One dedicated Destiny fan delves into the lore of Bungie's sci-fi shooter to create a prequel comic revolving around the Hunter Vanguard known as Cayde-6.

As many Destiny fans are well aware, prior to setting up shop in the Guardians' Earth Tower, Cayde-6—the armor and emblems dealer voiced by popular actor Nathan Fillion—has experienced a pretty interesting backstory all his own, as told through a few anecdotes documented in the game's Grimoire cards. Bearing that in mind, the Destiny fan and professional illustrator Tyler Champion recently took it upon himself to flesh out one of the mechanical merchant's mini-narratives in comic book form and then posted it to Reddit.

The artwork for the three-page one-shot is nothing short of stellar, as the panel placement, line-work, and coloring could easily be found taking up valuable real estate next to fan-favorite DC, Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse titles in comic book shops. While Champion's re-imagining of Cayde-6's failed reclamation of the Moon against Hive forces is objectively well-done, he had to shorten the story a bit in order to maintain proper pacing. The artist's truncated and illustrated version of the piece of Destiny short fiction can be seen below, and the full tale can be found in-game on the Ghost Fragment: Fallen.

[gallery columns="2" link="file" ids="279922,279923"]

Although the story itself was originally written by science fiction author Seth Dickinson (who chimed in to say he “got a little choked up reading it”), Champion definitely deserves some recognition from Bungie in some way, shape, or form. If anything, this might give the studio some incentive to start publishing Destiny comics. And if the company eventually does so, then Champion should be the first illustrator called. After all, Bungie is known for keeping in touch with its community, as it hired the game's Reddit thread moderator as its community manager a while back.

Cayde-6's yarn is one of many examples of the studio's ability to tell decent, engaging tales with Destiny. However, when it comes to the action-RPG's overall plot, many would argue that the narrative as a whole fails to hold up as a cohesive unit

According to rumors, the original story was very different, and offered fans a much more fulfilling experience upon the title's completion. In fact, anonymous members of Bungie's development team recently stepped forward to say that the whole story got rebooted late in production, which caused the lore's current structure to become confusing and muddled.

At any rate, perhaps one of the best ways to move forward with conveying Destiny's backstory and lore with future in-game materials would be to take a page out of Tyler Champion's book and utilize the comic medium's storyboard method. Rather than have fans simply absorb the title's history through text, supplementary artwork might allow for a more engaging experience. Plus, it could help developers pace and keep track of the narrative better than before. Nevertheless, such an idea could prove to be too cumbersome in the long run, as Bungie's current creative process might not be suited to the storytelling style.

Destiny and its most recent expansion, The Taken King, is available now for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Source: Tyler Champion (via Reddit)