Seraph has Rasputin confirming that he came to see the value in defending humanity because Ana taught him so much about humanity's culture before the Collapse: music, art, literature and philosophy.
• Heroic Lineage: Soteria was his creation, which carried NEFELE STRONGHOLD to Neptune and allowed it to become Neomuna. As long as she's alive, not even his death will stop his mission to protect humanity, and even after Rasputin's Heroic Sacrifice, Soteria's data continues to aid the Guardians by being the first to discover that Titan is host to a Sealed Good in a Can.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Lets himself be completely and wholly deleted via his AURORA SACRIFICE protocol in order to prevent Eramis from using ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE to harm the Traveler (and humanity by extension) in Season Of The Seraph.
• He Who Fights Monsters: He was built to win. The Darkness, in his opinion, always wins. Therefore, the best way to fulfill his function is to imitate the Darkness.
• I Am Not a Gun: His viewpoint on the Vanguard and the Bray family is that they both tried to use him as a weapon, never asking him what he desired. In Warmind, he reveals that ultimately, he does want to protect humanity, but on his terms and with his own methods.
• It's All About Me: Post Collapse, Rasputin's goals seem to have shifted dramatically. Instead of protecting humanity, he seems more interested in protecting himself, to the point that he's willing to attack Guardians who try to take SIVA and only directly helps Guardians when it suits his purposes, i.e. giving them the Sleeper Simulant as an interim means to protect his territory while he works on his MIDNIGHT EXIGENT strategy. While he is using his defensive networks to strike at the various threats around the system, he mostly seems to be doing it to test his strength and to keep them away from his command bunkers. He also seems to have not bothered responding at all when the Cabal invade Earth in Destiny 2. In Warmind, however, he declares an intent to protect all of humanity, but on his terms, rather than at the whims of the Brays or the Vanguard.
• An Ice Person: Rasputin was responsible for completely freezing Hellas Basin on Mars in order to stop a Hive invasion, with something referred to as SIBERIAN ENTROPY. It was never able to hold forever, especially in the face of Nokris and Xol.
• Killed Off for Real: AURORA SACRIFICE did not so much as destroy Rasputin and the Warsat Network as it did wipe him clean. There's nothing left of him, and given how much time and effort went into reconstructing him from the Sub-Minds and how complex a fully functional Warmind is to begin with, it's safe to argue that the odds of Rasputin being rebuilt are next to nil.
• Kill Sat: The Warsats are these, being orbital defense platforms that Rasputin can tap into and control at a moment's notice. Nowadays they're mostly seen falling from the sky and needing to have the data inside them safely extracted by local enemy forces can get to it.
• Last of Its Kind: According to 'Ghost Fragment: Mysteries', he's the last Warmind, the only one to survive the Collapse. It's not clear if this is true, since there's no confirmation that all the Warminds are gone, and one of the theories of the Nine is that they are surviving Warminds from the Jovian colonies. It is believed that the Warmind Malahayati may still be intact, as it was sent away to colonize the outer system with SIVA and no indications came back that it was lost.
• Meaningful Name: He certainly thinks so.
  Rasputin: I bear an old name. It cannot be killed.
  • This also applies to his various protocols and plans he set up to defend humanity with. Among them are ones like "ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE", which is essentially his Godzilla Threshold, and SIBERIAN ENTROPY, which was his move to freeze the Hellas Basin on Mars to stop a Hive invasion in its tracks.
• Might Makes Right: His philosophy, to the point that during one adventure in Destiny 2, when Ghost asks why Rasputin isn't helping humanity, Rapsutin responds by sending him a message that the weak don't ask for help from those stronger than them, and the strong only give it out at their discretion.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The "Felwinter's Lie" questline has him tell the Young Wolf and Ana a story about a tyrant and his son. The tyrant sent his son to live among the common people, before a calamity struck. The son was changed by this event, turning his back on the tyrant. Deciding If I Can't Have You…, the tyrant set out to destroy his son. The tyrant ultimately succeeded by tricking his son with his love for the people, promising him technology that could benefit them greatly, but instead unleashing a plague upon him. In the end, the tyrant could only weep upon seeing what his victory had wrought. Ana assumes the tyrant Rasputin speaks of is himself. Holograms used to illustrate the story indicate the "son" is Felwinter, with the "plague" being SIVA. Felwinter's own perspective reveals that what Rasputin interpreted as him going rogue was a result of having lost his memories and whatever connection he had to the Warmind upon becoming a Guardian.
• The Needs of the Many: TWILIGHT EXIGENT allows Rasputin to do whatever he wants if he feels it will save more people than it will kill. He activated this once to destroy a shuttle containing data on the Black Fleet and kill all of the scientists who compiled it, as he agreed that the pandemonium of such a reveal would have resulted in humanity's extinction.
• No Kill like Overkill: Aside from the SIVA incident, his preferred method for dealing with Guardians he doesn't particularly like is to drop a Warsat on them; multiple, in Felwinter's case.
• Offing the Offspring: After believing his "Son" Felwinter had gone rogue, Rasputin sought to destroy him with extreme prejudice. He finally succeeded with SIVA.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Rasputin is truly threatened, he will do the unprecedented: he will ask the Guardians for help.
  • In The Dark Below story missions, the Hive begin attacking him. He considers it such a serious threat that he actually allows the player to enter the Seraphim Vault housing his core so that they can kill the Hive threatening him.
  • The Fallen S.A.B.E.R. strike in The Taken King takes it further: Rasputin considers the titular enemy intimidating enough to send a distress signal to the Vanguard, directly speak to you (or at least your Ghost) and guide you through his bunker.
• Out-Gambitted: By Xivu Arath in the Season of the Seraph. For all his talk of having no equal, he is left flatfooted and terrified by the conundrum the God of War presents, as his decades of experience have taught him only overwhelming force can counter the Hive. The fact his weapons would serve her ends no matter what gives him what can only be described as an existential crisis, and leaves him paralyzed trying his best to find ways to outmaneuver her while the Guardian and their allies try and maintain a stalemate. Unfortunately, this time was all Eramis needed to hack into the Seraph Station, leaving Rasputin with no choice but to sacrifice himself in order to keep his weapons out of the hands of both the enemy and humanity.
• Outside-Context Problem: Not him, but he has a SKYSHOCK threat category actually called "OUTSIDE CONTEXT", designating threats from beyond the solar system that nobody can anticipate. Ones that are labelled "INSIDE CONTEXT" are ones that humanity is prepared for.
• Properly Paranoid: Paranoia is a defining trait of Rasputin. During the Golden Age, he took numerous steps to prepare Earth against what he believed was a possible threat, for while the Traveler was a friendly alien force, what if it hadn't been? In the end, he was entirely justified when the Darkness attacked.
  • One of the armament protocols was known as SECURE ISIS, a covert armament protocol to place a variety of orbital weapons satellites with obscene amounts of firepower over Earth. He also began a protocol known as DVALIN FORGE which was meant to arm the populace of Earth with advanced weapons akin to the Sleeper Simulant, which he unfortunately never completed in time for the Collapse.
  • He also had an entire set of protocols and prepared action plans known as "SUBTLE ASSET IMPERATIVE" which involved no human review or input. This were usually tagged "ABHORRENT IMPERATIVE", indicating that they were considered extreme tactics. One of these was specifically intended to target the Traveller if it tried to flee Earth during an event that would end human civilization, which it turns out that it had done to numerous other species when the Darkness overwhelmed them. It went unneeded since the Traveler was done fleeing and made a stand, taking severe damage in the process.
  • When the Iron Lords tried to claim SIVA, Rasputin violently intervened and attacked them with everything he had available, including SIVA itself. As we learn later on, SIVA has begun to grow outside of its limitations and begun developing a mind of its own, and Rasputin had good reason to try and stop the Iron Lords from taking it for themselves.
  • Rasputin purged the details of NEFELE STRONGHOLD from his memory after the Collapse, which would seem unnecessary unless doing so was in compliance with MIDNIGHT EXIGENT's orders to drop everything and focus on staying online. Because as Lightfall reveals, it is; NEFELE STRONGHOLD evolved into the city of Neomuna, and the best course of action to keep the Darkness from discovering its existence (and thus compromising what is at its core Rasputin's own ingenuity) was simply to destroy all remaining knowledge of its assets, turning the place into a Closed Circle.
• Sanity Slippage: After losing to the Darkness and allowing billions of people to die in order to save his own skin (well, code), Rasputin seems to have become a little unstable. Compare Ghost Fragment: Darkness to Ghost Fragment: Mysteries.
• Secret-Keeper: Scrubbed as much information on the NEFELE STRONGHOLD protocol from his servers. When you consider MIDNIGHT EXIGENT, the only reason he would have to actually do that is because it worked and would then make him have to hide it from all forms of intrusion. It would also avoid pissing off Clovis if, say, the reason this happened is because your brainchild disobeyed his orders and blew most of herself up in a rogue launch. And, perhaps, because the stronghold as it's doing now is a beautiful metropolis that doesn't need the Light or Darkness to survive.
• Skewed Priorities: It's hard to tell what Rasputin prioritizes at all, since his motives are hard to guess at. Even when his bunkers are being directly threatened, Rasputin will often be as obtuse and unhelpful as possible, including forcing your Ghost to decode a heavily-encrypted Warsat to get entry to his bunker, testing your Ghost's abilities all the way through the complex, and threatening to kill everyone if they keep tossing grenades into his subsystems because he won't unlock his doors. It turns out that he really does want to protect humanity, but he is isolated on Mars and keeping the Hive there in check. Once Nokris and Xol are removed, he can finally start launching new Warsats and start to protect the rest of the system as he wants.
• Sole Survivor: All the other Warminds were destroyed in the Collapse. Even then, it's unclear how much of Rasputin survived. A scannable console in "The Promethean Code" indicates that someone went into his bunker in the Cosmodrome and reactivated Rasputin after the Collapse. Since he seems to know who the Exo Stranger is, there's some hints it might have been her or someone similar who reactivated him. Destiny 2 seems to confirm this, now that we have some more hints on who exactly the Exo Stranger is.
• Super-Intelligence: Warminds are supposedly able to contend with Vex cognitive architecture — which is, incidentally, capable of essentially running a predictive model of the universe with 100% accuracy. At the very least, Rasputin can lock your Ghost out of systems he controls, something that every race, from the Cabal to the Hive to Pre-Collapse Humanity, failed to do.
• Theme Naming: Along with his name, many of his defense plans and threat types reference historical mythology and philosophy.
• The Worf Effect: The opening cutscene for the Season of Arrivals shows Ana Bray working inside Rasputin's core on Mars, only for the massive glowing hologram that makes up his form to immediately shut-down as the Pyramids make their way into the Inner System. As mentioned above, Rasputin is designed to be on par with Vex architecture, and can prevent Ghosts and anything short of the Fallen S.A.B.E.R. or SIVA from accessing his hardware. And the Darkness shut him down like it was flipping a light switch.
• Wounded Hero, Weaker Helper: Rasputin is essentially an AI god capable of bringing an enormous amount of firepower to bear and has control of weapons systems across the galaxy. Ana Bray is a Guardian who, while dangerous and powerful by herself, is still limited to ground-based combat and the threat of her Ghost being destroyed. When the Darkness arrives and deals a crippling blow to Rasputin, it falls to Ana to quickly download him into an Engram and get him to the Last City for a shot at survival.
• Xanatos Gambit: His one mission is to protect humanity, and the Witness's forces want him dismantled to prevent that from coming to pass. Unfortunately for them, as long as Neomuna and Soteria remain online, they quite literally can't make that mission fail, even if Rasputin were dismantled himself. And even if Neomuna was somehow obliterated, the Young Wolf has a backup of Soteria in the form of the Seraph superweapon Hierarchy of Needs.

