Wow, thank you @greateasternsun, pretty humbled by your post.

I don't have any formal education in branding or marketing, just a bunch of experience.

I think that the word Story can be interchanged with Goal, or plan. This may be a term in actual brand theory that you're referring to, but to me, the story, goal or plan, is situational to what the brand is trying to achieve. It is the X that is set by what is trying to be achieved by the entity.

Are you a company that just developed a programing language that is really easy to use and beginner friendly? Then X is what will reach your target audience. In this case, you're probably wanting your interfaces to be minimal, your design modern, your user experience should have a goal conveying the feelings of simple, responsive and intuitive.

In my experience, X should always come down to what is going to pull the interest of the most logical audience with the entity and it's brand.

Now if you wanted to incorporate more into a brand, not just what is going to work the best with the target audience. Then history of the entity can come into play, and be used to leverage a deeper meaning. This is something that Microsoft did with their brand, and it's definitely a good way to do things, especially if you're transitioning to modern practices.

This is, of course my perspective. I hope that is what you wanted to see!