I played Exision today and had the idea that the finale battle might have originally been the Gardner, finally removing paracausality from the universe after all enemies were defeated. It came to me when the Witness vaporized and our Ghost cried out in pain. But I got sidetracked by this question for no reason and got this for an answer. User: destiny what was the black heart meant to originally be AI: In the original lore of Destiny, the Black Heart was broadly defined simply as a mysterious, powerful fragment of the Darkness that the Vex were worshipping. Later lore and expansions (specifically Lightfall) recontextualized exactly what it was meant to be: * An Incomplete Replica of the Veil: The Black Heart was engineered by the Vex (specifically the Conceptual Mind of the Sol Divisive) under the direct influence of the Witness. It was constructed as an artificial attempt to replicate the Veil—a fundamental Darkness counterpart to the Traveler. * A Failed Copy: Because it was an artificial imitation, it lacked the true paracausal power and complexity of the original Veil. * A Trap: The Witness’s ultimate intention was to establish a connection with the Traveler to access the Pale Heart. However, the Black Heart was a failed substitute that could not properly facilitate this link. Instead, its lingering paracausal presence acted as a suppression device or "poison" that actively prevented the Traveler from healing after the initial Collapse. * A Vex God: Unable to fully comprehend the alien artifact they had successfully generated, the religious faction of the Vex began worshipping it as a deity, creating the Sol Progeny to protect it. If you want, I can dive deeper into how the Vex created it or explain what the Veil actually is. Let me know where you'd like to take the lore! ~~~~ So what it did here was give me the current narrative canonical “original” response. So I specified. User: what would it have been in the original storyline AI: In the original, scrapped 2013 storyline developed by lead writer Joseph Staten, the Black Heart was meant to be the core of an entirely different narrative twist: the revelation that the Traveler was actually evil. Before Bungie executives rejected Staten's script and rebooted the game right before its 2014 launch, the plot surrounding the Black Heart functioned completely differently: * The Traveler as the Source of Darkness: In the original script, players would discover that the Traveler was not humanity's benevolent savior. Instead, it was an advanced alien entity that brought the Collapse intentionally. The "Darkness" was actually a parasitic byproduct or spawn of the Traveler itself. * The Speaker's Deception: The Speaker and the Vanguard were running a centuries-long propaganda campaign to cover up this truth, tricking Guardians into serving a cosmic monster. * The Black Heart's Real Purpose: The Black Heart was not a failed Vex copy of an artifact; it was meant to be the literal, corrupted engine core of the Traveler. The Vex were holding it in the Black Garden to keep the Traveler anchored and dormant. * The Twisted Ending: A rogue faction of Guardians—originally led by Osiris and a rogue hunter named "The Crow" (who later became Uldren/Crow in the final game)—abducted the player to show them the truth. Your final mission in the Black Garden wasn't to save the Traveler, but to destroy the Black Heart to prevent the Traveler from waking up and destroying humanity all over again. When Bungie management panicked over this linear and dark storyline, they chopped up the cutscenes, inverted the roles to make the Traveler good, and left the Black Heart as a vague, confusing "blob of Darkness" in vanilla Destiny 1 until they finally patched the lore holes years later in Lightfall. ~~~~~~So that’s the neutral summary of Statens idea for the base game and how the original BH would fit into it with no bias from me. From here I asked what about our Guardian? Given how our killing the Archon right after waking up was treated like a big deal and some lines from Ghost in D1 about us being unusual. So because and more follow ups that were all weighted prompts I had summarize it instead of line by line and man does it read nice. ARCHIVE: THE SCRAPPED 2013 DESTINY LORE & THE REBORN GOD THEORY PART 1: THE RETAIL LORE VS. THE ORIGINAL MYTHOS * Retail Lore (Modern Continuity): Expansions like 'Lightfall' recontextualized the Black Heart as a failed, artificial replica of the Veil. It was built by the Sol Divisive Vex under the influence of the Witness to act as a paracausal suppression device, actively poisoning the Traveler and preventing