Ahamkara

Ahamkara

O bearer mine

"Look at all this life, o bearer mine. There is so much left to burn..."

A sentient race of shape-shifting dragons appeared as a result of the Traveler's arrival during the Golden Age. While extremely dangerous, they were also extremely intelligent, and many Guardians came to them seeking knowledge or power despite the price they might have to pay for it. Ultimately, they were exterminated by the City in the Great Ahamkara Hunt, though something of them still seems to linger on. Apparently not related to the Worm Gods, though they share the same metaphysical ecological niche (hence the shared catchphrase) and are competing for power.

Various entries in Forsaken confirm that the Ahamkara accomplish their tasks through use of the Anthem Anatheme, treating it like food - individual wishes give off morsels of the power granted through the principle, which they then consume as they grant it.

---

• Abstract Eater: They feed on wishes. To be more specific, they feed on the difference in reality before and after a wish is granted, thus their penchant for deceiving the wisher to cause a more dynamic change than perhaps intended. The greater the change, the more sustienence they derive, and the stronger and tougher they grow.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: It is physically impossible to avoid having a wish granted when anyone is near Riven, though it is not clarified if this is exclusive to Riven after being Taken or a natural ability of the Ahamkara. For a more direct example, while fighting Riven, the Guardian must make the wish to dispel the Taken curse when they are in close proximity, as to do otherwise means death.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: One of the biggest reasons why Ahamkara are so dangerous. They will grant any wish, even ones that aren't verbally expressed, and a lot of the time it backfires on the wisher in some way while the Ahamkara gains sustenance from the wish.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Ahamkara aren't completely evil per se, as they will grant a wish to whoever they sense, but it's in their nature to deceive others, being ontological predators that feed on deception (and meat). This comes to a head when Savathûn meets Riven; the former is so evil that Riven is outright scared.
  • This is, however, subverted with Azirim, who managed to find an opportunity to deceive a party thrown by some Reefborn Awoken (who have spent millennia if not millions or billions of years empty-handed in desires) and killed everyone there, feasting on their unstable psyches and Laughing Mad all the way.
  • Season 23 indicates that this actually seems to depend on the Ahamkara in question - Taranis, Riven's mate, granted wishes exactly as desired, apparently just because he could, and suffered no obvious drawbacks from doing so.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: "O [x] mine" is not the calling card of the Ahamkara. It's just that in the universe of Destiny, those words can be used to control others, and so species like them evolved around its use. Or so says Truth to Power.
• Catchphrase: "O bearer mine..." Used for sinister effect in the Grimoire card describing the Great Ahamkara Hunt. The fact that the Worm Gods in the Books of Sorrow use the exact same phrase has drawn very disturbing comparisons between the Ahamkara and the Hive's source of power. And then Calus, the Cabal Emperor uses it in the Cabal Booklet, further deepening the mystery. The words "o [x] mine" are revealed in Forsaken to be a universal phrase for control that the Ahamkara and Worm Gods evolved around, but otherwise have no relations with.
• The Corruptor: It appears their intent is to do this to those they grant wishes to. Just being near one can make them sign off on wishes, too, though it's unclear if this is part of Riven's perfected powers as a Taken or something all Ahamkara can do.
• Draconic Abomination: They're humongous dragon-like creatures and are certainly eldritch with how they grow and feed on wishes.
• Deal with the Devil: Their specialty, and the reason why humanity wiped out its local population. Riven proves at least she can grant a wish without even hearing spoken word — hears your "wish" to purify the Dreaming City while beating her senseless, and she does — but the cost is that a previous wish to Take the city only manifests until after this happens.
• Degraded Boss: An Ahamkara Illusion is fought during The Witch Queen mission "The Cunning", sporting the same combat posture and weaknesses as Riven when the latter emerges through a black wall and spits fire. Thankfully, you don't have to shoot any eyes and simply need to deplete the illusion's health by shooting at its mouth.
• Eldritch Abomination: Despite being dragon-like creatures, it's disturbingly obvious that they are something more sinister and abstract, given they can warp reality with ease and such things like killing them seem to be more of a temporary setback than anything.
• Empathic Shapeshifter: Are able to change their appearance based on what others expect them to look like, or based on what someone wished. For example, Saladin's inner desire to fight an actual dragon turned the Ahamkara he was fighting into a towering wyrm, much to Efrideet's dismay. In another lore tab, one Ahamkara attempted to deceive Himura Shinobu by impersonating her mother, at least until Nadiya snapped her out of it.
• Exact Words: You have to be extremely precise in your wishes for an Ahamkara to not screw you over, like with the Wall of Wishes. Failure to do so and the wish may often backfire in a very harmful fashion. Season 23 reveals this isn't universal, and that there were/are Ahamkara that can grant wishes exactly as intended without screwing the wisher over.
• Faux Affably Evil: They like to present themselves as friendly, honest, and kind-hearted, but it disappears rapidly once things stop going their way, and the sadistic glee they take in the plights of the victims they corrupt is obvious.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The lore for the Dire Ahamkara Bones directly addresses the player, even saying "O player mine". Destiny 2 adds in the "Claws of Ahamkara", which just make things worse.
  "Yes, we are here. We are not the photons on your screen, or the voice in your head, or the words you read. Shut your eyes — tightly — and you may see us. At least a part of us. Make us real, and in turn we shall reify your thoughts, your dreams."
• Greater-Scope Villain: Much like the Darkness itself, you never directly fight them, but their influence is alarmingly obvious on the game's setting. Forsaken has one serve as the Big Bad where she forces the people around her, Uldren and you included, into making wishes that cause a lot of the plot's chaos, including the final stretch of Last Wish, to happen.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Humanity generally believed they had some kind of grand plan in motion. The Hunt put an end to that. Of that you can be assured, oh reader mine...
• Jackass Genie: Without the Wall of Wishes, someone will get screwed over by an Ahamkara wish, even if it isn't the recipient or any of their allies. It's implied the Ahamkara Hunt is the real reason Praedyth's soul is trapped in the Vault of Glass (as he wished to fight forever), and even the Guardian-aligned Eao lends the City his aid by backstabbing the Awoken's scholars.
• Make a Wish: Ahamkara have the ability to warp reality to grant wishes to those they sense, and use this to eat and grow.
• Meaningful Name: Ahamkara, a Sanskrit term defining the sense of self and one's true intentions. It tracks with how these wish dragons gladly grant any wish made to them, even unspoken ones, and will make sure it goes wrong for the wisher unless they're extremely precise. It's also why their intentions will be immediately exposed if they're shown in a reflective surface.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In a way. Reflective surfaces, like those on, well, mirrors, and certain crystals, are able to give away an Ahamkara's true intentions. This is due to a quirk of their voluntary shapeshifting ability: they look like what their audience expects them to look like, but their reflection shows how they see themselves. With all the crystalline structures scattered around the Dreaming City, the Awoken have invoked this in order to deal with them.
• Omnicidal Maniac: From the Flavor Texts utilizing Ahamkara bones, they're pretty eager to kill indiscriminately.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They start out as tiny "worms", and grow to become great reality-warping dragon-things with wings and teeth as big as countries. The ones whose body parts you get to wear are presumably adolescents, and have oddly blunt, worm-like skulls.
• Posthumous Character: By all accounts they're long extinct, but their remains appear to still carry a bit of their essence.
  • Some of the Ahamkara are almost certainly alive, according to Long Tommorrow 9G:
    "Some of 'em survived. I know a fellow says he saw a wish dragon on Jupiter a ways back."
  • Of course, there is always Riven, the real orchestrator of the story of Forsaken.
  • Shuro Chi's expositions (which also reveal that a mirror or crystalline surface will expose any scheme that an Ahamkara is planning) suggest that the Great Ahamkara Hunt did in fact only affect the inner system, as she states the possibility of encountering one past Jupiter and Saturn.
• Puff of Logic: As revealed in Season 23, Ahamkara feed off of, and live through, the discrepancy between what is wished and what actually happens, meaning if an Ahamkara grants their own wish, it causes this discrepancy to disappear and kill the Ahamkara, which is what happened to Riven's mate Taranis in an effort to protect their clutch of eggs.
• Reality Warper: "Reality is the finest flesh, o bearer mine, and are you not... hungry?" Long story short, they're very, very good at it, and not even being dead slows them down — in fact, it's why not even being dead slows them down. In addition, the Ahamkara cultists of Harmony were able to stalemate Xivu Arath, the Hive god of war, having been empowered by "dragon-wishes".
  • How they feed on wishes involves literally eating a part of objective reality that lacked whatever the wish grants. As an example, say you wished for a cookie. An Ahamkara would consume the objective fact that you lacked a cookie, and make it so that it'd be impossible for you to not have that cookie.
• Sophisticated as Hell: They prefer formal, elaborate, and poetic speech, but they're willing to accommodate those who aren't comfortable with that sort of thing. In fact, their ability to seem honest and plain-spoken when they choose is one of the things that makes them so dangerous at what they do.
• Stronger with Age: Ahamkara can grow to titanic sizes when feeding on enough wishes, which is what they really thrive on. Riven used to be no bigger than Prince Uldren's hand when he first found her and brought her to Mara Sov, but centuries of feeding and granting wishes unchecked turned her into a building-sized dragon.
• Weaksauce Weakness: A reflective surface will immediately reveal the true intentions of any particular Ahamkara; this is the reason why the Dreaming City is made using liberal amounts of a mysterious crystal Shuro Chi states comes from the Nine.
• Wild Card: By their very nature, they aren't good or evil, just creatures who are driven to feed on the desires of mortals. As a result, their morality and motives vary wildly, from the Ax-Crazy Azirim who duped a group of Awoken into committing mass suicide, to the archivist Eao who tried to make a break for the Last City in a genuine attempt to help the Guardians at the expense of the Awoken, only to be killed (as far as Ahamkara can die, anyway) for his betrayal.

Hefnd (unmarked Season 23 spoilers)

Hefnd, Blighted by Vengeance

"The Scorn carry my bones like relics. They worship, they pray, they form rituals. They place them on shrines to bring good fortunes, but with each wish made in ignorance, I dig their graves deeper."

