Eliksni are Fallen and can't get up, its ok the Guardian brought Life-alert to save the day.

A juxtaposition maybe?

There's always an interesting layer in these conversations I like to point out. Which is, oftentimes in science fiction and fantasy, language barriers are adapted/ignored for sake of things making sense to the audience. For example, renowned fantasy abd sci-fi author Brandon Sanderson explained whilst teaching a creative writing class, that one approach to using words like "ottoman" to describe a piece of furniture, even though the Ottoman Empire may never existed in any of his particular settings, was to view his work as being the closest accurate translation from the common language of that setting. We see moments like this in literature and film alike, a recent exampke being Avatar the Way of Water, where the characters start out speaking in the Navi language then switch to English so the audience can better understand what is being said, however it's implied the characters are continuing to speak Navi. You can use a similar reason for why Star Wars has its own script for letters and numbers in its universe. Destiny also has a similar approach with the Cabal and Elliksni language as they both use their own unique symbols and written characters. Even in Destiny for the longest time we called the Elliksni, "Fallen", because narratively we didn't know any better. We didn't necessarily know the word "Elliksni" back in D1. And we don't really know what the Cabal actually call themselves in their own language or what their own language is. However based on Caiatl saying, "We are Cabal, we eat the mountains, we drink the seas." It's possible they use a word that sounds and is spelled the same as our English word, but that word may hold a different meaning/context in the Cabal's language. One of my favorite nods to the language/culture barrier lately is some ending dialogue from the remastered Arms Dealer strike, which goes something like this: Devrim: "We've cut another head off the proverbial hydra." Caiatl: "Hydras have but one head Devrim." Because Caiatl is a Cabal from Torrobatl she knows virtually nothing about Earth's various ancient cultures, stories, and mythologies and therefore the only Hydra she's ever seen or heard of is a Vex Hydra.

Why are they called cabal ? They're not when they're in your hellmouth.

I'd say it's because they are an amalgamation of multiple species (the actual Torabotyl, the Psions, and Warbeasts), similar to the Covenant from Halo. Which if course, is already taken by Bungie's former employers, Microsoft, who would sue them if they used it again, so they had to pick similar word for their group of various aliens.

What cabal is even left? Calus and all his advisors and friends are dead and only Caiatl is left. There is no more cabal.

True but we could ask the same question about The Guardian, or The Hive.

And?

Why are you called steve

Does the Oxford dictionary spell Oxford with a lowercase ‘o’?

800 IB Ninjas

I could be mistaken, but I believe Cabal was the term used to describe a certain type of warrior in antiquity.

I don’t know, but I was in a game last night with someone who had the tag “Step on my Caballs”. Got a good laugh out of that lol.

Cabal. a closed group conspiring for a particular ideological or political purpose

‘Cause it sounds cool

Why are we called humans? I doubt space rhinos were reading Oxford dictionary when they came up with their name