the Gardener... (/-/ Rampant Speculation /-/)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:30 (3206 days ago) @ Earendil
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:35

Rasputin gave up, yet somehow the Darkness was defeated or at least stalemated. There is an awesome story there waiting to be told.

I don't think Rasputin "gave up", I think he redefined the rules and goals of the game. Rasputin believes (or believed at one point) that he could "win", but does not say that he can defeat anyone. What he does mention is that he needs to do it alone, without humanity dragging him down.

I detailed more of this back in a post in September (holy crap!).

Ok, this is a bit of a tangent, but bare with me.

Reading your awesome post about Rasputin, the use of the term "gardener" struck me. I agree with your supposition that the Gardener is likely the Traveler. What is fascinating to me is the common assumption that "gardener" is somehow "good" or "benevolent". This made me think of another place where the term "gardener" often comes up: Star Wars. Specifically in the book Traitor.

At one point, Jacen Solo (Han and Lea's son, now a young Jedi knight) has a conversation with a mysterious character named Verger. They are trapped together in a bizarre form of alien slave-camp, along with hundreds of other beings. Jacen is trying to formulate a plan that will allow them to escape without causing harm to any of the other prisoners. Verger suggests that Jacen needs to focus less on saving every single life, and instead focus on saving the ones he can at the expense of the rest. She tells him all he needs to do is choose (who gets to live) and act.

Jacen responds "we have a word for people who think like that: Sith".
Verger replies: "really? Sounds exactly like a gardener to me"*

*I'm paraphrasing here.

Verger goes on to compare their slave-camp to a garden. "Some of these creatures are plants, and others are weeds. Some deserve to flourish, others merely harm the safety of us all". As time in the camp goes by, Jacen begins to see Verger's point. He comes across a small group of thugs that are beating the snot out of another defenseless slave. "Right... some are weeds" he thinks as he dives in to fight them off.

The point that verger was getting at is that being a "gardener" is a burden of responsibility. That responsibility can at times get ugly. Gardeners do not spread life and happiness wherever they go; the cull and cultivate.

This metaphor comes up in other places in the Star Wars fiction as well. One of the Imperial Grand Moffs spends all of his spare time tending his private garden. He grooms it with meticulous detail. He sees his roll as Grand Moff to be very much that of a gardener; maintaining order, preventing chaos, establishing complete control. The first hint of his turn towards "the good side" comes when he remarks that he might let his flowers grow a little more wild in his garden at home.

So going back to Destiny, what can we gleam from Rasputin's use of the word "gardener" in relation to the Traveler. What if there is a dark side to the traveler's actions? What if it can only help some (us) flourish at the expense of others (the fallen?). We know the Traveler once favored the Fallen, and left them in a debased state when it left them. What if the Traveler is not inherently good or evil, but merely trying to maintain its own sense of order? What if the Darkness is a force that somehow feels wronged by the Traveler, and is out for revenge?