"Alright, line up maggots!" Lord Shaxx roared at the twelve recruits that stood before him in the ruins of Twilight Gap. At his order, they rushed to line up and attempted to uniformly snap a salute. Unfortunately one titan's forearm blade sliced a warlock's armor. Said warlock reflixively blasted in the titan's direction with void light, causing the offending titan and several other recruits to fall like dominoes. Shaxx sighed and hung his head. -blam!-ing recruits. "You there," Shaxx said, pointing at the titan who was picking himself up from the ground, "what's your name?" The titan hopped to his feet, and after looking both directions to be sure he was clear, snapped a salute. "My name is Dinz Sun, sir!" the recruit yelled. "I thought you had a different name," Shaxx said, sounding genuinly confused. Dinz paused, looking to his squad mates before he answered. "No sir, my name is Dinz Sun." The warlock beside him snickered silently, shaking his head. "Well you really seem like a -blam!- UP TO ME!" Shaxx bellowed at the recruit. He turned to look at the other recruits standing in line. "From now on his name is -blam!- Up. I hear anybody call him different, they answer to me." "Sir, yes sir!" the recruits yelled uninimously, including -blam!- Up. "And you!" Shaxx said, pointing at the warlock, who thought he had escaped attention. "My name is--" "SHUT UP DREG!" Shaxx yelled."I didn't ask you what your name is. But because you so dearly want one, your name is now Dreg. You and your buddy -blam!- Up there will be cleaning sparrows when we arrive back at the tower." After waiting a moment to be sure Lord Shaxx was finished speaking, Dreg said "Yes sir!" and snapped a salute. "Alright. Anybody else want to piss me off this morning? There's plenty of sparrows for everyone." Silence. "Okay then." Lord Shaxx turned away from the recruits to face the ruins surrounding them. Most of the buildings were collapsed, all of the metal was rusted, and bones of different varieties lay all about. "Today marks the true beginning of your training to become a Guardian. Today you begin to apply all that you've learned. Today I welcome all of you here to The Crucible. But before we begin your training, I have a question. What do you see before you?" The question was greeted with the recruits sharing puzzled glances and shrugging. One Hunter ventured boldy forth and said "I see ruins, sir. I believe that this is to be our battleground, sir." Shaxx turned his head slightly, catching and reflecting the sunlight with his horn. "You are correct recruit, and in more ways than you know. This is both the battleground of today, and the battleground of humanity's yesterday. It is the place where humanity won one of its greatest victories. Around you stand the ruins of the Battle of Twilight Gap." Shaxx lowered himself to one knee, placing a palm on the earth. Before you step into this sacred place, and into my Arena I will tell you of heroes whose bones lie here. Then you may see what the order you stand for really represents." Lord Shaxx lowered himself further to cross his legs in a seated position. "Be seated and gather round. We will be here for some time..." ----------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! There's probably going to be 3 more parts, in which heroicness shall happen. Also I'm gonna make a poll to see exactly what people want to read Bump to share :) Tale of Kabr http://www.Bungie.net/en/Forum/post/75332648/0/0 The Rose Wilts: Last Word and Thorn http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/75736860/0/0/1 Toland's Legacy: The Forging https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/78149101/0/0 Short story i wrote (not Destiny related) http://www.wattpad.com/54307960-troubled-travels-blind-beggar

Were you playing on DeeJ_BNG? If you were, you probably didn't get some legit interactions. Sorry.

Deej, Thats good to hear. If you played it on hard you would fully understand how easy it is to do the raid with all the "little glitches and exploits". Perhaps that would be a better way to really understand just how easy this raid is to Cheeze your way through. I am sure you never imagined the hard raid actually being completed in under an hour. Legit, its pretty tough however it just seems that most cheeze through it at some point or degree. However, to your point I did it with random last night and well - it was the fastest hard raid I have ever done (1 hour or less). Yes, believe it or not 4 30's and 2 29's was all it took. RNG'sus was nice to me and now my last character is on his way to 30 (warlock just as you are). So congrats Deej, and when you get 30 feel free to invite me sometime and my team would be obliged to show you just how broken and easy the hard raid really is. The only plus side is that for the most part Atheon is killed legitimately and typically in 2 runs now. I hope you get some good knowledge when players show you all the re-spawn check points, shoving off bosses, and etc. People should not just show you the legit raid but the way that 90% of people play it - on Hard it is a completely different story.. I enjoyed your post and like I said, this is the best way for you to get a feel for how players are dealing with the end game content. Cheers and Happy Raiding!

So deej explain how matchmaking for the raid won't work when you literally just teamed up with total strangers and completed it? Really dude .

...... Wait you're surprised that a bunch of people didn't go off half cocked and start yelling the N word nonstop in a raid with a bungie employee?? If you think any experience you can have as a forward facing bungie employee is at all reprasenative of the average destiny player, you're crazy. Make a new account where people don't know who you are. Better yet do it with a female character and instead of having people come sit by you, they will teabag you and try to twerk with you.

DeeJ! A friend pointed this post out to me - I was that newbie in the raid last night. That entire group was a bunch of strangers to me (I had gotten an invite from someone I had found on Reddit) so I was a bit anxious. We saw you and others decided to send you invites - I don't think any of us actually expected you to accept! You made my first VoG possible since we had already spent probably a good 10-15 minutes (maybe longer, I'm not sure, it felt like awhile) trying to find a 6th person to fill out the party. They had actually talked about the possibility of 5-manning it before you joined up. I was so giddy after that raid I had problems falling asleep. I don't think I managed to get to sleep until sometime after 3am (I decided to stay up to see what Xur had at 1am since this would be the first time I had enough currency for anything). I'm honestly kinda surprised I'm conscious right now. I'm planning on making a post on Reddit at some point, because I feel like too much good stuff happened to *not* share. And I have no idea how many people will actually see this edit but - No we did not cheese Templar.

@DeeJ Glad you posted that. I have, through other gaming communities plenty of people Ive played with and befriended over the years. But through Destiny I have met so many new people, more than any other game in recent years. We've raided, we've cursed our RNG luck, we've celebrated each others good fortune (and imo dont make drops easier, a good drop is more exciting when preceded by numerous poor ones). We've created a Facebook group and new members drop by regularly. In short its been fun, we've made new friends and continue to do so. Thank you. #DeeJ

Lol, only took 3 months for a 'great' experience to happen worthy of posting, and even then it was something that is common to 29/30's. [spoiler]Or if you're name is DeeJ_BNG ; )[/spoiler] Where's the story about how it took 5 hours grinding and having to take a food break, but the whole party stayed from start to finish and had an epic last second of Time's vengeance when you killed Atheon with a melee attack..