The Story Behind the House of Wolves: Part 1, The Reef Wars

Note: In this part, as in Part 2 (Skolas' Rise) I will mostly be using the text taken directly from the relevant Grimoire cards, placed together in chronological order, to tell the story. In some areas, I have inserted my own text or rearranged previously existing text to clarify certain points. That being said, I really hope y'all enjoy it!

Part 1: The Reef Wars

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.

First, the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope. 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 Eliksni together," lost to pride and rage.

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

Found the Light. Too bright in Darkness to hide. House Winter, attack. House Devils, plot. House Kings, plan. House Wolves circle. House Judgment... wait.

……….

The transmission was broadcasted on all Fallen frequencies. Lacking, at the time, the ability to crack Fallen encryptions, the Master of Crows could discern only that the Fallen Houses were all talking to each other. That was a thing that had never happened before.

Then the Techeuns looked Earthward—and saw the Fallen there becoming bolder. Tactics suggested they were planning a massive attack. We had no interplanetary arrays—no way to warn Earth. We thought we would be able to do nothing but watch.

But then the Wolves arrived from the Jovians. Their army was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions strong: a dark wave that washed over the Reef, rushing toward the Earth. As soon as we saw them it was clear that if the Wolves reached Earth, the City would fall. The Queen's decision was this: attack the House of Wolves, thereby saving Earth but revealing the Reef's presence to any and all enemies in the quadrant; or remain silent, preserving the Reef's invisibility but allowing the City to perish. Seemingly oblivious to our existence, the bulk of the Wolf fleet stopped to regroup at Ceres.

……….

Ceres rules the Asteroid Belt. Ceres is the white queen of this space, four hundred million kilometers from the Sun. Ceres is round. Round means power, out here: nothing else in the Belt is big enough to crush itself into a sphere with its own gravity. Ceres has its own chemical stars. Shavings of salt and ice that glint in orbit. Like a crown.

Shark-fierce ships gather in squadrons and tribes. Skiffs. Ketches. The Kell of Wolves has a fleet gathered here. The Kell of Wolves heard the call, and summoned the House of Wolves to prepare for the great battle on Earth. The salvation of the Kell's people depends on their ability to shatter the City. It's a matter of survival.

……….

There are other lights, newer stars, newer crowns. Warship engines. Another queen is coming to conquer Ceres, because Ceres is full of warrens and shipyards and habitats, because Ceres is round and lucky as a Servitor. Because Ceres is full of the Wolves she wants to rule. Now the Wolf fleet turns to meet the Queen.

See the squadrons of Skiffs wrapping themselves in stealth, cold and transparent, knifing out invisible and brave? See the Ketches like broad blades, the bright thoughts of a Servitor guiding them to battle? See them turning, accelerating, waking up their jammers and their arc guns? All doomed. The Kell of Wolves will never make it to the Twilight Gap. The Kell of Wolves put all that strength in one place, and now the Queen of the Reef is coming to break it.

Out there, coming out of the dark, are the Awoken. Not so great a fleet, is it? Little fighters scattered around like four-pointed thorns. Destroyers and frigates and salvaged hulls pulled out of the Reef. And right at the front, at the spear tip, flies the Queen.

The Wolf Kell, practical, brave, tallies strength of metal and equipment. The Kell considers the chance that the Awoken have some secret weapon, something gleaned from hulks in the Reef or whispered up by the witches, and sets that chance aside. The Kell thinks the House of Wolves can win decisively. So the Kell sends challenge and warning. I AM LORD OF WOLVES, the Kell sends. YOU ARE AN EMPTY THING WITH TWO DEAD SOULS. THIS IS MY HOUSE. THESE ARE MY TERMS. SURRENDER AND I WILL ONLY TAKE YOUR SHIPS.

The Awoken fleet cuts their engines. Drifts. Wolf strike elements, torpedo-armed Skiffs hidden under jamming and camouflage, find their firing solutions.

The Queen's ship broadcasts. I AM NOBLE TOO, she says, OH LORD OF WOLVES.

The Kell doesn't mind a little banter before the kill. It gives the Wolf ships longer to draw the battle away from Ceres. The Kell replies. YOU HAVE NO LINE. YOU HAVE NO POWER. Captains and Barons signal their readiness, Skolas and Pirsis and Irxis, Drevis, Peekis, Parixas, all of them bound by fear and loyalty, all ready for war.

STARLIGHT WAS MY MOTHER. The Queen's ship whispers in eerie erratic radio bursts. Servitors begin to report a strange taste in the void. AND MY FATHER WAS THE DARK.

Here, at last, too late, the Kell begins to feel fear. CALL ON THEM, THEN, the Kell sends, one last mocking signal before death and ruin, AND SEE WHAT HELP THEY OFFER.

