This is all my own work, and is no way meant to be an official account of any information related to the game. It is not endorsed by Bungie or Activision in any way.
**In response to feedback from The Joining I have expanded the Cabal, added The Awoken, included some about Atheon and the Vex become a law of the universe and re-run everything through a spell check (UK Eng). Hope this is close to what you asked for, and thank you for both the praise and the criticism - if anyone has any other comments please do let me know**
The following is written from the point of view of the previous Speak of The Tower:
Finally I realise. Our focus has been wrong. Our plight was inevitable. The Traveler cannot save us.
Although I will be marked a heretic for these words, I feel Death's shadow so close now that it will matter little what they call me. I only hope that someone heeds these words, and my works are not squandered through the prejudice of pride.
I have dedicated my life as Speaker to answering the question of how to restore the Traveler. And now, with my end at hand, I have that answer. We cannot restore the Traveler without dooming ourselves to the Darkness. I have touched the consciousness of both, because to touch one is to touch the other. The Darkness is the inverse aspect of the Traveler. For as much as they are the antithesis of each other, they are the same. Like the ancient mark of the self devouring serpent. As the Traveler is growth and fulfilment, the Darkness is consumption and emptiness.
The Traveler and the Darkness have ever known this. That they are linked at such a fundamental level makes escape - for either one - impossible. The Darkness is no more free to consume that which the Traveler has never touched, than the Traveler is able to bring growth without the Darkness consuming it. That the Great War abated when the Traveler was wounded is not coincidence. It was inevitable. And the soldiers of each aspect now war upon each other unaided by their greatest champions.
Would that I could have found out what I have in the way anyone reading this will. This knowledge was many hard, painful years in the gleaning. If my light lasts, I will recount them for those that wish to know, for in the quests that I took in those years there is knowledge of its own. Such as what "The Anomaly" at K1 really is.
Suffice to say, if we do not destroy the Darkness before we restore the Traveler, then it will consume us. This is The Cycle, and it has happened since the end of the Universe and will happen until it's beginning, whether we win here or not.
As the Traveler uses Light, so the Darkness uses Gravity. Gravity enough that any light it touches is consumed. As the Darkness is Gravity it bends Time, as the Traveler is Light it exists on the edge of all Time. Each aspect grants, in limited form, it's abilities to those that would fight for it. The champions of the Darkness can bend and warp space time to greater or lesser effect, while the champions of the Traveler can exist outside of their normal time when all other things would simply cease. It is for this reason that only a champion of the Traveler can defeat the Darkness. To do this they must find the true aspect of the Darkness. It is not so much a question of where, but of when. As the Traveler exists on the boundary of time so the Darkness exists at its core.
The ripples that move the armies of Darkness against us lap upon the shores of the Traveler's Light. It is in this place between places that a Guardian will find the door to when the Darkness is. The key to that door however will be harder bought than even the key to the Black Garden. For there is a different force that guards this key, one that is not unleashed in war, but held in defense. Of what this foe is I have only formless shadows to hint at. I cannot even discern if it is an entire race or one single creature. Whatever it is, I fear that only a group of the strongest Guardians would withstand it, and one group alone may not even be enough.
For those that are willing not to ignore my words, I beg: search the Great Foundry on Mercury and the Grand Temple of Elysium on Saturn. I have left markers within these places that only a Guardian's Ghost will be able to pick up, markers that will guide you to the truth of my words.
I should have taken notes as I was going with this, But if anyone had found them, I doubt I would have had the chance to complete my findings. So it is that I must put down what I can remember now in as best as I can myself remember it.
I have learned what feels like so much and yet seems like so little in these last years that I'm not even sure if anything is entirely relevant. I have shadows of knowledge that I can give very little founding to, and yet, even these seem to be greatly important.
For as long as we have been fighting this war it is but a single conflict in an almost eternal struggle. The forces that we stand toe to toe with are simply other races that have been drawn into this conflict, either by The Traveler or by The Darkness, and there are still more that we have yet to face. I cannot say what they are, but I know in my heart and in my mind that they are more deadly than almost anything that has stood against us thus far.
