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"Whatever you kill, Oryx will replace."

Ghost: These tunnels go on for miles. We'll never explore them all.
(Something roars in the distance)
Ghost: I don't even want to know what they're keeping down there.
—Exploring the Hellmouth with Ghost

Destiny may be Lovecraft Lite, but that means there is still Cosmic Horror in it.

For terrifying things in the sequel, go here.

Nightmare Fuel pages are Spoilers Off. As such, all spoilers are unmarked. Read at your own risk.

    The Hive and the Taken 
  • Pretty much everything about the Hive. They're essentially what would happen if H. P. Lovecraft was an entire species.
    • The Hellmouth has entire rooms filled with bones. Most of them can be explained away as being the result of the enormous casualties inflicted during Crota's original invasion of the Moon, which in of itself is pretty damn terrifying. But some are very obviously inhuman, and some look like they might have come from a particularly large kaiju (the room containing Crota's Soul Jar, for instance, also has a rack of ribs as tall as the super-Ogre Phogoth the Untamed off to one side, for example). Given that the Moon, being the Moon, has no native life, it's probably best not to speculate further about whose they are and where they came from.
    • Their Tombships can teleport even into underground. When they want someone dead, they mean it.
  • Akin to the Hellmouth entry above, why are there so many human bones inside the Devil's Lair? How many people did they kill? What did they do to them?
    • Ever heard of the Hive god Nokris? If you miss a scan in the mission "Regicide," you might not know he ever existed, because he's not mentioned in the World's Grave or Books of Sorrows, even though he sits right across from Crota's statue in the Dreadnaught. It's not clear why he's not mentioned, but we've seen a similar phenomena: Praedyth and Kabr, who were forgotten outside of the Vault except for bits of gear and entries in the margins of texts. Looking over the Books of Sorrow, there is mention of Oryx having multiple lineages outside of Crota, and this was before he split off his two daughters.
      • In Destiny 2 it is explained that Nokris was branded a heretic for practicing necromancy and had all mention of him erased, save for the statue in the Dreadnaught. Why is necromancy forbidden? Because the Hive believe that only the strong have the right to exist, and that nothing can be given and all must be taken by force. Therefore, the act of giving life back to that which had died, and was therefore undeserving of existence, is heresy to them.
  • The Dark Below likely brought fear of the Hive back into more than a few Guardians, what with the first raid mission involving you being chased through complete darkness by an endless tide of Thralls, with only some short-lived pillars of light showing the way forward.
    • Omnigul, Will of Crota is a Wizard that will challenge your ear-drums with a piercing scream that sounds like something a banshee from hell would make.
  • Crota's End is positively soaked with Nightmare Fuel, because you finally find out what lies at the bottom of the Hellmouth. It's not pretty:
    • When you first start Crota's End you have bridge formed ready to take you. But then as you're falling you notice it getting darker and darker and then you finally land in pitch black with your health low or outright dead, as has been known to happen, then you start to notice the debuff called Weight of the Darkness which slows you down as you stay more and more in the dark, then you hear almost literal tide of Thralls screeching, crying out for fresh meat... And all the while, the Weight of Darkness comes down on you, stopping all your double jumps and slowly reducing your movement speed before finally stopping your ability to sprint altogether. Suffice to say that the Thrall likely stop being hungry at that point.
    • By the way, those pillars of light? They manage to burn away Weight of the Darkness, allowing you to move faster. So logically, you assume that you can wait there for a while and burn off the debuff until it's back to normal, right? Wrong, because if you stay by the pillar for too long, it will explode, taking you with it.
    • And then you finally get past the screaming hoard of Thrall and the occasional Knight and over a bridge and see this gigantic door across an enormous gap. There's a sync plate on either side of this gap, and you think "Oh, well I guess we have to stand on that and start this whole thing up." Then Thrall start crawling up from the side of the gap, and the totems on either side of you start to glow red and kill you while you and your whole party aren't paying attention. Then, once you finally figure out how to keep the Annihilation Totems from winding up while still building the bridge, a Knight that appears to be made of lava comes up and bitch slaps one of your teammates to death in no more than 3 swipes.