So the Queen calls, as only she can. Every Servitor in every Ketch hears it. Every Captain and Baron roars at their underlings as sensors go blind, as firing solutions falter, as reactors stutter and power systems hum with induction. Stealth fails. Space warps. The House of Wolves shouts in spikes of war-code, maneuvers wild, fires blind.

Behind the Queen's ship, the Harbingers awaken.

Her Harbingers rip into Ceres, destroying the asteroid and killing Virixas, Kell of Wolves and more than half his House. The remaining Wolves scatter, burrowing deep into the Belt for cover. There, new claimants to the Kellship arise: Irxis, Wolf Baroness; Parixas, the Howling; and Skolas, the Rabid.

……….

Now at war. Fight for system, control the belt.

……….

After the Scatter, the frontrunner for the Kellship was Irxis, Wolf Baroness. While Skolas and Parixas scrambled over the Kaliks servitors, Irxis secured the command of the Orbiks servitors.

Their history is still unclear, but the Orbiks originate with either another Fallen house—perhaps one that the Wolves absorbed long ago—or a modification of the Kaliks servitors. Either way, the Orbiks servitors held permissions on Kaliks servitors, which allowed Irxis to wreak havoc among her rivals' forces at the start of the Reef Wars. However, when Irxis' ketches were pinned against Eos by Skolas’ forces, the two sides engaged in the bloody, bitter battle known as the Eos Clash. It ended when one of Skolas’ Vandals, Peekis, launched a brutal assault that substituted finesse for sheer numbers and desperation. This attack left Irxis dead and both fleets nearly decimated. In the aftermath, the Crows salvaged one Orbiks servitor, Mecher Orbiks-11, believed to be the last of its programming.

Though technically a victory for Skolas, the Eos Clash came at a terrible cost for him. He docked Peekis' arms and demoted him to Dreg as punishment for his recklessness.

After the Eos Clash, Skolas changed his strategy. With Skolas and Parixas still fighting, no one expected either to attack the Reef. So by the time Paladin Abra Zire arrived at Amethyst it was too late: the Silent Fang, led by Drevis herself had massacred almost everyone in the station, including Coven Leader Pinar Venj.

Paladin Zire gave chase, and followed the Fang to the Iris Nebula, where, behind the glare of Iris' brightness, a Wolf ketch lay in wait. But the ketch was no match for Zire's smaller, faster ships, or her ferocity.

When the Battle of Iris was over, however, it was not Drevis at Zire's' feet. It was Parixas.

Grayor, another of Skolas' loyal vassals, had attacked Parixas' ketch at the same time that Drevis had attacked Amethyst. He, too, had lured Parixas to Iris, then the Silent Fang had used Iris' unusual brightness to disappear just as Zire and Parixas arrived in the system.

……….

Skolas wins control of House Wolves.

……….

After a string of defeats—at Amethyst, at Hygiea, arguably at Iris—Prince Uldren's Crows (the machines whose wings and feathers, sleek and black as their bodies, were eyes, too, sharp and delicate, and ears that pricked at every sound) finally made headway against the Wolves' encryption. They quickly discovered a seemingly unimportant piece of information: the House of Wolves had incorrectly calculated the eccentricity of the asteroid Bamberga.

So Paladin Imogen Rife chased Drevis, Wolf Baroness, directly into Bamberga's trajectory. Drevis' ketch was destroyed, and both she and her High Servitor, Kaliks-4, were captured.

It was the first decisive Reef victory since the Scatter. But on her way back to Vesta with her captives, Paladin Rife was attacked at Pallas.

……….

Siege of Pallas. Years of cruelty. Held the line to rescue butchers, murderers, Servitor.

……….

Under Skolas' vassal Pirsis, called Pallas-Bane, the Wolves amassed the largest Wolf fleet that had been seen since the Scatter. The Queen could not use her Harbingers against them—if she did, Imogen Rife and her fleet and all the people of Pallas would have been killed as well.

For years the siege endured. At first, neither side dared to attack the other: on Pallas, Paladin Rife knew that Pirsis had the firepower to destroy the asteroid. Above Pallas, Pirsis held back, hoping to rescue Drevis and Kaliks-4 and the other Wolves that Paladin Rife had captured at the Battle of Bamberga's Wrath. The Queen sought to diffuse the siege by sending Armada Paladins Abra Zire and Kamala Rior into the Hildian Asteroids, where Skolas was rumored to be hiding, but with the help of his tactician Beltrik, the Veiled, Skolas thwarted them.

