Umm... Grimoire cards coming at you. Read the passages I make [b]bold[/b]. VARIKS, THE LOYAL They call me betrayer. They do not think I hear the words. "Bug." "Insect." "Fallen." I hear. House of Judgment always hears. No choice. Has to. To keep Houses together. Had to. [b]First , the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope[/b]. Judgment not enough. Cannot keep Wolves from Kings, Scar from Winter. Fell to fighting. Fell to hate. Judgment gone. Others slaughtered, slain. Death and docking. "Keep [b]Eliksni[/b] together," lost to pride and rage. [b]Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light[/b]. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes? [b]Found the Light. Too bright in Darkness to hide.[/b] House Winter, attack. House Devils, plot. House Kings, plan. House Wolves circle. House Judgment... wait. Now at war. Fight for system, control the belt. Wolves Kell dead, dying. Skolas wins control of House Wolves. Attack, attack, attack. Place of learning, place of healing, put to the burn. Then Siege of Pallas. Year of cruelty. Held the line to rescue butchers, murderers, Servitor. Ends with Wolf fleet scattered. New tactics. Detonations. Blasts in civilian areas. Take the fight to them, he said. Cannot abide the hate. Uprising, they called it. Uprising on Cybele. Reach out to Crows, to Queen. Cybele attack stopped. Skolas captured. Ended House of Wolves with words. Paladins find me hiding, cowering. Nowhere else to go. No one else to be. I become Variks, the Loyal. House Judgement envoy to Queen of Awoken. No choice. House Judgment must survive. Yes? SKOLAS: DEFEATED Skolas is dead. Variks sits carving at his piece of amethyst. His undocked arms are weaker, less precise, but it is a comfort to feel the crystal press hard into his palm. The knife slips. He cuts himself. "Ai," he says, and of course right then the door opens, Variks has no privacy, Variks wants no privacy, Variks lives to serve the Queen. It's Petra Venj. She's masked against the ether air. "The Prince wants to speak," she says, and then, seeing him unmasked and bleeding, she chuckles. Petra depends on Variks for intelligence and Variks, frustrated with her insane risk-taking and bravado, sometimes gives her tips meant to get her killed. Petra has figured this out. Petra and Variks know each other's agendas and each other's strengths and to Variks that's as close as any two people can get. Petra is smart: she sends Guardians now, people who can die as much as they like. "You slipped," she says. Variks holds up the amethyst in his bleeding hand. It's a Reef gem. "I wound myself," he says, "to make this more beautiful." She stares into the gem with a distant Awoken eye. What does she see? Variks knows she has visions and he knows those visions haunt her, drive her. The Awoken are twinned to powers that terrify Variks. He'd dock himself again before he'd let the Queen's witches near him, the witches who raised Petra. The unfairness of it makes him want to roar. Why does everyone else have this patronage? Why do the Hive have gods and the Vex have sprawling time-bent minds and the Cabal have reinforcements? Why do the Awoken whisper to the stars and listen for the whisper back, the voices from the Jovians, the song in the dark? [b]Why do the Guardians get the Great Machine's blessing, was it like that before the Whirlwind, were there Fallen heroes crowned in Ghosts who strode the battlefield fearless and full of Light? Why do they tell stories about reclaiming the lost glory of humanity, and no stories about the lost glory of Variks' people, the House of Judgment that once kept codes of dignity and law?[/b] Why can't the Fallen have that strength? But no, that strength is not for them, not for Variks. Just this bleeding, sad pragmatism. Just dreg strength. Hanging on. [b]The alternative is Skolas' strength, fighting together, raging against extinction. Look where that's gotten the species. The House of Devils' Prime is dead. The House of Winter's leadership devastated. The poor Exiles trying to claw out some security against the Hive. In the last few years the Fallen have lost so much—and everything is escalating around them. There are gods and powers converging on this system, old machines waking up, old bones whispering flatteries. They need a new way.[/b] "Put your mask on," Petra says. "The Prince gets sullen if he's kept waiting." "Not like us," Variks says, oh so mild. The wound on his hand will heal. His work in the Prison of Elders, setting up trial by combat, building an audience and a relationship with the Reef's scavengers and armories, will bring him a little closer towards rebuilding the House of Judgment. Skolas' fury has guttered out. The Fallen may yet accept peaceful, lawful rule. They may yet survive. They'll hang on. "We're very patient, yes?" Petra looks down on him with pity and contempt and a strange fondness. He puts on his mask. I believe the Fallen homeworld was known as Eliksni and the Fallen (maybe called Eliksnians?) were once given a golden age by The Great Machine (Traveler.) I believe the "Whirlwind" was the abandonment of the Fallen race by the Traveler and subsequent collapse of Fallen society and the reason for the Fallen coming to Earth was to reclaim the Traveler. With all that said, there's the reason the Fallen haven't just swooped in and nuked us. They don't want to risk damaging the Traveler. There's no way the Fallen are evil. Perhaps Guardians shot at the Fallen first and the Fallen simply retaliated leading to the war we're having with them now. The only questions that need answered are who are the Hive, the Vex and the Cabal and what happens when the Traveler leave us?