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thefirstknife · 7 months

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What are the Tones?

Whomst've asked me this. You're fuelling my unending obsession, thank you.

I posted about the tones before! Most of it is listed in this post! But I'd like to add some stuff now that it's been some time since then.

The tones are noises made by the spires on Mercury (Lighthouses). Whenever someone dies, the spires emit a tone. They basically react to death in various ways, depending on how the death happens; there's different tones to dying to Light as well as different tones to a perma-death. This is peculiar because nobody could hear them except Brother Vance.

He made Trials of Osiris to study them (because it's an endless source of Guardians dying over and over). Mara knew about his research (Trials was accessed in the Reef in D1) and warned him to stop because it's dangerous. It's unclear why. Osiris did the same years later. As a matter of fact, Osiris was super dramatic about it:

"What I have discovered…" "…is dangerous enough to destroy every man, woman, and child in existence. You're meddling with forces outside your grasp," Osiris reprimanded.

The tones are interesting because they're still largely unexplained. Mara implied that they symbolise Guardians being attuned to Darkness and being able to wield it, which is true, but Osiris' reaction implies something more. And it has to be more, because Osiris detected the same tones as coming from the anomalies of the missing planets and from the Pyramids. Long post under:

In my previous post I also connected that to the fact that egregore seems to be emitting some sort of sound/frequency attuned to the same thing: anomalies, Pyramids and, obviously, to the source of it all (the Witness). So there's some sort of frequency in Darkness that is audible and comes from all places connected to the Darkness network (and that network manifests physically as egregore). And in this case, anomalies and Pyramids (and ships infested with egregore like Glykon and Leviathan) are fine; it makes sense that they link to the Witness!

But spires on Mercury? Why them? My bestie made a post recently after we went unhinged (again) because the same lore book that deals with the tones also makes a really strong implication that the Vex were deliberately led to Mercury by the Pyramid Fleet in the Collapse. There, the Vex drained Mercury of Light, hollowed out the planet and used its materials to make the spires (and the Infinite Forest, a simulation engine) and then they waited for the Pyramids to return. Which they did, in Arrivals.

To make things more complex, after Titan came back, it was confirmed that the Witness did not take the planets randomly. There was a purpose to each one being stolen. Mars was taken to search through our Golden Age and Collapse database in order to find where the Veil may have been hidden. This could've been just a random coincidence, but then Titan came back and we learned that the Witness wanted Ahsa dead because Ahsa not only knows the origins of the Witness, but also how to get through the portal (and who knows if she has any other potential powers to helps us get in there or help us otherwise).

Io is unclear, but there are many options; it may have been taken for the Pyramidion and Vex stuff which Asher got ahead of. It may have been taken to study the Tree of Silver Wings (the Witness had another seed it gave Calus in Lightfall), or it may have been taken to study the Traveler's past or the Light in general or maybe something else. The point is, there are options that we can understand.

But Mercury? Zero clue. The only thing that may have been of interest is the Infinite Forest, but Vance sealed it so if the Witness took Mercury for that and couldn't get into the Forest, then Mercury would've been useless and probably released sooner unless the Witness is just keeping it out of spite or thought that maybe it would be able to find a way inside. And of course... there's the spires and the tones. Mercury is somehow linked to Darkness and the Witness, it has to be, and we have no clue what the Witness wants with it.

Not only that, but there's another curious thing about Mercury, or rather, the anomaly of it. It was mentioned in Duality dungeon, by Calus. When Calus tried talking to the Witness on the Glykon, the Witness eventually responded and it told Calus to come to the anomaly of Mercury:

Through the Crown of Sorrow, the Voice in the Darkness called out to me, beckoning me to the absence of Mercury. At first, I feared the Leviathan would not survive the journey, as the Glykon had been rent asunder by a similar journey. By my Leviathan, it is strong. Its heart beats anew, and as it pierced the veil of creation... the Voice greeted me. There were such sights to behold.

