Cabal
| The Cabal | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Classification | Militaristic alien empire |
| Homeworld | Torobatl |
| Leadership | Empress Caiatl (Imperial Cabal); formerly Emperor Calus and Dominus Ghaul |
| Allegiance | The Cabal Empire; allied with the Last City under Caiatl |
| Subgroups | Red Legion, Shadow Legion, Loyalists, Imperial Cabal |
| First appearance | Destiny (2014) |
The Cabal are a species of huge, heavily armored aliens who run one of the largest military empires in the galaxy. They are patient, disciplined, and almost impossible to move once they have dug in, and they settle nearly everything by force. For most of their history the Cabal grew by conquering one world after another and folding the survivors into their war machine, and that habit of total war is what eventually carried them into the Sol System.
Guardians first met them as scattered legions strip-mining Mars, but the Cabal became humanity's central enemy when the Red Legion, under Dominus Ghaul, stormed the Last City and cut every Guardian off from the Light. Years later, after their homeworld burned and their exiled emperor turned against his own people, a battered remnant of the Cabal under Empress Caiatl set the old grudge aside and fought beside the City.
Biology
Cabal are massive and thickset, standing well over two meters and weighing several times what a human does. What looks like fat is mostly muscle. Their grey, leathery hide, deep-set eyes, and tusked faces have earned them a reputation as brutes, but they are trained soldiers rather than animals.
They evolved on a warm, humid world and cannot survive most environments unprotected. Every Cabal wears a sealed, climate-controlled pressure suit, so a breach is dangerous: wounded Cabal vent gas and leak an oily fluid, and a ruptured suit exposes them to air they cannot breathe. They are also very long-lived, with some individuals lasting well over a thousand years. In extreme old age their bodies slowly turn to stone.
The Cabal share their ranks with the Psions, a smaller, psychically gifted species they conquered long ago and pressed into service as engineers, pilots, and fire support. Psions stayed second-class members of the empire until Caiatl freed them.
Society and Military
The Cabal Empire is a monarchy sitting on top of a strict, meritocratic army, where rank is earned in battle and the best soldier gets the higher command. By tradition a Cabal army that marches to war is exiled from the empire until it returns victorious, which gives every campaign a desperate edge. The Cabal are said to have no word for retreat; Caiatl's order to fall back from their burning homeworld was the first such command any Cabal leader had ever given.
Their forces are split into Legions, each with its own role, commander, and banner. The ranks run, roughly from the top: the Dominus, a supreme military dictator (a title Ghaul seized for himself); the Primus, who commands a Legion; the Valus and Val, who lead elite units; and the Bracus at the bottom of the officer ladder. Caiatl created the new rank of Optus for the Psions she freed.
History
The Mars campaign
The Cabal arrived in the Sol System after the Collapse as scouting legions, built a beachhead on Phobos, and invaded Mars. What started as a mining and salvage operation grew into a long, grinding war once they uncovered Vex ruins and collided with the machines. Guardians fought their Mars commanders for years, killing leaders such as Valus Ta'aurc of the Siege Dancers inside his personal land tank.
The Red War
Two years after the Hive god Oryx was defeated, Dominus Ghaul brought the elite Red Legion to Earth and took the Last City in a single brutal assault. He shattered the Tower, captured the Speaker, and clamped a vast cage onto the Traveler, draining its Light and leaving every Guardian powerless. Ghaul believed the Light had chosen the wrong champions and that he alone deserved it. He also aimed a sun-killing superweapon, the Almighty, at the Solar System as a threat.
The Guardian recovered their Light from a shard of the Traveler in the European Dead Zone and fought back across the system. In the end Ghaul tore the Light from the Traveler by force, but the power he stole was hollow because it was not freely given. When he tried to ascend, the Traveler woke and destroyed him, ending the Red War. For the first time in its history, the Red Legion had been broken.
Calus and the Leviathan
Around the same time, the Cabal's exiled former emperor, Emperor Calus, arrived aboard his enormous pleasure-barge flagship, the Leviathan. Calus had been deposed long ago in a coup led by Ghaul and cast out with his loyal followers. He invited Guardians aboard the Leviathan as his "Shadows" and offered the leaderless Red Legion a place at his side. His robotic double and his servants became the targets of the Leviathan raids.
