You have to kill someone in two bursts with a blast furnace for it to be faster than three bursts from a bygones and at least on console that's really hard to do.
Where the original Vance was, before he was murdered by the Osiris stalker that is currently impersonating Vance.
I still have no idea what those writers were thinking with him, and why anyone okay’d that to go out to the public
. . . wait, what?
I feel a bit more than a bit behind.
Brother Vance, the vendor on Mercury, was also in Destiny 1. He was in charge of Trials of Osiris back then, and had a totally different personality and basically 0 dialog. People really really don't like him in Destiny 2, so @ronzo was just making a joke.
Ah!
I don't find Vance any more annoying than any other vendor in D2. I mean, he's got a serious fanatic feel to him, but in many ways so do some of the other guardians.
Back in D1 days, and even D2 prior to the first DLC, we didn't really know anything about Osiris beyond the fact that he'd been exiled by the Vanguard for delving too deep into Vex secrets or something and that there was a time-traveling exo who showed up a couple of times in the D1 "story" that apparently worked for him. Then Vance shows up being all enigmatic and handing out sweet loot for Trials, including passage to this cool and mysterious space on Mercury. Knowing nothing really about the Cult of Osiris we all assumed they were cool and that Vance was serious business.
Then Curse of Osiris came out and turned Vance into a joke character whose primary claim to fame is being an Osiris fanboy. Osiris himself appears to have nothing to do with the Cult, Trials was apparently just something Vance did on his weekends off or something, and it just generally turned this whole area of uncertain lore into a shallow, silly thing.
I don't personally care much about Vance because I never got into Trials and basically assumed we'd never find out anything about Osiris after the infamous "I think we know everything there is to know about The Stranger" statement back in D1 but a lot of people were highly disappointed with how that whole thing played out.
Vance isn't even just an Osiris fanboy, he is a pathetic Osiris fanboy. He is played for laughs, like a lot of Y1 content, and never given any weight or heft to be anything but a joke.
Yeah, Vance being a fanboy would have been a lot more palatable if he'd been a more respectable one.
Like the ninja guy in John Wick 3. Total fanboy but also a badass ninja.
As it stands there's no obvious reason why Osiris puts up with the Cult beyond the fact that most of the time he's probably not even aware they exist. He's off doing whatever in the Infinite Forest - probably spawning another copy of the dendritic mind for funsies - and Vance is just up there in the tower wondering whether senpai will ever notice him and organizing book club meetings.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I kind of prefer fanatics to be portrayed in a joking or negative light, so for me it basically fit right that he was sort of a goofy fanatic of Osiris, an "as if a god" guy who actually just happens to be a fairly powerful time manipulating Guardian.
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I kind of prefer fanatics to be portrayed in a joking or negative light, so for me it basically fit right that he was sort of a goofy fanatic of Osiris, an "as if a god" guy who actually just happens to be a fairly powerful time manipulating Guardian.
I don't think any of us were expecting the "Cult of Osiris" to be a religious cult worshiping Osiris.
We had Eris Morn, then Toland the Shattered as an examples in D1 of a non-Vanguard guardian who had delved too deep into the lore of one of the Darkness species. They clearly were a bit wrong in the head thanks to all the exposure to Hive magic but they didn't seem to worship the Hive's Worm Gods. I think we all (or at least me in particular) expected Osiris and his Cult to work something like that. People who had carved out a space on Mercury and reforged Vex machinery to work for them, shunned by the Vanguard for deriving power from a source other than the Traveler's Light.
Osiris as a guardian who basically did that while his Cult actually worshipped him for some reason was also a part of the unpleasant surprise in Curse of Osiris.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I kind of prefer fanatics to be portrayed in a joking or negative light, so for me it basically fit right that he was sort of a goofy fanatic of Osiris, an "as if a god" guy who actually just happens to be a fairly powerful time manipulating Guardian.
I don't think any of us were expecting the "Cult of Osiris" to be a religious cult worshiping Osiris.
We had Eris Morn, then Toland the Shattered as an examples in D1 of a non-Vanguard guardian who had delved too deep into the lore of one of the Darkness species. They clearly were a bit wrong in the head thanks to all the exposure to Hive magic but they didn't seem to worship the Hive's Worm Gods. I think we all (or at least me in particular) expected Osiris and his Cult to work something like that. People who had carved out a space on Mercury and reforged Vex machinery to work for them, shunned by the Vanguard for deriving power from a source other than the Traveler's Light.
