ALIEN FACTIONS is a Destiny 2 zine themed around the different alien species found both in the game, and in lore! Sign ups open on November 15th.
Hosted by @chaostructure-crafts and @sketchmatters
Alien Factions: A Destiny Fan Zine has been released! This is a free fan zine created by 21 different contributors, featuring a variety of art and writing about the aliens of all the major factions in Destiny 2!
Thank you to those who participated, and I hope everyone enjoys viewing it!
Also, a huge thank you to @Monstyra for helping me with the cover art! đź’š
why was I quiet for a little bit? I was a part of another Zine! \ o / The Alien Factions zine! Go check out the other works! (or keep an eye open for the spam of reblogs I'm about to do)
One of two stories by me featured in the Alien Factions zine!
Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there.
Reminds me of a crew I ran with once. I was the only human other than an Exo named Natasha-12 and she hated my guts. I got along fine with the Fallen and Cabal though. We were a pack of thugs for hire. Ten of us plus our glorious leader Pandhabr, a badass Cabal that had only one arm.
'Course I called her Pandabear. With a name like that, how could ya not?
Anywho. Pandabear had a mad hate for anything to do with Cabal authority. Somethin' about them all pretending to have honour without actually having any. I didn't much care long as she paid out the crew on time, and she always did, so we were solid. Ya always knew where you stood with her, mainly because if she didn't like you, you weren't standing any more.
Two of the Fallen on the crew were Marauders. Kikki and Trillis. Three of us together were the sneakies. We'd sneak in and get the doors open for the others. Kikki and Trillis both had stealth tech and I was just quiet. After a while they kit-bashed together a Marauder suit for me too. And that was pretty great 'till it broke.
Take it from ol’ Drifter: never trust tech you didn't put together yourself.
See, we were a pretty effective bunch. Pandabear would get us the contracts, us sneakies would go in, pop the locks on all the doors, let in the heavies. We had a sniper and a driver on overwatch. Most of the time the targets we knocked over didn't even know what hit 'em. We were good at gettin' in and out quick and makin' sure anyone that did see us didn't live to tell about it.
Ended up bein' a little too good, actually. Awoken authorities put out a bounty on Pandabear's head. We were holed up in some rooms above a dive bar on Tharsis (not Spider's bar, mind you, he was still on the Tangled Shore at this point). And, unfortunately for Pandabear, when the crew heard about the bounty and ran the numbers, the payout for turnin' her in was bigger than what we were making with her contracts.
Soon as I saw what was about to go down I went to bug out. Didn't feel like backstabbin' someone who always paid their bills on time. Wasn't gonna snitch. Took my nice, modified Marauder suit with me and turned it on to skedaddle. Not one of my smartest moves, if we're bein' honest, but I was scared and wanted out quick and quiet. And see… the thing about a Fallen Marauder suit is that, while it is pretty great for sneakin' around, especially when no one is expecting invisible friends, if someone does make ya out, they know you're up to no good. And Natasha-12 had real nice modified Exo eyes that she could switch into infrared so she could see heat.
I ended up face to face with her hand cannon right between my eyes. I dunno why she didn't pull the trigger right then. She definitely wanted to. I figured that was my cue to try to talk my way out of it, maybe get her to come with me. Unfortunately, she was on the 'betray the old boss' team. She marched me back to the room with the others and made me kneel down beside Kikki, Pandabear, and another Cabal named Tark. The others were all arguing over whether or not we were worth more alive or dead, and Trillis, to her credit, was on the 'letting us all live' side of things. Sadly, that didn't end well for her. When a Fallen named Virrhos started getting in Natasha-12's face and she started shooting, Trillis was next in line for a bullet spray and she did not get back up again.
I had my hands tied behind my back at that point but they hadn't taken off my suit, so I turned it on and, feeling like maybe havin' friends was better than not, while the backstabbers were fighting amongst themselves I rolled over and started getting the others free.
Tark up and bolted for the door. That was not a good idea but he was Cabal so he took a bunch of shots before he went down and that gave me, Kikki, and Pandabear enough of a distraction to dive out the window, which we did.
I had no idea what was on the other side of that window when I jumped through it, but it was better than a bullet in the brain. We were about three stories up and I managed to twist enough on my way down to break my fall on some awnings and bounce off of a few window ledges. Kikki pretty much just scurried down the outside of the wall like a cockroach, even with all four hands tied, and Pandabear landed with all the grace of a boulder. But, being Pandabear, she just grunted a little and stood up from a small crater in the ground in the middle of the alley.
