The namesake of this site, the Anathematic Arc, is a goofy bit of lore. It’s mentioned in The Hidden Dossier, a big lore book that’s a combination of the Witch Queen Collector Edition’s physical booklet and 30 pages of additional lore available through an ARG.
This bit is deep in the ARG part, where Ikora and Arach Jalaal discuss the Truth To Power lore book, an infamous book from Forsaken that turned out to be written by a lying Savathun (who, at the time, was getting most of her power from tricking people). Ikora says:
Ahamkara believe that by transforming themselves, by metamorphosing from monsters into treasures, they become more real. More important ontologically. It is the gap between reality as is and reality as desired that they feed on, Arach. And Guardians are the richest, finest source of reality as desired that they have ever met.
The skulls of dire Ahamkara speak to me. They know I want to know the truth, and so they whisper to me of a path they climb. They call it the Anathematic Arc.
They are going somewhere. Somewhere they consider more real. Guardians are part of how they get there.
What if Savathûn wants to go there too?
There’s a lot going on in this bit of fun, obscure lore, where they discuss the idea of the universe they know as being a pocket dimension or, indeed, a simulation. Is there any greater dramatic irony than two fictional characters discussing whether they’re fictional characters?
But I didn’t pick this name because I think of the Anathematic Arc as a particularly important topic in the Destiny universe. It’s not - it’s a funny fourth-wall break. A similar concept is mentioned in a few Ahamkara armor pieces that speak to the player (the previously-linked Skull of Dire Ahamkara, the Claws of Ahamkara), but otherwise, it hasn’t really come up.
No, the real reason I picked it was this brilliant entry in Truth To Power that can only be obtained through data mining (poorly-sourced on Destinypedia but see this Reddit thread) that reads:
O you wonderful curious things. Do you believe you’re the only ones with the power to see what should not be seen? Did you believe you can use such power blithely?
For your trespass, I would ruin your luck, wreak havoc on your drops, poison your engrams, and fill your lines with static. Thus I would curse you and dissipate the bond that ties you to your tasks. How frail you Guardians can be! How many millions have fallen silent, never to return, because the bond did not hold them strongly enough?
But you have already cursed yourselves. You have walked the Anathematic Arc and glimpsed creation from below. You will never forget the tenuous, provisional framework you found here. You will never forgive the mortality and fallibility that underlies a world you thought was everything.
Those who use this power to seek unearned knowledge will see more than they ever desired. There is a price for glimpsing the Cord. You will pay it.
There is indeed a price, and it’s, well, one the Ahamkara are readily familiar with: understanding the history of Destiny is likely to make you keenly aware of the gap between what is desired and what exists, just, y’know, in the context of a video game.
As you read about scrapped plans, cut content, fired writers, reused areas, it’s easy to start to desire a perfected Destiny - one that was planned from the ground up as a coherent universe, with a sensible business plan and content roadmap, with a stable core team with a shared vision aligned with their playerbase. Doesn’t that sound nice?
But keep in mind: what we got is a pretty good game. Not an all-timer. One that will probably never be held up in the rafters alongside Halo. But one that’s captivated me, and millions of others, for over a decade. And we got a game with a lot of mystery, the kind that causes us to nerd out about lore on calls with our friends in between shouting raid call-outs. And we got a game that, sometimes, when the stars aligned just right, could live up its promise for brief moments, and maybe that’s enough.