Osiris as a guardian who basically did that while his Cult actually worshipped him for some reason was also a part of the unpleasant surprise in Curse of Osiris.
Usually when I see "Cult of" anything, it makes me think of fanatics and zealots willing to throw away their lives in service to a worthless cause, so I have a feeling I'd not have been as disappointed. Since this is my first Destiny game, everything here is just presented as-is to me, so Vance is just . . . this.
I do find Morn (is Toland that disembodied voice on the moon?) to be more along the lines of some lost soul that dove into Lovecraftian Hive magics too deep, and came out worse for it, and yeah, that's kind of cool if a bit tragic.
I think what I appreciate most is the tastes of other sci-fi and even fantasy elements that Destiny just borrows from, it feels actually like its greatest strength is its ability to have these disparate elements combined into something cohesive. Like, Mars in D2 reminds me of Doom, the EDZ reminds me of half a dozen post apocalypse stories, the Hive have elements of Aliens and Lovecraft to them, the Cabal sort of remind me of the large warlike stupid creatures in The Fifth Element, the Vex seem to get all the time-travel stories all mixed in to one, etc. It's just kind of fun to see what bits of other concepts and games filter in to this one.
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I kind of prefer fanatics to be portrayed in a joking or negative light, so for me it basically fit right that he was sort of a goofy fanatic of Osiris, an "as if a god" guy who actually just happens to be a fairly powerful time manipulating Guardian.
I don't think any of us were expecting the "Cult of Osiris" to be a religious cult worshiping Osiris.
We had Eris Morn, then Toland the Shattered as an examples in D1 of a non-Vanguard guardian who had delved too deep into the lore of one of the Darkness species. They clearly were a bit wrong in the head thanks to all the exposure to Hive magic but they didn't seem to worship the Hive's Worm Gods. I think we all (or at least me in particular) expected Osiris and his Cult to work something like that. People who had carved out a space on Mercury and reforged Vex machinery to work for them, shunned by the Vanguard for deriving power from a source other than the Traveler's Light.
Osiris as a guardian who basically did that while his Cult actually worshipped him for some reason was also a part of the unpleasant surprise in Curse of Osiris.
Usually when I see "Cult of" anything, it makes me think of fanatics and zealots willing to throw away their lives in service to a worthless cause, so I have a feeling I'd not have been as disappointed. Since this is my first Destiny game, everything here is just presented as-is to me, so Vance is just . . . this.
I do find Morn (is Toland that disembodied voice on the moon?) to be more along the lines of some lost soul that dove into Lovecraftian Hive magics too deep, and came out worse for it, and yeah, that's kind of cool if a bit tragic.
I think what I appreciate most is the tastes of other sci-fi and even fantasy elements that Destiny just borrows from, it feels actually like its greatest strength is its ability to have these disparate elements combined into something cohesive. Like, Mars in D2 reminds me of Doom, the EDZ reminds me of half a dozen post apocalypse stories, the Hive have elements of Aliens and Lovecraft to them, the Cabal sort of remind me of the large warlike stupid creatures in The Fifth Element, the Vex seem to get all the time-travel stories all mixed in to one, etc. It's just kind of fun to see what bits of other concepts and games filter in to this one.
Destiny used to also have factions to which guardians might belong. Together they basically ran the City and decided what guardians' efforts should be focused on at any given time. The Vanguard were mostly focused on the day-to-day effort to stave off the alien threats to the system while the faction leadership would steer the long-term strategy. They were around for all of D1 and the start of D2 but since the Faction Rally events got shelved everyone's sort of ignored the fact that factions ever existed.
Anyway, the three factions who made of the consensus in the City were Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, and Future War Cult.
The FWC had a secret "time machine" in their basement which didn't let them travel through time but did let them see the future. It also drove anyone using it insane. They were considered a 'cult' because they were dedicated to doing anything possible to prevent the 'future war' they saw coming in their machine and believed was inevitable without drastic action.
Osiris' cult seemed sort of like that. He'd obviously monkeyed with time travel and was off doing mysterious things for reasons and then one day his representative, Vance, shows up at the edges of known space encouraging guardians to compete for fabulous prizes because such competition was, for some reason, necessary.
