1. The Reckoning
   The Collapse
2. The Breaking
   The End Time

Once upon a time, humanity had populated all corners of the galaxy — until the Collapse. The evil known as the Darkness forced humans all the way back to Earth and almost destroyed them entirely. The intervention of the Traveler kept humankind alive.

1. At the beginning of time
   10,000 years ago
2. Before the beginning of time
   One million years ago

The Light and the Darkness are primal forces in the world of Destiny. Both have existed since before time and the universe itself began. The Darkness enacts its will upon others, agents that do its bidding, including the Vex and the Hive. Essentially, it is an eternal force of nature.

1. The Hive
   The Vex
2. The Traveler
   The Cryptarchy

A product of the Darkness, the Hive religion known as Sword Logic is explained in what is essentially their Bible, the Books of Sorrow. Those who practice Sword Logic can do magic by accessing the same sort of power that is found in the Darkness.

1. The Winnower
   The Deep
2. The Formless One
   All of the above

Something as primal as the Darkness has to be known by a few names. The Winnower, the Deep and the Formless One are just a few of the titles attributed to it. Sometimes it's also called the Flower Eater, the Black Edge, Titanomach or the Queen of Final Shapes.

1. Vex
   Awoken
2. Human
   Fallen

The Scorn are undead Fallen, brought back to life by Fikrul, the Fanatic, using tainted Ether. They're the primary villains in Destiny 2, and they're a little more diverse than their still-living counterparts in terms of how they can attack and what weapons they use.

1. Lord Shaxx
   Vell Tarlowe
2. Feizel Crux
   Ana Bray

One of the founders of Cruz/Lomar, Feizel Crux was a master weaponsmith who crafted the Gjallarhorn rocket launcher. He made it personally as a gift to the Guardians who fought in the Battle of the Twilight Gap, using the armor of their fallen comrades.

1. Venus
   The end of the universe
2. Mars
   Beyond space and time

The Black Garden may be the place where the Vex come from. Though it can be accessed by a gate on Mars, as well as one on Luna, it is not physically at either of those locations. It is somewhere beyond space and time, linked to the Darkness.

1. Nothing
   Their brains
2. Mind-core fluid
   Their eyes

The consciousness of the Vex spans space and time, and their bodies are almost 100% mechanical. Within their mechanical shell, in their mind core, is a radiolarian fluid that looks like milk and is the last remnant of their biological nature.

1. Humans
   The Fallen
2. The Darkness
   No one knows.

Exominds, usually abbreviated as Exos, are living machines that were created by humanity during the Golden Age, before the Collapse. A man named Clovis Bray may have been their creator, but after the Collapse, most of their history, including their reason for being, was lost.

1. Awoken
   Hive
2. Exominds
   Warmind

The Vex are able to simulate human intelligence with ease, but they struggle to understand the massive artificial intelligence known as a Warmind. At least one Warmind, known as Rasputin, survived the Collapse.

1. The Cabal
   The Guardians
2. The Fallen
   The Taken

The Cabal come from outside the Solar System but have set up colonies on several planets, including Mars. The hulking aliens are subject to the rule of Dominus Ghaul. Before Ghaul, Emperor Calus was the leader of the Cabal.

1. Guardians
   The Vex
2. The Traveler
   Oryx

After the Collapse, the Traveler created the Ghosts from actual pieces of its own body. The pieces created the mechanical shells that house the inner Light and have an instinctive need to raise their companions from the dead using the Light.

1. Sol
   Fundament
2. The Moon
   The Black Garden

The planet Fundament is a gas giant where the Hive first evolved billions of years ago. They were simple creatures at first, but, through their introduction to the Darkness-worshipping worms at the center of the planet, they became the sinister Hive.

1. Savathun
   Oryx, the Taken King
2. Xivu Arath
   The Traveler

Savathun the Witch Queen, once known as Sathuna, daughter of the Osmium King, is responsible for killing the Helium King. After she and her siblings made a deal with the worms, they became the progenitors and gods of the Hive.

1. At the beginning of time
   Before the beginning of time
2. During the Collapse
   At the Battle of Six Fronts

The precise origins of the Awoken are not known, but the belief is that they were created during the Collapse. Before the Collapse they were humans, but as they fled to the outer reaches of space, the remnants of the Collapse changed them forever.

1. The original Vex
   Emissaries of the Darkness
2. The rulers of the Fallen
   Dark Matter beings

The Nine are beings made from a sort of coalesced Dark Matter — basically, pure thought that came into existence as life in the galaxy emerged. They can only exist as thinking beings as long as other thinking beings exist on the planets of Sol.

1. Uldren Sov
   Dredgen Yor
2. Lord Felwinter
   Saint-14

One of the Weapons of Sorrow, the exotic hand cannon called Thorn, was first used by the Guardian Dredgen Yor. In the beginning, Thorn was known as Rose, and Dredgen Yor went by the name Rezyl Azzir until he fell to Darkness.

1. The End Time
   The New Beginning
2. The Return
   The Dark Age

After the Collapse and the end of the Golden Age, the Dark Age began. The Dark Age lasted for an extended period of time, but it was replaced by the City Age when the Last City was founded. The city was built on Earth under the floating Traveler, and most of the remaining humans live there.

