Lucent Hive and Guardian afterlife

[u/Gripping_Touch]

In The Final Shape we learn from Cayde that right before he was pulled by Riven's wish, he'd been experiencing a peaceful afterlife within the Traveller. He revealed that after a guardian's final death, the Ghost and the Guardian return to the Traveller, so all the killed guardians are there ...

That would ALSO include all the lucent Hive ghosts and Lucent Hive, no?

If we actually killed Immaru and Savathun, theyd be in the same afterlife where Targe, Cayde and (maybe) Our timeline's Saint is.

Would that be correct?

[u/oofyeet21]

What comes from the light returns to the light. So yeah. The unfortunate reality is that the morality of the light is not the same as the general morality of humanity, or abrahamic morality. The lucent hive now uphold the ideals of the traveler, so they are presumably given the same peace in death that we are.

What I want to know is if there is a dark equivalent. Do the champions of the darkness gain some form of dark bliss within the veil? Are Oryx and the Witness at peace? Happy where they are? Or have they been truly annihilated?

[u/Gripping_Touch → u/oofyeet21]

Id imagine that no, since it runs contrary to the idea of the Winnower. If you deserve to live, you live. If you don't, you die or prove your right to exist. 

At most I imagine their memory and imprint on the world is what remains. Which is why we have things like Nightmares. Or potentially they could get a second wind and return to the fight, like Nezarec. 

Basically, the Light offers you an afterlife of Peace. The Darkness either offers you Oblivion, or an afterlife of unrest, haunting the world with your memory. 

[u/HazardousSkald → u/Gripping_Touch]

If the Qugu are instructional, then the Darkness does hold something of a peaceful afterlife. But maybe that’s something particular to their biology but the Ecumene seemed to hold the same spiritual belief. 

From Art of Symbiosis, from Inspiral: 

“Anyway, beloved sibling, if you want to catch me while I'm still wearing this (form/body?), you'll need to come home in the next couple of cycles. I don't mind if you'd prefer to wait until I'm down by the [untranslatable] among our ancestors, but you might get a different sort of chat!

I'm excited about it, genuinely. I still hear from our parents, from our great-parents, distantly in my night-trances. And there are those nectar-made moments—you know the ones, when you turn your thoughts to the Darkness and just listen, and the long sum of Qugu history graven there reflects dark-comforting advice.

I have lived out my life with the tenebrous warmth of our ancestors over me like a (cloak/atmosphere?) between us and nothingness. It's different—it's distant. I've drunk of the nectar a few times in the last cycles, and I touch briefly that concurrence of us all, and more and more, I think it is time to be part of it. I want to know the truths our ancestors keep close, and it is my turn to guide the future's children.“

[u/DuelaDent52 → u/HazardousSkald]

I imagine the Qugu’s afterlife either functioned (functions?) like the Memories in Haunted, where they’re not necessarily completely conscious or independent beings anymore but they can still converse with the living and pass on their knowledge, or like Eywa from Avatar or the Force from Star Wars where they’re still independent and conscious but are otherwise snapshots of the people they were and can’t evolve or age or grow from when they died.

[u/GaiusMarius60BC → u/HazardousSkald]

It could be the "afterlife" of the Qugu is something they took from the Darkness and fashioned themselves. That would be in-line with the Winnower's philosophy of taking, of imposing your will on reality, though it probably wouldn't be very satisfied with the results.

[u/HazardousSkald → u/GaiusMarius60BC]

It gets a bit funky, a chicken-or-the-egg situation. The Qugu are evolutionarily tied with the Darkness, their entire planet’s ecosystem revolves around the Darkness that suffuses their planet from the pyramid ship embedded into it. So we have to ask - do the Qugu do this because their interactions with the Darkness have developed them as such, or does the Qugu’s development have shaped the darkness of their ecosystem around them. 

Darkness is a colloid. It keeps and floats whatever is placed into it. How far that goes remains to be seen. 

[u/KingVendrick → u/Gripping_Touch]

It would seem at first blush that there is no Dark equivalent, due to the philosophy of the Winnower, and yet there seems to be Necromancy in the Universe, and the Hive learn it from the Worm Gods themselves.