Gun muzzles started poking out from the window we'd just broke through and I think we all got shot a few times, but we managed to avoid them hitting anything lethal and set off down that back alley to try and make ourselves disappear.
And this is where I ran into trouble with the suit. It got smacked up bad on my way down and after I landed, instead of making me extra sneaky, Marauder-style, it started sparking all over, making me even more visible. We’d gotten our hands free at this point and I pulled off pieces of the sparking suit as I ran. This, of course made it very easy to figure out which way I'd gone, so I figured, why not use that? I left a nice trail of sparky breadcrumbs into the back of a warehouse and pointed the other two to get up high while I hid down low.
Sure enough, Natasha and a Cabal gunner by the name of Zu'uok came in after a short while. She had her hand cannon, and he had a machine gun. It was dark. There were some lights outside occasionally slicing in like bright knives through broken windows, but that was about it, just stacks of shipping crates everywhere, and a lot of dust. The LEDs in Natasha's eyes switched from blue to red and she zeroed in on a warm lump in the corner under a tarp. She tapped on Zu'uok to follow her, then they got up close to it and both opened fire.
Natasha-12 emptied two full clips from her hand cannon before Zu'uok had to reload. Then, as both were reloading their weapons, we three jumped out.
We'd been hiding with enough crates of whatever the hell was being stored in that warehouse between us and them to mask the heat from our bodies so Natasha couldn't see us. And I'd hotwired the power generator on my broken Marauder suit to overheat and left that in the corner for her special eyes to find.
Pandabear landed on Zu'uok while Kikki and I went after Natasha-12.
That Exo was fast, but her gun was empty. I hit her with a brick I'd found on a pallet, all nicely stacked and just waiting for someone to pick one up and use it as a weapon. Meanwhile Kikki went after the backs of Natasha's knees with a rusted shovel she’d found. Neither one of us landed more than glancing blows but I did get the gun out of her hands, so that was a plus.
Natasha wasn't a soft target, though. She had that Exo mobility that meant she could move at speeds and angles regular organic people couldn't and she hit hard. Natasha snapped Kikki's elbow like she was at all you can eat crab night while also getting in a good kick to my face. It broke my nose and messed up my vision for a bit, which is not ideal when you're in a fight for your life. I was out for a few seconds while Natasha and Kikki tousled together. But bein' what I am, I got an edge over regular Lightless, even an Exo, and a little bit of Solar energy goes a long way when you're in close quarters in unarmed combat.
I slapped a thermite sticky grenade onto Natasha's lower back and pulled Kikki behind a pillar. By the time we could see again, Natasha-12 was an Exo-shaped pile of slag.
With Natasha down, Kikki and I ran over to help Pandabear, only to find her using her single arm to beat Zu'uok's unresponsive body with his own (now very mangled) machine gun, yelling what I think was the Ulurant word for "traitor" over and over at him.
I don't know if he was dead or not, but Pandabear had definitely broken most of the bones in his body so he wasn't coming after us. We grabbed Natasha's hand cannon and skedaddled before the others could catch up and find us.
We three ended up in a dumpster together. That's not a metaphor for a bad hotel room. We literally spent the night in a garbage bin while our remaining former crewmates tore up the town hunting for us. I woke up the next morning with Ether-stained Fallen arms for a blanket. The pillow under my head was the burly chest of a one-armed Cabal. And the thing that woke me? Last piece of the damn Marauder suit giving me a short little zap on my wrist when it came into contact with the unwanted half of someone's breakfast that got dumped on our heads as whoever it was walked by in the alley outside. Nice of them not to litter.
Dumpster breakfast wasn't bad. I remember it had bacon. I like bacon. What? Of course I ate it.
One of two stories by me featured in the Alien Factions zine!
CW: Violence (They're fighting a Tormentor.)
Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there.
“Ah Shit,” the Drifter ducked down behind a rock and Eris Morn, immediately behind him, likewise took cover before peeking around to see what had caused his harshly whispered outburst.
“Is that a Tormentor?” she asked him while reloading her Hand Cannon, Loud Lullaby, with her back against the same rock, next to him.
Drifter pulled out a small mirror from a pocket and used it to peek around the rough stone they were hiding behind. He sighed. “Looks like it, yup.”
The corner of Eris' lip curled up into a small smirk. “I haven’t killed one of those yet.”
“Yeah, I'm guessing you don't get many of 'em on the Moon." He chewed his cheek as he scanned their surroundings. "Maybe we can go around it?”