The Darkness consumes all, in one fashion or another. The Vex are utterly consumed. They were among the first of The Traveler's creations. An intelligent, self-aware group of robotic life forms, They were designed with a hierarchy of intelligence, with a central control point. The Traveler instilled in them a respect for life, growth and collaboration. They created many wondrous things, pushed their technology as far as the materials around them would allow and then sought out new worlds and materials. They were inexhaustible in their endeavours. Craving knowledge more than any other sentient thing had done before them. That, it transpired, was their ultimate undoing.
That was how The Darkness came to them. It entered their intelligence network and spread like a virus. Changing their programming, their very core. Replacing all drive for growth and education with destruction and corruption. The Darkness consumed their very nature and purpose. Warping the Vex into a legion that served to destroy everything that they had originally sought so desperately to obtain. Through The Darkness the Vex learned how to distort time. How to lock parts of existence out of time and how to move others, themselves included, through it so that nothing could prepare against them.
It was after the realisation of this manipulation of time that the Vex intelligence calculated that the ultimate way to corrupt everything was to corrupt anything at all times. To, in a single instant, be in the same place forever. Creating the "Atheon Paradox", so-called because Atheon was the name of the immense combat frame the Vex created to house the core processing intelligence for making this paradox a reality. Atheon was however eventually severed from the collective intelligence as its processing became "inconsistent and dangerous". The Vex created a temporal prison and locked Atheon within, ensuring their own progression whilst still facilitating the possibility of Atheon completing its task. This prison was set adrift through space, where it passed through galaxies, collecting matter, mass and substance as it went, until it was caught in the birth of a star and trapped into its newborn gravitational force, entering a steady orbit as the second "planet" from this sun.
The Vex became one of The Darkness's greatest forces: compliant without question, corrupted without exception. It was even the Vex themselves that corrupted the Fallen, and had it not been for the Warminds who knows how much damage they could have done to our own fight.
Of the Fallen
I have managed to learn much. As they are the most predictable and easiest to ensnare of all our current foes, they are also the nearest to the city so the easiest to get hold of. As well as from direct "enquiry", I also gained knowledge from an induced hypnosis at the Anomaly in K1. That place is quite remarkable.
What I have learned is as follows:
The Fallen home world was one much different to our own. They come from a planet much larger than our Earth, and as such had far greater gravitational forces to deal with. These forces made it such that the primary growth of species all had fluid based respiration. However, at the pressures on their planet water as we know it would have been a solid, and rather the liquid lakes and seas were of hydrocarbon base. The respiratory systems of the Fallen are based on a fluid that contains high ethylene and krypton levels. It is from this ethylene that we coined the term "ether", and it is the krypton that gives their respiratory fluid its white colour as it turns to a gas after being released from their pressurised breathing containers.
The increased gravitational pressure also gave rise to several other defining characteristics of the species. Their additional appendages were part of the evolutionary process, as it made them more adept swimmers as well as making them better able to manoeuvre on land after they had mastered the technology that they needed to bring their ether with them to breath. It wasn't until many generations after this that the developed proper bipedal movement and the use of their additional limbs became lessened to little more than useless. It also meant that their early structural creations were of a spherical design, as they struggled to find materials that would provide enough strength under the massive gravity for their needs in other weaker shapes.
After the Traveler visited them they became, as we did, much more advance in their use of technology, and not only managed to produce inter planetary travel within their own solar system, but once they had access to the resources on other planets were able to create ships and structures that were more practical in design. They still had a historical reverence for the spherical shape, and as such, when they decided to create their own portable AI devices they created these as spheres. These Servitors were meant to assist the High Priests in their search for cosmic enlightenment, however, instead of finding the Gods, they Servitors found the Vex.