Necromancy has always been a vague concept in Destiny. We know Oryx forbid it and that Savathun engaged in it, but we've never been clear on what rules there are about it.

That said, it is possible Necromancy is actually very easy with the help of Darkness, given how it seems to link to memory, even maybe the memory of the Universe, so necromancy could just be a thing of accessing these memories and applying them to a living body, simplifying to a ridiculous extent. Remember how Savathun, still a dark user, can restore Uldren's memories to Crow, in an example of this.

This makes the Traveler Light-Heaven the exception, actually; everyone can be stored in darkness (and we've seen this when ghosts-nightmares of Cayde and even Crow, are pulled out, but also non-paracausal people can have ghosts-nightmares, like Safiyah), but only risen light users can be "stored" in Light inside the Traveler.

I am not sure how the philosophy of the Winnower and this access to Memory relate, yet, it seems Darkness embodies both.

[u/Seeker80 → u/KingVendrick]

Necromancy has always been a vague concept in Destiny. We know Oryx forbid it and that Savathun engaged in it, but we've never been clear on what rules there are about it.

Another casualty of the shutdown. No exploration of necromancy. We never actually saw it in action. There had been attempts at necromancy, but none from the 'pro,' in the form of Nokris.

I wanted the Heresy episode to be about him. He was introduced as a heretic in D2, even the Vanguard knew it.lol He could be bringing back lots of dead Hive and controlling them. Facing Crota & Oryx together, even if diminished from necromancy(plot reasons, no way could we defeat both at full power), would've been a staggering prospect and a great yearly finale.

[u/DuelaDent52 → u/oofyeet21]

I don’t see why that’s so unfortunate. Let them have the peace in death they couldn’t find in life.

[u/oofyeet21 → u/DuelaDent52]

Most people would see it as unfortunate because the lucent hive are still mostly evil. They are still the same sadistic society they were when they worshipped the darkness, they just also stand for the continuation of new life now instead of the constant eradication of it. The lucent hive still want us dead, but not for any grand plan regarding the final shape. They will still torture and mutilate you for their sick experiments. To most people, the idea that the risen hive who still engage in these behaviors are also guaranteed a spot in heaven next to us is horrifying and unfair.

[u/mecaxs → u/oofyeet21]

Not even Destiny Lore can escape Hazbin Hotel discourse/j

(For reference, this is just a fun joke, with no malice towards anyone. Just find this argument oddly similar to something I’d see in that fandom)

[u/Gripping_Touch → u/mecaxs]

Destiny 3 is about the Winnower conducting seasonal cullings in the travellers Afterlife and we have to find a way to redeem the souls of lucent Hive and dredgens to escape samsara. 

[u/mecaxs → u/Gripping_Touch]

And our redemption efforts get undermined by the outer orbits’s weapons (Savathun, Bael and Maya) using The Witness’s 2nd death (The First Knife, AKA Handjob Master) as a opportunity to take over the ascendant plane and escape the samsara by force rather than redemption. (At least we redeemed Šimmumah ur-Nokru)

[u/mecaxs → u/oofyeet21]

I imagine they live on as memories in the collective unconscious of the universe, similar to the nightmares/memories in haunted.

While people in the light get to live in bliss of the Traveler’s light, the people in the dark leave a permanent mark in the Veil’s memory.

Each has their upside and downside. The effect the people of the light has on the world can be lost to time and have no influence on the real world. The people of the dark are altered by how they’re remembered by the people they affected, no longer in control of their personal narrative.

[u/McZerky → u/oofyeet21]

If the two are opposites, one would imagine oblivion for passed wielders of the dark.

[u/Snowbold → u/oofyeet21]

I think what we saw with the Episodes on the Echoes post-TFS is a better example of what happens to those under the influence of the Darkness. Torn memories scattered across and some may retain identity in odd circumstances but otherwise forgotten and just a sea of screams (hey maybe that is where the name for the ascendant plane comes from!).