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With Shadowkeep around the corner, our return to Luna imminent, and Eris' return, I think that it's a good time to take a moment to educate ourselves on the first Crota fireteam. After all, not everyone here was around for The Dark Below.
Pretext
Wei Ning
Wei Ning is a Titan. She likes to punch. She punch a lot. She punch Dreg. She punch Vandal. She punch Captain. She go to Crucible and punch.
Wei Ning is one of the "first" Strikers, in that she teaches that your body is the greatest weapon. She's pretty famous. She lit the Eternal Flame of the Firebreak Order. She also built Fighting Lion after getting mad that people were getting salty at her in Crucible for only punching people.
At a bar in the City, she bought multiple rounds of drinks for everyone there. Among those people was Eriana-3, a Praxic Warlock who she was introduced to by the Hunter Pahanin of the Pahanin Errata and the sole survivor of the Vault of Glass. Wei Ning began to gush and fangirl over Eriana-3. The two began a relationship.
Eriana-3
*A Warlock of the Praxic Order (like Taeko-3, and Aunor Mahal). Praxics are hardcore against the Darkness, with their philosophy being not to understand the Darkness but to destroy it.
Battle of Burning Lake
- First major contact with the Hive. Guardians just barely won over the Hive and decided to follow them to the Moon to begin to take it back. Shaxx deeply disapproved, citing their narrow victory and the need to study. The Consensus disregarded Shaxx.
The Great Disaster
Thousands of Guardians. One thousand Knights. Crota. It's an all-out, one-sided slaughter. And not the kind we like.
Crota goes on a massive kill streak, even going so far as to kill a Guardian by sharpening their Ghost into a knife and killing them with their own Ghost.
Eriana-3 captures a Wizard and tortures it in an attempt to find out how to kill Crota. It tells shows her through mental imagery the Oversoul Throne. It also shows her Wei Ning, dead, impaled on Crota's blade and held high.
The Guardians get beaten so irrefutably the Vanguard completely abandons the Moon and states that if anyone goes there, they're on their own.
Eriana-3 is understandably upset that her girlfriend/wife/life partner/blueberry friend is dead and vows revenge on Crota.
Raid Prep
Assembling a Team
Eriana-3 meets with Eris, a Hunter, to get revenge for Wei Ning.
They seek out the disgraced Warlock, Toland, with a fanatical understanding of the Hive, for his aid.
In addition, they conscript Vell Tarlowe, a Titan of the Pilgrim Guard who helped bring refugees to the then-new City; Omar Agah, a Hunter with surprisingly little lore on him; and Sai Mota, a third Hunter who toasted her fireteam the night before the raid:
To the best damned fireteam I've ever worked with. We may not be the smartest. And we may not be the bravest. But we are the dumbest! To victory!
- The group heads to the Anchor of Light to plan. During this time, they consult Toland on what they'll face. They act tough as most Raid Groups do.
Crota's End
Raid Proper
The group reaches the Temple of Crota, electing to descend to the Stills through walking all the way down through the Hellmouth.
Here, the group is ambushed in the canyon before the entrance to the Temple. Tarlowe rushes forwards to kill a pack of Thrall commanded by the Wizark Verok, and is quickly overwhelmed and snuffed out before the group even enters the Hellmouth to Thrall Minors with recommended LL 130 or below.
Few of us made it beyond the canyon. The rocks cracked apart, Hive waiting in ambush. It was worse for the ones who made it inside. Stay alive. - The Wakening
The Thrall will smother your Light! Do not underestimate them as Tarlowe did! - Enemy of My Enemy
Vell is spectacularly dead. Omar and Sai are quite dead too. Eriana, poor Eriana, she was so very bright at the end, wasn’t she? A brave light. - Ghost Fragment: The Hellmouth 2
During this time, the group is seperated: Toland, Eris, and Omar in one group, and Sai and Eriana in the other.
Toland tells Eris and Omar to hunt the Eyes of Crota, a trio of recommended LL 130 Acolyte Majors, and follow the trail of Light they left back to Crota. This plan fails, and the three are split up.
Eriana tells Sai they will hunt the Hand of Crota, a recommended LL 130 Knight Major. While successful in doing so, the Knight retreats back into a tunnel where Omnigul is. The pair pushes forwards.
Toland, left to his own devices, goes and seeks out Ir Yût, the Deathsinger. Somehow, he convinces her that he is an ally, and he hears her Deathsong, splitting his soul from his body. His goal complete.
Eris stumbles upon Omar, strapped to an altar in a room full of Hive pupae by the Heart of Crota, a recommended LL 130 Wizard Major. The Heart flays his Light to feed to the cocooned Hive. Eris runs. Omar dies.
Eris sees Sai Mota, Ghostless, using the bones of Acolytes as ice picks to climb her way up and out of the Hellmouth. Near the top, Omnigul snipes her and she falls thousands of feet to the Stills to her death.
"Mota was so close -- clawing her way out with bones torn from the Acolytes. Her fall -- Omnigul. You honor her." - Eris - Acolyte Rung, Legendary Hunter Gauntlets
Eriana-3 somehow makes her way to the Stills at the bottom of the Hellmouth, where Alak-Hul stalked. Sending off her dying Ghost with a message of regret, begging Wei Ning for forgiveness, and blaming all of this on Toland, she somehow makes her way to the bridge to Crota's Throne World. Here, she casts Radiance and charges at Crota head-on before being snuffed out.
Eris makes a Wish on her Ahamkara bone. This robs her of her sight, but she implants the eyes of a Hive to restore her vision. She spends years in the Hellmouth hiding from and studying the Hive. Eventually, she escapes as well, a few months after The Guardian expels the Darkness from the Black Garden, and quickly begs them to finish what Eriana started.