If I recall my D1 lore cards correctly I think Osiris was actually a member of another faction who believed harnessing the powers and technology of humanity's enemies was the best way to fight the Darkness. They got voted out of the consensus, basically, and then shunned.
Edit:
Yeah, Toland is the voice on the Moon. He was one of Eris' fireteam members when her fireteam went down in the Hellmouth on the moon and were wiped out by Crota, son of Oryx. Toland was, at the time, the most deeply steeped in Hive magics and when his body was destroyed he was able to send his mind into Sword Space, the extra-dimensional realm where the Hive gods dwell and which they rely upon for space travel and building the Throne Worlds where powerful Hive keep their souls to prevent their own deaths. The transition, followed but atemporal eons drifting bodiless through the screaming void, drove Toland insane but his mind is still out there and periodically gives guardians a little help.
Yeah, the impression the pre-Curse-of-Osiris lore gives is that Orisir was a guy who got deep enough into studying the Vex that it made the City nervous and so they threw him out. Also he was talking some shit that seemed crazy to them and people were listening.
The Cult of Osiris basically seemed like the guardians or the like who had left the city to follow him and were doing some mysterious shit or other with him or at his direction and this was part of whatever unknown thing Osiris was up to.
Then CoS came and took a big old shit over that entire area of the lore. Because D1 Y1 was basically all about flattening out everything in the lore to make it more simple, less mysterious and more conductive to generic AAA action game plotting.
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Like Jim’s FBI prank on Dwight in The Office, we were basically scammed
Bungie tricked us into thinking we were doing something really cool and important in D1 with Trials, and then in D2 they were like “sike chumps, Osiris didn’t give a shit about all the work you did! Vance is probably crazy.” It’s very disingenuous.
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Bungie tricked us into thinking we were doing something really cool and important in D1 with Trials, and then in D2 they were like “sike chumps, Osiris didn’t give a shit about all the work you did! Vance is probably crazy.” It’s very disingenuous.
From following various Bungie Narrative members on twitter, it seems they've had to combat a lot of internal meddling from a certain representation of "Internet Bro Culture", which most recently led to reinforcing the memetic perception of Shaxx and Mara fucking in spite of narrative members apparently disliking how that obscures/diminishes the gay "subtext" of Mara's story as told in Forsaken. They're clearly trying to revise/retcon much of what went on during D2Y1, but I bet we'll continue to see a lot of misguided upending of expectations and dubious "humor".
From following various Bungie Narrative members on twitter, it seems they've had to combat a lot of internal meddling from a certain representation of "Internet Bro Culture", which most recently led to reinforcing the memetic perception of Shaxx and Mara fucking in spite of narrative members apparently disliking how that obscures/diminishes the gay "subtext" of Mara's story as told in Forsaken. They're clearly trying to revise/retcon much of what went on during D2Y1, but I bet we'll continue to see a lot of misguided upending of expectations and dubious "humor".
Wait, what.
I thought Shaxx and Mara were, in lore, a thing and not an Internet meme.
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From following various Bungie Narrative members on twitter, it seems they've had to combat a lot of internal meddling from a certain representation of "Internet Bro Culture", which most recently led to reinforcing the memetic perception of Shaxx and Mara fucking in spite of narrative members apparently disliking how that obscures/diminishes the gay "subtext" of Mara's story as told in Forsaken. They're clearly trying to revise/retcon much of what went on during D2Y1, but I bet we'll continue to see a lot of misguided upending of expectations and dubious "humor".
Wait, what.
I thought Shaxx and Mara were, in lore, a thing and not an Internet meme.
It is in lore, just the destiny community isnt very mature and made a lot of crass jokes about it
"Mara and Shaxx in the lore" is based on one book where Mara has Shaxx come read her the Tempest.
"The helmet stayed on" is intentionally interpreted to read sexytimes because people want sexytimes.
Shaxx then wanting to be with Mara is also in the Lore, though Mara reciprocating is not supported, as far as I can tell.
It's also in the lore that Mara and Sjur Eido were romantically (and sexually) involved. I can buy Mara not really caring about gender, but they really played up the "deep in love" angle with Sjur such that the throwaway fling with Shaxx is a bit jarring to try to resolve
It is in lore, just the destiny community isnt very mature and made a lot of crass jokes about it
But like, it's the internet
Sure, that's what the Internet is for. Crass humor.