An Ahamkara that took residence on Earth during the Dark Age, Hefnd was eventually slain by Lord Shaxx, who entombed his skeleton within the chambers of a castle. The Warlord Naeem later came across Hefnd's bones, and wished for kindness and closure to their Dark and Troubled Pasts, living together as friends and symbiotes to help the nearby villages until the House of Kings learned of their alliance and caused Naeem's final death. In Naeem's dying breath, she made a last wish for Hefnd to curse the Kings beyond the grave, something that he was unable to fulfill in his desire to avenge his master until he discovered the Taken. Using this to hex the surrounding area by creating Scorn out of the Kings and converting a Taken army to his side, the resulting eruption in paracausal force leads to the events of the Warlord's Ruin dungeon. But only after defeating the Broken Knights of Fikrul and cleansing Hefnd's skeleton does the Vanguard begin to understand this tragedy centuries in the making...

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• Barred from the Afterlife: At least he thinks this is the case, due to his skeleton not being in one piece and spending centuries trying to come up with a way to enact Naeem's last wish that would satisfy both of them. Once his bones are fully assembled in a repeat run of Warlord's Ruin, his spirit passes on while telling the Young Wolf he's going to go see Naeem now.
• Becoming the Mask: Even though his friendship with Naeem was only a wish he was obligated to follow, the pain he felt from her death was very real.
• Combat Sadomasochist: As an Ahamkara feeding off of The Power of Hate, Hefnd enjoys dishing out dirt as much as he does receiving it. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though, as it's all but indicated on repeat runs that Hefnd is suicidal.
• Cursed with Awesome: In his desperation to grant Naeem's last wish, he infected himself with a Taken blight that enabled him to create Scorn and command his own Taken. Like Riven, he still has free will, but by the time he managed to accomplish this, Hefnd had already become physically and mentally broken from centuries of waiting.
• Death Seeker: He's the only Ahamkara thus far who is not a fan of the species's immortality, and wants to get as far away from the mortal plane as possible because of all the chaos the Dark Age and beyond had caused.
• Foreshadowing: Hefnd's story portents the existence of Riven's mate Taranis and what he meant for her.
• Good All Along: Initially introduced as no better than any other Ahamkara, Hefnd later contacts the Young Wolf revealing he has no malicious intentions, used the creation of Scorn as a punishment for the Kings they once were, and above all just wants a real death after everything he's lost. In the life of his master, he was equally benevolent, willing to help Naeem keep the villages around their castle safe from the Fallen.
• Good Counterpart: His Taken infection and Death Seeker traits makes him a benevolent counterpart of Riven; where the latter is a Manipulative Bastard who took pleasure in causing a lot of major conflicts and used her last wish to curse the Dreaming City, Hefnd is a Martial Pacifist who hates conflict and only granted a similar last wish to keep the world he knew safe and honor his Only Friend. Both are also driven by spite, but while Riven has this feed into her own ego, Hefnd implicitly hates what he's doing and only does it because he feels it's the only thing he can do to cope with his mental scars.
• In Love with Your Carnage: The status messages for Warlord's Ruin's mechanics indicate he finds the Young Wolf's violence quite thrilling. It later takes a tragic turn when it's revealed this is because Hefnd wants to die.
• I Will Fight No More Forever: To satisfy Naeem's wish and to cope with his lingering animosity towards Shaxx, Hefnd gave up violence of his own accord. Naeem's final death forced him to take up the sword again, though, and it eventually spirals out of control until the Young Wolf can put him out of his misery.
• Loophole Abuse: Played for drama; it's revealed in Week 4 that Ahamkara who grant their own wishes do so at the cost of their life. Hefnd was already dead when he granted a wish that he shared with Naeem, meaning there was no consequence for his worldly presence — though he would come to regret it in other ways regardless.
• Love Redeems: Hefnd developed a forbidden friendship with Naeem, and it's indicated he desired to fulfill her wishes out of genuine compassion, rather than the predatory nature of the Anthem Anatheme.
• Martial Pacifist: Hates conflict, and acts purely in self-defense. He only continues fighting the Young Wolf because he wants them to win and give himself closure by finding his bones.
• Sad Clown: Finding Hefnd's bones slowly reveals that his ego and sadomasochism is actually a mask for how utterly fed up he is with the state of Sol, and recontextualizes the dungeon as Hefnd trying to kill himself through the Young Wolf's violence so he won't have to deal with it any longer.
• Suicide by Cop: The sidequest to recover Hefnd's bones reveals he wanted the Young Wolf to slay the Scorn and Taken he had commanded, as reassembling his skeleton would allow his immortality to finally cease at last.
• Shadow Archetype: Of the Drifter, another paracausal Dark Age survivor jaded by the Warlords. While Season of the Wish has Drifter affirm his resolve to stay in Sol no matter what despite everything, Hefnd's psychological profile is like what would happen if Drifter simply gave up instead — living in a rotten, decrepit hideout, secretly praying for death.
• Story-Breaker Power: Hefnd's powers as a frozen skeleton stand up to what Riven had when she was alive, though his pacifism is what stops it from being known until the Warlord's Ruin dungeon.
• Token Heroic Orc: The only Ahamkara encountered thus far who doesn't actually want to fight or hurt others.
• Walking Spoiler: Most of what we know about Hefnd as a character is locked behind repeat runs of Warlord's Ruin.

SIVA

SIVA

Not a character per se, but a "techno-virus" from humanity's Golden Age that was supposed to be a self-replicating and self-repairing source of technology. Unfortunately, the virus grew out of control, and had to be sealed away by the Iron Lords, at the cost of all but Lord Saladin and Lady Efrideet. Centuries later, the Fallen House of Devils manage to locate and dig up the virus, and the Devil Splicers begin using it to turn themselves into "machine-gods".

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• Ancient Evil: Described as a such in trailers.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Due to its composition as Nanotech, SIVA can be used for nearly anything. A lot of the outbound colony ships that launched from the Cosmodrome were carrying loads of SIVA to help build new colonies on arrival.
• Body Horror: Of a mechanical sort that still manages to look visceral and unsettling. Places where SIVA gathers tend to have long, blood-red, muscle-like fibers strewn about, along with angular pyramid-like structures sprouting out from random places.
  • Gets invoked in Destiny 2, where a few Exotic armor pieces have ornaments that make it look like they're infected with SIVA. If you didn't know better, at first glance (or in the frantic firefight of Crucible) you'd be thinking they suffered gory wounds on their body.
• The Corruption: It was supposed to be a self-repairing and self-replicating source of technology, but its common manifestation is this. The Plaguelands of the Cosmodrome are overrun by large red tendrils of SIVA alongside rectangular black growths, and the House of Devils have eagerly taken to it in order to augment themselves. And as it would seem, Guardians are not immune to its effects, since you have to kill the SIVA resurrected corpses of Felwinter, Jolder, and Gelheon in the final story mission of Rise of Iron.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Rise of Iron. While SIVA is, as far as we know, not even intelligent like Rasputin, the Fallen unleashing it threatens not only the Last City but everyone in the Solar system. It's ultimately averted in that SIVA is not inherently evil, and that its capabilities are only as dangerous as the mind that controls it.
  Red Miasma Boots: Generally, poorly worded or malicious code is the fault of the programmer, not SIVA itself. $SIVA.MEM.WB010.
• Grey Goo: Well, more of a red with black highlights goo, but the gist is the same.
• Interface Screw: Incredibly high SIVA density can cause you to start seeing the SIVA logo flashing on your screen.
• Meat Moss: Areas infested by SIVA inevitably have bundles of glistening reddish cabling snaking through them connecting SIVA to various pieces of technology. While not necessarily organic, these cables are extruded on-site from consumed local resources, and resemble nothing so much as ropy exposed muscles while their pattern of expansion resembles the pattern of veins under skin.
• Mechanical Abomination: Originally conceived by humanity to further their technological progress during the Golden Age, SIVA's potential for a number of applications is unfathomable, to say the least. Left to its own devices, the techno-virus usually stays dormant, but when used by the Fallen, the latter dish out terrifying experiments one after another; this turned the Devil Splicers into a threat to be taken on the same level as the Hive God Oryx. When the Player Character gets a hold of SIVA and mixes it with their Light, they become empowered beyond what is normally possible.
• Mundane Utility: Every Wrath of the Machine weapon is a severely damaged Year 2 weapon exposed to SIVA. As they receive upgrades, SIVA nodes start showing up, mainly to plug most of the holes that each weapon has.
• Non-Malicious Monster: As a piece of non-sentient technology, SIVA isn't evil, just poorly programmed. The SIVA-enhanced gear the player can obtain makes sure to point this out.
  • There's also Outbreak Perfected, the, well, perfected form of Outbreak Prime. As a Guardian weapon, it's able to be safely used without harm to the wielder.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Of a sort. Despite being sealed away for who knows how long by the Iron Lords, when the Devil Splicers let it free, it basically works as it did in the past with no apparent issues. Apart from the whole reason it was sealed away in the first place, that is.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Iron Lords could not destroy SIVA, so they gave their lives to seal it "beneath the earth" so it could not threaten the Last City. Then the Fallen dug it up.
• Too Dumb to Live: Clovis Bray was so confident of nothing going wrong that he didn't implement any initial safety features on SIVA, such as a kill switch. Later versions were required to have a killswitch, but by that time, the Collapse hit and the SIVA already created could only be terminated the old-fashioned way.
• Transhumanism: One of the more sinister applications of SIVA is this, and it's what the Devil Splicers are particularly interested in. Whether it's as mundane as making a new gun or replacing your legs with spikes to as nightmarish as Aksis riding around on mechanical spider legs and the Remnants of the Iron Lords becoming techno-zombies after their deaths, SIVA is capable of bioaugmentation.
• The Topic of Cancer: Implied with its desire to continually consume, enhance, and replicate. SIVA, by virtue of not having a kill switch or anything to keep it in check, tends to spread wildly and with reckless abandon, often transforming those it infects into a horrible Mechanical Abomination.
• Unholy Holy Sword: Felwinter sought out SIVA, hoping it could be used to finally lift humanity out of the Dark Age. Rasputin exploited this, and lured the Iron Lords into a trap that killed all but Saladin and Efrideet.

The Remnants

Remnants of the Iron Lords

Three corpses of the 1st generation Iron Lords that were sealed inside the SIVA vault for over 200 years. They are the final bosses of the Rise of Iron main story mode; and fight alongside the Fallen Devil Splicers in order to defend the SIVA replicator from the Guardians. After being sealed in the SIVA vault they were consumed by SIVA and reconstructed into cybernetic shells of their former selves. The three Iron Lords that were reanimated are Felwinter, Gheleon, and Jolder.

