I just completed a long, roundabout journey through the internet, accidentally stumbling upon one thing after another. In the approximate order of my stumbling:

- While trying to find The Deceiver's exact words he says in response to the Barbarian who mumbles a spell to awaken him I happened upon the fact that Bungie's Myth series, like Destiny, also had a group called The Nine. Myth's "The Nine" were powerful Avatara (magic users, some of which were very much like LotR wizards and others who were fighters and warriors with magical powers) lead by Alric, the king who in Myth II probably brings an end to the cycles of Light and Dark ages.

If the current Nine are anything like Myth's Nine then they would be military leaders who were some of the most powerful beings in our solar system. Unfortunately, that doesn't do much to help us decide which, if any, of these descriptions of The Nine are true...

- By one theory, there are four known ages in the Myth series: An Axe age, a Sword age, a Wind age, and a Wolf age. Master Rahool will sometimes mumble about "...a Wind age... a Wolf age..." if you stand near him.

- The names for these ages almost certainly came from an old Norse poem called Völuspá. It talks about everything from the creation of the earth and the heavens, to a Golden Age that is destroyed by three powerful maidens from the race of Giants (do recall that Oryx and his two siblings we have yet to see were originally female) and a bunch of other stuff.

- A good deal of that bunch of other stuff makes up the naming conventions of Rasputin's response to the arrival of the Darkness. Notably, VOLUSPA seems to be the term Rasputin used for some sort of military force or military plan he activated to combat the Darkness. Other terms from Norse mythology used by Rasputin / Humanity during the collapse include: FENRIR (a great wolf that kills Odin) and SURTR (a Giant with a flaming sword whose fire engulfs the Earth).

While I don't think we can really piece together Destiny's story from Völuspá, though I'd love to see someone try, it's kinda neat to perhaps piece together where the Norse theming of words in Rasputin's logs came from. It also seems clear that writers at Bungie made an effort to subtly reference the mythology and mysticalness of some of their past games like Myth and Marathon. It continues the great Bungie tradition of having a few background elements from past games that are familiar to us Bungie fans... as if they were from an old dream. :)

I love seeing posts like these. I started Bungie with Halo, so I love seeing all this stuff from their past games and all the connections. It's almost like they're building one large universe, rather than a bunch of smaller ones, and that's awesome.

Did you post this at the subreddit? They usually enjoy stuff like this over there, too.

:(

I think you have to post it, then go back and edit it to see the flair options. It's weird.

Ok... found it. Had to post, edit, hit the tiny flair link below the post and select and save the right one. Posting to Reddit always feels a good bit like posting to Bungie.net in that posts seem to just vanish and seem hard to find. Perhaps I'm just too used to traditional UBB type stuff and ignorant of the brilliance of other systems. :p

Great stuff, Raga, as usual.

Me too. Reddit is a hot mess. I don't post much over there either.

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I just completed a long, roundabout journey through the internet, accidentally stumbling upon one thing after another.

what i pictured:

great post though, thanks for sharing!

No, you have it. It's built on transience, looking at something once, then leaving it.

I think we can only assume they ripped off the names, from Fenrir to Dvalin. I don't see a lot of Germanic paganism in the stories per se, but it does rely heavily on fantasy concepts ultimately sourced from things like heathen rituals and pre-Christian Europe culture.

In terms of piecing Destiny's story together from Norse mythology, I don't think it can be done. The names were, as I said, probably just ripped off.

As for the ages, I never learned much about the Vola prophecy, but I read it differently to some translations. I also barely can do Icelandic. Here's one I found, then I checked it in both the King's Book and the Hauksbok. Seems to be about right, except the Hauksbok has a line about the ground exploding and trolls flying around.

Bræðr munu berjask ok at bönum verðask
munu systrungar sifjum spilla
hart er í heimi, hórdómr mikill
skeggöld, skalmöld, skildir ro klofnir
vindöld, vargöld, áðr veröld steypisk
mun engi maðr öðrum þyrma

Brothers must fight and become killed,
Sister-sons (also means cousins) must spoil kinship (blood, probably double meaning for effect);
Hard is the Earth with mighty whoredom;
beard age (definitely beard, may be poetic for ax, but ax is øx), scabbard age, shields are cloven,
wind age, wolf age, until the world falls,
And no man will spare others.

The damn thing's hard to understand, but it definitely says beard age. Wolf sometimes mean murder, and wind sometimes means storm.

I think we can search through the poem and find elements of Destiny's story in there, like the ground exploding (the cracked moon and hellmouth) and trolls flying around (wizards, the female form of troll is used), but I think it's like looking through Nostradamus's quatrains. Some shit's gonna be in there due to the game being a fantasy.

Other stuff doesn't fit at all, for example, there are no beards in Destiny.

Other stuff doesn't fit at all, for example, there are no beards in Destiny.

Yet.

Beard-fade! :P

it's got a really good community and is incredibly helpful. r/destiny is basically the same as bungie.net for me. UGH.

So would you say that hipsters have led us into the beard age?

I love seeing posts like these. I started Bungie with Halo, so I love seeing all this stuff from their past games and all the connections. It's almost like they're building one large universe, rather than a bunch of smaller ones, and that's awesome.

Did you post this at the subreddit? They usually enjoy stuff like this over there, too.

Bungie's writing team has generally been full of fans of their previous franchises who got hired. Staten was a Myth fan, I think? I was certainly a huge Marathon fan.

Dangit, I just realized that is probably the most hipster thing I've ever said. :-(

One time I said "I had one of those before the hipsters caught on and it got too mainstream."

At that point, I decided I was going to stop talking about my Holga.

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