Destiny: Lore

Chapter 14: Rise of Iron

Lord Saladin at this left his post of the Iron Banner, the tournament within the Crucible that,for a long time, trained Guardians and then took charge of the situation personally. Much to the bewilderment of the Guardians in the Tower. At Saladin's request, we personally scaled Felwinter Peak and defended it from a retooled Sepiks Prime. Sepiks, that had been resurrected and appeared to have been augmented with some kind of unfamiliar technology. For some reason, this great mechanical construct was capable of regeneration. We destroyed Sepiks prime once again, but with such regenerative power, it quickly retreated. And so, Saladin instructed us to pursue it back to the Cosmodrome, but before doing so, we entered the Iron Temple for the first time. Saladin had not ventured her for a long long periods of time, and so the honor was given to us.

The Iron Lords were returning, and to signal this to the world, the Braziers atop Felwinter Peak were lit once more by us. We arrived finally in the Cosmodrome and encountered Fallen forces in great numbers. Nevertheless, we pushed through and gathered what data we could from a sensor grid near the entrance of this new area of the Cosmodrome. This was a strange instance as it had been almost completely consumed by the same technology that covered Sepiks. The Fallen responded to this invasion, coming from an entrance to a new area of the Cosmodrome. This area was the Plaguelands, and it had been locked away by the Iron Lords after their final assault had been made on the SIVA replication chamber during the early City age.

From the Plaguelands, as we were downloading what remained of the Archives, augmented Fallen assaulted our position they had been covered in the new technology that had graced Sepiks, the one that had also graced the sensor grid we were trying to salvage. They turned themselves into cyborgs with this powerful newfound substance. The substance that was the nanotechnology that had destroyed the Iron Lords, that we call SIVA. Next, after discovering such a terrible fate that befallen the iron lords, and the Fallen went into the Plaguelands. Destroying a Fallen stronghold there, we discovered that SIVA had even resurrected the guns of the Golden Age that had fallen during the Collapse. After taking down those guns, Shiro for the Vanguard Scout assigned to Saladin in the Iron Temple, reinforced our beachhead that we had created by destroying these guns and all the while, Lord Saladin told us to meet him back at the Iron Temple, so he could tell us the story of the Iron Lords and how they fell to SIVA. Saladin told us this tale with great pain. He told of us of how they failed to truly destroy the SIVA replication chamber within the Plaguelands in spite Jolder's detonation.

With this, the task now falls to us to destroy this threat once and for all. After recounting the tale of the Iron Lords, we're told to seek out the cryptarch Tyra Karn and her advice on the nature of SIVA and she pointed us to the Golden Age labs of its creation on Mars under Clovis Bray's roof in the Dust Palace. And so there we went. Finding out more about SIVA and the Fallen had in fact learned of the substance there, and had known to unleash it within the Cosmodrome because of such research. Finally, we head back to the Plaguelands to destroy SIVA once and for all.

Having established that the Devils had a limited control over SIVA, we overloaded their systems within the reactor that they had maintained. Breaking their defenses and giving us a much needed chance to get into the SIVA replication chamber that they had built their Archon's fortress around. This replication chamber is where the Iron Lords fought SIVA, and it was also where we would find their tomb. There we found that SIVA had done something far more terrifying than simply create cyborg Fallen. The unrestrained SIVA withing the chamber that had survived had taken the bodies and light and presence of those Iron Lords and had augmented and corrupted them. We faced SIVA Iron Lords, vile creatures that had been corrupted by SIVA's influence, light forced to fight our light and yet unable to stop themselves, due to SIVA's nanotechnology and its influence. Their bodies, their armor, and their weapons had been twisted to the will of Rasputin, whos final order had not simply been to immunize, but now was a new directive. Consumed in hearts, replicate, but this great technology of the Golden Age was not enough to compare to our light and so we slew the terrifying forms of the reanimated Gheleon, Felwinter, and Jolder. We destroyed the SIVA replicator and recovered Jolder's helm. Upon presenting it to Saladin, we proved ourselves worthy of an honor that none before us would know. We would be the first of a new generation of Iron Lords, our title put to great use, our honor and legacy born anew. And so our job was now extended. No longer were we simply a guardian. We were a lord Guardian and after reforgin Gjallarhorn with SIVA and other technologies at our disposal, our job became clear. The House of Devils had been stopped from creating more SIVA, but this did not stop them from using that which they already had at their disposal. The House of Devils was on the move.

Aksis, the new Archon Prime of the Fallen Devils had made a call to all Fallen across the system. He told them to turn themselves to the perfection complex in Old Russia, where he resided. He offered them cybernetic augmentations, which to the Fallen is akin to becoming a demigod for they wish to ascend as machines. We assaulted this new stronghold of the House of Devils and destroyed the Archon Prime once and for all, so that he would never be able to unite those millions of Fallen across our system and to begin a new assault on the City that will surely spell our doom. And now with this moment of brief peace, began the Age of Triumph, the last age of the City. We had faced all threats we had seen. We had seen peace in our time. The children who had once been told of the Darkness and were afraid regardless of the stories no longer told, they were no longer afraid. They had heard our heroic deeds done, and they wished to imitate them. But even with this Darkness still loomed on the Horizon. A darkness that we could not predict. A darkness that once again, we would be weak to in our hubris. The Fallen had shown signals of retreat in the Cosmodrome during a routine scouting run the FOTC, Forces of the City, discovered that Fallen had retreated En Masse and had piled all of their armor and heraldic flags in massive pyres and set them ablaze. The Fallen's retreat signaled the end of the hundred year siege that surrounded the City, which ordinarily would be a point of great joy, but in reality, it was an omen of the coming war. And finally, we had the state the City was in now, you as an exalted Guardian of the City. A lord Guardian of the Iron Lords. The Guardian that slain Oryx, the Taken King, one of the darkest threats we had known. The one who had found justice for Eriana and Toland and Vel and Omar and Sai and Eris. The one who had defeated the Vex within the Vault of Glass and the one who had slain the Kell of Kells. And at your side always were the three Vanguard mentors, Ikora Rey, Commander Zavala, and Cayde-6. But finally, on one fateful, stormy night in the Tower, the danger of the situation would be finally revealed and our new enemy would at last unmask themselves.