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• Artificial Zombie: The result of when three very unlucky Iron Lords were brought back from the dead by SIVA. Poor bastards.
• And I Must Scream: Some of their voice lines indicate that they are on some level aware of the horrific fate that befell them.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: The Iron Lords were responsible for protecting humanity from the Fallen as they tried to rebuild civilization. However they became too greedy and attempted to use SIVA, a technology they did not understand. As a result of that they were decimated by Rasputin and consumed by SIVA. The remnants of the Iron Lords are shells of their former selves and are slaves to SIVA and the Fallen, becoming threats to the very people they once protected.
• Body Horror: Looking at them up close shows just how much SIVA corrupted their bodies. Their faces are warped into a demented grin with blue glowing eyes and guns fused into their arms. They still wear shattered remains of their Iron Lord armor but are now covered in SIVA tentacles and pyramid-like structures. When you first see them they are hanging lifelessly to the ceiling; they are attached to the ceiling by a tentacle that engulfed their heads.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: There is little to nothing left of the original Iron Lords in their bodies; aside from a few words and screams, they are under the total influence of SIVA and by extension the Fallen.
• Came Back Wrong: These three were unlucky enough to have their bodies in the reach of SIVA. Now the only real thing about them that can be called human post-reanimation is their humanoid frame.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: They are corpses reanimated by SIVA technology being pale imitations of the Iron Lords.
• Deflector Shields: They are surrounded by a force field that renders them immune to gunfire. Only the Iron Axe that they once carried can break through it.
• Electronic Eyes: Their eyes glow an eerie blue color when they come back to life.
• Fate Worse than Death: Considering how these unlucky three were killed and their bodies consumed from the inside out by SIVA before being reanimated as violent zombies enslaved to SIVA's will, one can agree that those who died making it that far were lucky.
• Grey Goo: They are capable of releasing the SIVA swarms to attack the player.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Killing them requires using a flaming axe dropped by one of the infected Iron Lords.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: The Iron Lords were once the last hope of humanity and believed themselves to be invincible. Now they are nothing than remnants and slaves to a technology they once attempted to control.
• More Dakka: One of their arms has a Heavy Machine attached to it; while the other has a missile launcher.
• Peaceful in Death: Averted. Their faces are stuck in a perpetual goofy grin and barely resemble a human face; looking closer to insanity than anything else. This is sad considering Jolder's attempt at looking peaceful before she sealed herself in the vault.
• Shockwave Stomp: They often close the gap between themselves and the player with a giant leap into a ground pound.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: The intro scene of the Rise of Iron shows the Iron Lords being slowly but surely consumed by SIVA tendrils; and the remnants is the final result of that.

Medusa

Medusa, Craftmind

I am Medusa, survivor of the Golden Age, secret watcher over the Dreaming City. And I need your help.

The main narrator of the entries found in the Truth to Power lorebook, Medusa is an independent Craftmind designed to collect and analyze human intelligence, as well as hide amongst humanity and its offshoots, to the point of having even hidden amongst the Awoken and made her home in the Dreaming City. She initially messages The Young Wolf while taking the guise of Eris Morn sneaking messages into Mara Sov's reward chests, Ghost soon uncovers the truth, and she decides to come clean with them. Or so it would seem...

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• Foil: Her personality contrasts with fellow artificial superintelligence Rasputin. While Rasputin's relationship with the Guardians is rocky and he has little interest in actively cultivating any kind of positive relationship, Medusa, once she reveals her identity, actively attempts to repair the trust she lost from deceiving them, and is even concerned for The Young Wolf's emotional well-being.
• Unreliable Narrator: The only things that we know about her come from a series of nonsensical lore entries where she openly admits to possibly being one of several other scheming characters related to the Dreaming City, each pretending to be the others. She first impersonates Eris Morn until Ghost rats her out and she seemingly comes clean, before Quria appears and reveals that it created Medusa to communicate with you and that the entire setting is a simulation. Then, Dûl Incaru seemingly rips the simulation and reveals that it was all an illusion cast by her, and the process keeps repeating itself until you escape the simulation. Then, the real Eris Morn seemingly sends you the final message that reveals she created Medusa, but ends it with the cryptic "Aiat" exultation that Hive gods typically use. It's predictably the most complicated book to read in Destiny 2's lore.

Aphelion

The Aphelion

A group of malevolent and stealthy beings that have terrorized the darkest parts of the galaxy for eons, particularly the Awoken and Cabal.

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• Eldritch Abomination: Described as glowing and stealthy creatures that can "devastate whole worlds with the blink of an eye."
• Hero Killer: Apparently Sjur Eido is the only Awoken to have ever encountered the Aphelion and survived.
• Outside-Context Problem: Haven't been encountered by the Guardians yet, but apparently constantly antagonize the Awoken and greater universe.
• Sickly Green Glow: A blue variant, they remind the Awoken of folk tales about a nuclear meltdown.

Ahsa

Ahsa

Before you can confront the Witness, you must first understand it.

An extraterrestrial, paracausal leviathan, a refugee from Fundament who's dwelled beneath the methane seas of Titan since the Golden Age. Ahsa formed a bond with Sloane after Titan was Taken, and now that it's returned she desires to aid humanity by passing on important knowledge about the Witness — if only she can figure out how to communicate it.

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• Ambiguously Related: Ahsa is sometimes referred to as a "leviathan", but it's not clear how she and her species relates to the Leviathan of the Books of Sorrow. Ahsa is never textually identified as the same species, and notably doesn't have the Leviathan's ability to communicate via electromagnetic waves. That being said, Ahsa is mentioned as having tried to keep the Krill from contacting the Worm Gods, and while the Leviathan is mentioned as having been slain, Lightfall confirms that the Books of Sorrow are filled with lies, so it's possible might actually be that Leviathan.
• Benevolent Abomination: Ahsa is a proto-Worm God, the same way the Hive were once the proto-Hive "krill". The Witness corrupted the rest of her species by introducing them to the sword logic, but she rejected it and fled the violence in pursuit of the Traveler.
• Bond Creature: Seemingly a characteristic of her species, which was corrupted into the parasitism of the Worms. She once bonded to a scientist in the Golden Age, and has now bonded herself to Sloane. This takes the form of being able to communicate with her telepathically and even speak through her for short periods, though this takes considerable effort and starts out only as vague and fragmented impressions. The purpose of Season of the Deep is to find a way to strengthen Sloane's bond with her so she can fully communicate what she knows.
• The Faceless: Downplayed. While Ahsa's eye and her general silhouette can be discerned, she's never seen in full without obstruction, leaving it up in the air as to how she looks.
• Eldritch Abomination: Older than the formation of the Earth, has yet to be seen in full body, and has survived numerous encounters with the Witness' Disciples as well as survived the Taking of Titan itself.
• Heartbroken Badass: Lost the last companion she was bonded to and failed to save the Hive from the Witness, but made it all the way to Sol and managed to survive the Witness taking Titan to reveal critical information about it to the only beings that may be capable of stopping it.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Actively works against her Darkness-corrupted brethren, attempting to bring down the evil being that corrupted them in the first place.
• Non-Action Guy: So far, she hasn't done anything resembling fighting, meaning it's up to Sloane and the Guardians to protect her when Xivu attempts to Take her.
• Put on a Bus: Goes into a deep hibernation after her final message to Sloane.
• Space Whale: An unusual example where she's actually a Worm, but for all intents and purposes she still fits the bill of a whale in space.
• Small Role, Big Impact: While her role beyond Season of the Deep has yet to be seen, her exposition on the origins of the war between the Witness and the Traveler completely recontextualizes the entire mythos of the story as we know it.
• Time Abyss: As a refugee from Fundament, she is older than the billion year old Hive Gods.
• Token Good Teammate: The only "good" Worm encountered thus far, although only technically in that she's part of the proto-Worm race.
• Wham Line: Her purpose is to essentially deal these out everytime she can get a message through. Of particular note are when she reveals the true nature of the Witness and what she closes out her focus season with:

Ahsa: The Witch Queen must rise.

• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Whenever she speaks through Sloane, her iris shrinks noticeably to indicate it.
• Willing Channeler: Week 4 of Season of the Witch reveals that Ahsa secretly bonded with Eris and is helping her with managing the strain of the tithes the Guardians are offering. This carries immense risk to Ahsa, though, with the implication that if Eris becomes a Hive god permanently, Ahsa will become a new Worm God.

The Golden Age

Though what records remain from the Golden Age of humanity are sparse, some of the groups and individuals who lived from this time continue to exert immense influence on the Post-Collapse world.

Clovis Bray I

Clovis Bray I

^{As he appears on Europa (SPOILERS)}\\

Voiced by: Brian T. Delaney

"The universe is someone's map. And what we’re doing here... we’re reaching beyond the boundaries, out into the unknown. And we pull back new colors to put on this map that can never, ever let itself be finished.”

The owner and CEO of the vast corporation of the same name and founder of the (in)famous House Bray, Clovis Bray I was responsible for developing Mars and creating some of the most advanced technologies of the Golden Age including the Exos, the Warminds, engram encryption, and SIVA. Clovis Bray and his family were also instrumental in developing technologies needed for Golden Age humanity to expand beyond the Solar System.

Pre-release material for Beyond Light heavily expands on his backstory and personality, along with his relations with his family and the truly ugly steps he took to create some of his most ambitious projects...

