And, more interesting info: Switching to Nvidia's driver today resolved the issue for me, but it appears X is trying to start before nouveau finishes initializing. I think this may still be systemd, as reducing the number of active cores on the machine also resolves the issue.
- Bug#774020: systemd: black screen with backlight on st... allan
- Bug#774020: systemd: black screen with backlight ... allan
- Bug#774020: systemd: black screen with backlight ... Wojciech Aniszewski