Meta's post confused me because it made it sound like Shaxx & Mara were not in the lore and I had thought they were.
To clarify, the Shaxx & Mara thing started as this goofy lore card on a piece of Raid gear, which generated many memes, and which was then reinforced with the recent promotional vid for Crimson Days. Based on the context of tweets from this Bungie narrative member (which may have been deleted), she disagreed with the decision to reinforce the lore card, as from her (and Seth Dickinson's) perspective Mara was very intentionally written as gay in Marasenna (etc..).
I thought that Shaxx's entry for the Dawning and then followed up in The Vow reinforced that while Shaxx may be smitten with Mara, it doesn't seem like Mara notices/cares/reciprocates.
Which I find acceptable. Shaxx, this legend, this myth, this force of nature, simply doesn't know how to handle the feelings inspired by Mara, who as always remains supernaturally aloof and indifferent (to anyone but Sjur).
I get why Bungie goes the route of stoking their fanbase, and I find this threads the needle of paying respect to both the story of Mara and Sjur but also inspiring community adoration.
Vance lore: The comic they did for Curse of Osiris was a large mistake and a problem. It's kind of bad that they reinforced that as a thing with their hardcover Destiny comic collection... And this isn't to shit on the creator, I think Ryan North is great and love TONS of his comic book work. It's just jokey jokes for days that are contradicted by even the bad story of the DLC itself! There's a part of the comic that says Osiris wrote out some of the stuff he was working on and then distributed it throughout the Tower so that people would have a greater understanding of the Vex threat, among other things. Even as a joke... how could that POSSIBLY have become mysterious and ominous sounding prophecies? If someone intercepted the work and reprinted it in a completely different way... why did they do this? What was their motivation for thinking he would want them to do that? Why didn't he step in if he thought the information was important? If he intentionally wrote them as religious prophecies... why the hell would he do that? That would be like if Shaxx started listing the rules for Elimination as a religious sutra instead of as just like... basic instructions for a task. Bizarre and out of character. I think part of the problem is that Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 seem to understand the time frames involved differently. D1 wrote the heroes of the older ages as LONG past into legend, where even people who knew them might start to forget and allow for the details to change. The way 2 is written, it would be like if a cult sprung up around this thread, 10 years from now. And you could just... go and quickly read it and confirm the cult was insane bullshit. I got the sense from D1 lore that there might have been many Speakers over time, and the one who Saint considered a father might not have been the guy we met. D2 pretty much negates that possibility entirely, as I understand it.
Shaxx lore: Shaxx seems... confused by interpersonal relationships. The Vow lore entry implies that he thinks marriage is a sort of vague connection between any people who like each other, and considers himself married to... thousands of Guardians? This is a stark contrast to Ana's monogamous and adult romantic relationship or the similar one described between Mara and Sjur in the Forsaken lore. So it's unclear how serious Shaxx would be about being into Mara. I could definitely see Mara entertaining casual liaisons many, many years after her real, true love had died.
To be fair to the various writers, I think whomever makes the highest-level decisions about "The Destiny Canon" has either been replaced a couple of times or else has just completely changed their mind about what the story should be, to the point where I don't think 'ret-con' even applies. It's just completely different stories that have some of the same characters and events in them. In D1 that sort of worked because everything was vague and ephemeral. Lore cards seemed to come from completely different ages where things worked differently. Like, I couldn't even tell you with any particular certainty in what order the Fall of the Iron Lords, the duel between Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor, the Battle of Twilight Gap, and the deaths of Eris Morn's fireteam took place. In D2 they've gone for much more thorough inspections of stuff that sort of forces the universe into more a rigid structure. That rigidity lends itself to a brittleness that the old, vague structure didn't have.
As for Mara... I have a hard time imagining Mara Sov having a one-night stand with anybody. She's hot, sure, but she's effectively a god. Bumping uglies with Shaxx, helmet on or not, seems like the wrong...scale for something she'd do.
I got the sense from D1 lore that there might have been many Speakers over time, and the one who Saint considered a father might not have been the guy we met. D2 pretty much negates that possibility entirely, as I understand it.
