Bungie believe that the darkness is an incoherent mesh of different enemy races and that its story was never told. However, there is a story behind what the darkness has presented itself as so far, and how we, and the enemy races, have interacted with it. I will be presenting the darkness in a case by case basis, and explaining the connections as I see fit. The first interaction we have with what is known to be the darkness is at the garden's heart. It was an amorphous, physical blob of dark energy that gave life to giant statues of the vex. White energy left the blob to power each statue, which seemed to be limited since after defeating each statue the blob ultimately dissolves into nothingness as it releases a massive pulse of light. The darkness could be seen as a sort of sponge or conduit of light- able to drain and keep light as we see oryx is able to do during the final boss fight in the taken king's story mode. The vex were studying the darkness in order to gain an understanding of what Oryx was, and how he was able to manipulate the darkness. The main example we have of this is the Vault of Glass, the vex's attempt to create a sword space, an ability given to those who proved themselves worthy to possess it. We see that it is through sword spaces that death is given meaning. In real life, once you die, you die (without the light) however, when one possesses the darkness, death is a way to prove one's strength compared to others, and a way to enter one's sword space. In the Vault of Glass, lower vex sacrifice themselves to a conflict in order to reset time before the guardians even began the ritual of negation. In crota and oryx's sword spaces, death is a way of attaining the power necessary to completely annihilate their enemies. We see this through the activation of the oversoul in Crota's end and in basically every part of oryx's sword space: from killing wizards to fight the war priest to killing oryx's shade to stop him from wiping the team. Death is a form of empowerment to the hive. The sword logic was made because of the boons which were granted after killing a certain level and number of enemies, and these boons were able to be passed onto another person, as we saw through the tithing system of the hive. However, the greatest boon of the darkness could not be gained by merely killing mortals. The greatest boon, the power to Take, was granted after killing a god of the darkness. In the books of sorrow, and our interactions with the taken, we found out that the darkness was not just a mysterious... Thing that stole light. We found out that the darkness was a place, and that after a certain point, Oryx was able to enter it, and found something living inside of it. Oryx journeyed into The Deep (the darkness) to find power, and he could only enter the deep through some ritual that could only be done while in his sword space. The books of sorrow detail that oryx only journeyed into the deep from his sword space while surrounded by his siblings, who all wanted to kill him in order to steal his power for themselves. Oryx found a god that I forget what it's name was, managed to kill it, then was given the power to take. He could take creatures the size of planets, he could take the youngest thrall, he could take anything that did not possess the light. We don't know what exactly happens when he takes something, but we do know that taking can not be reversed, and that the taken are like feral animals unless under the control of something else. But what are the taken, and how do they appear out of no where? "The taken are not bound by terrestrial constraints" -Eris The taken are known to be inside the darkness until they are ripped out to serve their master. Since the taken can appear anywhere at any time, does that mean the darkness is everywhere at all times? The darkness was confirmed to be both a place, and a substance so far, and when exiting this place, one could end up anywhere in the physical world that one can imagine. The taken are proof of that. But along with the taken, there are usually blights. Small, spherical orbs of darkness that constantly respawn the enemies you just killed. Blights are not confirmed to be part of the darkness itself, or products of the darkness, but we know that they are physical, they can be killed, and if to get too close, some of your light it taken away so that you can't use ability or move quickly. That is the darkness in all of its forms that we have encountered , and the ways in which different characters have reacted with it. This was made to refresh our minds concerning the story of the darkness so that we can know how different the story about the darkness is when comparing D1 and D2. Hope you enjoyed!