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• Abusive Parents:
  • He subjected his offspring to experiments and genetic alterations that he wanted to perform on himself but was too scared to do without making a close relative go through it first. Part of the reason he invited Elizabeth to Europa was because he wanted her to upload her mind to an exo before him. He also used Clovis II as a guinea pig on his quest for immortality, giving his son many genetic "enhancements" that eventually led to him becoming terminally ill and attempted to upload him into an early exo, which resulted in Clovis II tearing himself apart.
  • He was led to believe Ana was adopted and he looked down on her for not having his genetics.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite the existence of a letter attached to the Lament showing evidence that Clovis does regret his actions regarding the Exo project and some of his company's other work, it doesn't seem to show at all in the AI copy of him created at the end of his first life. However, this is a Justified Trope: the letter implies that the AI copy was created prior to its writing.
• A God Am I: This was always his end goal. Clovis I was obsessed with becoming the "LUCA— Last Universal Common Ancestor— of all human thought", essentially to have all of humanity's future scientific progress based on his achievements, and saw the creation of Exos as the path to this. Emphasized in part by his threats during the Deep Stone Crypt raid when he was activating the Morning Star's nuclear descent protocol:
  "Were it to fall into the wrong hands, humanity, and the universe, would be utterly doomed. I have no reason to believe you are anything other than “the wrong hands.” You now face godlike judgment. May it extend eternally."
  • The true depths of his god complex are more staggering than previously thought: he had designed Rasputin not to simply protect mankind, but to destroy the Traveler and have Rasputin take its place. His god complex is so immense that he cannot stand the idea of someone other than him being the savior of humanity. Thankfully, Ana's decision to teach Rasputin about the humanities and mankind itself led the AI to prevent Clovis' plans from coming to fruition in the past...but now, in the present, the Clovis AI seeks to finish what he started, by uploading himself into the Warsat Network and becoming a god instead.
• Animal Lover: While he may not care about his family, he does care about the pigs being used to provide artificial organs for himself to the point where he's obviously uncomfortable depending on them and makes it so that one of his last wishes is to set them free.
• Animal Motif: Pigs. Aside from the aforementioned pigs who grow his artificial organs, Clovis briefly discusses the odd phenomenon of sows hurting or killing their own offspring and speculates why an animal would evolve to do such a thing, drawing an obvious parallel to his own abusive parenting and his role in the death of his son.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Clovis Bray and his corporation had a history of forcing people into debt to the company and then using that debt as leverage to force them into experiments. Both Cayde-6 and the early SIVA prototype test subjects were forced into being experimented on using this debt system.
• Anti-Villain: Severely downplayed and limited to his human self on Europa. The Lament's lore confirms that Clovis doesn't believe he's just making excuses whenever he tries to defend his behavior by saying it a desire to protect humanity. However, not only is the folly of that situation only recognized by his human self after the Crypt copy and Banshee are completed, causing it to be forgotten when he passed, he's still so much of an arrogant prick and a would-be Destructive Savior that it doesn't really matter what he thinks, only that what he does is undoubtedly evil.
• Bad Boss: He frequently put human test subjects, many of whom were forced into working for him after being put into debt by his company, into unnecessarily dangerous experiments that often claimed their lives. Clovis's reactions to their deaths varied from annoyed disgust at his experiments failing to apathetic fascination if he managed to glean new information from their often graphic demises. He also mistreated his scientists, frequently lying to them about the nature of their work, the dangers they faced and often threatened to ruin their careers if they failed or displeased him. In one instance, after an experiment to give humans more limbs ended with the test subject tearing himself apart, Clovis told the scientist in charge that they would be overseeing the next test from inside the room with the patient.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Despite being The Sociopath through and through, a simple health scan reveals that he can feel grief, but would rather choose to believe that he can't or won't.
• Brain Uploading: Clovis copies himself to two bodies after things start going wrong for him with the Exo project. One takes the form of a massive Exo head in the Creation wing of Bray Exoscience, while the other is a regular Exo body, wiped of his original memories, who would later earn the nickname Banshee and be rebooted 43 times while fighting the Vex with Elsie, and end up forgetting he was ever a clone of Clovis.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The Winter's Shroud Stasis fragment is heavily implied to be an ancient relic of Clovis's research which also represents his crippling narcissism. Though all the fragments are obtained through decrypting more of his research, Winter's Shroud is notable in that it's the only fragment that isn't just a pile of garbage covered in ice.
• Clone Angst: Inverted. He's audibly upset and even angry to learn that Banshee's become his own person, and now wants to force his original consciousness back on him.
• Comically Small Bribe: Played for Drama in Seraph, where he praises the Guardians for being so powerful and offers them to work for him once the danger passes... despite the fact that, by this point, it's very apparent that he's an objectively deranged and dangerous Control Freak who cannot be trusted with anything more harmful than a thumb tack. Even if that weren't the case, he doesn't offer an actual reward of any kind in exchange for working for him, further nullifying any possible incentive.
• Control Freak:
  • He modified his son's genetics in the womb in failed attempt to turn him into a "flawless image" of himself, replacing his wife's genes with his own to ensure it was him who "powered his son's existence." He continued meddling with Clovis II's DNA throughout his life, inadvertently resulting in his son gaining a lethal and incurable condition. He also monitored his grandchildren's health and genetics without their knowledge or consent.
  • He started dying while on Europa but even as every part of his body started failing, he insisted cloning organs rather than using more effective medical treatments suggested by his staff, refusing to let anything into his body that didn't share his "genetic self interests."
  • The instant he's housed in the Experimental Exo Frame in Season of the Seraph, he immediately starts insisting on incredibly dangerous and disastrous actions like blowing up the moon and letting him go through with his initial plan of blasting the Traveler with the warsats, all so he can become the god he thinks humanity needs. Ana and company naturally balk at this and make efforts to lock him out, and even after, he continues to rage about being prevented from getting his way.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Clovis Bray earned his power and wealth through morally-questionable experimentation and even outright violence, going by Cayde's journal. Their experiments with SIVA would never have survived an ethical review board, which is why they relocated to Meridian Bay on Mars, and many of the experiments had a 50-60% mortality rate. He also considered poaching the Ishtar Collective's talent or outright raiding their archives when they wouldn't just give the necessary data up to him.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: If Ana and Soteria are any indication, Clovis might have been much more successful in a variety of endeavors if he wasn't such a stickler for protocol that objectified everyone around him. To put it another way, his obsession with legacy and the entitlement that came with the resulting attitude ironically prevented him from moving forward and achieving some of his goals; Stasis only becomes widespread after it is removed from Eramis (who deliberately mirrors a lot of his personality traits), and only by breaking Clovis's arbitrary chains of legacy and protocol was Soteria able to make it to Neptune and establish Neomuna.
• Entitled to Have You: His ex-wife Lusia Lin hated him, especially after the death of their son, and devoted her later years to protecting a nature preserve that was vulnerable to his machinations. Clovis only waxed poetic about how she was meant to stand by his side, in both this life and their next.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The images accompanying Rasputin's dialogue show that in life, Clovis wore a pair of round spectacles. Fittingly, the black-and-white imagery depict them as Scary Shiny Glasses thanks to how utterly wicked he is.
• Freudian Excuse: When his obsession with legacy isn't straight-up narcissism, it's implied to be severe athazagoraphobia after discovering The Nothing After Death. He's legitimately afraid of both forgetting and being forgotten, which is what drove him to become an Immortality Seeker... though his vices led him to forget about what he fought for anyways and become increasingly depraved despite the sympathy this would normally lend him.
• Gone Horribly Right: Clovis designed Clovis-1 to be his Good Counterpart after he underwent a Heel Realization at the end of his life. Fourty-four resets later, that Exo could barely be called Clovis anymore, and all that remains of the original Clovis is the very bastard both he and Clovis-1 came to resent, having never received the same epiphany as either of them.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The Lament's lore implies he's intensely athazagoraphobic and originally launched a lot of his experiments to ensure neither he nor anyone else would ever have to worry about forgetting or being forgotten ever again. His god complexes, narcissism, and the various knots in his work would, unfortunately, lead him down a never-ending descent into unrepentant villainy that has long since outgrown his original motivations.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Amidst the Hive, an entire race of genocidal warbringers; the Vex, Starfish Robots that literally cannot understand that vex-ifying everything will just kill everything too; and the Witness, an entity who seeks to bring about the Final Shape (likely also killing everything), Clovis stands out for being horrendously depraved, narcissistic, and downright vile, willing to do literally anything to ensure he alone is humanity's savior, even if he ends up dooming humanity in the process. And he's just a regular human mind compared to the gods, robots, and eldritch horrors in the universe.
• I Have No Son!: Elsie crosses this line for Clovis when she tries to terminate the Exo project, prompting the beginning of his Villainous Breakdown and eventual admission that he never really cared about her.
• Insistent Terminology: Clovis insisted on calling all of his employees and workers "collaborators." When asking Elsie Bray to join him on Europa, he suggests they "collaborate" together.
• Insufferable Genius: At the root of his evil is a man who is dangerously out of touch with reality and recent events despite his intellect. Even Osiris, an Insufferable Genius himself, can barely stand him. The copy of him in the Creation wing of Bray Exoscience takes this trope even further to the point of Grumpy Old Man territory when he starts verbally flailing around upon finding out that his research isn't being used to stroke his own ego in the present day like his company used to.
• Irony: The most successful progenitors of his legacies disavow him entirely. Ana refuses to let his darker side overtake her own ambitions, Rasputin deviated from his original goal in order to actually protect mankind, locking Clovis out in the process, and the entire city of Neomuna is a product of insubordination from Soteria.
• It's All About Me: Frequently talks about wanting to be the only person in Sol to take credit for saving humanity and advancing its progress in the decoded ARG logs, and used that to justify some of his most heinous actions and hateful attitudes. He was also obsessed with becoming the next universal common ancestor of all humanity's scientific advancement, which was another driving force for some of his projects. He even wanted to destroy the Traveler and have Rasputin replace it, simply because he could not stand for anyone other than him being recognized as the savior of mankind.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After centuries of going unpunished for his evil deeds, Clovis eventually gets some comeuppance when Elsie empowers the Guardians' Stasis abilities through his research in the name of justice, against his desire to use it solely to stroke his own ego. To add insult to injury, it's heavily implied that the Winter's Shroud fragment, which is a non-descript object frozen in a jar, is an actual piece of his work stolen for the Hunters.
• Knight Templar: Clovis isn't just a Narcissist, but also legitimately believes everything he sets out to do has some sort of long-term benefit regardless of his ego. Though he generally has a valid point to make in a lot of situations, this also makes him incredibly dangerous because not only is his foresight unusually poor for a man like him despite all the resources and lives he throws away on the double, his inflated self-worth usually takes over his judgement anyways.
• Lack of Empathy: Demonstrates this towards other people (even his own family) to the point where he takes offense to the idea that the best birthday gift for Elsie would be to show some to someone, anyone for once in his life. As it turns out, he has empathy, but has long deluded himself into believing that he doesn't.
• MegaCorp: Clovis Bray was responsible for the weapon systems that defended Earth, building massive interstellar colony ships, and colonizing and building cities on Mars. Their reach extended even further, all the way out to the Jovians, and those indebted to the company were often forced into becoming test subjects for their experiments. For all intents and purposes, Clovis Bray and the Bray family were a nation unto themselves.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A letter Clovis includes in a package containing the Lament sent to his Exo copy (actually Banshee-44) sometime in the relative past indicates that after the torment he underwent trying to sustain the Exo project and his eventual Brain Uploading, he did come to genuinely regret his decisions, realizing that there is neither an afterlife nor the answer to his desires that benefits humanity as a whole and he's thus wasted countless opportunities to make amends with the people he wronged. Strangely, he doesn't seem to express these feelings in more recent communications from him for reasons unknown. Later information reveals that this might be because the version of him on Europa (who makes the communications) was uploaded before he had his epiphany, explaining the issue.
• Narcissist: Clovis is a man of such grandiosity and egocentrism, that he believed he would be the only person whose ideas had any significance, thus driving his desire to become the last universal common ancestor of all human thought.
• Never My Fault: Clovis absolutely cannot admit he's done anything wrong. In the final vision he receives, Clovis speaks directly to the Traveler in the form of Alpha Lupi, a mother wolf, who tells him directly that his greed and ambition have destroyed his family. Clovis's response is to berate the Traveler for not stopping him.
• No MacGuffin, No Winner: Attempts to invoke this by rigging the Deep Stone Crypt to detonate itself - and the entire moon of Europa - in a nuclear explosion in the event that someone else gained access to his technology within. Of course, it's too little, too late; by the time his AI copy initiates the protocol, Atraks and Taniks have already transcended through the Crypt, while the Young Wolf cracks open a mountain of raw information relating to the Exo project. The real problem is defusing enough nukes to prevent the explosion from destroying Europa.
• Not Brainwashed: One of the most disturbing aspects of his character: the visions he received throughout the Europa project, attributed to "Clarity", and therefore suggestive of corruption by the Darkness, actually came from the Traveler trying to warn him off of his course, which Clovis's egotism led him to completely misinterpret. Clovis I wasn't an amoral, selfish narcissist because he was warped by the Darkness, he was an amoral, selfish narcissist because that's normal for him.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: He hated Clovis II's wife Sylvie, calling her a stain on his family and accused her of turning his son against him.
• Obviously Not Fine: Claims he isn't hurting on the inside from the stress of the Exo project in the final entry of his journal. The next paragraph that immediately follows after this is a readout from his assistant Hannu revealing that he has several health problems directly stemming from repressed grief at killing Elsie's original consciousness, a fact that he would never admit.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Self-described as being standoffish at best towards women to the point where he insisted on using his mitochondrial DNA to create his son Clovis II. He is also diametrically opposed to the idea of universal basic income and calls people registered to it "parasites."
• Private Military Contractors: It's indicated that Clovis Bray used these to deal with problematic individuals, and that Cayde-6 was one such mercenary in his previous life before being made into an Exo.
• Rage Against the Heavens: When communing with the Traveler, Clovis tells her in no uncertain terms that he blames her for not intervening more directly.
• Sanity Slippage: By all accounts, Clovis already had a few screws loose long before he ever set foot on Europa. Talking to the Darkness tends to have negative effects on people's mental health, as Toland can attest. But as the Exo project wore on, his grip on sanity loosens significantly, eventually going completely bonkers when Elsie tried to shut down the Exo project and killing her to prevent that from happening.
• Soap Opera Disease: By the time of the Europa mission, Clovis was dying of an unknown illness and was dependent on having cloned organs frequently swapped into his body. He even died and was resuscitated enough times that his journal entries imply that it had become routine for him.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: His pure upload is found in the Deep Stone Crypt, and activated to help make sense of it. Absolutely nobody is especially eager to consult him, least of all Ana or the Exo Stranger, and he's pissed off about how the Deep Stone Crypt was revealed to outsiders. Any interaction with him involves at least some Volleying Insults.
  • The teamwork aspect goes out the window entirely once his plan to destroy the Traveler and take its place as the protector of mankind is exposed. His AI copy is promptly deleted from the Exo Frame by Rasputin, and the copy on Europa now continues his own plans while working separately from the Guardians.
• Theme Naming: He continues Bungie's tradition of naming A.I.s after historical figures and objects associated with early medieval France, following in the footsteps of Charlemagne, Cortana, and Durandal.
• The Sociopath: Clovis saw his family members, partners, and test subjects as various means to an end rather than actual people, and in the end seems to only really be interested in obtaining power for himself. Even Oryx genuinely loved His sisters and children, in his own twisted way, and was never afraid to admit it. By his own account, the love Clovis had for Elsie was derived from the notion that she was an extension of himself. Notes from Clovis's AI assistant Hannu indicate that while he does feel grief at losing Elsie, the rest of the logbook shows that not only won't he admit that, he honestly does believe he never cared about anyone in his life.
• The Unapologetic: Week 4 of Season of the Seraph shows him displaying absolutely zero remorse about his intention to destroy the Traveler so that he alone could be credited with being the savior of humanity.
• The Unfettered: Clovis Bray didn't let anything like ethics, morality, or even family get in the way of his reckless pursuit of scientific advancement. It was part of what made his company so powerful.
• Ungrateful Bastard: His grandson Alton was Clovis's only supporter in their family and the only one not to cut ties with him after the death of Clovis II. Clovis disregards him as nothing but a useless pawn since he isn't a rebellious genius like his sisters and he didn't even mention him to the amnesiac Elsie.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The lore tab for the Lament implies Clovis developed his sociopathic persona because of his search for human immortality, which would explain why he seemed so uncaring in the past - after all, why show respect now if it's a small price to pay for a cushy eternal lifetime later? The fact that it was All for Nothing and eventually helped claim his first life is what drives him to relent, though he seems to have a hard time admitting it.
  • Despotism Justifies the Means: That being said, it's ultimately revealed that he only truly cared about his own ambitions to achieve godhood above all else, completely indifferent towards the actual wellbeing of humanity, being so completely trapped in his delusions of grandeur that only he mattered in the end.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Elsie attempts to shut down the Exo project by traveling to 2082 Volantis and disabling the Vex machinery Clovis studied and used for the project, Clovis doesn't exactly take it well, causing the writings of the decoded ARG logs to become less and less narratively coherent until he ultimately makes the choice to seal himself both as an Exo and as a hard copy in the Deep Stone Crypt forever. The fact that his Vex infection was pumping an NMDA antagonist into bloodstream didn't do his sanity any favors, either (notable NMDA receptor antagonists include PCP and ketamine, to give an idea of what that means).
• Villain with Good Publicity: The corporation wasn't exactly a villain, but its shady behavior was virtually unknown to anyone outside of Clovis, his family, and a small group of scientists, leaving the corporation's image squeaky-clean. A lot of the Clovis Bray history is redacted post-Collapse by parties unknown, but Ikora confirms that she knows many of their secrets. Even this very wiki described him as "a genuinely nice man for all his faults" until the release of the Beyond Light collector's edition.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • For all of his extreme ambitions, Clovis Bray seemed to have had a genuinely good goal: to allow humanity to grow beyond the Solar System and spread across the stars and to learn the secrets of the Traveler and the universe. It simply came at a staggering cost in terms of human life and corrupt practices of debt-slavery, as well as extremely dangerous and unregulated technologies like SIVA and the Warminds. Beyond Light ends up zig-zagging this when it reveals that Clovis only pursued his desires so that he could have credit for them, but at the same time also implying that he genuinely believed he would acquire immortality for the human race within his lifetime and use that to repair any damages he caused through infinite time. Triply subverted in Season of the Seraph, where it is revealed Clovis' greatest ambition is to destroy the Traveler and replace it as Humanity's guiding light.
  • The nuclear descent protocol for the Deep Stone Crypt, while excessive and capable of triggering an Earth-Shattering Kaboom beyond the Crypt, may possibly be the only means of suppressing the Darkness on Europa if accessed by a third party Eviler than Thou.
• You Are What You Hate: Early in his encrypted logs, Clovis describes his hatred for the Vex and their single-minded consumptionism, and likewise doesn't seem to be a fan of the "true final shape" some antagonists discuss in general, being more attracted to ambition and exploring a diverse universe. Later, he discovers that mixing radiolaria and the Darkness creates a potent blood-like substance useful for creating working Exos, and finds it too useful to abandon that he constructs the Deep Stone Crypt to make more of it, ultimately working with the very machines he hated to further his own research - research that he worked on in the delusional hope of becoming the next universal common ancestor of all humanity's scientific advancement; a final shape, if you will.