They both took a few moments using two very different methods of 'eyeballing' the terrain. It was a steep valley, almost a canyon. The purplish Neptunian wind-cut rock was layered like a stack of jagged pancakes up both sides. It sparkled prettily in the sunlight. The path wound down from where they were situated before becoming straight along the bottom where the Tormentor was patrolling, and it ended in a metal door, flush with the rock. They would not be able to climb farther up the sides without notice. The only way forward was through that pass.
The Tormentor lumbered deceptively slowly, its giant scythe resting between one of its glowing pauldrons and the tree-trunk-like conical structure that served it as a neck. (Or were they shoulders? It was difficult to tell where armour ended, and the Dread's pyramid-like biological structures began.) Its one arm dangled past its knees, almost scraping the ground with its knuckles as it walked, while its tattered cape (or were they once ribbons?) wafted about in the slight breeze. It muttered gutturally to itself.
“I am not seeing any alternate routes," Eris whispered. "Are you?”
“Nope," Drifter shook his head. "What about your freaky portal shit?”
“With an entire army of Taken in the Ascendant plane? Ill advised. And I do not recommend we try to backtrack due to the Shadow Legion behind us.”
“You’re right on that," Drifter smirked. "We made 'em pretty mad. That says a lot when the least dangerous route is through the damn Tormentor." He chewed his other cheek for a bit. "Ok, Three-Eyes, what you got on you for ranged precision damage? They’re weak to that.”
“Any weapon can do precision damage if your aim is good.”
“I ain’t worried about my aim.”
Eris sniffed dismissively. “You’re worried about mine?”
“No. I’m worried about what weapons you are aimin’. You got anything besides that Hand Cannon? What’s your heavy?”
“Night Terror.”
“Of course you’d bring a fuckin' sword.”
“You’ve had no complaints regarding my swordsmanship in the past.”
“Your swordsmanship is excellent and better than mine, which makes sense for someone who uses Sword Logic against the Hive. But you ain't been runnin' tactical for Guardians up against these things. I have. Rule number one of fightin’ a Tormentor is you do not engage the Tormentor in melee.”
“A rule! A bold utterance for someone who claims that I have issues with authority.”
Drifter rolled his eyes. “I said that because you said that about me..."
"Hmmm…"
"And you are a lot more like me than you let on to most people... and you know it."
"Tsch."
"Now I get that you’re having a grand old time jokin’ right now at ol’Drifter’s expense but please do not melee the Tormentor, Moondust. Watchin’ someone I love die is not my idea of a good time.”
Eris turned her head and regarded him, her face impassive.
Drifter blinked. “Ah shit… I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Eris said quietly.
"Huh." He looked away. “I wasn’t gonna say that... just yet. I mean..." He looked back at her and licked his lips. "I mean it. And I don't think that's a... surprise to you.”
The corner of Eris' lips returned to her small smirk. "Surprised at your affection? Not at all. But I was not expecting you to express it so freely, nor under these circumstances."
"Well, that's a surprise to me too."
Behind them, lower down in the ravine, the Tormentor grumbled something threatening. They both froze and waited. Drifter used his mirror to peek around the rock and watched it continue its patrol. They were still undetected.
“I expect so," Eris continued whispering. "You've always insisted you had no loved ones.”
“Yeah well… I um..." He looked back into her three eyes. "I do now."
The corner of Eris' lips shifted from a playful smirk into a gentle smile.
"And I do not wanna watch you die," Drifter continued. "So please do not melee the Tormentor. Please?”
She reached out her hand and touched his face. "It is very difficult for me to refuse you anything when you say please.”
Drifter blinked again. “Really?”
"Yes," she whispered.
His eyes narrowed in that way they often did when he was analyzing something. “Please kiss me?” he asked, with a playful whisper.
Then his eyes widened as Eris Morn leaned forward and did in fact kiss him, fully, on the lips. Much to his great surprise.
“Damn.” he whispered, looking up at her with a delighted face as their lips parted. “That was all I needed to do? Just ask?”
She kissed him again gently, before answering. "Blurting out that you love me may have also contributed. In case it was not obvious, I do feel the same."
"Whoa." He reached out and pulled her into a third kiss. A distant roar echoed off the rocks from where they had come. Their lips parted and they both looked back along the path and then around the rock at the patrolling Tormentor.
“Let us both try not to die,” Eris whispered.
“Ok,” he grinned at her, his eyes sparkling brighter than the stones in the jagged stones around them. “You take my Scout Rifle. Stay back here and take pot shots on the shoulders. I’ll go get its attention.”
He pulled the strap over his head and handed her the gun.
“It will suppress your Light," she said.
“Yeah, but I barely use that anyways. Guns still work just fine. Just gotta keep movin’ and not get caught.”
Eris nodded. “Be careful.”
“You know I always am.”
