In a time of great prosperity, a tyrant king sent his son to live among the people and learn their ways. He did so for many years, until a great calamity befell the kingdom.

In the aftermath, the tyrant's son was changed. The tyrant's son turned away from his father, and became a warrior. The tyrant chased his son across fields and mountains and oceans.

He said, "If I can't have my son, then no one shall."

In the end, the tyrant used his son's love of the people against him. He promised him a miraculous technology that could rebuild the kingdom. When his son came to claim it, he unleashed a plague upon him. His son was destroyed.

And the tyrant looked upon his tyranny and wept.

🎶 Ra Ra Rasputin, Vanguard's greatest war machine 🎶

Next month's Sticker Club offering, with potential for charms later. :3

osiris literally woke up last week and he is already working

Understanding Rasputin via Felwinter

I’ve always waited for someone to ask me this question but you know what, fuck it. I’m tired of waiting! I will be the asker of the question I want to answer! Let’s talk about Felwinter and the Warmind Rasputin! Because we now know Felwinter was a pre-Collapse Rasputin fragment (or more accurately a miniature model), we can analyze him to infer what Red was like before the Darkness rolled into town. 

Here’s what Felwinter tells us about AI-COM//RSPN in his glory days:

Rasputin is not just a machine; he’s a sapient being complete with emotions and desires... Felwinter has a distinct, stable personality, exhibits empathy and a (mostly) normal range of emotions, and forms genuine social bonds. Saladin notes that he has a curiously flat affect and sometimes forgets to blink, but the Iron Lords never doubt Felwinter is a person. If just a fragment of Rasputin behaves that way, we can assume Rasputin himself has the same qualities.

...but he’s not human, and doesn’t want to be. Felwinter also has uncannily still body language, machine-like tenacity and patience, and no sense of irony. While he conceals his specific connection to Rasputin, he doesn’t mask his day-to-day oddities to make people comfortable or pass as a “normal” Exo. He also doesn’t mimic human needs like eating or sleeping even though Exos are capable of doing so. He doesn’t want to be anything other than what he is.  

Rasputin is defensive, not aggressive... From his first moments as a Guardian Felwinter just wants to be left alone. He demonstrates the earliest use of Well of Radiance - taking a sword, an offensive weapon, and reversing it into a defensive tool. He participates in the military pageantry of the Iron Lords for purely pragmatic reasons. When the other Iron Lords are convinced they’ll have to attack Shaxx’s citadel, it’s Felwinter who gets them to hold off while he tries to talk Shaxx around. It’s Felwinter who tries to talk to Cosmodrome-Rasputin before the others go to take SIVA by force. Rasputin wasn’t tasked with waging war on humanity’s behalf; he was tasked with protecting humanity. He’s fundamentally built for defense. 

...but once a fight has begun, he’ll end it. Rasputin may not have any liking for violence, but he doesn’t mind it, either. In line with their general disinterest in warfare, both Rasputin and Felwinter treat conflict as a sour yet necessary chore to be dealt with as fast as possible. According to Saladin, when Felwinter joined a fight, everyone knew about it. We’ve seen Felwinter use Well of Radiance, but we also know he mentored Osiris, the most famous Dawnblade Warlock. The pull quote on Swarm of the Raven says, “With enough altitude, Felwinter's destruction would blanket the field farther than you could see.” It’s safe to assume that Felwinter dealt fiery blows from on high in many a fight. That tallies with what we know of Rasputin’s threat response: there’s the concepts of honor, valor, and military glory, and then there’s an orbital strike. Guess which one he prefers.

Rasputin ruled not out of a desire for power, but a sense of responsibility... When Felwinter finally found a mountain where Cosmodrome-Rasputin couldn’t keep throwing warsats at him, he killed the intransigent warlord who occupied it, moved in, and devoted himself to solitary research and contemplation. He initially ignored the village at the mountain’s base, but bonded over time with the woman who brought their monthly tribute. She tried to convince him his unique abilities gave him a responsibility to defend the village. Felwinter insisted he wasn’t a warlord, didn’t need the village’s tribute, and had neither a desire for its fealty nor an obligation to protect it. Then one day she didn’t come back. That’s when Felwinter takes up the protection of the village and later brings it under the umbrella of the Iron Lords; in fact their continued defense is his only major condition for joining.