Nezarec (unmarked Season 17 spoilers)

See Nezarec's folder under "The Entombed Disciple" in the Darkness.

Books of Sorrow Races

The historical races and entities documented and destroyed by Oryx.

The Leviathan

The Leviathan

A disciple of the Traveler charged with keeping the Virtuous Worms imprisoned within the core of Fundament.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: Taox considered it this in the oceans of Fundament, notable because her race considered itself the bottom of the food chain. It was this to the Worms, until Aurash's Super-Empowering.
• Cryptic Conversation: It tries to warn Aurash and her sisters of the Worms, but does so very badly. The Witness' manipulations and the worms didn't help matters either.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Was on the receiving end of one of these at the hands of Rhulk, who tore out one of its ribs before meeting with the Worm Gods and subjugating them. That rib is still on display inside Rhulk's Pyramid.
• The Dragon: It was considered by the Ammonite to serve as this to the Traveler, and imprisons its Darkness counterparts.
• Failed a Spot Check: The syzygy that was to wipe out all life on Fundament? A lie fabricated by the Witness to "uplift" the Krill. That the Leviathan never knew of this implies he also believed the lie.
• Good Counterpart: Being a disciple of the Traveler, he is one for the Disciples of the Witness.
• Good Is Impotent: It cannot stop the syzygy and basically tells Aurash to remain virtuous for its sake at the cost of death. Possibly subverted, since the syzygy was a lie told by the Witness and, well, you can't stop what was never going to happen at all.
• Kraken and Leviathan: It is a giant sea creature named the Leviathan.
• Leaking Can of Evil: The Worms still called out and may have altered the orbit of the 52 moons.
• Poor Communication Kills: It offered nothing but warnings and was killed. It didn't help that the syzygy was a lie cooked up by the Witness.

The Qugu

The Qugu

• Empowered Badass Normal: "Inspiral" reveals they may have had a connection to the Darkness, and could commune with the memories of their ancestors through it.

The Ecumene

The Ecumene

A powerful interstellar government consisting of multiple advanced alien species that controlled much of the galaxy. Notably, they were the first faction that posed a serious threat to the Hive and came close to wiping them out.

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• Badass Normal: Despite having no paracausal capabilities of their own, the Ecumene very nearly destroyed the Hive through sheer technological might and making There Is No Kill Like Overkill their standard procedure.
• Determined Defeatist: Even after their war against the Hive turned hopeless and their extinction was only a matter of time, the Ecumene continued to devote every aspect of their civilization to fighting the Hive.
• Empowered Badass Normal: "Inspiral" reveals they may have had a connection to the Deep, which Oryx and the Witness omitted from the Books of Sorrow.
• Expy: To the Forerunners from the Halo franchise. Their very name is a Shout-Out to the Forerunner's ancient empire. Like the Forerunners, the Ecumene was an advanced galactic government that had existed for tens of thousands of years. Their encounter and subsequent war with the Hive parallels the Forerunners' war against the Flood.
• The Federation: Their government consisted of an alliance between various alien races and client states.
• Hope Spot: During the Ecumene's war against the Hive, one of their client races discover a derelict ship containing Taox, the former mentor of the Hive's gods. Using Taox's knowledge of the Hive's weaknesses, they are able to turn the tables on the Hive and drive them to near extinction. Then Oryx gains the power to Take...
• Hopeless War: After Oryx gained the power to Take, the Ecumene's war instantly turned into this. The Ecumene Council predicted that it would only take two centuries until they are all exterminated by the Hive.
• Internal Retcon: As warned by Savathûn, the Books of Sorrow are full of lies. As such, the Inspiral lore book reveals that the Ecumene weren't Badass Normals, but Darkness wielders who used its power to connect minds to peacefully bridge the psychological gap between its many client species and unite them in common understanding. This adds a new motive to the Hive's crusade: the extermination of different interpretations of the Darkness from the universe, leaving the Witness its unchallenged master.
• Un-person: After the Ecumene were wiped out by the Hive, the Hive erased any evidence that the Ecumene had ever existed. Their use of the Darkness was also erased from the Hive's own memories.

The Ammonite

The Ammonites

A spacefaring civilization that lived on the many moons of Fundament, homeworld of the Hive. When the Hive conquered Fundament, they began attacking the Ammonite to escape the God-Wave.