Eris pulled him back into one last brief kiss before he scampered down the path toward the massive Dread with the scythe below them.
Drifter waited until the Tormentor was at its farthest point from them, in front of the metal door they would need to go through it to get to, before stepping out from behind a glittering rock.
With a chipper loud voice and his best Gambit announcer grin, he made himself known.
“All right, all right, all right!” he called out.
The Tormentor stopped and turned around with a menacing growl, pulling its scythe off of its shoulder.
“Hey! How you doin’ big guy?” Drifter greeted the monstrous creature.
It shouted something incoherent as the light in the middle of its head focused on the rogue Lightbearer.
Drifter placed his hand on his heart, keeping his large exotic Hand Cannon, Malfeasance, behind his back as he walked forward. “Me? Why, I’m very flattered, but I’m sorry, ol’ Drifter’s no longer on the market. Very recent development. Was in the works for a long time though, truth be told."
The Tormentor began to run.
Asp quick, Drifter pulled out Malfeasance and began to shoot his rapidly approaching opponent in the left shoulder. Behind him Eris poked the end of the Scout Rifle out from behind the rock farther up above and also fired repeatedly into the same shoulder Drifter was targeting. At Drifter's fifth shot a small explosion erupted from the Tormentor's shoulder, staggering it and causing it to stumble to the side.
Drifter grinned. "Did that hurt? I bet it did. Now, here me out, we don't have to do this. You could just go for a walk and I'll be on my way and we never saw each other. No one needs to know."
The Tormentor said something that sounded a lot like "Koh Kah In Vaun!" and lurched toward Drifter with a burst of speed that made his eyes go wide. He fired four more shots and then the monstrous Dread jumped high into the air, its scythe raised above its head in both hands.
Drifter watched it sail toward him, his legs bent slightly in a partial crouch, and then, when it was about half-way down on its way to split him in half, Drifter's body crackled with Arc energy and he tumbled forward and up into a run, putting as much space between himself and where the Tormentor was landing.
Void energy erupted from where the Tormentor hit the ground. Drifter felt the Arc energy leave his body as the Tormentor's scythe-blade became embedded half-way to the hilt in the stone and a small shockwave of Light suppression emanated out from it.
Drifter was now behind it and took another shot at the same glowing left shoulder he'd been firing into. The stale-neutrino-charged slugs erupted in another explosive shadow, sending the Tormentor down on one knee.
Eris landed another shot on its shoulder.
Drifter's mouth went dry as he saw the Tormentor's small head swivel to point directly at the rock Eris was hiding behind.
"Awww, Come on!" he called out to it. "It don't have to be like that. I'm sorry but I'm just not that into you. It's nothin' personal." He continued to rapidly shoot the same glowing shoulder. Each individual bullet did not seem to be doing much damage but on the fifth shot the shadow explosion of Taken infested precision damage caused the Tormentor's head to whip back around and focus on him.
It growled menacingly and ripped its scythe out of the ground with what seemed like barely any effort at all. Then it swung the weapon down and across itself, sending a crescent of Void energy directly at the Drifter.
He tumbled out of the way. The large purple projectile burst against some of the jagged Neomunian rocks behind him, sending small bits of rubble to skitter down by his feet.
“Oooh! You do not take rejection well. You should work on that. Sometimes they just ain’t into you in that way and ya gotta learn to accept that.”
Drifter fired five more shots into the same shoulder as the Tormentor began to run toward him once more. He saw muzzle flares from behind it as Eris was also firing.
The great scythe swung through the air again sending another violet crescent of death toward him. Drifter dodged to the side, half climbing up a ventifact rock formation to get away from the blast.
“You ever hear of anger management?" he called out as the Tormentor got closer to him. "You could use some of that.” He fired five more precision shots into the shoulder and was rewarded with a raspy inarticulate shout as the shadow explosion burst open the Tormentor's shoulder.
The Tormentor yelled something that sounded a lot like "Vos Kay Assis Kang!" and began to spin its scythe, tossing it into the air above it.
The spinning weapon began to rain down Void projectiles at the Drifter. There was not a lot of room in the ravine for him to elude them. The first three missed but the fourth caught him in the right shoulder. Drifter swore and shifted his gun to his left hand to continue firing.
Behind and above them, from behind the boulder, Eris continued shooting the Tormentor's right shoulder as Drifter tumbled and dodged. As the Tormentor's scythe returned to its hand Eris landed a shot which caused its other glowing shoulder to erupt.
"Inna Koh Goon Goh!" it yelled as its head and body whipped around, staring directly at Eris.
