The recent posting of the Destiny Plot Summary reminded me of a scene that I had forgotten. The very first mission, in which you have done nothing remarkable yet, the Stranger is observing you. Which begs the question, are you inherently worth watching, or is your ghost worth watching?

My feeling is that it's not our ghost, not unless there is a sort of Merlin prophecy surrounding our ghost where one day he is destined to find "The one that saves the universe". That would be hokey. The only other explanation would be if our ghost were a sort of badass. While Ghost can certainly hack things, he is markedly timid. Always questioning whether something is a good idea, and generally being unsure of himself.

That sort of leaves us as the special one. As the primary protagonist, it would make sense that we were special. But do we have any evidence for why the Stranger would think we'd be special prior to us being found by our ghost? The only evidence I can find for this would be in a Cabal Grimoire card, a story told by a different ghost:

"I thought Mars would be the place to find a Guardian. The sand preserves everything well, and Clovis Bray had been famous for attracting talent. The brave, the brilliant, the footloose, those restless on Earth and itching for fame."

This would imply that not just any dead person will do, which makes sense else the ghosts would just pick someone from within the city walls that had died.

I also do not think it's because of our pure skills, or potential for skill. We can't hardly die with our ghosts around, and an army of Guardians would be insane. No one really shows amazement at our feats. Power is not an issue.

Personal theory: It could be that the Stranger or those she represents are aware of who we used to be. Maybe we were one of them? A badass ghost-less warrior in a previous life would only stand to be more powerful with a ghost. My theory then is that it's our attitude that they're after. We might not be as timid as those guardians before us, but would be a guardian that wants to live life on the edge as the Stranger does.

An Aside: There is a conflict here though. The Stranger appears to be fighting the same war as the Guardians, but they are doing so in a way that those at The Tower must not approve of, else they'd be more buddy-buddy. Since the Guardians "willing gave up the moon" to appease the Hive, it could be that the Guardians represent the passive pansies, and those with the Stranger are the aggressive warriors.

Back to that of attitude vs power, this could be why the Stranger waited until we had done something rather different (gone to the moon) before revealing herself. Yet still she asked us to go even further away from our walls to meet her. She could have met us on the Moon after we completed our quest, but instead the final "test" was to travel to a planet we hadn't been to before. Meanwhile, our ghost is being quite the pansy, asking us if we know what we're doing. Our character has quite the "why the hell not?!" attitude, strikingly similar to our Stranger friend and apparently rather different than those Guardians before us.

To drop an analogy, perhaps the Guardians are the Jedi equivalent, beaten, hiding, and scared, while the Stranger is the rebel forces. Not so singularly powerful but willing to keep taking the fight to the enemy.

Does anyone have any information for or against that theory?

Perhaps the Stranger just so happens to be tracking the fallen nearby and sees your newly-revived Guardian taking on the group of Fallen she was tracking? If so, then maybe something she saw gave her some hope that we might be useful later on and so she starts tracking our movements in addition to whatever other missions she is running. Facing the Hive at the Temple of Crota could simply be additional evidence that our Guardian might be useful resulting in her eventually trying to help us out to find the black garden.

Perhaps the Stranger just so happens to be tracking the fallen nearby and sees your newly-revived Guardian taking on the group of Fallen she was tracking? If so, then maybe something she saw gave her some hope that we might be useful later on and so she starts tracking our movements in addition to whatever other missions she is running. Facing the Hive at the Temple of Crota could simply be additional evidence that our Guardian might be useful resulting in her eventually trying to help us out to find the black garden.

Perhaps, though her doing missions on Earth seems unlikely when there are enemies outside of earth that we "can hardly imagine". Gaurdians also seem to venture to old Russia with frequency, and that was one mission where our Ghost had no qualms going to. Unless she was on vacation? :)

I'm still thinking it's not our power that makes us special. It's something else. Either our willingness to take the fight to the enemy and not stay passive, or else the Stranger and her crew knew us in a prior life.

There is a Grimoire Card about the Exo Stranger:

I stand here now and now and now many times, this view, this ground...

This is where I always choose to stand. I put my feet where I put my feet before and where I will again and I look at the sky.

Great things moving, rendered small with distance, lesser things not moving, watching me.

I always stand here, resolute. Then fall back to that point, there, where everything shatters...

(The sky isn't special here, certainly no better than any other sky, but it's the view I know best.)