The stalemate over Pallas was broken by, of all beings, a dreg. Ironically dubbed Weksis the Meek, the dreg led dozens of followers in an unsanctioned attack on Pallas. They managed to blast a hole in the Athens Hull, but were stopped soon after by Commander Hallam Fen. Weksis and the surviving followers were imprisoned alongside those they had come to save. Weksis' attack may have been unsuccessful, but it inspired another, deadlier assault. This time Pirsis, the Bane of Pallas herself led another strike, blasting through the same Athens Hull breach that Weksis had weakened in his assault.

Pirsis' strike team managed to free Kaliks-4, but Paladin Imogen Rife cut them off outside Drevis' cell. Pirsis might have escaped, but she refused to retreat without Drevis. Paladin Rife destroyed Kaliks-4 to prevent the Wolves from recovering it, and eventually the Wolves were forced back—but not before Pirsis slew Paladin Rife with her own blade.

Finally, Commander Hallam Fen, Imogen Rife's protégé, was able to establish a line of communication with the rest of the Reef. Working with the Techeuns and the Crows, they created an enormous visual illusion of the Harbingers, making it seem as if the Queen had finally decided to cut her losses and destroy the asteroid. It worked—the false Harbingers so scared the Wolf fleet that they broke ranks. Then the combined forces of Commander Fen, Paladin Leona Bryl and Paladin Kamala Rior slammed, capturing Pirsis, Pallas-Bane and driving the rest of the Wolves off.

Hallam Fen brought Drevis to Vesta, years after Imogen Rife had set out to do so. As a reward for his service, the Queen bequeathed him Rife's place among the Seven Paladins.

……….

Finally, Beltrik, the Veiled left the Hildians and massed his fleet at Fortuna, to replenish his ketches' Ether from the organic compounds found on the asteroid's surface. His ships landed on Fortuna one at a time, the rest forming a defensive screen around its surface. He believed that Paladin Zire would attack the screen and destroy her fleet against the shield wall.

But Abra Zire's fury over the Battle of False Tidings had chilled over the years into an icy, clever resolve. She separated her forces in two, and engaged Beltrik's veil with what he thought was her entire host. But in secret, Abra deployed her second fleet with a weapon the Reef had been working on since Bamberga: Carybdis, a gravity weapon strong enough to knock asteroids off course. Carybdis caught asteroid Tinette in its beam and flung it into Fortuna, destroying both and severely damaging Beltrik's fleet. Beltrik was easily captured in the ensuing chaos, and brought swiftly to the Queen. The fight became known as the Fortuna Plummet, as are, on occasion, the remains of Fortuna and Tinette as well.

After the Fortuna Plummet, one of Prince Uldren's Crows returned with a message from a Fallen, by the name of Variks, of the House of Judgment.

……….

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.

……….

In desperation, Skolas personally led an all-out assault on the military fortress of Cybele. Little did he know that the Queen knew of his plans, thanks to the word of Variks of the House of Judgment. No sooner had Skolas' ketches arrived at the asteroid than all four Armada Paladins—Abra Zire, Kamala Rior, Leona Bryl and Hallam Fen—caught him in a pincer movement. Kaliks-12, the High Servitor of Skriviks, the Sharp-Eyed, tried to escape, but Abra Zire chased it down.

Skolas' Cybele Uprising had failed. He, Skriviks, Kaliks-12 and the rest of his leaders were cast into the Queen's prison. The Reef Wars were effectively over.

……….

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?

……….

Variks of the House of Judgment declared Queen Mara Sov the new Kell of Wolves, and advised those captured at Cybele to serve her. The first among these to pledge their loyalty to the Queen was one called Saviks, who was given the honor of serving in the Queen's throne room, to the right of the Queen herself. Though many Wolves knelt to the Queen, some refused to admit the war was over. A group of Wolves rallied under the banner of a new would-be Kell: Veliniks, called the Ravenous.

But before Veliniks could strike at the Reef, the Reef struck at him: Lieutenant Petra Venj, a Corsair who had served under Paladin Abra Zire during the Hildian Campaign, hunted down and captured Veliniks.

……….

"More of your brother's Crows have entered the Cauldrons of Rhea." The Witch directly before her spoke with a dry buzz. "The Nine do not approve."

The Queen stopped a moment to study the sealed face of a cell. The cloud of her breath mingled with the slow exhalation of cryonics. "Send them one of our prizes. Something to commemorate our mutual victory."

"And which of your prisoners would you gift?"

If she paused to think it was only for an instant. "Send them Skolas."

"A lovely gesture."

"Mm." She cocked her head as if listening for a frozen heartbeat. "And remind them this: the Crows are mine."

End Part 1

Link to Part 2: Skolas' Rise - http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/37l64v/the_story_behind_the_house_of_wolves_part_2/

Link to Part 3: The Hunt for Skolas - http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/39l815/the_story_behind_the_house_of_wolves_part_3_the/