Bite-sized Backstory 36: The Fallen Houses (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, October 14, 2018, 13:29 (2230 days ago)
edited by Ragashingo, Sunday, October 14, 2018, 14:19

With two crushing defeats, one at Twilight Gap at the hands of The Last City and another at Cybele at the hands of the Awoken, the Eliksni found themselves being driven back once again. Since the Dark Age they had raided and pillaged the scattered settlements and cities of Earth mostly unchecked. But now, the Awoken had set up colonies and industry and a military presence within the Reef, and the Last Safe City beneath the Traveler had built great walls and was defended by seemingly unkillable Guardians. It’s around this point that our Ghost finds us on the outskirts of the Cosmodrome and from then on things go from bad to worse for the various Fallen Houses:

The House of Devils:

The Fallen will continue to claw at the walls of our City, unless we strike them down. Beneath the ruins of the Cosmodrome, in the shadow of an old colony ship, we've located the House of Devils' Lair - and the High Servitor feeding them their strength. We must destroy this machine god...and send their souls screaming back to hell.

The House of Devils will go on to become one of our greatest rivals in the story of Destiny. In fact, when we first encounter them, they are on the verge of making a major discovery. They have been looting and studying the remains of our Golden Age in the Cosmodrome for decades and have finally found something they think can change their fortunes.

Our first clue to what the Devils found is the Guardian jump ship we find crashed in the Cosmodrome. They are one of the first to report on strange signals coming from Old Russia. Later, after we escape to the Tower and return to the Cosmodrome, we discover that the Devils have been trying to steal data from some source buried within the old spaceport. We hear old Russian opera. Our Ghost stops the Devil’s data taps. And by the time we reactivate the large communications array we are sure we have found the Warmind Rasputin! Without our help, the Fallen might have been able to compromise the Warmind’s systems and possibly gain control of the powerful Warsats orbiting overhead.

But that’s not all the Devils found… Their attempts to locate and crack Rasputin saw them discover perhaps an even bigger prize: SIVA. When we killed Sepiks Prime, we greatly hobbled the House of Devils. Without their large High Servitor to process and distribute life sustaining Ether, the house would have scattered. But with the discovery of SIVA, radical factions of the House of Devils including Archon Priest Aksis and the Devil Splicers take over and force the Eliksni house down a path of abandoning Ether in exchange for relying on SIVA for sustenance and survival. For a time, the House of Devils becomes powerful enough to even threaten The City, but with the destruction of the SIVA replication chamber and the deaths of Aksis and Vosik, their newfound power is ripped away from them.

House of Winter

After the Eliksni’s collective defeat at Twilight Gap, the House of Winter retreated back to Venus where their Kell, Draksis, ruled over his house from a hidden position near the ruins of the Ishtar Collective. Draksis became notorious for his raids on human settlements while his house sought out new knowledge among the Vex and Human ruins near the Ishtar Sink. Eventually, after rising to the attention of the Vanguard (Cayde-6 once sent one of his Hunters to Venus to the Cinders to search for Winter’s Kell…), our Guardian finds Draksis’ Ketch and puts an end to him. Seeing as the House of Winter had already lost its Prime Servitor, this was something of a fatal blow to the Eliksni on Venus.

House of Exiles

The House of Exiles was not formally an Eliksni house. It had no Prime Servitor and no Kell. Mostly, it was a collection of Eliksni who had either been banished from their own houses but who had been separated from their house but who had refused to lay down and die. Like all of the Eliksni, the Exiles keep their distance from the other Houses. Seeing as Earth, Venus, and Mars were already occupied (with Mars being somewhat closed off to the Eliksni thanks to the heavy Cabal presence) the Exiles took refuge on Earth’s Moon… near the Hive. The Hellmouth was not exactly the safest place… but with Crota’s initial and eventual ultimate defeat, the Hive there were not the threat they had once been.

The House of Exiles is most notable for harboring the Eliksni mercenary Taniks. But beyond that, and a few suicidally daring raids down into the Hellmouth, we don’t ever hear much from the House of Exiles.

House of Wolves

After several years of conflict, the House of Wolves eventually knelt down to Mara Sov and her Awoken. With the help of Variks, the House of Wolves worked and fought alongside the Awoken for a time. Many Wolves did in fact truly regard Mara Sov as their new Kell and followed her orders with honest devotion. It was only when Skolas returned proclaiming himself to be the Kell of Kells and seemingly having the power to defy the Awoken that the House of Wolves rebelled. That rebellion was short lived, of course, as a vengeful Mara Sov sought the aid of the Guardians of The City. Within a short period of time… months at most… Skolas had been defeated and recaptured. He would eventually meet his end at the hand of some group of Guardians as nothing more than a mere play thing in Variks’ Prison of Elders.

The House of Wolves did not die immediately, however. Its remnants somehow managed to hide among the sprawling Cabal fortifications on Mars. They even rebuilt their Prime Servitor, Orbiks Prime, and for a short time where a thorn in the side of the Awoken and Cabal alike… until a Guardian discovered their hidden base of operations and lay waste to Orbiks Prime once more.

House of Kings

The Kings rarely lowered themselves to squabble in Eliksni politics or power grabs. They regarded themselves as rulers… and the other Eliksni houses seemed to have a great deal of respect for them. Even when the house of Devils was at its height, it seldom interfered with the House of Kings. The Devils and Kings were even neighbors in the Cosmodrome yet somehow managed to stay out of each other’s way.

In the end the House of Kings met with the Awoken Prince, Uldren Sov, and they alongside the House of Devils on Earth, the house of Winter on Venus, the House of Wolves on Mars, and the House of Exiles on Earth’s Moon… left.

The Fallen are abandoning the Cosmodrome.

Hawk fly-overs confirm. The House of Devils forces are simply not there anymore. They’ve been disorganized for the last few years, but there’s never been a shortage of ground troops whenever we staged a significant sortie.

Intel source GREENRAVEN was right. And, for the moment, it’s worth assuming their report on the House of Exiles, House of Winter, and House of Wolves are also accurate. We’re fact-checking against independent fireteam reports from the field.

The kid all the SRL fans talk about — Marcus? He was in one of the fireteams out at the Cosmodrome. He pulled me aside, and said it to me straight: the Fallen Houses are gone. The siege is broken. The stalemate we’ve had with the Eliksni for what, a hundred years? It’s over. We won.

Commander, I’m not even sure they’re flying the banners anymore. The teams found huge mounds of burnt cloth and armor, ceremonial piles, in several of the most hardcore Fallen holdouts.

What’s changed? Where have the Fallen gone? Why have they burned their banners?

That final question was posed by a Guardian named Sloane… who we eventually meet on Titan. So what did change? In short, Prince Uldren and the Scorn.

But that’s a story for a later time. We’ll check back in on the Eliksni in a bit, but for now we are mostly caught up to the start of Forsaken. There are still some finer points to explore such as what the Devils were trying to accomplish with SIVA or the grand significance of Skolas trying to force his way into the fabled position of Kell of Kells, but I’d like to visit those too at a later date.

Why the little rush past some interesting stuff? Well… because with Forsaken’s release, Bungie’s writing team has delivered the largest and most far reaching selection of lore since the Book of Sorrows detailed the rise of the three brave sisters who eventually spawned the terrifying Hive. Because of that, I am thrilled and excited to begin detailing:

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