The Speaker's lorebook from this season (or was it last season?) makes clear that he is the most recent in a long history of Speakers, but that connection to the Traveler had dwindled considerably by the time he was born and it's not clear to him whether anyone can still achieve a "true" connection to the Traveler that previous Speakers were presumed to have.
As to Saint-14's relationship to Nighy Speaker and the nature of temporal proximity, I didn't think we had any previous knowledge that Saint-14 thought of any Speaker as a father figure, but certainly the fact that most folks in the Destiny Narrative are quasi-immortal makes crafting these relationships between characters the players can interact a very tempting proposition.
I honestly though the Vow lore spelled out that Mara just wanted to be friends with benefits with Shaxx, who was straight up in love. I would think that Mara having a relationship or a consort or whatever you want to call it would be a decent anchor for her, so she doesn't lose touch with humanity.
I enjoy the notion that the player's omnicidal adventure through space and time has claimed history as a victim.
I'm reminded of the storyline to WoW. If you were to plot it out from the player character's perspective, you're left with something to the effect of them being their own many greats removed grandfather while existing simultaneously in a variety of contradictory timelines.
Didn't the Shaxx/Mara thing happen hundreds of years ago or am I crazy
It happened sometime between Twilight Gap[1] (several centuries ago) and when we killed Riven in Last Wish, although it's implied to be closer to the latter than the former:
Mara stared at the Wall of Wishes. She had no more bargains to make. Her plans were in motion.
There was nothing left but the wait.
She pulled a sidearm from a hidden holster and cracked a dozen rounds into the Wall.
The cosmic balance shifted. Somewhere in the Dreaming City, Riven heard the Queen's wish and a thousand shrieking tears in reality cut through the space in front of her.
Lord Shaxx suddenly blocked Mara's view of the Wall.
"—YES, AND WE'D ALL BE DEAD!" He was screaming at no one, with a mug of caffeine in his fist.
He started, almost spilling his coffee. "Where are we?"
Mara slapped the mug out of his hand. It shattered on the floor. She shoved a weathered book in his face. "I told you there would come a time when I collect for the Reef Wars. Read this. Out loud."
"No one tells me what to do," he said, grabbing the book and incinerating it in a bolt of Striker lightning. "I can recite The Tempest by heart." And he did. Mara sat and listened. They stayed for a long time.
[1] The Reef Wars were when the Awoken fought the House of Wolves in order to prevent them from joining the rest of the Fallen Houses at Twilight Gap
I don't have god rolls, but i have good enough; i'm not some bleeding edge perfectionist that I need to have X gun with Y, Z talents and specific stuff. I think what gets me is I started in on getting a perfect scout but I have Randy's so when am I gonna use something else? Vorpal? For what? Bosses? Randy's does the job in the crucible, and how often is that perfectly rolled vorpal gonna a) be equipped and b)have time enough to put down that dawnblade who is about to oneshot me? I appreciate the ease of getting a lot of loot, to some degree, but the hassle of donating and sorting it in the terrible UI says, "Naw, gonna do something else."
Maybe I just donate and let it all go to the postmaster and get eaten, I donated 200k, I did my part.
Done:
Trophy Hunter - god roll with Extended/TT/Vorpal and a disruption/lead from gold roll
Steelfeather Repeater - Grave/Swashbucker/Vorpal and FF/MKC/Osmosis
Black Scorpion - Fluted/Zen/Rampage/Range MW
Bygones - Outlaw/KC
Line in the Sand - God Roll Rapid Hit/Firing Line
Infinite Paths 8 - Demo/Zen Moment
JQK3 - Demo/Snapshot and Threat/Surrounded
Travelers Judgement - FF/TtT and FF/Surrounded
Definitely Still Working On:
Perfect Paradox - Threat/Trench, Demo/1-2P, Demo/Opening shot - Want to condense the Trench and 1-2 Punch rolls, maybe get a slightly better PvP roll.
Breachlight - God Roll Demo/Vorpal, also Demo/Osmosis and Outlaw/MKC - Want to condense the Vorpal and Osmosis rolls into one gun
Patron of Lost Causes - I have a god rolled Rapid Hit/EP/Osmosis, and good Full Auto/Vorpal, but I wouldn’t mind a Full Auto/Vorpal/EP.