The silent avalanche begins. Rock and dust. Falling chaos. Machines, as a rule, hate chaos.

Our enemies outflank us from below, above, left, right, before, beyond. The Traveler - shattering.

There are always the dead. Their names shift.

Sometimes I think I see myself among the dead.

But I am resolute.

I think she is something of a time traveler herself! She and whatever shipmates she talks to after you first battle the Vex on Venus. Could it be she is watching us and influencing us because she knows we have a chance? Or maybe she has influenced us several times before... all those ending in disaster... but this time things are going well?

Certainly the combination of ourselves plus our Ghost is somewhat special since we uncovered Rasputin, disrupted the Hive's plans, prevented the Vex from taking over Venus, pierced the Cabal's exclusion zone, and killed the Vex's god. But really, the special one I think is the Exo Stranger.

That said, there's that as yet unused quote from the late trailers where she said something like: "It doesn't matter who you were, only what you will become." I wonder if she knows both who we were and what we will become?

Time Travel fits. Like the Security Officer from Marathon Infinity, she travels back in time again and again from the doomsday event (the launch of the Trith Xzeem in MI, the destruction of the Traveler by the Vex in Destiny). Each time she pushes the timeline closer to victory.

She's probably watched the origin of every Guardian and tested each. You are the first to make it this far and thus are special.

"But there are those who maintain that her intervention saved their lives - or averted unspeakable catastrophes."

Time and time again she flees the moment of ultimate doom to the past, each turn making changes that improve our odds. The loss at the twilight gap is averted and the city's guardians push out into the wild far earlier. A word to the Speaker causes you to defeat the Hive's attempt to drain the light of the Traveler, causing it to recover faster. On her word, a guardian reactivates the sensors on Venus, allowing Ikora to detect and counter the Vex's attempt to assimilate the planet and delaying the eventual Vex attack on the traveler. Culminating in the attack on the Black Garden where you enable the Traveler to begin to recover, a major step towards our ultimate victory.

At the end of every turn she flees again to the past. Each cycle bringing new opportunities to pull a Dr. Samuel Beckett and put right what once went wrong. Each time brining us closer to victory. Along the way she may have failed, or perhaps she may fail in the future but her past self sees it. Perhaps she will fall one day, only for a Ghost to find her and forge her in light and that is a future self she has glimpsed during the numerous travels back in time.

We can only hope she succeeds before the Sol Imminent hunt her down.

If she's making it better, were any powers making it worse? Are the Vex operating in a similar fashion?

In the VoG, when you return with relics at the final fight, Guardians "make their own fate" and gain a damage boost against Atheon ("Time's Conflux") called Time's Vengence.

What in the world would time need vengence over? Being manipulated by the Vex?

I think it's interesting that it's not just her. Maybe she's the active agent, the one who gets her hands dirty and actively nudges things, but there is a ship and a crew who can get into trouble. They had to hide and power down while she came to rescue them.

Perhaps she is the last of our Golden Age rescuing us? Could we have had time travel capability before the Collapse and only she and her crew escaped The Darkness?

I think there is a reason the Vex returned during the Collapse. They knew of the Traveler and the Darkness from the Sol Imminent mind communicating with the Sol Descendent. So the networks reactivated in the present to gain the cooperation of the Darkness via worship of the black heart while the operation to assimilate the system proceeded. Only the Traveler intervened, and now the Stranger and the Guardians are not following the script. Despite the Vex efforts, we've made our own fate and avoided doomsday.

I think there is a reason the Vex returned during the Collapse. They knew of the Traveler and the Darkness from the Sol Imminent mind communicating with the Sol Descendent. So the networks reactivated in the present to gain the cooperation of the Darkness via worship of the black heart while the operation to assimilate the system proceeded. Only the Traveler intervened, and now the Stranger and the Guardians are not following the script. Despite the Vex efforts, we've made our own fate and avoided doomsday.

Hmm. Were the Vex worshiping the Black Heart because, as speculated, that's the only thing that worked? Or were they doing it to buy time to accomplish their own goals? The Vex are constantly said to be immensely intelligent and computationally powerful. So much so that one Vex unit might be able to simulate several instances of researchers researching it. Could they really only come up with worship as a way to interact with the Black Heart when one Guardian was able to kill it with a rifle?

There's a few armor descriptions that seem to point to guardian's armor not being that special except for the power of light going through it.

Guardians are more than someone with a gun.