But you merely adopted the Darkness. I was born in it. Moulded by it.
And that was just obligatory. No regrets.
But just saying, the Darkness might not be as bad as they say it is. Same with the Traveller. I've uncovered a few dead Ghosts so far and some have interesting things to say... things which do not help the Traveller.
For example:
[spoiler] [quote]1 Fallen story found beside the disabled skiff, unknown House, partly corrupted, rendered as follows:
what others call dark which is not I know what it is but no time room calm given for an appropriate telling so I say only that what is not shadow is an ally and a wonder and I respect what I cannot steal from and you cannot take from the dark you can claim only pain from the dark and that is why the dark is worthy of love beyond all other love that astonishing ability to evade being robbed
I love what I will not name[/quote][/spoiler]
[spoiler] [quote]I'm writing this from memory - some mine, but not all. The facts won't sync with the reality, but they'll be close, and there's no one to say otherwise, so for all intents and purposes, this will be the history of a settlement we called Palamon and the horrors that followed an all too brief peace.
I remember home, and stories of a paradise we'd all get to see some day - of a City, "shining even in the night." Palamon didn't shine, but it was sanctuary, of a sort.
We'd settled in the heart of a range that stretched the horizon. Wooded mountains that shot with purpose toward the sky. Winters were harsh, but the trees and peaks hid us from the world. We talked about moving on, sometimes, striking out for the City. But it was just a longing.
Drifters came and went. On occasion they would stay, but rarely.
We had no real government, but there was rule of law. Basic tenets agreed upon by all and eventually overseen by Magistrate Loken.
And there you have it...no government, until there was. I was young, so I barely understood. I remember Loken as a hardworking man who just became broken. Mostly I think he was sad. Sad and frightened. As his fingers tightened on Palamon, people left. Those who stayed saw our days became grey. Loken's protection - from the Fallen, from ourselves - became dictatorial.
Looking back, I think maybe Loken had just lost too much - of himself, his family. But everyone lost something. And some of us had nothing to begin with. My only memory of my parents is a haze, like a daydream, and a small light, like the spark of their souls. It's not anything I dwell on. They left me early, taken by Dregs.
Palamon raised me from there. The family I call my own - called my own - cared for me as if I was their natural born son. And life was good. Being the only life I knew, my judgment is skewed, and it wasn't easy - pocked by loss as it was - but I would call it good.
Until, of course, it wasn't.
Until two men entered my world. One a light. The other the darkest shadow I would ever know. [/quote][/spoiler]
[spoiler][quote]At the doors to the Temple he fell for the last time. He fell, and I could not reach him.
My own Light flickers.
They took me down into the dark, past tiers of massed Hive, more than we believed could exist. Past grisly nurseries hung with pupae. Past writhing worms that they swallow whole. I saw the armaments of war.
I am weak, so weak.
They have clamped me to this spire while a black foulness eats my Light. The Wizard comes now and then to probe with her scaly claws into my systems, to inquire about my making, the City, what I have seen. I erase and dump as quickly as I can - they will learn little from me - but I am studying them, I know - pain.
Always pain.
I have seen chasms beneath the surface, falling away to green nothingness. I have seen black seeders prepared for invasion.
Their strength is not their own. They draw from another force, something that corrupts, that distorts, that eats and will not be satisfied.
The Wizard is near. I feel her presence as a rip and a knot in the world. She tells me things that I immediately forget. I am too small to hold the vastness of them, or the terror.
I am fading. I have no more that it can take.
With my last light I say to the City: War comes again from the Moon. This time they want the Earth. Prepare.[/quote][/spoiler]
[spoiler][quote]The Acataleptic Clause claims that we are intrinsically unable to understand the Darkness. In many respects this belief parallels the Praxic Creed, which suggests that we should stop worrying about the nature of the Darkness and focus on resisting and defeating it.
Certain positions - often labeled heretical - imply that the Traveler itself triggered the Collapse, or that it knew the Darkness was coming for it and hoped to use the Solar System as a sacrifice or a proxy army. The Binary Star cult is one notable example.[/quote][/spoiler]
And these are only a few of the messages, taken from Ghosts.
To me it seems like the Traveller cannot be trusted. Either it uses us or it simply wants us to fight against the good armies. This would explain why the Cabel want to protect everything related to the Traveller and Darkness. This explains why the Vex were mass-producing, only to protect several artefacts. This explains why the Hive, creatures of Darkness, can feed off the Light of Guardians and Ghosts.
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The more they tell me I won't be able to understand "The Darkness", the more I want to learn about it.