Might work on/Don’t really care:
Galant Charge - Would be cool to have my exact pve roll but also have TtT as an option.
Martyr - not many options, good with my demolitionist roll
Last perdition - y2 vendor roll is already solid
Pyroclastic Flow - Kind of want an Ambitious/Cluster/Fast Reload, but since rockets are eh….eh if I don’t get it.
Basically, I’m just trying to condense my Paradox, Breachlight, and Patron god rolls from 3 down to 2 frames to save vault space.
I’m really surprised how many “good enough” rolls I have for most of the guns, and I’m really pleased I got the god rolls for Trophy, Line in the Sand, Bygones, and Breachlight out of the way early. The double final perks on 8 of the guns really goes a long way to making this easier.
The way I read the Shaxx/Mara relationship is that he's into her and she thinks he's an amusing plaything. Like, literally a thing: she treats Guardians as objects, not people.
Bit of good advice from reddit: if you are done grinding for timelost weapons, and just want the resources from dismantling frames, spam trophy hunters or pyroclastics. If your season rank is high enough, those two will drop a higher masterwork level and have a much higher chance of dropping enhancement cores over the other weapons.
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Also RE: Bygones talk from the other day, my Bygones with Kill Clip in action-
Back in D1 days, and even D2 prior to the first DLC, we didn't really know anything about Osiris beyond the fact that he'd been exiled by the Vanguard for delving too deep into Vex secrets or something and that there was a time-traveling exo who showed up a couple of times in the D1 "story" that apparently worked for him. Then Vance shows up being all enigmatic and handing out sweet loot for Trials, including passage to this cool and mysterious space on Mercury. Knowing nothing really about the Cult of Osiris we all assumed they were cool and that Vance was serious business.
Then Curse of Osiris came out and turned Vance into a joke character whose primary claim to fame is being an Osiris fanboy. Osiris himself appears to have nothing to do with the Cult, Trials was apparently just something Vance did on his weekends off or something, and it just generally turned this whole area of uncertain lore into a shallow, silly thing.
I don't personally care much about Vance because I never got into Trials and basically assumed we'd never find out anything about Osiris after the infamous "I think we know everything there is to know about The Stranger" statement back in D1 but a lot of people were highly disappointed with how that whole thing played out.
He has one good line about us doing Ikora's job for her.
Like the ninja guy in John Wick 3. Total fanboy but also a badass ninja.
As it stands there's no obvious reason why Osiris puts up with the Cult beyond the fact that most of the time he's probably not even aware they exist. He's off doing whatever in the Infinite Forest - probably spawning another copy of the dendritic mind for funsies - and Vance is just up there in the tower wondering whether senpai will ever notice him and organizing book club meetings.
I don't think any of us were expecting the "Cult of Osiris" to be a religious cult worshiping Osiris.
We had Eris Morn, then Toland the Shattered as an examples in D1 of a non-Vanguard guardian who had delved too deep into the lore of one of the Darkness species. They clearly were a bit wrong in the head thanks to all the exposure to Hive magic but they didn't seem to worship the Hive's Worm Gods. I think we all (or at least me in particular) expected Osiris and his Cult to work something like that. People who had carved out a space on Mercury and reforged Vex machinery to work for them, shunned by the Vanguard for deriving power from a source other than the Traveler's Light.
Osiris as a guardian who basically did that while his Cult actually worshipped him for some reason was also a part of the unpleasant surprise in Curse of Osiris.
Usually when I see "Cult of" anything, it makes me think of fanatics and zealots willing to throw away their lives in service to a worthless cause, so I have a feeling I'd not have been as disappointed. Since this is my first Destiny game, everything here is just presented as-is to me, so Vance is just . . . this.
I do find Morn (is Toland that disembodied voice on the moon?) to be more along the lines of some lost soul that dove into Lovecraftian Hive magics too deep, and came out worse for it, and yeah, that's kind of cool if a bit tragic.
I think what I appreciate most is the tastes of other sci-fi and even fantasy elements that Destiny just borrows from, it feels actually like its greatest strength is its ability to have these disparate elements combined into something cohesive. Like, Mars in D2 reminds me of Doom, the EDZ reminds me of half a dozen post apocalypse stories, the Hive have elements of Aliens and Lovecraft to them, the Cabal sort of remind me of the large warlike stupid creatures in The Fifth Element, the Vex seem to get all the time-travel stories all mixed in to one, etc. It's just kind of fun to see what bits of other concepts and games filter in to this one.
