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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity (/-/ Rampant Speculation /-/)

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 14:27 (3178 days ago)

I've never seen this discussed before, but in the Human Fragment 1 grimoire card, commander hardy talks about the Traveler being active on Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, and then now they are going to meet it on Mars. He wonders what will happen if it goes to Earth.

But if the Traveler went to Mercury and Venus from Jupiter, then to Mars, that means it purposely skipped over Earth! If it wanted to help us, why would it pass us by purposely? Something doesn't add up. Also Brother Vance says in game that the Speaker is a charlatan, so Osiris must know the real deal.

I think it's pretty obvious, but not that is wasn't already, that the Traveler might not be benevolent toward humanity.

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Orbital Mechanics Does not work that way!

by Durandal, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 14:33 (3178 days ago) @ Cody Miller

To paraphrase the newsmonster :)

The visitation order can be explained by the Traveler moving to the next nearest planet in order of distance. As each planet does not move at the same orbital period around the sun the traveler could easily hit Mercury or Venus before Earth as Earth could be on the far side of the Sun at that time.

It isn't as if it arrived during some great conjunction with all the planets aligned in a row.

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Orbital Mechanics Does not work that way!

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 14:45 (3178 days ago) @ Durandal

To paraphrase the newsmonster :)

The visitation order can be explained by the Traveler moving to the next nearest planet in order of distance. As each planet does not move at the same orbital period around the sun the traveler could easily hit Mercury or Venus before Earth as Earth could be on the far side of the Sun at that time.

It isn't as if it arrived during some great conjunction with all the planets aligned in a row.

I should load up starry night and look at where the planets are during the 14 months of its arrival!

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You know the correct year?

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 14:54 (3178 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I wasn't aware we had any concrete dates at all.

Anyway, yeah, orbits could account for that kind of skip but so could the Traveler's goals. Maybe it saw that the Earth was just fine and worked on the other planets instead? We have direct evidence that it terraformed our solar system and the Eliksni seemed to have liked what it did for them. So much so that they followed it to our system after their version of the collapse.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 14:55 (3178 days ago) @ Cody Miller

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 15:04 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

Yeah, but we have a lot more evidence that it was a force for good. Clovis Bray and the Ishtar Collective would not have even existed without The Traveler most likely. I think it was either injured fighting The Darkness or Rasputin hit it with an "annihilation-pumped caedometric weapon" as he went into hiding.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Beorn @, <End of Failed Timeline>, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:02 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.

If *I* were a sphere that had sustained Major Damage, I would probably rotate myself so as to hide the damaged area and expose my strongest areas to the most likely attack vector (aka, space).

Ha, can't believe I never thought of that.

by someotherguy, Hertfordshire, England, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:05 (3178 days ago) @ Beorn

- No text -

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I wouldn't rotate 180 degrees, though...

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:07 (3178 days ago) @ Beorn

At most 120, so I can get 4 major attacks far from each other, as opposed to 2 very far and every other subsequent attack pretty close to one another.

I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by SilverBrin, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:19 (3178 days ago) @ Beorn

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.


If *I* were a sphere that had sustained Major Damage, I would probably rotate myself so as to hide the damaged area and expose my strongest areas to the most likely attack vector (aka, space).

If I were a sphere you'd see me around more. =(

But seriously what is the ulterior motive for sustaining damage to protect humans? Is there a value on earth worth sacrifice?

I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Earendil, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:24 (3178 days ago) @ SilverBrin

But seriously what is the ulterior motive for sustaining damage to protect humans? Is there a value on earth worth sacrifice?

I doubt the traveler sustained damage on our behalf. The Darkness wasn't after us, but after the traveler. Maybe the traveler could have run and saved its self from damage, or maybe it was ambushed and "landing" on earth was it's only option. Maybe it was ambushed and thought that humanity was as good a reason as any to make a final stand. I don't think we know.

But I don't think the Darkness came for Human's, and the traveler stepped in the way of the first swing.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:27 (3178 days ago) @ Earendil

But seriously what is the ulterior motive for sustaining damage to protect humans? Is there a value on earth worth sacrifice?


I doubt the traveler sustained damage on our behalf. The Darkness wasn't after us, but after the traveler. Maybe the traveler could have run and saved its self from damage, or maybe it was ambushed and "landing" on earth was it's only option. Maybe it was ambushed and thought that humanity was as good a reason as any to make a final stand. I don't think we know.

