Lore Codex · Technically True
The Unveiling Board
Every power in Destiny follows one local rule, like a cell in Conway's Game of Life, and the people who shaped the story bend those rules wherever they stand. Run the saga from the Golden Age to Renegades, or paint your own board, and see what grows: a Garden, a Sword-world, the Vex's simulation, or the Final Shape. The lore behind it is the Flower Game ; the people and eras come from the figures and the timeline .
The board runs in JavaScript. Turn it on to play; the rules are written out beside it either way.
Contested
tick 0
Play
Step
Reset
Distortion
Start
Every power at once
Empty board
Speed
Paint
Thrall 0
Lines: each power's share of the board. The dashed white line is variety (how evenly the powers are mixed). Near 1 means a Garden; near 0 means one shape has won.
Free play
No era running
Play the saga to run the story in order, or drop one era onto the current board.
Play the saga
Begin era
Ticks per era
Named figures bend the rules inside their circle. Fireteams hunt bosses: a raid. A Hive god usually only dies for good with a fireteam inside its circle; otherwise it re-forms in its throne world , a little weaker each time.
Place
Send a fireteam
Actor influence
Raid damage
Attrition: hostile ground wears actors down
Empty space next to 2 or more Light fills with Light. Light alone withers. Packed Light drives off hostile neighbours, and where many powers mix, Light takes back Darkness. In this model, inside the Traveler's reach a fallen Guardian is often raised by a Ghost .
Growth
Defense
Reclaim from Darkness
Every Hive cell strikes a neighbour each tick, weaker kin included. Kills climb the castes: Thrall → Acolyte → Knight → Wizard → Ascendant → God (brighter is higher). Prince is a rank of the well fed and the royal line: Crota was Oryx's son but still had to win his place, so here it is set by blood or standing, not kill count alone. Part of each kill is tithed up to the highest caste nearby, so power pools at the top. Higher castes hit harder, but their worms are hungrier: a Hive cell that goes too long without a kill is eaten, and part of that tithe returns to the Darkness. A cell that reaches God becomes a new Hive god on the board.
Strength
Tithe: ticks before the worm eats
Tithe up: share of a kill passed to a higher caste
Sword Logic among kin
Brood: spawning into empty space
A Taken cell takes a neighbour of any power. Taken need a Taker: away from Oryx, Savathûn or Riven they lose direction and fade.
Taking
Fade without a Taker
A Vex cell simulates a neighbour. If that neighbour's surroundings are predictable (few different powers), the Vex replace it. They cannot simulate the Darkness at all and the Light only badly: paracausality is their wall. Variety is the only defense.
Simulation success
Predictable means at most this many powers nearby
Build
How simulable the Light is
The legion is strong in formation: a Cabal cell hits harder the more Cabal stand with it, and absorbs part of what it beats. After Caiatl's Coalition, loyal Cabal stop fighting the Light; renegades don't.
Strength
Absorb the conquered
Garrison: building into empty space
A lone Eliksni has no House and no Ether, and it starves. Houses scavenge into empty space and strike at the Light that the Great Machine chose instead of them. Crowded Houses turn on each other. The House of Light makes peace possible.
Rage at the Light
House wars
Scavenge
Awoken are born where Light and Dark touch the same empty cell. The Reef holds together against all who carve at it: Fallen, Taken and Red Legion.
Birth where Light meets Dark
Reef growth
Defense
Scorn raise the Eliksni next to them as Scorn, and attack nearly everything else.
Raise Eliksni
Strength
Darkness spreads into space that is already uniform , freely near the Witness, its Pyramids and Disciples, and thins out far from them. It presses on Light that is surrounded and cut off from variety. It never attacks; it waits for sameness. Near the Witness and its Disciples, the Darkness raises the Dread , who do attack.
Spread into stillness
Fade far from the Witness and its Pyramids
Pressure on surrounded Light
Dread raised
Dread strength
These rules are a first reading of the lore, meant to be argued with. Cell rules live in stepCell , actors in ROSTER , and the story in ERAS , all in the page source.