Destiny used to also have factions to which guardians might belong. Together they basically ran the City and decided what guardians' efforts should be focused on at any given time. The Vanguard were mostly focused on the day-to-day effort to stave off the alien threats to the system while the faction leadership would steer the long-term strategy. They were around for all of D1 and the start of D2 but since the Faction Rally events got shelved everyone's sort of ignored the fact that factions ever existed.
Anyway, the three factions who made of the consensus in the City were Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, and Future War Cult.
The FWC had a secret "time machine" in their basement which didn't let them travel through time but did let them see the future. It also drove anyone using it insane. They were considered a 'cult' because they were dedicated to doing anything possible to prevent the 'future war' they saw coming in their machine and believed was inevitable without drastic action.
Osiris' cult seemed sort of like that. He'd obviously monkeyed with time travel and was off doing mysterious things for reasons and then one day his representative, Vance, shows up at the edges of known space encouraging guardians to compete for fabulous prizes because such competition was, for some reason, necessary.
If I recall my D1 lore cards correctly I think Osiris was actually a member of another faction who believed harnessing the powers and technology of humanity's enemies was the best way to fight the Darkness. They got voted out of the consensus, basically, and then shunned.
Edit:
Yeah, Toland is the voice on the Moon. He was one of Eris' fireteam members when her fireteam went down in the Hellmouth on the moon and were wiped out by Crota, son of Oryx. Toland was, at the time, the most deeply steeped in Hive magics and when his body was destroyed he was able to send his mind into Sword Space, the extra-dimensional realm where the Hive gods dwell and which they rely upon for space travel and building the Throne Worlds where powerful Hive keep their souls to prevent their own deaths. The transition, followed but atemporal eons drifting bodiless through the screaming void, drove Toland insane but his mind is still out there and periodically gives guardians a little help.
The Cult of Osiris basically seemed like the guardians or the like who had left the city to follow him and were doing some mysterious shit or other with him or at his direction and this was part of whatever unknown thing Osiris was up to.
Then CoS came and took a big old shit over that entire area of the lore. Because D1 Y1 was basically all about flattening out everything in the lore to make it more simple, less mysterious and more conductive to generic AAA action game plotting.
Bungie tricked us into thinking we were doing something really cool and important in D1 with Trials, and then in D2 they were like “sike chumps, Osiris didn’t give a shit about all the work you did! Vance is probably crazy.” It’s very disingenuous.
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From following various Bungie Narrative members on twitter, it seems they've had to combat a lot of internal meddling from a certain representation of "Internet Bro Culture", which most recently led to reinforcing the memetic perception of Shaxx and Mara fucking in spite of narrative members apparently disliking how that obscures/diminishes the gay "subtext" of Mara's story as told in Forsaken. They're clearly trying to revise/retcon much of what went on during D2Y1, but I bet we'll continue to see a lot of misguided upending of expectations and dubious "humor".
I thought Shaxx and Mara were, in lore, a thing and not an Internet meme.
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It is in lore, just the destiny community isnt very mature and made a lot of crass jokes about it
But like, it's the internet
Meta's post confused me because it made it sound like Shaxx & Mara were not in the lore and I had thought they were.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
"The helmet stayed on" is intentionally interpreted to read sexytimes because people want sexytimes.
Shaxx then wanting to be with Mara is also in the Lore, though Mara reciprocating is not supported, as far as I can tell.
So memes.
Also that new cutscene
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To clarify, the Shaxx & Mara thing started as this goofy lore card on a piece of Raid gear, which generated many memes, and which was then reinforced with the recent promotional vid for Crimson Days. Based on the context of tweets from this Bungie narrative member (which may have been deleted), she disagreed with the decision to reinforce the lore card, as from her (and Seth Dickinson's) perspective Mara was very intentionally written as gay in Marasenna (etc..).
Destiny lore is great.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Which I find acceptable. Shaxx, this legend, this myth, this force of nature, simply doesn't know how to handle the feelings inspired by Mara, who as always remains supernaturally aloof and indifferent (to anyone but Sjur).