it from healing after the Collapse. * The Cosmic Balance (Gardener vs. Winnower): Tracing the concept back to the 'Unveiling' mythology, the Black Heart stands firmly as a tool of the Winnower (Darkness). It relies on reduction, the Sword Logic, and paracausal drainage. It stands in direct opposition to the Gardener (Light), which champions growth, complexity, and life. * The Primitive D1 Concept: Before the rigid framework of "Light vs. Dark" was established, early concepts implied the Darkness was actually a corrupted, inverted form of Light. In this dark-fantasy framework, the Black Heart behaves exactly like a corrupted, dying Ghost—audibly beating like a human heart and channeling dark intent into dead stone statues (the Sol Progeny) to resurrect them. PART 2: THE TREE OF SILVER WINGS * Primordial Roots: First teased on the D1 Exotic 'Ruin Wings' ("The leaves are ruin, the bark disaster"), the Tree existed in the primordial garden before time. It was trampled into the mud during the first cosmic war between the Gardener and the Winnower, its fragments forming the birth of the physical universe. * The Universal Conductor: The Tree is a neutral paracausal sponge. In 'Season of Arrivals', a seed planted on Io drank raw Light until a Pyramid ship parked overhead, calcifying it into Darkness. In the 'Root of Nightmares' raid, the collision of the Traveler's Light beam and the Witness's flagship instantly grew a new Tree, proving it thrives purely on the tension and clash between both forces. PART 3: THE SCRAPPED 2013 "STATEN CUT" PLOTLINE In July 2013, Bungie executives dismantled a linear, darker version of the story written by Joseph Staten. The original narrative featured a vastly different world corporate: * The Mentor Osiris: Osiris was a mystical, Obi-Wan Kenobi figure living in exile inside an ancient Vex temple on Mercury. The Exo Stranger was not a time-traveler, but his literal field assistant and agent. * The Evil Traveler Twist: The central plot revelation was that the Speaker and the Traveler were lying to humanity. The Traveler was an ambiguous, potentially malicious entity that brought destruction across the stars, and the Vanguard operated as a totalitarian religious police state to maintain control. * The Awoken and Rasputin: The Awoken (including Prince Uldren, then a rogue space pirate named Crow) were outcasts who actively refused the Traveler's shadow. The Warmind Rasputin was not a bunker network, but a physical Exo prisoner held by the Hive inside the Dreadnaught, which players had to rescue. PART 4: THE REBORN ENTITY THEORY (OUR GUARDIAN) Connecting the 2013 narrative blueprint with anomalies left behind in the retail game ('The Taken King') yields a compelling theory: The player's Guardian is the reborn soul of the primordial corrupted Lightbearer/Darkness entity. 1. The Ghost's Blind Spot: In 'The Taken King', Ghost explicitly notes: "I brought you back... but I don't know what you were before. Other Ghosts talk about knowing their Guardian's mind, sharing their thoughts. With you... there's a wall. I can't read you. I just know you are dangerously strong." * Implications: Standard Ghosts lack the administrative privileges to read a mind belonging to a god-tier entity that preceded or split from the Traveler. The soul lay hidden in the Cosmodrome until it was accidentally jump-started. 2. Unusual Lethality & Muscle Memory: The player's Guardian possesses an unmatched, rule-breaking aptitude for slaying gods and mastering paracausal elements instantly. Under this theory, this is not a gift from the Ghost, but ancient cosmic muscle memory waking up. 3. The Cyclical Destruction of the Heart: If the Black Heart was the rotting, localized anchor of a fallen deity or corrupted Lightbearer, the final vanilla D1 campaign takes on a deeper meaning. By destroying the Black Heart, the reborn Guardian unconsciously shattered their own past life's anchor, cleansing their clean-slate self to become the ultimate paracausal apex predator. Which we do, cause we wack Atheon, Crota and then Oryx shortly after. Toppling entities with billions of years and trillions of lives under their belt. And would need to be that to kill a corrupt god. The whole silver wings things came from it too, I didn’t bring that up. It brought it up and tied it into my idea. Now I’m not saying it’s gospel but I would recommend you guys try playing with it for whatever ideas you have, can definitely help shape and flesh your idea using details you forgot or didn’t connect. I’m going to try the Edge of Fate storyline too, see how interesting what it can guess about their plans.