The Techeuns have been gathered and the Festival of the Lost is over, and so we've entered a period of Destiny 2 in which, uh... not a lot is happening. Bungie is still keeping busy with its weekly adjustments and tweaks to the Trials of Osiris, and it's been really fascinating to watch the process as the developer works to enhance that mode. But November is something of a catch-up month for Destiny 2 players. We've got some time to kill.
I missed last week's Iron Banter, so this is a good catch-up opportunity for me as well. Rather than talk about the ongoing Trials experiments once again--we'll probably do that next week--this feels like a good chance to look around the world of Destiny 2 and think on all the things that haven't been a part of the Season of the Lost. A lot of story ideas are in motion in various corners of the solar system, and it's not clear where they're headed or how they'll converge. So let's talk about the threads that remain dangling.
The Missing Emperor And The Struggling Empress
Calus was an ominous and constant presence in the solar system up until recently, so what happened to him?
Last season, before Osiris was revealed as Savathun and we were semi-going to war with Cabal Empress Caiatl, we spent a lot of time on the Glykon, the derelict Cabal ship that served as the setting for the Presage mission. Central to that mission was a singular question: What happened to Emperor Calus, formerly of the Leviathan that sat in our solar system for years?
This is something I've been meaning to bring up here for a bit, and just as I was preparing to do so, YouTuber lore daddy Byf dropped a video running down similar questions and thoughts. As always, his is a good assessment of the situation and its greater implications.
Byf focuses on the question of whether Calus is dead--something suggested by the whispers you can hear within the Glykon, some of which are Calus' voice, some of which are the voices of other dead folks. We've seen for a while now that the Darkness has some connection with the dead and can use their voices, so hearing Calus in there suggests he might have bought it during the big communion experiment at the center of Presage's story.
But characters this season have acknowledged that Calus is, to some degree or another, still a variable. We know from the Presage mission that the Glykon managed to enter one of the anomalies where the planets missing from our solar system used to be, and we know he managed to use the Scorn and the Crown of Sorrows, in some way, to seemingly talk to the Darkness. And then he disappeared. That's a lot of setup just for him to die offscreen, seems like.
So the question is, what does Calus communing with the Darkness mean, what happened to him, and when will he be back? Is he still something of a pal to us, given how much we helped him over on the Leviathan? The Calus situation might linger in the background for a while, but this feels like an essential piece of the puzzle as we near Lightfall in 2023.
I'm going to use this opportunity to plug my half-defunct Destiny lore Tiktok project that I may or may not ever return to.
Meanwhile, Empress Caiatl isn't a major part of the current season, but she's definitely still a player in the overall picture. Caiatl has popped up in background lore from time to time, and even sent a message to Zavala asking if the Cabal and the Vanguard should team up to nuke the Dreaming City as a way to eliminate Savathun. Zavala turned that idea down, but diplomatic talks are still open with the Cabal Empress, who has been actively engaged in battling the forces of Xivu Arath. We know Crow is currently liaising with the Cabal, and an angry Lord Saladin has been paling around with them too, infuriated by the Osiris/Savathun betrayal.
Caiatl has a score to settle with Xivu Arath and we spent a whole season earning her respect while refusing to bend the knee and join her empire. Seems like further developments for an alliance--or not--are forthcoming, and the political situation has changed. Caiatl demanded Zavala pledge fealty because the honor and strength customs of the Cabal required it. But there's a war on and the Hive are gunning for everyone, and Caiatl seems more pragmatic than stalwart. I'm expecting more Cabal negotiations to kick off sooner rather than later, maybe as soon as Vanguard missions start delving into Savathun's throne world.
The Friendly Harpy
The Harpy could be the key to future diplomacy with the Vex, as well as building the robots as actual characters.
The Season of the Splicer ended with a Vex incursion into the City, and with it came a moment in which you could find a Vex Harpy that wasn't aggressive, but instead seemed to try to communicate. The Morse code message the Harpy seemed to be saying was "Assistant," which everyone in the Destiny 2 community took to mean that former Io quest-giver Asher Mir was trying to contact us.
Questions linger about the Harpy's deal--had Asher been transformed or downloaded into the robot, or was he using the robot sort of like a walkie-talkie to make contact from some other place? Either way, it suggested a kind of "inside man" within the Vex collective, and potentially, a way to make the Vex allies themselves. After all, in the Season of the Splicer, the Vex seemed to be enthralled by the Quria, a Taken Vex mind under the control of Savathun. Thus, Savathun presents as much a threat to the Vex as she does to everyone else.
There's a lot we just don't know about the Vex generally, but we do know they're used as a weapon, to some degree, by the Darkness. The Glassway Strike on Europa is all about how the Darkness told Clovis Bray to build a portal to a Vex planet, only for the Vex to invade Europa in response. It seems like we're due to actually start interacting with the Vex as a people though, and the Asher/Harpy connections seems like an in-road to do that, especially as we move toward facing Savathun.
The Sisters Bray And The Warmind
Elsie worked to change the Dark Future timeline of her origin to save Ana, so there's definitely more to see with both characters.
A big part of the Europa expansion was understanding the drama of the Bray family, with the Exo Stranger revealing herself as Elsie Bray, sister to Ana Bray (formerly quest-giver on Mars) and granddaughter to Clovis Bray (megalomaniacal Golden Age inventor of Exos and all-around bastard). Elsie also told us her whole deal: She's been traveling from timeline to timeline, affecting changes in an attempt to keep the solar system from falling to the Darkness. So far, she's failed--a lot. This time, she's trying something new: namely, all the stuff with us, and a different approach to dealing with Ana.
In the future that Elsie has seen, the Dark Future lore book, we find out that the Darkness and Stasis manage to corrupt a huge number of Guardians. That includes Eris Morn (more on her in a second), who becomes the leader of the bad guys, overtaking even Savathun. The Vanguard and remaining champions of Light in the solar system eventually lose everything, especially when it turns out that Ana was a double agent working for Eris all along, and Elsie is forced to kill her.