Ana Bray makes an excellent point in the beginning of the Warmind DLC: “We never bothered to ask Rasputin what he wants.” Rasputin has never shown any sign he wanted to run the Golden Age. One Grimoire card called him the AIs’ “tacit king,” the “first among equals.” "Tacit” means an unofficial decision agreed upon but not spoken. “First among equals” means he held no special position or authority. In other words, Rasputin didn’t ask to be in charge; everyone just decided he was. He made Felwinter to study himself and discern if he really was the dangerous autocrat the name “Tyrant” made him out to be. Eventually Rasputin must have taken up the role others had defined for him for the same reason Felwinter took up the village’s defense: because he wanted people to be safe and believed only he had the power to do it.

...but he also acknowledges no authority greater than himself. Felwinter earned the moniker “Dark Horse” partly for his unique black chassis and partly because he was kind of the bad boy of the Iron Lords. If he decided a Lightbearer ought to die he freely ignored the Iron Decree that forbade killing Ghosts, and he did it with total confidence in his judgement. When questioned he would supply evidence that his victims had been Ghost-killers/murderers/something worse, but otherwise saw no need to ask or inform anyone else before killing them. To Saladin he simply declared it “operational necessity” and showed no guilt or remorse. Felwinter was 100% comfortable serving as judge, jury, and executioner and never doubted his assessment of the threats his targets posed or his own authority to pass sentence on them.

In one of Rasputin’s earliest Grimoire cards he says, “My will is pure. I do not obey,” and in Warmind he matter-of-factly declares, “I have no equal.” Rasputin answers to no one. He neither solicits advice nor asks permission from anyone about anything, and only rarely bothers to explain himself. He only barely has a concept of “ally” as opposed to “resource.” He has no inherent respect for or faith in the Traveler and prepares a strategy to cripple it if he deems it necessary. More recently he has at most mild interest in what the Vanguard thinks about anything, preferring to keep his own counsel on what actions will best protect humanity - humanity, not Guardians.

Rasputin will do what he thinks has to be done, regardless of ideals... Felwinter has a map of Rasputin’s moral code pre-MIDNIGHT EXIGENT, his current moral territory that permits any and all actions in service of survival, and it’s interesting to see how it runs the gamut. He displays a strong sense of duty and responsibility, seeing power as an obligation to protect rather than a tool of dominance. He doesn’t make decisions based on ego or personal considerations, easily turning over his territory to the Iron Lords as long as his conditions are met. But he also kills the warlord Citan out of hand because he believes Citan isn’t negotiating in good faith and will never stop being a threat. That matches what we know of Golden-Age Rasputin.

...but at the end of the day he genuinely wants to help. Despite his outward cynicism, Felwinter has a deep streak of genuine belief in humanity and, yes, hope for the future. If Rasputin used SIVA as bait, he must have thought Felwinter would chase it, which means he thought Felwinter would risk a great deal for a tool that could kickstart the rebuilding of human civilization - and he was right. Felwinter thinks long-term, and he’s not content with the status quo. He tells Citan he joined the Iron Lords because “they’re going to change the world.” He searches out SIVA in the quest to not just sustain but improve humanity’s situation, at a time when most of the Iron Lords were working to defend their people day-to-day.

Rasputin has a deep-seated connection to the Sun and Solar elemental energy. While he knew a few Void tricks, Felwinter was primarily a powerful Solar Warlock. Rasputin, too, is often linked to Solar. It’s not an accident that his “eye” in the Aurora Reach vault resembled the Sun (a likeness carried through in the Season of the Worthy promo graphics) or that his signature weapons - Sleeper Simulant, Felwinter’s Lie, the Valkyrie javelin - are all Solar-typed. The angelic term “seraph,” used for people or tech associated with him, literally means “the burning one.” Felwinter mentored Osiris, the archetypical Solar Warlock, and Rasputin’s best friend wields the most famous Golden Gun short of Shin Malphur himself. The guy’s got a theme.