I get why Bungie goes the route of stoking their fanbase, and I find this threads the needle of paying respect to both the story of Mara and Sjur but also inspiring community adoration.
Shaxx lore: Shaxx seems... confused by interpersonal relationships. The Vow lore entry implies that he thinks marriage is a sort of vague connection between any people who like each other, and considers himself married to... thousands of Guardians? This is a stark contrast to Ana's monogamous and adult romantic relationship or the similar one described between Mara and Sjur in the Forsaken lore. So it's unclear how serious Shaxx would be about being into Mara. I could definitely see Mara entertaining casual liaisons many, many years after her real, true love had died.
As for Mara... I have a hard time imagining Mara Sov having a one-night stand with anybody. She's hot, sure, but she's effectively a god. Bumping uglies with Shaxx, helmet on or not, seems like the wrong...scale for something she'd do.
The Speaker's lorebook from this season (or was it last season?) makes clear that he is the most recent in a long history of Speakers, but that connection to the Traveler had dwindled considerably by the time he was born and it's not clear to him whether anyone can still achieve a "true" connection to the Traveler that previous Speakers were presumed to have.
As to Saint-14's relationship to Nighy Speaker and the nature of temporal proximity, I didn't think we had any previous knowledge that Saint-14 thought of any Speaker as a father figure, but certainly the fact that most folks in the Destiny Narrative are quasi-immortal makes crafting these relationships between characters the players can interact a very tempting proposition.
I'm reminded of the storyline to WoW. If you were to plot it out from the player character's perspective, you're left with something to the effect of them being their own many greats removed grandfather while existing simultaneously in a variety of contradictory timelines.
It happened sometime between Twilight Gap[1] (several centuries ago) and when we killed Riven in Last Wish, although it's implied to be closer to the latter than the former:
[1] The Reef Wars were when the Awoken fought the House of Wolves in order to prevent them from joining the rest of the Fallen Houses at Twilight Gap
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So far have locked in my PvE Traveller’s Judgement, and my Martyr’s Retribution. In about 15K fractaline.
Still need: Steelfeather, JKQ, PvP Travellers, Gallant Charge, Like in the Sand
Maybe I just donate and let it all go to the postmaster and get eaten, I donated 200k, I did my part.
Done:
Trophy Hunter - god roll with Extended/TT/Vorpal and a disruption/lead from gold roll
Steelfeather Repeater - Grave/Swashbucker/Vorpal and FF/MKC/Osmosis
Black Scorpion - Fluted/Zen/Rampage/Range MW
Bygones - Outlaw/KC
Line in the Sand - God Roll Rapid Hit/Firing Line
Infinite Paths 8 - Demo/Zen Moment
JQK3 - Demo/Snapshot and Threat/Surrounded
Travelers Judgement - FF/TtT and FF/Surrounded
Definitely Still Working On:
Perfect Paradox - Threat/Trench, Demo/1-2P, Demo/Opening shot - Want to condense the Trench and 1-2 Punch rolls, maybe get a slightly better PvP roll.
Breachlight - God Roll Demo/Vorpal, also Demo/Osmosis and Outlaw/MKC - Want to condense the Vorpal and Osmosis rolls into one gun
Patron of Lost Causes - I have a god rolled Rapid Hit/EP/Osmosis, and good Full Auto/Vorpal, but I wouldn’t mind a Full Auto/Vorpal/EP.
Might work on/Don’t really care:
Galant Charge - Would be cool to have my exact pve roll but also have TtT as an option.
Martyr - not many options, good with my demolitionist roll
Last perdition - y2 vendor roll is already solid
Pyroclastic Flow - Kind of want an Ambitious/Cluster/Fast Reload, but since rockets are eh….eh if I don’t get it.
Basically, I’m just trying to condense my Paradox, Breachlight, and Patron god rolls from 3 down to 2 frames to save vault space.
I’m really surprised how many “good enough” rolls I have for most of the guns, and I’m really pleased I got the god rolls for Trophy, Line in the Sand, Bygones, and Breachlight out of the way early. The double final perks on 8 of the guns really goes a long way to making this easier.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/02/18/a-destiny-2-obelisk-bounty-god-roll-weapon-guide-for-mass-fractaline-donation/
Also, the Vex! :rotate: