Archive of Our Own ^beta

A newly arisen guardian is a little like a baby. A highly lethal, fresh out of the coffin now immortal 7 foot tall baby. That is to say, they aren’t fully people yet and act mainly on instinct with little regard for their safety, others safety or the fundamental laws of the universe. While it is true that, given about a hundred years time and some in-depth soul searching, they are capable of creating their own persona, it is also true that a hundred years is a very very long time even for immortals and new guardians are rising every day with more and more frequency.

The elders, their Vanguards, take on the responsibility of shepherding these younglings along the first steps of their new life and of wielding their new light. The hunters live by the mentorship mantra, ‘do what I say, not what I do and maybe you’ll get a nice gun if you’re good’. The titans employ a more subtle method of ‘do what I am doing, exactly as I am doing it and for the love of the traveller do not try to bench press the cabal’. Last but not least, the warlocks are the most refined in their instruction, preferring to assign mentors whenever possible. If summed up like the other classes, their style would be best described as ‘follow my lead, yet forge your own path. There is much more in the world than there once was and I will show you how to find it’. 

With experience and exposure to guardians comes familiarity with things such as social grace, and the strange habit all new guardians have of dropping off to sleep wherever they are standing. If standing without support, the guardian in question will collapse in a heap on the ground, where as if they are leaning up against something, they will simply nod off regardless of precarious placement or company. Hunters often are found sleeping on the girders of construction sites while one would be lucky not to trip over a warlock or three when entering a library, any library. Titans seem to have a firmer grasp on where it is good to sleep and a magnetic effect on other sleepy guardians. To put it bluntly, if a titan is sleeping somewhere with enough space around them for others, that space will quickly be filled by young guardians in a formation dubbed by the general populous as the world’s most dangerous puppy pile. The effect is thankfully additive not multiplicative. 

With the death of the traveller and the dispersing of the ghosts, new guardians have been arriving at the tower enmass, leaving a dearth of instructors and an absence of oversight. Now, because they are not literally children, this is not in fact, exactly as horrible as it seems. It is, in certainty, much worse because these are freshly revived beings powered by The Light and fully capable of ripping a hole in the fabric of spacetime. In this hour of need, Ikora, Vanguard of the Warlocks, is to be noted down in history as being the only one to come up with a feasible solution and it was decided that teaching and guidance could be outsourced to the reef and the house of elders. It is worth noting that this decision was probably the universe’s only saving grace.

The outsourcing of instruction was prompted initially by Variks the Loyal, house Judgement Scribe of the reef. Ostentatious because of the need for discipline in the prison, he asked for a team of high ranking guardians to be posted at the reef full time. When presented this request, Zavala, Titan Vanguard, quickly dismissed it and Cayde-6, Hunter Vanguard, just laughed. It was Ikora and Ikora alone who saw the potential benefits. She proposed a rotating shift of younger guardians in the prison itself and a combat light link to the prisoners. Anyone who made trouble could get hooked up and sent out for the younglings to farm. The prisoners would get exercise and punishment while the guardians would get some much needed experience and whatever gear they could loot off the bodies. Variks easily and eagerly agreed and the true reasoning for his proposal was revealed. Him and his wanted to study guardians in detail.

They had asked for experienced ones because they thought there was no way the tower would allow younglings to go without a chaperone, a voice in their ear at the very least but this? Was beyond their wildest dreams. They would be the envy of every fallen house, from earth to venus and beyond. A rotating guard would allow them many data points and the length of stay was negotiable. Even the Queen was intrigued at this new venture, having given the proposal Her Blessing  but not putting any stock in its success.

It was a smooth transition from the tower to the reef for the first set of guardians. A triad of warlocks were the chosen few, and Ikora sent them off with all the intel they could possibly read on the reef. Their arrival was heralded with calm admiration, and Variks gave them all monitoring bands to document their progress. They did well on their first day, completing the trials with ease and speed. Later that same day there was a brief panic when they abruptly went missing for a few hours. The Queen’s Guard scoured the Reef, yet the three were found curled up in the central library not 300 meters from their quarters. This was the first properly recorded ‘Guardian Pile’. Many pictures were taken and the younglings were left to rest in peace. 

The next group was a little more diverse, consisting of a titan and 2 hunters of vastly differing coloration. However, unlike the previous some problems began surfacing almost immediately. It was soon very apparent to the overseers that Hunters Get Bored Real fucking Fast.  Like, insanely fast. Once the trial was complete, they wandered off the second overseers removed the tracking band. Reports came of the two trying to climb the side of an asteroid cluster and doing lame magic tricks for awoken kids like 52 pickup with blink strikes.

Variks called a conference of the Elders and the very next day, the Challenge of the Elders debut with startling popularity. With variable conditions and restrictions, the Challenge of the Elders was incredibly effective at mitigating boredom among the visiting guardians. For a time.