The Solar element has a dual role of hurting and healing that mirrors Rasputin’s dual nature - half trying to guide a peaceful society, half wielding tremendous weapons of war. Rasputin also anchored the Golden Age of humanity the way the Sun anchors our solar system. Like the Sun, his influence curved everyone’s lives into certain trajectories even if he himself was a distant figure. And the same way that I’ve said before how the Sun would barely notice if every single planet exploded tomorrow...Rasputin survived the disaster that wiped out the rest of the solar system.

Time to get my tumblr up to date! That scene from the last story mission of season of seraph made me really emotional. I never liked Rasputin a lot (coz what he has done - especially to Felwinter) but with that season I started to grow fond of him. He changed. he grew.

I went to send the Warmind my regards! (I "accidentally" broke into the Warmind bunker from Fallen SABER which is sort of but not quite where I was trying to go - need to go back on Titan or Warlock because the jump needed is really difficult on Hunter). Don't normally get to look around since generally you're in a strike while here, so I took some screenshots for reference.

Seeing Zavala in the cutscene after Cayde's death saying we're not soldiers and giving YW a stern look has... a different impact now. Knowing how much Big Blue has loved and lost and raged and grieved? It adds perspective. He wasn't just telling us that as commander. He was warning us of how much pain we would bring.

And reading how Crow got brutalized just because he looked like Uldren without knowing why? That's our fault. We did that to Crow for the sake of vengeance. Savathun sowed chaos because we allowed it. Crow had to deal with our consequences because we are too godly, too beyond control to be stopped. We are unstoppable in the face of adversity.

Crota. Oryx. Atheon. Ghaul. Panoptes. Xol. Nokris. Riven. Insurrection Prime. Gahlran. The nightmares. The Undying Mind. The Vex of Garden of Salvation. The Psion Flayers. The truth of Rasputin. Savathun's interference. Stasis-wielding Fallen. The High Celebrant of Xivu Arath. Taniks, that Stubborn Bastard. Caiatl's legions. Quria, Blade Transform. Xivu's forces. Savathun herself, reborn in Light. Rhulk, first Disciple of the Witness. And we still keep going. Raids, dungeons, whatever. The Young Wolf is a god amongst gods.

And it was because we were chosen years ago by a little machine with the gift of the Sky.

witness tried loading into the warmind expansion. RIP.

A friend of mine asked me yesterday “what is your favourite fictional world to explore” I answered pretty easily that for me, it was the Destiny games. He sorta laughed at me, said that there wasn’t much to the worlds of those games, they didn’t feel alive and directly compared it to Fallout, saying Fallout is a much better game when it comes to that. (Bethesda Fallout…) He’s right to some extent. However that’s not why I love the environments, nine years ago I played Destiny 1 for the first time and a younger me was captured in the stories of landmarks and buildings falling apart, and why they were like that. It inspired a wonder in me only Breath of the Wild and The Outer Wilds have ever truly matched. I very quickly just took some screenshots around Destiny 2, not the game I fell in love with nine years ago, but a game that still captures my wonder. (P.S I really do not like Bethesda Fallout, you see how this has galvanized me)

concept art of Charlemagne for a warmind fixit i will hopefully have enough spoons to sketch out some day. if canon doesn’t want to do cool things with its lore then i’m stealing the ideas and nesting on it like a cranky hen.

In response to recent developments.

Ana "fingerguns" Bray showing she means business 👉👉👉😡

THEM

Non-English speaking Destiny fans, this is a general call for input: this season (Season of the Seraph), how is “warmind” being translated? I recall the translations for the Warmind DLC not being what I expected, and illuminating; for instance French rendered Rasputin’s title as “Esprit Tutélaire” or tutelary deity and German rendered him as “Kriegsgeist” or “War-[Spirit/Mind/Ghost].”

Inktober day 28: "watch", featuring the warmind Rasputin