But I don't think the Darkness came for Human's, and the traveler stepped in the way of the first swing.

My favourite theory is that it was going to flee the darkness and leave us, as it did the Fallen, and Rasputin(or someone similar) was all like "OH NO YOU DON'T" and destroyed it's propulsion systems, forcing it to stay and fight.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:59 (3178 days ago) @ Earendil

We have some hints:

Ghost Fragment: The Traveler:

You have lived as invisibly as possible, flicking from solar system to solar system, making grand plans, overseeing the culturing of civilizations, before leaving in a blink. But you have no recollection of ever wanting worship or even thanks from those blessed by you.

But memory is heavy now.

It feels like lead and neutronium and electroweak matter fashioned into a moon-sized ball that you must carry as you move.

Now, your flight is rapid, your vast mind infected with such dread and toxic doubt that you find yourself afraid of the simple act of thought.

And it is your children you must turn to now, in time of need.

Ghost Fragment: The Traveler 2

This has been such a long chase. This will be the place you will fight. Fight and win.

But do you really know why you go where you go, and where this journey is taking you?

The chase leads you where you need to be, you believe.

Unless...you are being pushed.

Perhaps The Traveler was just doing it's normal terraforming / uplifting thing when The Darkness attacked? And it looked for help from the only allies it had at the time? Or maybe it was a bit more involved than just settling over our planet? We know it stopped the Vex from taking over Venus.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Durandal, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:28 (3178 days ago) @ SilverBrin

It could just be that the anti-grav units on the intact side work better and so the Traveler orients that way by default. The traveler could have had shielding that failed catastrophically at one point and suffered the long term damage described in the "pearl" Alpha Lupi card, and then floated down to the point on Earth where it sits now.

Whatever automatic defense systems are still operational as a survival reflex, allowing survivors to build the city underneath as humans are seen as allies still.

I prefer to think that the City is one of the last bunkers of humanity, that it's location isn't random happenstance, and this is the scene of the Traveler's epic last stand.

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

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Reminds me of this gc.

by iconicbanana, C2-H5-OH + NAD, Portland, OR, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:39 (3178 days ago) @ Durandal

On Rasputin giving up

by Earendil, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 17:07 (3178 days ago) @ Durandal

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!).

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the Gardener...

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:30 (3178 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?

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the Gardener...

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:47 (3178 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

We know The Traveler helped the Fallen and then something (almost certainly The Darkness) happened to them. I don't believe we know if The Traveler was there at the time. And it certainly doesn't seem like it left them destroyed. Variks recounts it as: "First , the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past." Skolas said: "Remember the hope that brought us here. Remember the age before the Whirlwind, when ether ran free, when we ruled ourselves and our futures as kings."

In both cases it looks like The Fallen had a Golden Age. Maybe The Traveler abandoned the Fallen, or maybe it did what we're told it always did: "flicking from solar system to solar system, making grand plans, overseeing the culturing of civilizations, before leaving in a blink." and The Darkness came later?

That said, The Traveler has certainly pruned some gardens as well. It halted the Vex when they took over Mercury and started to take over Venus. It drove The Darkness out of our system to a large extent. So it does help and hurt, but so far it seems like it has only hurt the weeds...

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A Small Aside

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 19:13 (3178 days ago) @ Earendil

In that cool discussion of Rasputin there was a side tangent on where the Hive got their power. The best known example detailing where Hive Wizards got their power says:

Their strength is not their own. They draw from another force, something that corrupts, that distorts, that eats and will not be satisfied.

That's got to be Oryx, right? The Hive had a shrine to Oryx which was communing with some power outside our system. Oryx pulls creatures out of our universe, uses The Darkness to corrupt them, then sends them back as Taken. Even DestinyTheGame.com says:

A dark shadow has fallen over our worlds. Oryx, The Taken King, is hell-bent on vengeance and is raising an army of corrupted “Taken” forces by manipulating the Darkness itself.

Ikora also once remarked about The Darkness that we defeated in The Black Garden:

We must assume the abomination was part of something greater. And we cannot flinch from the terrible, obvious comparison: just as the Traveler acts through us, this power was able to act through its own servants.

So, ultimately the Hive (or perhaps just Crota's group of Hive?) drew power from Oryx who ultimately gets his power directly from The Darkness?

^ This ^

by Earendil, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:25 (3178 days ago) @ Beorn

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.


If *I* were a sphere that had sustained Major Damage, I would probably rotate myself so as to hide the damaged area and expose my strongest areas to the most likely attack vector (aka, space).

Also, one doesn't need to be a sphere to understand that protecting a wound is instinct :)

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probably flipped over to keep bird crap from falling in ;)

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 16:36 (3178 days ago) @ Earendil

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THAT'S why it's white!

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 17:06 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

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Vex death goo, bird crap, same difference, amirite?

by Kahzgul, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:07 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 17:36 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.

The grimoire mentions the damage was done on the trip to Earth. I doubt we shot it.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:19 (3178 days ago) @ Cody Miller

i mentioned awhile back that all the damage to the traveler was on the bottom, as if we were shooting up at it.


The grimoire mentions the damage was done on the trip to Earth. I doubt we shot it.

Which card says that? We know The Traveler was being chased and hunted. We know from Ghost Fragment: Traveler 3 that it was attacked and badly wounded when it stayed to defend us. We have lots of evidence that The Traveler was in our system when The Darkness attacked. But I don't see anything in the Grimoire that tells us The Traveler had suffered damage before coming into our system or while making its way around our system.

The only evidence I could find at all that The Traveler had suffered any damage before the Collapse is some hard to make out surface details in the video where the astronauts first encounter The Traveler on Mars.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:20 (3178 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The grimoire mentions....

the what now? oh yeah that story that i have to unlock in game, but read separately on another device.

thanks for pointing that out though, i did not know that. I'm sure at some point the grimoire will be retconned anyways.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:25 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

thanks for pointing that out though, i did not know that. I'm sure at some point the grimoire will be retconned anyways.

Why would you assume this? Even if I thought it reasonable to think it would happen, the lore in the Grimoire is still not detailed enough, or in the other cases, not related enough to the main story that they would have to retcon anything.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 19:11 (3178 days ago) @ Xenos

Why would you assume this?

Fall of Reach

First contact with Brutes in First Strike, no wait Contact Harvest

Brutes in New Mombasa

Dreadnaught going straight to earth, no wait Saturn

Humans are/are not Forerunners (okay, that one is on 343)

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 19:13 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

You skipped the rest of my post though which is explains why that won't really happen. For them to retconn the Grimoire they would have to go out of their way for no reason.

Edit: Also how is the Dreadnaught going to Saturn a retcon?

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 19:38 (3178 days ago) @ Xenos

Edit: Also how is the Dreadnaught going to Saturn a retcon?

it's implied in the game that it was a straight jump. Chief is in the same room he was in when they left high charity. It gets retconned to them making a pit stop at Saturn so that Miranda, Johnson and Arby can beat him there.

Maybe they always intended for that to be the way it played out, but that's not how it appeared to be in Halo 2.

I'm not upset, I was just saying that it wouldn't surprise me if something changed. All i know about the grimoire is what i've read people speculate about on here, and some of the audio readings that Guardian Radio has done. I haven't expended any time to read them on my own.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 19:40 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

Edit: Also how is the Dreadnaught going to Saturn a retcon?


it's implied in the game that it was a straight jump. Chief is in the same room he was in when they left high charity. It gets retconned to them making a pit stop at Saturn so that Miranda, Johnson and Arby can beat him there.

Ah, I see, I thought you were talking about the Hive Dreadnaught.

I didn't figure you were upset, just stating my opinion that I don't think retconning would make sense in this case. With the books it makes sense, no matter how "canon" they were they were interpretations of official Halo lore by a writer (even if they worked for Bungie). This on the other hand is written and approved by an in-house team.

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I don't think the traveler cares about humanity

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:33 (3178 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

I'm sure at some point the grimoire will be retconned anyways.

Why? So far it's mostly backstory that ties directly into what we're playing in Destiny right now. Retconning the Grimoire would mean retconning Destiny's entire story. Maybe as we go forward we'll see elaborations we didn't expect or fudges to make something line up a little better with new gameplay features, but the Grimoire seems awfully solid so far. Not something that's just going to be thrown out a few years down the road.

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