1. The Fallen
   The Hive
2. The Cabal
   The Taken

Nessus exists in a deep orbit that sometimes goes right into the Kuiper Belt. The Vex made it into a machine world long ago, but then the Cabal took over to mine it for whatever technology and resources they could find.

1. Rezyl Azzir
   Lord Shaxx
2. Saladin Forge
   Andal Brask

It was Rezyl Azzir who founded the Guardians by uniting the Risen during the Faction Wars. Thanks to the influence of the Guardians the war was ended, and those in the city were able to unite against the Fallen.

1. The Battle of the Twilight Gap
   The Reef Wars
2. The Battle of Burning Lake
   The Battle of the Six Fronts

The Battle of the Six Fronts was the first major offensive that the Last City had to face. The Fallen attacked, and the Guardians were able to hold off the attack on every front. The Iron Lords became legends during this time.

1. Solkis Devil Kell
   Saladin Forge
2. Praedyth
   Saint-14

After the Fallen attack during the Battle of Twilight Gap, Saint-14 led forces to take out the Fallen based around the Last City. It was once thought that he died in the Infinite Forest, but, thanks to time travel, he survived and exists in the present timeline of the game.

1. The Taken
   The Hive
2. The Cabal
   The Fallen

In what was called the Late City Age, the Hive came to Earth and attacked at the Battle of Burning Lake. The Guardians were successful in ending the invasion. Lord Shaxx used this as an opportunity to start reverse engineering Hive blades for Guardian use.

1. Mind reading
   Wish granting
2. Time traveling
   Porta making

Viewed as legendary dragons, the Ahamkara had the power to grant wishes and make someone's darkest desires into reality. The Guardians exploited this power at first but later came to fear the great cost of such power. They hunted the species nearly to extinction.

1. Thorn
   Rose
2. The Last Word
   Apotheosis

After Dredgen Yor turns on his fellow Guardians and slaughters many of them, he is confronted by Shin Malphur, the son of the Hunter Jaren Ward. Malphur wields the weapon known as the Last Word to take out Yor.

1. The Vex destroyed his homeworld.
   The Guardians killed his son.
2. The Fallen killed his sisters.
   The Guardians nearly killed him.

Oryx, the God-King of the Hive, sought revenge against the Guardians for killing his son Crota. To this end, he entered the solar system in an absolutely massive ship called the Dreadnought, but he was unable to take the ship all the way to Earth.

1. Earth
   Mars
2. Luna
   Mercury

The Curse of Osiris expansion pack deals with the Guardians' attempts to rescue the Warlock Osiris from the Vex on Mercury. He was exiled from the Last City because he was a little too obsessed with the Vex.

1. Osiris
   Skolas
2. Craask
   Keldar

Skolas the Rabid was the Kell of the House of Wolves who sought to unite all of the Fallen Houses and become the Kell of Kells. He's the big bad of the House of Wolves expansion. Skolas is known for being both vicious and delusional.

1. Banshee-44
   Suraya Hawthorne
2. Mara Sov
   Ikora Rey

Ikora Rey is a human who was the disciple of Osiris. She took on more and more of his duties as his obsession with the Vex grew. Eventually, when Osiris was given the boot, Ikora was elevated to his former position as Vanguard.

1. The Taken King
   Kell of Kells
2. The Darkness
   Clovis Bray

Once upon a time in the Golden Age, Clovis Bray created SIVA as a tool to help construct extrasolar colonies. The Warmind called Rasputin ended up using it as a weapon against the Iron Lords, and later the Fallen discovered it and unleashed it once again.

1. The Cabal
   The Vex
2. The Hive
   The Fallen

Before plotting their invasion of Mars, the Cabal set up a base on the Martian moon of Phobos. This base stood for quite a while, until Oryx arrived in the Solar System, at which point the Fallen overtook the base and forced the Cabal out.

1. Commander Zavala
   Lord Saladin
2. Asher Mir
   Eris Morn

Eris Morn, a Hunter, is an expert on the Hive. While Guardians generally don't remember their first life, Eris learned some facts from hers, including that she was from Russia and she died while swimming in the Neva River.

1. The Darkness
   Oryx
2. Crota
   Dominus Ghaul

The Books of Sorrow were composed by the Taken King, Oryx. He's not solely responsible for its contents, as there are verses from the Worm Gods as well as Oryx's sisters. The Books go into detail about the philosophy of the Hive.

1. The Whirlwind
   The Cataclysm
2. The Reaping
   The Rendering

The Fallen were once known as the Eliksni, until an event called the Whirlwind. The Traveler chose the Eliksni before he chose humanity, so they had their own Golden Age and period of advancement. The Whirlwind occurred when the Traveler left them and they fell into civil war.

1. Behind the sun
   In an asteroid field
2. Below the Moon's surface
   Phobos

The Awoken reside in the Reef, which exists in an asteroid field. Queen Mara Sov is the regent there. Remnants of ancient ships from the Golden Age are adrift in the Reef. It was as far as those fleeing the Collapse ever made it.