I go on a rant about this every time Bungie tries the same hamfisted attempt to make Guardians look like bad guys, as if it’s some deep narrative twist. We. Were. Attacked. First. We’ve been defending ourselves the whole time. If these mf’ers don’t want us to kill them, they really need to stop trying to kill us. Simple as that. It was even more hilarious when the scorn baron tried to turn it back on us calling us murderers and dead ones or whatever. Like dude, your entire race consists of crazy reanimated fire demon exploding psychos. OF COURSE I’m going to shoot all of you in the face. It’s not clever writing. Bungie’s writers need to stop trying to be “deep”.

Saint was correct in executing the crusade agsint the fallen. They almost wiped out humanity and needed to be crippled and dealt with brutally, as a show of strength and to remind them to never launch another offensive of the city. We shifted the momentum when we defeated them, we needed to keep pushing to make sure that they stayed down. While non military fallen died it did lower their moral even more and crippled their houses and leadership. Would mithrax join us if the fallen where just as powerful as pre Twilght Gap? Probably not, as he would be confident his people could take the city. The fallen grew desperate at the end of d1, house devils burned their banners. House of Dusk is crippled and so is house of salvation, and house light is an ally. Through strength and making the enemy weaker, this will bring them to the negotiating table with us holding advantage. The same happened with citatl. We destroyed her war council and weakened her position and it made her more open to what we wanted out of the negotiations and not her terms. If we went with her terms then she would be leading us. But we weakened her and showed her our strength. This made her follow our terms. Mithrax knows we are to strong so that likely played a factor into him and his followers to join our side. It's in the past now, and we have a valuable ally. We can hope more fallen will join us or they will face defeat.

Uh sir this is a Space Wendy’s

<It's a weird contrast between what is talked about in lore vs what's talked about in-game. The only real positive bridges between these are Eido in her second round of dialogue and Saint-14 (albeit rather quick thanks to seasonal storytelling still not being *quite* perfect and because this season's message is a bit less subtle than Chosen). Saint's growth is obvious because he knows the atrocities the Fallen committed but starts seeing that Mithrax's attempts at an alliance are genuine and that House Light, even if many of its members are from the old Houses, no longer subscribe to that belief. Eido's singular quote about how the blame should go to the old Kells for starting the war is entirely accurate, and we even see this with Namrask in the lore, who laments how he may have been the first Fallen to strike against humanity out of rage and how he fears that he created Saint-14 as he appears in Eliksni culture, specifically NEW Eliksni culture. Namrask and Mithrax in the lore are by far some of the most interesting characters, as they constantly admit that at one point or another they've killed people. Namrask's whole story is about how he no longer wishes to be a warrior knowing what he did and how it's gotten out of hand. Mithrax also shows regret, especially after the events of the Reef Wars, where he met Sjur Eido, and even further with the Red War, where he met us. Saint's crusades were entirely reactionary, and ultimately the blame should not be on his shoulders, but those of the Kells of old that started to fight, of which few remain and those that do have come to regret their actions knowing the damage they've caused. You still have vestiges of their past through people like Phylaks, Skolas, Eramis. All Fallen. In the lore, Mithrax understands this. However, the game's dialogue does seem a little inconsistent with this, as multiple times I found myself asking the same question as the title of this post. The fact that Six Fronts and Twilight Gap get so few mentions is a testament to the seasonal model's flaws that persist. Even Chosen, which I'd have considered the best season if SoA never happened, still has some flaws. This just has a smidge more... most of which about Savathun but this also has some of the blame as well.>

Get off the forums Lakshmi-2 no one likes you.

He’s not the bad guy, he’s just seen as a demon in the fallen’s eyes. Hey, isn’t there another famous Bungie character who the enemy race sees as a demon?

I see it more of a mutually beneficial agreement and truce between both our people. Once the endless night is over, a single wrong move from house light and their kell will fall.

I don’t know that human beings ever forget, but they have an amazing capacity to move on. As one example, the first Japanese car was imported into the United States sixteen years after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, while Japanese electronics were being imported into the USA a couple of years previous to that. This war with the Fallen/Eliksni has to end eventually. While humanity won’t forget, it will move on.

Saint is correct - crush under foot.

He’s as much the bad guy as the Eliksni are the bad guys to humanity. To the people of the city, any/every eliksni is directly involved in the massacre of their people over time. On the other hand, the Eliksni fear guardians, but especially saint. You could go in circles and say “the fallen did it first! But saint shouldn’t have killed innocents! But they killed innocent humans too!” Either side is going to look at the atrocities committed by the other as being worse. Saint is being the bigger person and being a representative of humanity by giving up and atoning for his actions just as mithrax is doing so for the fallen. At some point you gotta put your weapons down and look for another option.

Would we have done anything different? The houses are dead. Most of the Eliksni that came from old houses had to work for their kell or else they starved of ether. The fallen have been starved to the point of eating corpses. Oh yeah! that reminds me! The fallen-eating-babies thing? That’s mostly a myth. Did [i]some[/i] of them commit atrocities against humanity? Yes. Did Saint have every right to slaughter them? Yes. Were innocents on [i]both[/i] sides caught in the crossfire? Yes. In the dark future we basically did the exact same thing they planned to do.