“No! Nope nope! Over here!" Drifter shouted. "I said… over here! Shit.” Drifter reloaded his gun and continued firing into the Tormentor's back as it turned away from him and stomped toward Eris, each three-toed footfall louder and faster than the last.
Drifter tossed a Glacier grenade just in front of the Tormentor. A blue crystalline wall of Stasis crystals sprung up between the enormous Dread and Lightless Eris Morn up behind her rock.
The Tormentor did not even break its stride. It burst through the crystals and kept going. Drifter threw another grenade. And another. He kept shooting and shouting, but the Tormentor was no longer interested in pursuing him. Eris continued to methodically fire precision shots into the Tormentor's glowing midriff as the Drifter yelled from behind it, his voice becoming more and more panicked.
“You get away from her! Moondust! Moondust it’s locked on to you! Get the fuck out of there!”
The Tormentor began to glow red. It roared as it ran toward Eris.
The Scout Rifle was empty. She dropped it and pulled out Loud Lullaby.
Eris' charms tinkled softly with each burst from the feather-wrapped muzzle of her gun. Each shot hit the Tormentor perfectly in its glowing chest. After eight shots, the magazine of the Hand Cannon was empty. Three more and the backup mag was done too.
The Tormentor continued advancing.
Eris pulled out her sword in her left hand as her glowing orb frosted over in her right. She shifted her stance. The Tormentor had almost reached her when Drifter jumped on it from behind, grappling the monster's thick barely-there neck, attempting to drive a spike of Stasis into the glowing light in the middle of the thing's forehead.
The Tormentor, finally distracted from Eris, reached up and behind itself, grabbing and then dangling the Drifter in front of its face, holding him by his neck.
Drifter's feet kicked in the air and he dropped his gun. He clawed helplessly at the Tormentor's three fingered hand as it squeezed his throat.
Eris tumbled between their assailant’s legs, grabbing Malfeasance from the ground, while the Tormentor laughed at the crunching and gurgling sounds the Drifter's throat was making.
The humongous Dread snarled triumphantly and shook the Drifter. The rogue Lightbearer flopped around like a broken doll.
Eris fired into its back as it continued to crumple the Drifter's windpipe and sprinkle the ground with his blood. Every five shots staggered it but the Tormentor did not stop. The Drifter's attempts to free himself became weak and then his limbs relaxed. Still the Tormentor continued squeezing the life out of him.
Eris reloaded Malfeasance and emptied it into the Tormentor's back again. Finally at her second reload, the Tormentor dropped the motionless rogue to the ground and turned to her.
It shouted "Gah Kah Ja Koo Do!" and rushed toward her.
Eris snarled, planted her feet in the ground, and continued to fire, each shot hitting precisely, every five Taken-infused bullets exploding in a burst of additional damage.
The Tormentor raised its scythe above her. Eris kept firing.
As the scythe descended to split her in two the Tormentor let out an enraged roar and its weapon fell to the side.
The monster's body became entangled in roots of Resonance energy which dramatically rose from the ground. Eris fired a few more shots into the corpse for good measure before rushing over to the Drifter's mangled body.
He was still alive. He gave her a weak grin and a shaking, blood-splattered thumbs up as his ghost appeared and began to heal him.
Eris held his hand and ran her fingers through his hair until he began to breathe properly.
"Hey Moondust," he rasped. "This is great. We both lived!"
Eris squeezed his hand gently. "I thought we had agreed we were not going to melee the Tormentor."
Drifter shrugged, then winced as that was definitely not the correct movement to be making at this time. "I guess neither one of us is very good at followin' the rules."
"Apparently not," Eris said, caressing his cheek.
There was gunfire in the distance.
Eris looked back the way they'd come, Malfeasance ready, her three-eyes scanning the entrance for any movement.
"Can you stand?" she asked.
"Maybe?"
Eris helped him to his feet. At his first step forward he nearly fell.
Eris lifted his arm over her shoulder, careful not to impale him on her chitinous pauldrons, and together she and the Drifter limped their way toward the exit.
My dreaded (:p) contribution to the @alienfactionszine !
And yes, I named this Harbinger Helen just for fun, and she does not like my Guardian Clarice :/ I dunno whyyyyy
The three oldest sisters had begun the process of joining, known only to them through ancient texts of the mind, never accomplished in recent memory. It was a permanent metaconcert; an unbreakable bond of self-dissolution.
My piece for @alienfactionszine of Inotam, Oblivion's Triune, of course. Inspired by the painting of the Pythia, except Inotam sits on the Sundial. She's holding a goblet as a reference to the Y-goblet faith of the Psions and also a curved staff used in auguries for divination.
