Earlier this week, Bungie announced Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the Year 4 Fall Expansion. Guardians will be traveling to Europa alongside Eris Morn, The Drifter, and the Exo Stranger. There, this team will unlock the secrets of the Darkness and learn how to harness Stasis, a new Darkness themed elemental energy. However, Europa is also home to a large force of the Fallen, led by Eramis. Eramis, formerly known as the Ship-Stealer, has taken the title Kell of Darkness at the seat of a new Fallen Empire. Guardians will have to go up against Eramis, her new army of Fallen, and whatever darker forces reside on Europa.

This expansion, while it may not be immediately obvious, is going to define the future of the Fallen, one of Destiny’s most popular enemy races. The Fallen, known in their own language as the Eliksni, were once an incredibly powerful force in their own Star System, and had been visited by the Traveler as humanity was. However, they were also met with their own Collapse, called the Whirlwind. Unlike with Humanity, the Traveler abandoned the Eliksni when the Darkness arrived, and after the Whirlwind, the Eliksni tried to follow it desperately. Known to them as the “Great Machine,” the Eliksni went from a proud and advanced species to scavenging pirates, the Fallen.

The Fallen chased the Traveler all the way to the Sol System, and one of the first alien species humanity encountered, alongside the Vex. Their arrival, however, also signalled the earliest stages of the Collapse of the Golden Age. During this time, the Fallen thrived across the system, particularly on Earth and Venus, where they established the powerful and prominent Houses we encountered in Destiny. However, as time passed, some Fallen would take other paths. Variks, the friendly Vandal from the House of Wolves DLC, allied himself with Queen Mara Sov when her Awoken fleet easily conquered the House of Wolves and Mara declared herself their Kell. This also drove a wedge into the relationship between the Fallen Houses. The House of Wolves was meant to aid in a large assault on the Last City and the Traveler: The Battle of Twilight Gap. Without the Skolas and the House of Wolves, the other Fallen were defeated by the Guardians protecting the city.

The Fallen would rise briefly to prominence during the SIVA Crisis. A splinter group of the House of Devils known as the Devil Splicers uncovered a powerful nanite technology: SIVA. SIVA was used to ressurect Sepiks Prime, the Devil's Prime Servitor, and the Splicers also used it to augment their own bodies. With the help of Lord Saladin, the last Iron Lord, Guardians defeated the Splicers and ultimately defeated their leader, Aksis, Archon Prime. The SIVA Crisis was the last major activity from the Fallen until after the Red War.

Things came to a head before and during the events of the Forsaken expansion. Uldren, who had been corrupted by the Taken Ahamkara Riven, helped create the Scorn, a sub-species of Fallen corrupted by Dark Ether. The Scorn were captured and placed in the Prison of Elders, but escaped rather quickly when Variks betrayed the Awoken to try and resurrect his ancient House of Judgement. The Scorn and the Scorned Barons stressed the forces of the House of Dusk, which was lacking leadership following the murder of the Kell of Kings by Uldren and the Fanatic. Around this same time, Guardians learned that a subset of the Fallen largely abandoned their old systems to work under the Spider, who despises the system of Kells and Houses and believes they must do whatever it takes to survive.

Without real leadership, the Fallen began to fracture. Some of them remained loyal to the House of Dusk banner, while others rallied under Variks, and more under the radical anarchist group The Kell’s Scourge, led by Siviks, Lost to None. Siviks, the Spider’s Brother, was one of the escapees from the Prison of Elders, but his radical views against the traditional Fallen structure led him on a path to create his own group.

One of the most important splinter groups that formed rallied under Eramis. Initially captured and sent to the Prison of Elders during Skolas’s rampage during the House of Wolves DLC, Eramis was known for stealing ships to supply the House of Devils. However, once she was freed following the Scorn Prison Break, she began to rally Fallen under the forgotten banner of the House of Devils. Rather than return to noble glory they held during their own Golden Age like Variks wants, or abandoning their traditions like Siviks and the Spider have done, Eramis wants to reestablish the House of Devils as it was during the Dark Age. Initially, she attempted to do this by breaking into the ruins of the Tower to steal Outbreak Prime from the Cryptarch Vaults. However, this is where the second major player stepped in to help us stop her: Mithrax. With Mithrax’s intel, Guardians were able to enter the Tower and stop Eramis’s underlings from stealing the SIVA fueled weapon. Now, Eramis has travelled to Europa, where she is breaking all the unspoken rules the Fallen hold dear. Rather than fight the Darkness and reclaim the Great Machine, Eramis wants to harness the Darkness to exact revenge on it for destroying their society. With the Fallen largely fractured, many have allied with Eramis.

Of course, there are other options. Fallen who have not joined Eramis’s up-and-coming House of Darkness have very few other choices. There are some, like the Fallen on the Moon, who still rally under the Dusk banner, but without leadership they will fall to infighting and Guardian incursions. However, a large majority of the Fallen will be forced to fall into the other three categories: House of Judgement, the Spider’s Syndicate, or the House of Light. We’ve already talked about Judgement and the Spider’s Syndicate, the House of Light is far more intriguing than either of these.

Rather than fighting back against humanity and Guardians in an attempt to retake the Traveler by force, Mithrax and his newly formed House of Light want to work alongside Guardians. Mithrax was originally a member of the House of Dusk, but after being spared by Guardians during a mission on Titan, he went on to respect them. He even went as far as to ally himself with a Warlock and a Hunter to form their own Fireteam. It was with this Fireteam that Mithrax declared that he would form the House of Light, a house built around aiding Guardians and serving the Traveler.

With the arrival of Beyond Light, the Fallen have to make a choice. Do they stand with Eramis, who defies their most basic beliefs; do they stand with Variks, whose betrayal unleashed the Scorn onto the Sol System; or do they stand with Mithrax, who has aligned himself with the very people who have fought and killed their brethren for centuries? It will be a hard choice to make, but the choice must be made.