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Borderlands 3 Eridian Writings

Last Updated: 18 September 2019

Nyriad

“[Nyriad] You. You, who hears me, eons after my time. I have set these words down, even as my mind fractures under the weight of what I have done. Find my words, and remember the their truths in my place. For I am the one who put the Destroyer in its chains. I am the who murdered the Eridians. I am Nyriad.”

Brighter

“[Nyriad] When my atrocity was complete and I returned home, I found no family to rejoin. The others had fled. Our braid.”

Reflection

“[Nyriad] Even death will not end the Destroyer. So long as dark and light, true and false, something and nothing, there will be a Destroyer. I wonder if it, too, has a reflection that it might meet someday. And though I shudder to think of unceasing hunger, my blood runs cold at the thought of unstoppable creation.”

Watcher

“[Nyriad] There was a single Guardian present when I killed the Eridians. It stood and watched from above us in that mechanical crypt. I feared, and perhaps hoped that it would seek to avenge them and strike me down. But it made no motions to save its life-givers as they died. It merely… watched”

Erased

“[Nyriad] The Eridians were neither gods nor demons. They were simply a people whose abilities outpaced their needs, so in their curiosity broke down the walls that should have stayed up. They were, perhaps, fated to be erased at their own behest, like the forest that grows so that it may burn.”

Free

“[Nyriad] What will happen, I wonder when all the Vaults are empty, and all the terrors dead? Will the Guardians still stand their vigil? Will they find a greater purpose? And what is stopping them from finding it now?”

Language

“[Nyriad] We once lived side-by-side with the Eridians, though already the forgetting has begun. There was no fear of one another. Only awe on one side, and a kind of sadness on the other. They never said if they knew their fate before it fell. But they also never said any of us had a choice.”

Side By Side

“[Nyriad] I may be the last to ever learn the Eridian language from one of their own. I have asked so many questions I should have asked them while I had the chance. Like why the Eridian term for “homeworld” also means “first landing”.”

Crypt

“[Nyriad] It was here that I killed them. A billion lives to power a machine. Should it comfort me that they will thrum in its heart forever? Perhaps oblivion would have been kinder. It would have been for me, at least.”

Contained

“[Nyriad] What is the Destroyer? It is a mouth with endless appetite. It is hate that never cools. It is the long shadow cast by our universe against the mouldering sun of the time. It will never truly be contained. Merely made to wait until its chains slip–or are slipped for it.”

Names of the Destroyer

“[Nyriad] The Destroyer. A practical name for an incomprehensible evil. Surely it has had millions of names more poetic or subtle. But none of the civilizations who coined them survived to pass them on, or anything else for that matter. Only the Destroyer itself knows for sure long it has been tearing through the universe… eating its own name.”

Curiosity

“[Nyriad] I do not know how Eridians became aware of the Destroyer. They never spoke of a time before it. But I suspect that they went searching for it, or something like it, and for their curiosity they were rewarded with doom.”

Purpose

“[Nyriad] As the Siren sisterhood, we were the keepers of many answers, but our own nature remained elusive. We never knew our origins, nor our purpose. In this way, we are still undeniably mortal.”

Braid

“[Nyriad] I have never known a time without my sisters. Even when one passes and a new Siren receives her markings, she always finds her way to the sisterhood. It seemed the will of the universe that Sirens be together, our lives entwined like an unseen braid.”

Witch

“[Nyriad] I am Siren. Like the Destroyer, my kind has been called by many names. Oracle. Angel. Witch. Rarely are the names used kindly. I used to hate the ones who feared us, believing them ignorant. I think now, after what I have done, I better understand.”

Hunted

“[Nyriad] Sirens have been hunted for as long as they have existed. Hunted out of fear, out of jealousy, out of misguided greed. The sisterhood was our way of passing down the craft of staying hidden, and staying alive when hiding was no longer an option.”

Gnaw

“[Nyriad] The Destroyer is ever hungry. Perhaps that is obvious when regarding a hoor that gnaws on the edges of galaxies. But its appetite only grew as it the stars, never stopping even to swallow.”

Building Pandora (Part 1)

“[Nyriad] The prison known as Pandora is the most incredible cage ever constructed. An unbreakable lock meant to hold an unceasing evil for all eternity. Even for the Eridians, whose reach could pluck stars from across the void, it was the work of centuries.”

Building Pandora (Part 2)

“[Nyriad] The creation of Pandora took the minds of generations to assemble. It was an impossible task, the scope unthinkable, the cost of failure too greaat. Still, they worked diligently, even as stars in the sky above them began to wink out.”