Once the Vex had knowledge of the Servitors they were quick to corrupt their relatively simple neural design and use them to their own designs. Once it became apparent that the Servitors had communed with beings of the cosmos when the High Priest had not, it wasn't long before the Servitors were moved to the position of utmost authority in the Fallen hierarchy. However, the High Priests were not so easily denounced, their position over the century's of Fallen evolution held great weight, even in light of the Servitors apparent connection to the Gods. It was through this, as well as a faction of the Fallen that were still nervous about giving complete control to an autonomous creation, that meant the High Priests kept some face and were given the responsibility of maintaining the Spiritual guidance of the Fallen. However, as the High Priests were most often in commune with the Servitors, and held them ultimately in no less regard than the other Fallen did, the Vex had no challenge at all in using them to further their own machinations.
Once the Vex had supplanted their control at the top of the Fallen's social hierarchy, it wasn't long before that social standing was corrupted. Thievery and violence became the only ways to gain respect. It became seen by the Fallen as their right to take from others that which they had laboured to build. This caused the creation of clans within the society, members grouping together to protect what they deemed to be theirs, and take what they deemed would be theirs. Production and advancement all but ground to a halt, with military supplies and Servitor production being the only industries that maintained any semblance of existence.
Then, once the Vex deemed it was time, they, through the Servitors, told the Fallen of other worlds, and other races that they could also steel from. And so it was that the Fallen spread forth, pillaging everything in their wake. Following the direction of the Vex, and thus ultimately the Darkness, they have been unknowing pawns in the Darkness's battles for centuries.
Of The Hive.
The Hive are old beyond reckoning. Back before time was measured, before the Darkness and the Traveler were aware of each other, when they were barely aware of themselves, the Darkness took its first victory. The Hive, creatures from a huge molten cored planet far from the sun of its solar system, were born into darkness. They were a subterranean species, and for centuries they never knew light ever existed. Darkness, however, was a way of life. They came to think of it as an entity, started to worship its vastness and perpetual existence, and the Darkness heard their prayers. It infused the Hive with its need to consume, with its power to destroy. It transformed them from skulking, dishevelled ambush hunters living in the tunnels they bore of their planet's rock into the insatiable, unstoppable, interplanetary force they are now.
The Darkness ascended champions from within them, chosen Hive to become the personification of its presence. Gods among them, proxies that the Darkness could use to mould this willing race to its own designs. It infused their thoughts with those of power. Over ages it corrupted their bodies as well as their minds, making them into tools to reap the light of other worlds, instilling some of them with power over fire – the most all consuming of elemental forces. As these alterations were taking place, natural order was applying its influence as well, etching out a hierarchical structure to the Hive social standing, creating a cast system that would be the standard still seen today.
Thralls, the miss-born, are at the bottom of this ladder, those Hive that are not born with the desired bone armour protrusions are deemed to be defects, unable to ever attain the higher callings of the Hive.
Acolytes are those Hive that have been accepted and have reached maturity in the nursery pits. These Hive are pitted into a myriad of violent and deadly tests as part of their training to Ascension, after which they will have been moulded into Knights.
The Knights are Zealot in the following of their dark gods. Unwavering and toughened by all the challenges already faced, it is a formidable force.
Ogres are mutated Thrall, raised on a diet of pain and dark energies they are grotesquely altered to better serve the Hive gods. Great time and energy is required to create the Ogres of the Hive, and only the Wizards have the knowledge or the power to perform the brutal acts required for the process to be successful.
Wizards are the only front line Hive that are female. They have greater power than most knights, leaning overall belief towards an ultimately matriarchal social system.
The Hive have given themselves over to the Darkness completely. They cannot be turned from the path that the Darkness sends them down. Reasoning is impossible and imprisonment is futile. For all the irony, they must be destroyed because of the purity of their belief. There is no other way to ensure our survival.