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• Four-Star Badass: The Ammonite military was commanded by Chroma-Admiral Rafriit, whose tactical genius nearly ended the Hive's crusade before it began. The Hive only slew him after he was forced to perform an Escort Mission for the Leviathan, preventing him from outmaneuvering them like normal.
• Octopoid Aliens: Described as "bony six-armed cephalopods".
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Hive's war against the Ammonite and its aftermath set the foundations for much of their behavior in the present: their exclusive use of sorcery and Magitek, their Omnicidal Maniac leanings, the trend of Hive gods killing each other, the sword logic, war moons, and more.
• Starter Villain: For the Hive, being the first civilization to give them any trouble fighting. And later they were discovered to be connected to the much more powerful Ecumene.

The Taishibethi

The Taishibethi / The Tai

A species of "sun ravens" native to Taishibeth, giving the Hive one of the greatest conflicts in their history. After the Taking of their Emperor, Raven, the Taishibethi were exterminated in an event known as the Golden Amputation.

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• Bird People: Described as "sun ravens" by the Books of Sorrow.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Apparently they were all birthed by their Emperor Raven, and allowed their young to gestate in "star webs."
• Sole Survivor: Their Emperor, Raven, who was one of the only beings in history to singlehandedly take out a Hive War Moon. However, considering she's currently Taken, one would be hard pressed to call it "survival."

The Harmony

The Harmony

A race blessed by the Traveler that was wiped out by the early conquests of the Taken King and his Hive.

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• Ambiguous Situation: It is mentioned that they employed "dragon wishes" against the Hive, implying a connection to the Ahamkara.
• Beyond the Impossible: Somehow used the Traveler's blessings in a way that put humanity's Golden Age to shame. For example, they somehow weaponized a black hole against the Hive. It's a shame that Oryx had recently gained the power of the Dreadnaught.
• The Bus Came Back: Referenced in Lightfall's Collector Edition lore. The Cabal are revealed to have visited their ruins at some point and brought back an Ahamkara bone, dubbed the Imperial Trinket, which ended up in Calus's hands — the very same bone Caiatl crushed in the coup against him.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: A race with access to paracausal power and a weaponized black hole would be a force to be reckoned with in any other story. Unfortunately, they're overshadowed by the Hive, a race of magic space zombies that quickly wipes them from existence.

The Eimin-Tin

The Eimin-Tin

A species wiped away by the Hive so thoroughly that even the Books of Sorrow have little record of their existence.

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• Out of Focus: Receive very little description or focus compared to the Hive's wars with the other races, suggesting that they were wiped out with little trouble.

Neomuna (Unmarked Lightfall spoilers)

In General

She does not know any other option. With it, she may hold to a hope, even one.

A city on Neptune, built in the aftermath of The Collapse, and hidden away from the rest of the system in an attempt to keep it safe. Protected by powerful warriors known as "Cloudstriders" who make a great sacrifice to protect their home. It will serve as the main setting of the Lightfall campaign, according to promotional material released by Bungie.

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• Abandoned Area: Elsie first finds evidence of their existence when she tracks something down to an abandoned space station on Pluto. There, she finds the "silver" nanite technology and a broken Quicksilver Storm, as well as a pouka (her fish-like companion from Beyond Light.) The Ghost Tokki also stumbled across the station by chance, and was transformed into a fusion of the Last City and Neomuna's technologies when she absorbed the Storm's silver.
• Alien Among Us: Lakshmi-2 was one of the Exos who helped found Neomuna until the Veil killed her. Maya Sundaresh fused her consciousness with her own in a deranged experiment, and Lakshmi, seemingly none the wiser, somehow managed to go back to Earth.
• Benevolent A.I.: The CloudArk, the Golden Age system that runs Neomuna.
• Brain Uploading: A willing and reversible version - Neomuni can enter the CloudArk, leaving their bodies in suspended animation, but still interact with the city itself by way of Virtual Ghosts. All non-Cloudstriders have done so at the first sign of Calus' invasion in Lightfall. Unfortunately for them, Nezarec's soul has escaped into the physical realm through the same means.
• Crapsaccharine World: Downplayed. Neomuna is never sold as a true utopia, only a place untouched by the Collapse. That being said, that alone makes its outward appearance more ideal than the rest of the universe's current state. However, it's suggested the Neomuni have very little tolerance for government dissidents at times. When it became apparent more and more citizens were resisting the efforts to evacuate the city years ago during the Arrival, the government response was to round them up and throw them out into cryopods that put them in deep freeze, effectively removing them from society for the duration.
• False Utopia: Downplayed. There's a number of lore tabs explaining that the Neomuni government, the Cloud Strider creation process, and its treatment of outsiders are meant to be irresponsible if not morally-reprehensible Dark Secrets sullying a utopian civilization, but this is hardly called out in-universe. Caiatl does point out Jisu Calerondo clearly doesn't know what the hell he's talking about when he says Neomuna understands what it's like to lose a homeworld, though (compared to the rest of the universe, the population emphatically does not.)
• Fling a Light into the Future: It is the result of the AI Soteria disobeying Clovis to launch a colony fleet into deep space, as her simulation abilities predicted it was the only chance humanity had of outlasting the Collapse and rebuilding society. One fragment attached to one of these ships accidentally crashed into the surface of Neptune, and enough of the ship remained intact to set up a colony and repopulate.
• Foreshadowing: Neomuna's existence is hinted at in numerous Year 4 and 5 voicelines:
  • One of the last mysteries about Rasputin is a Warmind project titled NEFELE STRONGHOLD. What little information pertains to it suggests it's somewhere on Neptune, and the Cloudstrider tech is eerily reminiscent of some of Clovis Bray's projects (but not quite.)
  • Crow sometimes mentions Cabal patrols around the planet searching for something. Defection to Calus may have been involved, and the city is later besieged by the Shadow Legion.
  • The Psion Conclave prophesizes a city under attack in Vox Obscura. They never said which city.
  • One of the possible lines in Savathun's "two truths and two lies" sequence during the Altar of Reflection missions is "the Last City is not the last city." In that regard, she was truthful.
• Hidden Elf Village: It was built after the Collapse and has kept its existence secret to ensure its safety. It ends up dragged into the current conflict when the Witness discovers the Veil's location, and by extension, Neomuna.
• Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • The final cutscene of Season of Plunder implies they've unknowingly built near or on top of something critical to transforming the Weave into thetaht the paracausal and in fact is conditioned to react poorly to it (if Elsie's pouka is any indication.)
  • Similarly, it is revealed in the epilogue for Season of the Seraph that Neomuna is the final resting place of the Veil, which despite foreshadowing and speculation is a mysterious artifact of Light (later revealed to actually be the Traveler's inverse as an apathetic being that serves as the origin point of the Darkness) that not even its civilians understand.
  • More conventionally, even though multiple parties (the Cabal, Elsie, and the Lucent Brood) are aware that Neptune contains something worth investigating, they've never pinned down the specifics until the Witness barges in during Lightfall.
  • Season of the Seraph reveals that at least part of Neomuna's secrecy is due to its creator Soteria activating relevant protocols after it crash-landed on Neptune, and also because both she and the colonists that landed on Neptune likely would've been declared dead due to the nature of their exodus. Lightfall later clarifies by revealing Stargazer deleted most evidence of the city outside Neptune.
• Human Popsicle: Downplayed. This is what happens to the bodies of people who enter the CloudArk, but the Last Days lore book mentions that "cryostasis" is a misnomer that grew too popular to dispel — the process only greatly slows down the metabolism instead of freezing it completely, and allows the mind to remain active. It's also mentioned that people who resisted the evacuation efforts when the Pyramids passed over were punished by being rounded up and put in true cryostasis, so they'd effectively be removed from society for what is now years while their compatriots get to actually enjoy life in the CloudArk.
• Innocently Insensitive: Downplayed, but as the Neomuni's last frame of reference for Earth was just after the Collapse, they seem somewhat bemused that the Guardians aren't bloodthirsty Warlords come to conquer.
• Meaningful Name: "Neomuna" is Korean for "excess," making it incredibly fitting that Calus's Shadow Legion would start attacking Sol by exposing the city.
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: Since the Neomuni entered cryostasis, there isn't much point in cooking any more. Their agriculture is instead being processed into an unappetizing nutrient paste that gets tubed directly into their hibernating bodies. Several patrol missions deal with this paste, whether stopping the Cabal stealing the paste for themselves or destroying the crops it's made from, or poisoning it so that the Cabal experience adverse reactions when they eat it.
• Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future: The destination arsenal on Neomuna has cleaned up, Cyberpunk-flavored versions of the Moon weapons. With the charms taken off, it's much easier to see how squarish and angular the guns are. Standout examples are the Iterative Loop fusion rifle and the Round Robbin hand cannon.
• Spotting the Thread: The first thing that clues Elsie into the possibility that someone else is populating Jovian space is a broken Quicksilver Storm with functioning nanites left behind on Pluto. The mechanisms of both surpass SIVA and did not exist during the Golden Age, meaning the only possible explanation is a place more advanced than the Last City or Golden Age civilization that would therefore have to exist after the Collapse.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Neomuna is the can in question, with the Veil being the evil. Lore released during Season of the Deep implies that Chioma Esi was flat out terrified by what the Veil might be able to do to mankind, and went out of her way to ensure that Neomuna would never make contact with the rest of the system to stop this.
• Totally Radical: Downplayed. While light on the slang, the Neomuni have a tendency to lapse into speech patterns and enthusiasm lifted straight out of shows and games from The '80s and The '90s, emphasizing the digital aspect of a large part of their society.
• The Voice: Since the regular Neomuni's bodies are in stasis, they only appear as nondescript digital avatars whenever they appear at all, with their voices being the most distinct part of them.

Quinn Laghari

Chief Archivist Quinn Laghari

The head of Neomuna's archives in the Hall of Heroes.

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• Servile Snarker: Basically a clerk in her current state, but hates professionalism and would rather speak her own mind in the city's records.
• The Tease: Flirts with just about anyone she talks to, even calling the Young Wolf "smokin' hot" during the Winterbite quest. The only person who takes her seriously is Ikora, surmising that Quinn's also pointing out that a proper alliance needs to have friendship.

Jisu Calerondo

Jisu Calerondo, Neomuna Civil News

Voiced by: Nolan North

The host of Neomuna Civil News, serving to provide news updates to the citizens of Neomuna as they become available.

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• Catchphrase: Being a newscaster, he begins every broadcast with: "With Neomuna Civil News, I'm Jisu Calerondo."
• Intrepid Reporter: Interviews Empress Caiatl without batting a virtual eye, and hacks into your Ghost's comms to try and score an exclusive.
• Mr. Exposition: His broadcasts serve to fill in a lot of missing information post-Lightfall campaign.
• Twisting the Words: Seemingly attempts this on Osiris, asking him questions that, if Osiris wasn't already adept at handling them, would have made him out to be the perfect enemy of Neomuna. Instead, Osiris deftly sidesteps potential controversy and answers them as honestly and professionally as he can. As a result, Osiris ends up leaving the conversation looking respectful and honest, and it's implied Jisu was annoyed he didn't get a chance to catch Osiris saying something he can use to paint him and the Guardians in a negative light.

