In Search of Story; Darkness & Collapse (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, September 25, 2020, 14:39 (1306 days ago) @ INSANEdrive
edited by Ragashingo, Friday, September 25, 2020, 15:01

There's really not a lot of points of view set during the Collapse. I can think of just one set during it, and a few good stories adjacent to it:

First, the only view I can recall set during the Collapse is a collection of log entires written by Henriette Meyrin, the mother of the human who eventually became Ada-1, the Exo who runs the Black Armory in the present day. In the Black Armory Papers, specifically in entires 67 - 72, you get a vague glimpse of what it was like during the Collapse. Later in the same book you get some looks at life afterwards.

The first few chapters of the Marasenna give a brief glimpse of what it was like to encounter the Darkness in space, lots of physical distortion and a bad presence that can be felt, and a very very brief glimpse back at the earth from afar is it and the Traveler are being attacked by the Darkness.

Both the Drifter's early days in A Man With No Name and the Iron Lords' various stories talk about the harsh days immediately after the Collapse. So does my History of The Last Word.

One of my favorites that gives a good glimpse what the Golden Age was like immediately before the Collapse is Last Days on Kraken Mare. You can get a similar look at the moments just before the Collapse as seen by researchers on the Moon in the book Revelation.

Finally, there's a page in Cayde's Journal (the Treasure Island book that came with The Taken King) where his writing goes into a weird decreasing square spiral and seems to tell of the Darkness attacking:

There's no bounty. No Hive. I'm out in plain sight. Sky is torn open and there's nothing and nobody left in this ruined world but me and the boiling shadow all around. Whatever it is hits me before I can level my gun. Doesn't matter. Tendrils of pain crawl over my splayed fingers, my outstretched arms, my shoulders, my neck, my screaming mouth as it consumes. I'm being enveloped. Everything is wrong. Primordial. My systems go sideways. All but my sensors. It wants me to witness this, the world. It's world now. Suffocating in the black poison. I collapse. We all collapse.