Of The Cabal
The Cabal have no ties to either the Darkness or the Traveler. They simply follow in the wake of the wave of conflict between the two. A brutal, war loving race, they thrive on the destruction and conflict that ensues between the Traveler and Darkness. Drawn to it like vultures to the field of battle. Their lifespan is many times that of a human, making them far better suited to long distance space travel. The Cabal dominated their home world completely, killing all other life-forms that could be conceived as dangerous on any level. They then spent centuries warring among themselves for sport and land until they were united under a single Emperor with the task of conquering their solar system. This only took them just over two centuries, so brutal was their blood lust. And each of the eight planets was declared a chapter in the service of the Emperor, and they were sent forth to conquer and pillage at will in the service of the Cabal empire. It only took a few thousand years for word of one of the conflicts caused by collision of the Darkness and the Traveler to reach their leaders, however nothing much was made of this, so only small raiding parties were sent to "mop up" the survivors of conflict. It wasn't until the raiding parties arrived and sent back their findings that the Cabal stopped and took notice. Never had they seen such utter devastation. Even in their thousands of years warmongering across their galaxy they had never reached such intensity of destruction. The images showed whole worlds shattered, a littering of spacecraft for thousands of miles and not a single survivor. They also showed glimpses of advanced technology, the like of which the Cabal had never seen. This was enough for the emperor to sequester all forces in range to strip all possible tech and data from the remnants of the ships and planets laying in ruins. This action took centuries, and the idleness of the front line battle forces during this time bred contempt and resentment for the Imperial command. However, the Chapter heads and the Emperor back in the home system had not been idle, they had managed to learn much about the Traveler and its conflict with the Darkness. Enough to know that there would be no more intense a conflict found in the universe than where the forces of these two were engaged with each other.
So it was that the order was sent out that tracking and following these conflicts was an "Imperial Priority" for all forces and that all chapters were fully in support of this. This order was accompanied with instruction on how to modify all Cabal weaponry to harness Solar energy in order to increase its effectiveness against all enemies of the Empire. In truth the upgrade was as much an attempt to placate the impatience of the front lines as any other reason. And so the Cabal have been chasing the Traveler ever since.
They are in this for themselves, purely interested in destroying and pillaging the worlds brought to arms by the eternal confrontation.
Of The Awoken
Whenever two forces collide there is energy that is released. The amount of this energy depends on the magnitude of these forces. Like the sparks of a hammer hitting an anvil these energies spread out of control and absent of the consciousness of the forces that created them. So it is with The Awoken. Born of collisions between the Darkness and The Traveler, the awoken come in part from both, but belong to neither. Energies produced at the razors edge giving second life to once living consciousness's drifting through time.
The Awoken are not of the natural order, they are the children of conflict. Uncomfortable to commit to either side entirely they live on the fringe bar a few exceptions. Those that would choose a side only ever do so after some great inner turmoil.
A race of outcasts, ostracised by nature it's self. They have very different emotions than humans. The Awoken are almost unable to feel any subtle emotion. Happiness, guilt, fear, joy and the like are almost alien to them. Only the intensities of love and rage compel them. This makes the males of The Awoken very volatile, and oft times completely irrational, with the females being better equipped to maintain rationality through these intense emotional phases. Thus The Awoken have become a clearly matriarchal society, with the females unchallenged in their superiority.
While the Awoken that we have had direct contact with are of human appearance, there are others of different species as well. The Awoken take on the physicality of the race they once were, before their death during the conflict separated their consciousness from their being. Other conflicts have born Awoken of different species.
The Awoken are held in their own place among the races of these previous conflicts, particularly the Fallen, from whom many of the Awoken numbers are made up. It was through this respect that the current Queen managed to oust the Kell of the Fallen House of Winter and take control of that house herself. However, I have managed to get some information that both the House of Winter and a number of the Awoken are not at all happy about this. I hear that some from both sides are even actively working to undermine this control, and that the capture of the Archon Priest from the Prison of Elders was engineered by members of The Awoken.
Either way, The Awoken are to be treated with caution. Their motives will always be their own, and we must not assume that just because we have a moment of pursuing the same goal that we have found an ally.