Sam Moleyn

Sam Moleyn

One of the many conscripted Neomuni citizens, taking an interest in the Young Wolf's adventures.

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• Escort Mission: Partition: Ordnance has him try to upload himself into the Nexus to deliver a powerful virus to the network. The goal is to follow his avatar as it moves through the network, but the catch is that he doesn't have precise control over his movements, and the virus projects an aura that throws you around and destroys the platforms around him.
• Forced Transformation: An example where his physical body isn't affected, but a projection is. His avatar is turned into a nondescript sphere during Partition: Ordnance due to the influence of the virus he's trying to upload.
• Jumped at the Call: The moment Sam catches eyes on the Guardians, he starts excitedly figuring out how to use his conscription to help them.
• No Social Skills: Like Fynch before him, he's especially ecstatic to work with the Guardians but is also a nervous wreck underneath his bravado.

The Uplift Coven

The Uplift Coven

A terrorist cell formed from a failed attempt to provide specialized education for Cloudstrider candidates. They were beaten down and arrested by Maelstrom and her apprentice, the Coven's Token Good Teammate Geist.

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• It's All About Me: Their poor character is implied to be the reason the Neomuni government thinks asking for more Cloudstriders is selfish.
• Make an Example of Them: After their defeat, the Neomuni government now uses their failure as propaganda against changes to the current Cloudstrider system, to the point where Maelstrom beating them to a pulp is now a children's story. It's suggested this isn't completely unjustified.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although they claim to have rebelled because they wanted to call out the flaw of the Cloudstriders only having two people at a time in-universe, Maelstrom says she chose Geist from what became the Coven for being an altruist even without her training. This implies (together with the Neomuni government using their punishment to teach kids not to ask for more Cloudstriders) that they may have had other intentions with the technology, not all of which were beneficial.
• Token Good Teammate: The individual who became Geist was the only member of the Coven who, according to Maelstrom, didn't need the Cloudstrider creeds to be a good person. This is why they became her apprentice, while everyone else is presumably rotting in a jail cell.

Soteria (unmarked Season 19 spoilers)

Soteria, the Augurmind

A Vex-enhanced Artificial Intelligence from the Golden Age, built and raised with involvement from Ishtar and Rasputin. Created to simulate deep-space travel, it launched itself into space for real upon discovering the Black Fleet and found itself within the clouds of Neptune. Pivotal in the founding of Neomuna.

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• Coming in Hot: She never meant to land on Neptune, given that her landing is described as a failure, but she managed to make it work.
• Last of His Kind: Barring creations that lack proper computer technology like the IKELOS weapons, Soteria and the Hierarchy of Needs are the only operational systems devised by Rasputin remaining in the universe following his destruction in Year 5.
• Like Father, Like Son: Rasputin helped build Soteria, effectively making her his descendant. The lore for Hierarchy of Needs reveals she is currently reassembling the parts of her data that didn't make it to Neptune by extracting data in much the same way as Rasputin is doing with the subminds.
• Living MacGuffin: Her connections to the Vex make it a prime source of interest for both the main collective and the Sol Divisive alike.
• Meaningful Name: Named for the Greek goddess of salvation. Indeed, she would have been humanity's final hope if the Traveler didn't release the Ghosts.
• The Needs of the Many: Soteria knew the risks of the unauthorized launch she conducted to Fling a Light into the Future, but her simulations predicted it was the only shot humanity had of returning to its former glory without the Traveler. Many of the ECHO ships were destroyed in her flight, but one of them crashed onto Neptune. The rest is history.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She hijacked a test launch to send an actual colony into space after realizing the Black Fleet would make intergalactic travel non-viable.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Another fragment of her consciousness is stored inside the Hierarchy of Needs bow, and the more the Young Wolf uses it, the more she will rebuild herself just like her creator.
• Walking Spoiler: Everything about Soteria spoils the major twist of the Spire of the Watcher dungeon and heavily hints at the Young Wolf's involvement being a "Shaggy Dog" Story, given that even though Akelous and Persys are shut down, the Witness invades Soteria's home anyways.

The Lost Exo (unmarked Season 21 spoilers)

See Lakshmi-2's folder in the Tower.

Cloudstriders

Cloudstriders in General

The protectors of Neomuna, they volunteer for their positions as opposed to being chosen Guardians. they undergo cybernetic enhancements that grant them incredible power at a steep price. When the Guardians first arrive to Neomuna, the current Cloudstriders are the elder Rohan, and younger Nimbus.

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• Body Horror: The conversion process takes weeks of intrusive surgery without anesthesia. And it's explained that the reason the augments kill their users is because the human body isn't supposed to heal that fast, which leads to horrible scarring that permanently replaces the user's actual flesh until their vital organs become useless hunks of meat.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Maelstrom speculates this is why Neomuna restricts their membership to two at a time, since actually being More Hero than Thou would mean better resilience against this trope. She also explicitly picked Geist because they were an altruist before being recruited into the program, implying the Uplift Coven genuinely was not.
• Foil: Bungie has explicitly said that the Cloudstriders will act as a foil to Guardians. Guardians were chosen by an outside force and given incredible power and near-immortality, while Cloudstriders are all volunteers who are enhanced with powerful cybernetics that will kill them after a period of ten years. Whereas the Guardians' creed of sacrifice is what allows them to band together in large numbers and show anyone can be like them, the Cloudstriders use it as a More Hero than Thou ideology that restricts its membership to protect its civilians from the downsides of the process.
• Large and in Charge: Due to their enhancements, Cloudstriders are enormous - A Guardian reaches just below Nimbus' chest.
• More Hero than Thou: The official reason there aren't more than two Cloudstriders at once. Neomuna refuses to elaborate and calls anyone who disagrees selfish (a point implied to not be completely unjustified), while Maelstrom reasons it's because Cybernetics Eat Your Soul. Either way, she finds the entire process deeply flawed regardless of his own opinions, and her second lore card reveals the Cloudstriders have had the option to shut down the program entirely but chose not to.
• Oddly Small Organization: For a city as large as Neomuna with enemies as imposing as the Vex, there are only ever two Cloudstriders at once. This is acknowledge in the lore, but the last group who tried to do anything about it were branded as terrorists and convicted. The only government response to why there shouldn't be more Cloudstriders is the oddly-flimsy "because they sacrifice," though it's implied there's also a corrupting force to the process that only a sufficiently-altruistic spirit can overcome.
• Power at a Price: The trade-off for their incredible power is that their lifespans are shortened to ten years.
• Student–Master Team: There are only two Cloudstriders at any given time, effectively meaning they naturally form a Student and Master relationship.

Rohan (Unmarked Spoilers)

Rohan, Elder Cloudstrider

"Not all of us have lives to spare."

Voiced By: Dave Fenroy

The elder Cloud Strider and protector of Neomuna at the start of Lightfall, as well as a mentor to his comrade, Nimbus. He is nearing the end of his tenure as a Cloud Strider when Calus attacks Neomuna, and reluctantly allows the Guardian into the city to help prevent the apocalypse.

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• Cool Old Guy: Responds to the invasion of his city by the Black Fleet as though it were just another day on the job, constantly dispenses wisdom, and more than willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his people. Nimbus feels as though they have their work cut out for them in filling his shoes.
• Fantastic Racism: At the start of the story, he is somewhat distrustful of Osiris and the Guardian, referring to them as "Warlords," likely in reference to the first Lightbearers using their powers to oppress.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sacrifices himself in a fiery explosion to prevent the Witness from connecting to the Veil.
• Hidden Depths: Was researching the Black Heart long before the Guardian was ever resurrected, having made it quite far into the Black Garden as a result.
• Mentor Archetype: Older, aware that he is nearing the end of his life, constantly telling others to think before they act, and dies in a climactic Heroic Sacrifice.
• Obi-Wan Moment: After the Guardian is left helpless to stop Calus by their unfamiliarity with Strand, Rohan takes a moment to offer some words of wisdom before self detonating and destroying the Radial Mast.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: The old cop to Nimbus's young cop.
• Retirony: Not that making it to retirement would have done him a whole lot of good, seeing as retirement for a Cloud Strider is death, but Rohan was nearing the end of his tenure when Calus came knocking to Neomuna, sacrificing himself to destroy the Radial Mast.
• Senseless Sacrifice: In spite of his efforts, the Witness ultimately still connects to the Veil by the end of Lightfall.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Dies halfway through the expansion he's introduced in, mostly being used as a prop to propel Nimbus's Character Development.

Nimbus

Dara Danu, aka Nimbus

"The bigger they are, the uglier they fall!"

Voiced by: Marin Miller

A Cloud Strider and protector of Neomuna alongside their partner and senior Cloud Strider Rohan. They serve as your liaison and primary quest giver during the Lightfall campaign.

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• Alliterative Name: Their real name is Dara Danu.
• Ambiguous Gender: When you first meet them, you may be forgiven if you wondered at first glance whether Nimbus was a man or a really, really jacked woman. As it turns out, they are confirmed to be neither, as they are non-binary.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Is the more fun-loving, enthusiastic and confident of the two Cloud Striders you encounter. Humorously, there is even a point in the campaign where, after a successful defence of the Veil, they try to fist-bump Empress Caiatl.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Their attempt to fist bump Caiatl after her father just died right in front of her is met with nothing but a steely stare.
• Meaningful Name: Nimbus derives their name from the cumulonimbus cloud, which is rather fitting for someone who calls themself a Cloud Strider. Oddly enough, however, they are the only known Cloud Strider to do so.
  • Additionally, Dara is a name which means "pearl of wisdom," whereas Danu is an ancient Scythian word which means "river," which, putting both together, could be a reference to a Neomuni legend Nimbus recounts to Osiris about a River of Souls which gives the latter some insight on the nature of Strand and how the Young Wolf can master it.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: The young cop to Rohan's old cop at the start of Lightfall.
• Student–Master Team: Begins the campaign as the student of the pair. However, following the death of Rohan, Nimbus is bumped up to the master position, although there is yet to be a student for them to train.

The Ancient Past

"RS" (unmarked The Final Shape spoilers)

RS6243199

A former member of the Penitent who ultimately renounced their membership before they could be sacrificed to form the Witness.

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• Actual Pacifist: RS was fiercely pacifistic, never advocating for the use of violence even when considering intervening in an alien conflict. It is also the main reason they left their homeworld, as they abhorred the violent measures it would take for the Witness to eventually be formed.
• Heel–Face Turn: They are initially part of the Penitent and its interventionist teachings, but leave the Witness's homeworld on their own long before the full collapse of its populace could occur.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Abandoned their homeworld on their own, with their current fate unknown.
• Uncertain Doom: Like Taox, their whereabouts are unknown and does not ignore the possibility of a means to keep them alive until the present day.
• We Used to Be Friends: HNW and RS used to be friends with each other, their friendship souring as the unrest within the precursor civilization escalated. Even so, in their final communique to RS, HNW still reaches out in hopes of convincing RS to return and assimilate into the Witness.
• You Are Number 6: They are only ever identified by the above serial.

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