The fall of the homeworld
The Cabal's fortunes collapsed further when Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War, turned her attention on them. Her rituals razed Torobatl, the Cabal capital, and killed billions. Caiatl, Calus's daughter, was shot down during the defense, gave the first retreat order in Cabal history, and rose to become Empress. She brought her people to the Sol System, freed the enslaved Psions, and looked for allies.
Alliance and the Coalition
Caiatl first demanded that the Vanguard kneel, and the dispute was settled through a Rite of Proving, a series of ritual war-games rather than open slaughter. After the Vanguard's champions won, the two sides reached a truce. When Savathûn unleashed her Light-wielding Hive during The Witch Queen, Caiatl committed the Imperial Cabal to the Vanguard's side for good, becoming a core member of the Coalition that would stand against the Witness.
Lightfall and the Final Shape
Calus did not follow his daughter. Adrift, he answered the Witness and was remade as one of its Disciples, leading a new army called the Shadow Legion with stolen Pyramid technology. During Lightfall he invaded Neomuna on Neptune in search of the Veil, and the Guardian killed him for good. His death did not stop the Witness, which used the moment to begin its march toward the Final Shape. The Shadow Legion fought on under the Witness until that army, like the Witness itself, was undone in the Pale Heart during The Final Shape, where Caiatl and the Imperial Cabal joined the final battle.
In later stories a breakaway Cabal force, the Barant Imperium, rose under new leaders who reject Caiatl's alliance and want to destroy the Last City and reclaim Torobatl.
Legions
The Cabal field many Legions, each built for a purpose:
- Red Legion: the elite world-conquering army of Dominus Ghaul, shattered during the Red War and later absorbed by other forces.
- Loyalists: the followers exiled with Calus aboard the Leviathan.
- Shadow Legion: Calus's army in service to the Witness, using Pyramid technology.
- Imperial Cabal: Empress Caiatl's personal army and the Coalition's Cabal arm.
- Skyburners, Sand Eaters, Dust Giants, Siege Dancers, Blind Legion and the Ice Reapers: older legions that fought on Mars and at Saturn, most now folded into the Red Legion or destroyed.
Combatants
Cabal soldiers favor heavy armor, blunt force, and artillery. Elite units carry a regenerating elemental shield that drops fastest to matching damage.
- War Beast: a tamed, armored attack animal used as a fast melee threat.
- Psion: light, mobile support troops who fire from range and unleash short Void psychic blasts; elites carry a Void shield.
- Legionary: the backbone of the infantry, equipped with jump jets and a range of slug and projection weapons.
- Phalanx: a defensive trooper who carries a large energy shield that forms a moving wall and can shove Guardians back.
- Gladiator: a fast, durable melee fighter with dual cleavers.
- Incendior: a pyrotechnic soldier with a magma launcher that sets the ground alight; elites carry a Solar shield.
- Centurion: a field commander with jump jets and a Solar shield; many named bosses are Centurions.
- Colossus: a heavy soldier with a slug thrower, homing back-mounted missiles, and a wide melee shockwave; elites carry an Arc shield.
- Scorpius: a deployable automated turret that lays down a relentless barrage.
Vehicles and craft include the Interceptor, the Goliath Tank, the aerial Thresher gunship, and the Harvester dropship.
Notable Cabal
- Dominus Ghaul: the gladiator who overthrew Calus, declared himself Dominus, and led the Red War. Destroyed by the Traveler.
- Emperor Calus: the deposed emperor who became a Disciple of the Witness. Killed by the Guardian at Neomuna.
- Empress Caiatl: Calus's daughter, the current leader of the Cabal and an ally of the Last City.
- Valus Ta'aurc: a Mars war commander killed inside his land tank.
- Val Ca'uor: a Red Legion commander who tried to seize the Leviathan.
- The Consul: the disgraced advisor who raised Ghaul and engineered the coup against Calus.
Fighting the Cabal
Match a shielded Cabal's element to strip its shield quickly: Centurions and Incendiors use Solar, Colossi use Arc, and Psions use Void. Phalanxes block fire with their shields and bash forward, so flank them or shoot the gaps. Colossi suppress with slug fire, rain homing missiles, and knock back anything that gets close. In harder activities the Cabal appear as Barrier Colossi and Unstoppable Incendiors, which must be stunned with the matching counter before they can be hurt.
Trivia
- The Cabal were the second enemy faction shown in Destiny, after the Fallen.
- Many of their unit names come from the Roman military, including Legionary, Phalanx, and Centurion.
- Along with the Taken, the Cabal are one of the few factions with no suicide-bomber unit.