Lure

“[Nyriad] The momentuous task of caging the Destroyer was made all the more difficult by its intelligence. It understand the beings it consumes and the cultures it dissolves. To trick such a being required a great sacrifice–a lure. Millions of lives that entered Pandora ahead of its captive, tempting it further inward. I can only hope they were already dead when I closed the gate behind it.”

Feeding

“[Nyriad] All prisoners must be fed, even the Destroyer. The Eridians devised of a feeding slot that calls wayward souls to open it every two hundred years. A cruel surprise for these that open this false Vault, but in exchanged the small morsel will keep the Destroyer sedate over the eons. In any case, the victims will not be in pain for long.”

Mantle

“[Nyriad] Pandora’s upper mantle is made of solid Eridium. It is this shell that now holds the Destroyer tightly in its bonds. The pressures and energies at work beneath the surface of the planet are titanic in scale. If the cycle is disrupted in any way, it is entirely possible that the Eridium will force its way to the surface. I fear such a thing might attract the wrong kind of attention.”

Warrior

“[Nyriad] Not all shared the desperate optimism of the Eridians. There were some who hoped to appease the Destroyer and save their own souls by attacking the yet-unfinished Pandora. They were met by another of the Eridians’ creations–the Warrior. Though their coup was obliterated, the Warrior now sleeps in its own Vault, ready to defend it from any who would further trespass against Pandora”

Key

“[Nyriad] The Eridians knew of the flaw in their design. The cost of putting the Destroyer in its chains meant that there was no one left to throw away the key. All they could do was disguise it. And so it will forever hang in the sky, a small, cold, tidally-locked moon, unremarkable even to the dwellers on the surface of the planet.”

Knotted

“[Nyriad] No thread is ever truly cut. It can be tied to another, whether knotted by careful fingers or tangled by chance. Every Siren must decide what will happen when their thread reaches its end.”

Burden

“[Nyriad] To inherit a Siren’s gift is also to inherit her curse. This is the choice of a Siren present with death–pass on the gift and burden someone worthy, or release it, and burden an unknown soul who has no idea that the entire universe is about to want them dead.”

Deal

“[Nyriad] When the Eridians found me, my sisters tried to fight them off. But I stopped them. I saw what lay behind their open hands. I knew that anyone who would ask for my help was already lost.”

Tools

“[Nyriad] I do not believe the Eridians intended the Guardians to be their heirs. Though they are technological marvels, they were held back from true emergence, kept in the dark to be of greater use. I wonder if they resent their creators for it. Even the sharpest knife is still a simple tool.”

Guardians

“[Nyriad] The Eridians left their mark on countless worlds, but few of their creations are uncanny as the Guardians. They are quasi-life, a half-truth, driven by instructions they only partially understand. They are hardly the ideal custodians one would choose to guard the leashed terrors of the universe. But in their resolute imperfection, they at least mirror their creators.”

Consciousness

“[Nyriad] The Vaults operate as self-contained prisons. The Guardians have no need to serve as jailkeepers, only as sentinels at the walls. Why, then, bring them so close to consciousness? What purpose has a thinking spear?”

Keen

“[Nyriad] I suspect that some Guardians are keener than others. I have seen them acting of their own accord and even heard them speak. What spark do they have that the others lack? Was it freely given, or stolen like the fire of the gods.”

Sleep

“[Nyriad] The soul of a Guardian is little more than data to be transferred from one shell to another. I have never seen where they reside if not in their physical bodies, and I suspect I never will. A soldier who cannot be killed in their sleep is a dangerous one.”

Change

“[Nyriad] I have seen Guardians change their own bodies, lengthening their blades or strengthening their armor as they require. I wonder how far they might change themselves now, in the absence of their makers.”

Uncountable

“[Nyriad] Since the Guardians are not bound to individual bodies it is nearly impossible to know how many the Eridians might have made. An uncountable army, hidden below the surfaces of a hundred worlds. We are fortunate that they rarely stray far from their wards.”

Secrets

“[Nyriad] With Pandora sealed, and the Destroyer chained within, the greatest of the Eridians’ secrets is put to rest. It would be folly for me to think, though, that this is the last of them. There are countless other wonders or terrors they hid across the stars before my time. For every Graveward, Traveller, or Timekeeper, there are surely a duzen more slumbering in forgotten Vaults.”

Warning

“[Nyriad] You. You know now all that I know. This was an epitaph, not for myself, but for the world I knew. I have brought ruin to the Sirens, murdered the Eridians, and imprisoned a primordial force of the universe. Perhaps I have earned your hatred or your sympathy. But that is not why I write these words. I havetold you the truth, no matter its hard edges. Before I can put my fractured mind to rest, I must pass one more warning. [Nyriad] You must never find the Seventh.”