What on earth am I doing... I'm... Oh God... I'm AGREEING (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, June 13, 2016, 23:47 (3178 days ago) @ Ragashingo

In some ways it does seem odd. In others though, I think Guardians are something entirely different from what the universe has ever seen. My sense of it from what we've done, from what the Grimoire has said, and from what little Bungie has said in various places is that Guardians are far more powerful than anything even the Hive have encountered.

Our ability to return from death, to weild Light directly, to naturally interact with and reverse the corruption of Light (as we did when killing Oryx) are abilities that have never been witnessed before. Perhaps the Traveler had such power but I get the sense that the philosophy of the Light was to heal and build communities and uplift but not to directly fight... Until Rasputin nuked the Traveler.

When that happened and Ghost and Guardians were created the war of Light vs Darkness changed. Now the Light is on the offensive, pushing out from The City in the form of us Guardians. And yes, the Darkness is powerful and through the Hive it destroyed thousands of worlds, but the Light is powerful also... If used in the wrong way.

See, I also hope that when the Traveler awakes, it will denounce us as preverting the Light. We are destroyers, not builders. We're more following the Hive's Sword Logic of being the last creatures in the universe standing that we are terraforming worlds and building communities.

Again, though, this is something I think Bungie has not told us and has to be inferred almost entirely, which is dumb.

This all sounds right to me.

The grimoire makes it clear that the Hive hierarchy is entirely derived from individual power. The strength of the ONE. One Oryx. Then his vassals. Then their vassals. And so forth, like a feudal society. And here come the Guardians, as a TEAM, who are able to defeat him. But it muddies the equation. The guardians are not individually strong (except that one sunsinger who solo'd Oryx), but they are strong together. This is a type of fight the Hive have never had to face before?

And why not? Because - as we know from the Fallen - the Traveler is a coward. He runs, he hides, he uplifts races and then - as the darkness approaches - he runs away again.

But when he was crippled by Rasputin, he made an act of desperation and raised the ghosts to bring the powers of light to bear in ways that had never been unleashed upon the universe. Violently.

In many ways, the guardians are too powerful for their own good. We are immortal, amoral, and relentless. Single-minded and greedy. And virtually unstoppable. We have to compunction about our need to kill, and we celebrate our military victories with dances and sparrow flips, showing bravado that gave the cabal pause.

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In my opinion, the single biggest step in the overall story was the moment when Ghost told us we weren't the first guardian he tried to bring back. THAT was a revelation.