    • Once you FINALLY get that part down and through door and the Shrieker and Thrall filled hallway (and hopefully get to the chest in time to get a bit more loot), you face down with Ir Yut, the Deathsinger. Why is she called that? She looks just like an ordinary wizard, and attacks like one, too, except that, all the while, she's preparing the Liturgy of Death, which, if you let her finish, kills everyone that's currently alive. Makes you wonder what other sort of horrors the Hive have in their bag of tricks, and what relation these tricks have to those of the Vex and their Vault of Glass.
    • And finally you face none other than Crota himself, the Son of Oryx, the Monster of Luna, the God-Knight, and you realize that your health doesn't regenerate except by picking up a relic called the Chalice of Light. And then you notice you're surrounded on either side, and when he points, the shields keeping the Knights and the Acolytes at bay drop and the slaughter begins.
      • So the Chalice and a few abilities are your only way to regenerate health and shields, right? Well, on Hard, the Chalice doesn't spawn. At all. As if that wasn't bad enough, you know the room you and your party start in before you go out and try to slay Ir Yut? Yeah. A Gatekeeper spawns down there, just to keep you in sight of Crota and the Ogres that spawn every two swords. It all goes downhill from there.
      • There's also the implication of what Crota intended to do with the relic- that is, drink the Light of fallen Guardians. Why he would want to do this is up in the air, but the fact that he had killed enough Guardians to do that in the first place is fairly worrying.
    • And then you have the Oversoul. Crota summons what is essentially a giant green ball of fire when he becomes enraged or whenever somebody dies. What's creepy is what it looks kind of like some Hive perversion of our own sun, but the real terror begins when you realize it explodes after a few seconds and kills everyone that isn't already dead which is, once again, evocative of the Vex's Oracles and Gorgons in the Vault of Glass.
    • When you finally reach Crota, point at him. The God-Knight will point back. It's creepy.
  • Ladies and Gentlemen, Oryx Himself.
    • It gets better. He's after the Guardian(s) who killed his son Crota. That's right. He's after you specifically. He even speaks to you, and he is pissed.
    • Also, when Oryx attacks a Cabal base on one of Mars' moons, the Cabal send out a distress signal and they don't even shoot at you. That's right, we may have a temporary Enemy Mine situation...
  • The Taken are a group of the four enemy races who has been corrupted by the Darkness and Oryx so much it turns them into shadow-like zombies with their bodies in constant agony as they kill their own kind and that they violently twitch and jitter. With The Taken King's release, they sporadically roam patrol areas regardless of player level, leading to situation where you can be overwhelmed by more than two opposing forces.
    • Yes, you read that right. The Taken include all four races, including the Hive, Oryx's own race. Given that the Hive already fanatically worship Oryx and the Darkness as gods, one must wonder why Oryx even feels the need to make Hive part of the Taken. Do they see it as a religious experience of gaining the favor of Oryx and the Darkness? Do they view it as a punishment? Either of these answers is scary in their own right.
    • The very fact that Oryx can brutally force the VEX in all their implacable nature to undergo constant agony especially considering the Vex are supposedly closer to the Darkness than the Hive.
    • However, the implication that they are in constant agony isn't true; they're actually in constant ecstasy! Whenever someone gets Taken by Oryx they are confronted wholly by the Darkness, which then strips away their fears and worries that plagued their former life and replaces it with sense of purpose and joy in their new existence. That's right, folks; the Darkness can so effectively Mind Rape you that it will make you serve it of your own volition!
  • In what appears to be a Raid in a Vidoc, a large Phogoth-sized Ogre climbs out of some tar lake, and it looks like spider-legs on his back with some white bulb on his back.
    • Turns out, this monstrosity has a name- Golgoroth, and he is no less terrifying with context than without. His introduction is creepy enough, but when you see an entire fireteam unload on him to near no-effect, that's when the horror really sets in.
  • The second part of introductory cutscene for the Coming War. The Awoken fleet appears to be even in battle with Oryx's fleet over Saturn, but then, after Mara Sov personally uses her strongest attack, Oryx's Dreadnaught takes absolutely no damage and retaliates with a shockwave that annihilates the entire Awoken armada, the Queen included. Uldren's scream before the cutoff mixes both anger and horror at just what happened.
  • The Coming War, the first story mission for The Taken King, was previewed at Gamescom 2015, and most of it is Nightmare Fuel. Bungie clearly took a page from their playbook in Halo: Combat Evolved when they introduced the Flood, going with the Nothing Is Scarier route as your Guardian investigates a Cabal fortress on Phobos under attack. Commander Zavala and Eris Morn are observing from the Tower. Eris grows increasingly agitated as the mission goes on, and even Zavala starts to get unnerved when we see a Cabal Centurion get "taken". Finally, Eris goes into a full blown Freak Out, screaming "HE'S HERE!' when we finally meet Oryx, the Taken King Himself. And he has a message for the Guardian, dripping with pure malice:
    Oryx (in the Gamescom demo): You took my son! Now I... WILL TAKE YOU!"
    Oryx (in the game proper): "LIGHT! GIVE YOUR WILL TO ME!"
    • At which point a Taken Knight appears and begins attacking you, supported by Taken Psions. After barely fighting them off, Zavala orders your Guardian to abort the mission. After fighting through some more Taken Cabal, you get outside and find that the Taken are destroying the base. Zavala then sends a message across all channels ordering all Guardians to return to the City and prepare for an imminent invasion. Eris then sums up just how screwed the Guardians are:
      Eris: "We have slain his brood. We have murdered his son! And now, the Taken King comes for us all..."
    • On your way out from the Phobos base, you have the opportunity to scan a readout. Your Ghost lets you know that, over the course of their assault on the Cabal, the Hive have inflicted massive casualties to all three of the military units on Mars: the Sand Eaters, Dust Giants, and Blind Legion. And that was with Oryx's first strike.
  • Speaking of the Cabal, guess what plan A is for dealing with Oryx? Crash their ships into Oryx's dreadnought's core to destroy it, even when doing so will likely destroy the solar system. Again, this is Plan A.
  • The mission "Cayde's Stash" starts directly with a trek into the Devils' Lair, where you used to fight Sepiks Prime. It's now overrun by Taken, and you get to scan what remains of Sepiks Prime, dishevelled yet still glowing.
    Ghost: "Remember when Sepiks Prime was our biggest problem?"
  • The boss fight against Alak-Hul, the Darkblade. So Bungie thought you'd like a rerun of the Abyss' pitch-black darkness and incorporate it in an actual boss fight. The result is an intense, paranoia-inducing battle where you don't know when the behemoth is going to show up and bring down his massive axe on you. It's made even worse by the fact that he himself is colored black, so you're essentially shooting at his ominous silhouette everytime he's visible.
  • Ever been to a Hive funeral? It is one of the most bonechilling things in Destiny. A floating coffin surrounded by floating robed figures wearing hoods that look like something out of Silent Hill, while they are guarded by invincible Knights. Not only that but rather than just one Deathsinger, there are multiples of them in the procession, beings that can kill with their voice alone. The entire thing being punctuated by wailing that is alien and twisted, is the icing on this cake of a horror show.
    • Oh, by the way, know who one of the Deathsingers is? Ir Yut. Not only is she back from the dead following her seeming death in Crota's End, it turns out she's a lesser Deathsinger. Two of the greater Deathsingers, Ir Anuk and Ir Halak, are also in attendance, and they're Crota's sisters.
    • Prior to that mission, you return to the site where the Hive attempted to summon Crota and are greeted by an Ogre called Baxx the Gravekeeper. He's not that much different from any normal Ogre so dealing with it should be no problem. However, before you can deal the final blow, Oryx takes the Ogre. Still, you snag the fragment and the mission complete screen appears, ending this mission... Except it hasn't ended. Your communications are cut and you are unable to be teleported back to your ship. Suddenly, Oryx's face appears yet again before bringing Baxx back with a whole bunch of Taken, all of them completely invulnerable. What began as a simple extraction mission became a race for your life.
  • Ever wonder what a Taken Guardian looks like? Now you know.
    • Not only is the Taken Shiver emote creepy, the description is "Oryx is dead, right?" Almost as if even killing him yourself doesn't mean he's deader than dead.
    • Furthermore, the origin of the Taken gear? The Reef has started to manufacture it using actual Taken as raw materials for the process, under the direct orders of Petra Venj. Not only that, they offhandedly mention that they needed to install lots of soundproofing as Taken screams shatter plastics and blood vessels.
  • Turns out that since the death of Oryx, all of the Taken capable of complex thinking are now scrambling towards taking his powers for themselves in a power vacuum. Whoops. It's all for nothing. According to the Sword Logic, the successor to the throne and seemingly all of its power is you.
  • Malok, Pride of Oryx was originally a Thrall that Oryx's sister Savathun implanted to steal his tithing and give it to her instead; when Oryx finally found him, he was so happy that he took Malok and turned him into this...thing.
  • It's very much worth noting that Oryx remains the single greatest threat that The Tower and The City have ever faced, and that's including the the sequel's Red Legion invasion. No other power had forced Queen Mara Sov to launch an all out assault or for Commander Zavala to call in every Guardian they could find just to prepare for what was almost certainly a Hopeless War with the Hive God-King. The Vanguard's quick actions prevented the extinction of all life in the Sol System by ending the Taken War as soon as they could.

     The Vex 
  • THE VEX. Really, the first time you encounter them is on Venus. You're wondering who you're going to meet when suddenly, an electric, pitch-black cloud appears in front of you. Then, unblinking red eyes, filled with murderous intent, start to form...
    • Vex Minotaurs and their promoted versions, especially when playing missions on Hard. They might appear to be Mighty Glaciers, but are capable of surprising bursts of speed, and if you take cover from them long enough they will teleport right next to you to continue their assault. All while emitting a noise like a charging elephant mixed with an electronic shriek.
      • Fun Fact: Did you know that Bungie gotten inspiration for the Vex voices by uploading a video, then copying it and uploading it 1000 times with animal sounds?
    • Speaking of Shrieking, ever heard The Templar? That sounds more like a Digital Roar.
    • Encountering the Minotaurs for the first time can throw players off by a lot, especially when you think you've got the high ground. The scariest thing about them is probably how they'll charge at you, relentlessly, teleporting to gain you.
  • In the Black Garden, there's the Black Heart, that... thing... the Vex were worshiping. And then there's the possibility that it could be a part of the Darkness.
    • The lore related to the Black Garden borders on Surreal Horror. Read it here
    • In the Grimoire entries, we learn that the Vex are far more advanced than humanity in terms of technology and logical thinking. But when the Vex encountered the Black Heart, even they were unable to comprehend it, so they decided that the best course of action was to worship it.
  • If you didn't fear the Vex before, you will after playing the Vault of Glass:
    • Also in the Vault of Glass Raid you got these new Vex Units called the Fanatics. Basically they're headless Vex Goblin with Black and Green Mist coming of their bodies and if they touch you are Marked for Negation so now you have to get into the circle or else The Templar will come and perform Ritual of Negation which will wipe out the people affected by the debuff.
    • What happens if you die in the Vault of Glass? You get a chilling message saying "You are forever lost in the dark corners of time". We can assume that your Guardian was consumed by the Darkness... which is probably not good...
    • What happens when you die in a Darkness Zone? Normally you just restart, but what would happen in-universe?
    • Also what about the Oracle? They've never been encountered anywhere else, they also inflect the Marked for Negation On the Entire team. Failure to kill them, or cleansing with the Relic, results in Total Party Wipe.
      • Also to drive the point of how much shit you're in when doing the Vault of Glass are those Gorgons, white glowing Harpies that can kill your whole team if they so much as look at you, because they can apparently decide what is and isn't real. Really makes you wonder just what else is in the Vex's bag of tricks.
    • Really, the entire revelation behind what the Vault of Glass is there for: to research how to literally alter reality, learning how to decide what does and does not exist, to the point that the Vex can change the fundamental laws of physics so that their existence and supremacy become a law of nature. When you descend into the Vault, what you're fighting down there are literally weapons and technologies designed to reshape reality so that you never existed.
    • If the Grimoire card for Atheon is to be believed, there exist multiple timelines where the Vex were successful in taking over the galaxy. In theory, that means everytime you restart a checkpoint, a timeline exists where Guardians failed to stop The Darkness and Vex.
    • The mental instability that Kabr and Pahanin became subject to. Kabr survived the Vault of Glass, seemingly alone, as a One-Man Army... And, if this quote ("No one can open the Vault alone. I opened the Vault. There was no one with me but I was not alone.") is any indicator, Kabr's entire fireteam was rendered Ret-Gone, and he lost his mind because of it. Pahanin, however, knew Kabr and likely knew of the Guardians he trusted, but the Ret-Gone also affected him... making him wonder if the same could ever, or had ever happened to him. As a result, Pahanin became terrified of traveling alone.
    • Vex armor is described as having living Vex cells as integral part of it. Any of the raid armor you wear could end up corrupting you.
      • Slept in the armor last night. Woke to feel my heart stuttering to the pattern of an unknown signal. -In-game description of the Cuirass of the Hezen Lords Warlock Chest Armor
      • It goes beyond the armor. In general, Vex technology runs the risk of infecting those who make contact with the organic Vex components. Kabr is implied to have willingly infected himself and turned himself into a Vex monstrosity solely so that he could integrate his Light with the Vex technology to make the Aegis. Another Guardian, a Warlock named Ashir Mir, was exposed to too much Vex technology that part of his body was transformed into a Vex appendage and even infected his Ghost. When Ashir appears in Destiny 2, it's clear that he's not entirely there anymore.
  • The implications of the Undying Mind Strike: The Vex are not only repairing the damage caused by you slaying the Black Garden's heart, but they're trying to summon the Black Heart back - a force which was powerful enough that it was responsible for shutting down the Traveler itself. Which means that when you slew the Sol Progeny, you didn't actually kill whatever the Vex were worshiping. It's still out there somewhere.
  • Remember how bad it was when Skolas tried to take over the Vault of Glass? "Paradox" features the Taken are doing the same.
    • If attempted as a Daily Heroic, there are new hidden Ghosts in the Vault of Glass, containing transmissions from the long dead Guardian Praedyth. In them, he speculates that the Vex either aren't as omniscient as they appear, or have foreseen their own inevitable destruction and are trying to do anything they can to change this. While this may be good news for humanity, it doesn't necessarily mean that humanity will survive either.
    • Worse when you see these alternate paths that reveal these Ghosts through. You're taken to a dimension filled with Taken Vex, led by what looks like a Taken Gate Lord, and it's implied by Praedyth that this is a timeline where the Vex were successfully assimilated into Oryx's Taken, possibly long after Oryx's death of being consumed by his worm.
      Praedyth: "Welcome to the end of the Vex. Their, '"immutable'' future. Enslaved to a will they don't understand. A will long dead here. Dead eons ago. But then they won't end, will they? Because you're here."
    • Another two of the possible futures on Praedyth's Ghosts? Going through the logical outcomes of the Future War Cult and Dead Orbit. Either neverending war between the Vex and Exo, or humanity fleeing the Darkness across the galaxy, slowly losing ships to the passage of time and the wearing of parts, and simply leaving the broken ships behind, apparently without even trying to take their inhabitants on board.

     The Books of Sorrow 
  • The Books of Sorrow is full of this. The Hive went From Nobody to Nightmare thanks to the worms.
    • The Despair Event Horizons the Hive inflict upon various species are uniquely disturbing, like Savathûn poisoning the Ammonite homeworld's oceans ("Their screams flavour the void") and how the people of the Harmony wailed with fear when Oryx broke the gift masts, and committed mass suicide by throwing themselves into the black hole they built their civilization around. These living worlds had their hope shattered, to the point where their inhabitants decided "Better to Die than Be Killed".
    • Early on, you'll see a variation of a VERY familiar phrase pop up when the Worm Gods of the Hive are first alluded to: Oh vengeance mine. Whether they are one and the same or the Worm Gods are just similar in nature, the very fact that the Ahamkara possibly had a hand in shaping the Hive is chilling.
    • To reinforce the connection and make things somewhat more disturbing, "Worm" can be spelled with a 'y' - "wyrm". "Wyrm" is another word for dragon. The Ahamkara were dragonlike. The worms eat Light, the Ahamkara seem to feed on reality. And, given Destiny's mythological symbolism, there's actually precedent for this: There actually is a legend in Norse mythology of something similar - Nidhoggr, the dragon that eats the roots of the world tree. Which sounds a lot like eating reality, don't you think?
      • One of the perks on the Sealed Ahamkara Claws gear is literally called Nightmare Fuel.
    • Oh, by the way, remember the similarities between the Vault of Glass and Oryx's sub-dimension? There's a reason for that. Crota introduced the Vex to the powers of the darkness, and a Vex axis mind determined the best way to resist the Hive was to perform the same religious rituals to get the same paracausal ontological abilities.
    • More fuel is added when you consider the King's Fall Raid. In order to finally defeat Oryx, the team has to enter Oryx's throneworld (where his soul is kept) and basically kill his spirit. His daughters, Ir Anuk and Ir Halak have the same death-proofing. Yet, the team doesn't go into their individual throneworlds to finish the job. Realistically, the Kings Fall Raid only serves to make the daughters even more angry with you, and they know where you live....
    • The revelation that the Hive follow the "Sword Logic" can be this. The way it works for the most part is that once you kill a follower of the Sword Logic, you are objectively stronger than them, sometimes absorbing their power, and those who can be defeated do not deserve to exist. At the end of the Taken King storyline, you kill Oryx for good, which, with the Sword Logic, has some chilling implications for who the player Guardian is now. For one, you're now literally the most powerful being in the system, and according to Toland, Oryx's power is sitting there, waiting for you to take it and become the new king! At least this means that everyone else reaching for the throne is destined to fail. Never before has Lovecraft Lite gone so wrong.
    • The Sword Logic is also displayed in how the Hive display their ''affection'' for each other: through murder. They kill each other so that when they are revived in the throneworlds, they will come back to life stronger from the experience.
    • The Amiable Ecumene was a power in another galaxy that the hive overran and destroyed. In the Grimoire Cards told from the perspective of either an Ecumene AI or high ranking figure, it says they use various "assimilation liquors" on their soldiers, and there's pretty damning evidence (dictated in Beard Grizzly's theory video "Don't Watch Unless You Want to End Time") that the Ecumene created the Vex. The Ecumene was so thoroughly obliterated by the Taken that the only evidence left of their existence is their reference in the Book of Sorrows.
    • The power of the Perfect Raven, the Taken Tai Emperor Raven.
      On the seventh pace, the Perfect Raven emerges from Oryx's wound, and spreads her wings across Taishibeth. Never again is a Taishibethi child born.

  • The lore for Thorn, which evidently belonged to a Guardian that gave himself over to the Darkness and was corrupted. The Guardian was... disturbing.
    • The Thorn itself looks like it was made from something Hive-like. Heck, one of the upgrades for it adds bullets that penetrate and deal prolonged damage to its target. While that's actually fairly normal for bullets, the upgrade is called 'Mark of the Devourer'.
      • Thorn's ammunition in-game isn't actually bullets. If you shoot it at a wall, instead of the normal bullet holes you'd see from most handcannons, you see WHAT LOOKS LIKE INCH LONG CROSS-SHAPED SPIKES sticking out of whatever you shot at.
    • There's actually more weapons like Thorn, referred to as the "Weapons Of Sorrow". The Necrochasm, which actually EVOLVES as you kill enemies with it, going from a common to a legendary to, eventually, an exotic weapon.
    • And of course Murmur, which has a similar look...
    • The final piece of lore for Thorn has been revealed. Except it's not a Thorn Ghost fragment. It's a Rezyl Azzir fragment. The "Rose" that is constantly alluded to is a trophy gun wielded by the valiant hero Rezyl Azzir. It had Knight bones stuck to it. Doesn't take long to put two and two together...
  • The various areas where the only light is provided by the player's Ghost are rather unnerving. The Off-World Transit station on Mars, in particular, brings back uncomfortable memories of the subway station in The Last of Us, being a huge, dark, abandoned area, now full of lurking monsters.
    • It gets even worse... That was originally where the Gate to the Black Garden was in an earlier build of Destiny.
      • Guess what? It's there now, and guess who is trying to take control of the Black Garden? Oryx.
  • The Prison of Elders, site of the new Arena mode in the House of Wolves Expansion, is a prison in the Reef where the prisoners are allowed to roam free with their weapons in designated sections. That alone is paranoia inducing, but then you get into the individual containment sections:
    • The Hive section is basically a sewer with one of those pools of liquid that Hive like to crawl out of with skeletons littered around the ground. The question being: where did the Hive get those bones? Did they just import them from the Hellmouth? Or, more disturbingly, are they previous combatants who lost?
    • The Cabal section is basically a bombed-out warzone. During the live stream preview before the release of House of Wolves, the guest player said that it was "Cabal Hell". He wasn't far off.
    • The Vex Prisoner Qodron foresaw its glorious future and the first step to it is killing your fireteam, it willingly went into the Prison of Elder and waited patiently for you alone; “It is no prisoner. It is here with a purpose.” and guess what? Qodron is not the prisoner here. You are, Guardian.
      • The implication of Qodron going into the Prison is that it's there for you specifically. It knows that you will become legend, and its there to snuff you out. Congrats, Guardian. The unfathomable, time-spanning, world-eating, Darkness-worshiping meshed intelligence has now noticed you and is putting dedicated assassins where it knows you're going.
  • The Fallen were never considered amongst the scariest of Destiny's enemy factions. They didn't have the raw might of the Cabal, the gribbly horror-movie aesthetic of the Hive, or the terrible, awe-inspiring scale of the Vex. The backstory indicated that they had once been a major threat, but in the actual game, they're a motley Dying Race of generic Space Pirates for you to gun down on the way to face the real threats. 'House of Wolves' brought the fear-factor for them, though not in a way you might have expected. They were the Traveler's previous agents, with Ghosts, Guardians, and a beautiful, vibrant civilisation sustained by its Light. In other words, they were us, In fact, they were better than us in many ways - bigger, stronger, and more technologically advanced. Then the Darkness caught up with them, and the rest is history. Their 'ether' is synthetic Light. Their Servitors are idols of the Traveler. They are a walking promise, nay, threat, by the Darkness - this is your fate if you oppose me. This is what happens if we fail: a long, slow death by starvation as we throw ourselves onto the guns of the next of the Traveler's chosen races in a desperate attempt to regain what we've lost and stave off the monster clawing at our backs. Sweet dreams, Guardians.
  • While the idea of two, three, or even four Fallen Houses uniting under a single banner is worrying, it's nothing that the City hasn't got the capacity to deal with. However, when Skolas fails to do that, the first thing he does afterwards is bust into the Vault of Glass and tamper with Vex tech. The next thing he does is break into the Citadel and, by the time you encounter him, start bringing the rest of the House of Wolves through time the way that only the Vex can normally do. There's nothing quite as chilling as realizing that a Fallen Kell has the capacity to become Time Master, given sufficient Vex tech to work with.
  • The secret mission "The First Firewall." Mostly because there's no briefing, no chatter from Ghost, no talking at all. Nothing. Just you, Rasputin's creepy orchestral music, and a tide of high-level Knights in a small, enclosed space.
  • Everything about the legendary jumpship Agonarch Karve is really unsettling. Everything from its flavor text (Life is pain. Pain is power. And power is life) to its appearance is a stark contrast to all the other ships in the game. It also resembles the raid weapons of King's Fall, which all appear to be bone held together by sinew.
  • The Rise of Iron Expansion unveils a new threat in a form of SIVA, a biomechanical Plague from the Golden Age long-contained, until the walls holding it broke down, and The Fallen went in to scavenge...
  • With the imminent release of Rise of Iron came a new Alternate Reality Game called Owl Sector, detail a strange phenomenon in which Guardians are being infected with a series of glowing tech mites that give them strangely beneficial (specifically boosting EXP gains). At first it was strange, but didn't seem like anything wrong. But hours later, as the Vanguard and a scientist faction made logs detailing these experiences, someone by the name of Shirazi began experimenting its effects on human civilians. Patient B, injected with Brilliance 3.2, went immediately comatose, but with seemingly no ill effects. He's still yet to wake up.
    • As the hours rolled by, the unnerving aspects merely grew. Different transmissions created different results: patients with seemingly zero ill effects except for a strange buzzing in their ears, patients being uncooperative if also acting like they were high, others suddenly becoming highly aggressive.
    • Even worse, seeing this phenomenon has Lord Saladin under some serious anxiety unlike him, while Lord Shaxx is almost panicking as he sees this spreading through his Crucible.
      Lord Shaxx: "What is this stuff? Get it out of my Crucible!"
  • The Shadows of Yor, a group of Guardians that idolize Dredgen Yor of all people and take Draco in Leather Pants to horrifying levels. They claim that every horrible deed Yor committed (Murdering Pahanin and Jaren Ward, the razing of Palamon, etc.) is an outright lie and that he only fell to the Darkness because he had no choice. In the Crucible, they tend to ignore objectives and focus on only killing their opponents just for the sheer pleasure of it, even trying emulate Yor down to the armor they wear and all wield copies of Thorn, with hints that even the replications are slowly corrupting them just like their idol.
    • It's gotten to the point that Shin Malphur himself is concerned about the Shadows' actions and is preparing to do what he needs to stop them. He still remembers the horror of his childhood and refuses to let a second Dredgen Yor be born.
  • The fate of the Iron Lords is nothing short of horrifying: With the revelation that SIVA's replication system was merely damaged, you enter the chamber to see three human figures hanging from the ceiling, viciously mangled beyond recognition by SIVA's tendrils, confirming it was SIVA that murdered them. And then as you attempt to activate the self-destruct sequence, their corpses are yanked upward... before dropping back down, with the sole goal to kill you. After seeing that, it's hard not to think of SIVA as less than a virus, and almost pure evil.
  • The Plaguelands are as close to Hell as we're likely to get in this game, and considering the events of the base game and it's expansions that is really saying something. Everything in the Plaguelands is a testament to SIVA's unrelenting nature, and the Archon's Keep may as well be in Mordor, what with the lava and the putrid sky filled with choking smoke belching from Aksis' affront to humanity.
  • The Flavor Texts of the Wrath of the Machine weapons are nothing short of disturbing, and looking at the previous Raid weapons, that's saying something. With frequent inserts of "SIVA", "Consumption", and "Replication", sometimes into the original weapon's Flavor Text, SIVA feels less and less mindless. Rather, it's like it may have actually gained some semblance of sentience... and completely obsessed with taking over everything until there's only SIVA.
  • Some of the descriptions or implied backstories on gear can be outright terrifying.
    • The Red Death's description is simply "Vanguard policy urges Guardians to destroy this weapon on sight." It's covered in spikes, and permanently stained with blood. It's one of the few weapons specifically designed to kill Guardians permanently. Which is pretty scary, considering the other weapons that can are either linked to the Darkness or far more brutal than the Red Death, which is a regular (albeit customized) assault rifle.
    • The Helm of Inmost Light is even scarier. Taking Good Is Not Nice to a whole new level.
      Flavor Text: The Light shines brightest in those it consumes.
    • To say nothing of the Bad Juju, the weapon of Toland the Shattered?
      If you believe your weapon wants to end all existence, then so it will.
    • Or the Thorn, of course.
  • One of the Lore entires describe a Cabal laid Temporal trap on board of Almighty. One of the Guardians triggered it and was forever suspended in time. His Ghost speaks of inability to bring him back, because he's not actually dead but he can't even transmit him out of it. And yet he's still connected to him, so until he truly dies the Ghost can't even find another. And with Almighty crashing down on Earth... whatever happened to that Guardian?

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