So when Calus disappeared off the Glykon, he went back to the Leviathan and bolted straight for the Mercury anomaly in which he was able to communicate with the Witness. Why Mercury? Glykon went into the Mars anomaly. Why couldn't the Witness speak to Calus in there? Or in any of the other anomalies? Why specifically Mercury? This is driving me insane.

But if Mercury is somehow connected to the Darkness network through the spires, is it possible that it serves as some sort of a communications hub? Maybe that's why the Witness is still keeping it? And it still is! We can see it in Root of Nightmares, in the Witness' room. Titan is still obviously there as well because it came out before Titan returned, but Mercury and Io are still trapped. This is also confirmed by the tiny excerpt we can see from the TFS Collector's Edition which I talked about in here.

Or the reason for Mercury is something completely different. We have no clue why Mercury was taken and what's going on there and why the Witness called Calus there and why the tones happened and why are they the same tones that can also be heard from anomalies and Pyramids.

To fuel me even more, they decided to drop two lore pieces in Season of the Deep that relate to Mercury and the tones tangentially. I know literally everyone and their grandma thinks that Targeted Redaction is just there to be funny (and so did I at first), but I genuinely can't accept that as being just a joke. The gist of it is that Osiris has no clue who Vance is and that is, to put it simply, impossible.

Obviously Osiris did not like the Cult and they were annoying to him, but he knew Vance. He spoke to him only once, but Vance is the one who told him to "plant the seed," a message that Mara gave him years before. This literally sets up the entire Season of Arrivals. Not only that, but Vance told Osiris about the tones and Osiris was deeply troubled about them. He's the one who continued the research and went around the solar system after planets disappeared, investigating anomalies and discovering that they emit the same tones. He mentions Vance, by name, twice in Immolant:

"Do you hear that?" Osiris asks, turning to Sagira. He turns the ship's scanning array toward the anomaly. "Like the tones Vance described. From the spires, and then the Pyramids. It was coming from the anomaly that replaced Io as well."

"We could use the Crucible right now. Your trials. This will be very helpful. You mean to stay, yes?" "I will. Long enough to show you how to implement the simulation; but tonight, I must disembark," Osiris says. "So soon?" Osiris tenses his jaw in forced silence. He twiddles with code. "I'm worried about what Vance found."

At the same time, Osiris also sends us the seasonal artifact from Hunt, Fang of Xivu Arath. In it, he mentions:

The zealots that followed me to Mercury have proved themselves useful… twice now, actually. They possessed an artifact in their stores: a Hive fang.

The zealots being useful "twice" refers to Vance telling him about the seed and having this artifact kept safely in the Lighthouse (technically, it's three times: in Curse of Osiris, Vance told us where to find the machine to bring Sagira back and it was being kept by the Cult, but it's unclear if we told Osiris the details). Osiris, again, specifically mentions Vance when he recounts where he got it from, in Immolant:

Sagira had chided him for storming the Lighthouse and ransacking Vance's possessions. "They're my relics," he said to silence her protests.

I know Osiris has been through a lot, but his memories are completely and perfectly intact... Except for Vance. That's bizarre to me, given that there's several important points that tie them together, like planting the seed on Io (something he wouldn't have known to do without Vance relaying Mara's message) and research of the tones, something that Osiris spent a lot of time doing and was explicitly worried about; so worried, in fact, that he was willing to part ways with Saint just to continue that research.

In my old post I also mentioned how Osiris even went to Ana to tell her to ask Rasputin if he heard any tones in the Collapse, but Rasputin wasn't up yet. And when Rasputin was finally up, we had much bigger problems to deal with so I assumed that Osiris never asked because the priority was to find what's on Neptune. But now I think that Osiris didn't ask because he doesn't remember. Because the memory of Vance and tones and whatever they mean was deliberately removed from him while Savathun had him imprisoned. Or, perhaps, the Nezarec tea messed with it. After all, Darkness is memory.

This would obviously imply that the tones are something so important and dangerous that Savathun (or someone else) wanted Osiris' knowledge of it removed so that maybe she could have leverage or to know something we don't or perhaps for some other purpose by some other actor. This was such a big point that the entirety of Immolant part 1 is almost exclusively dedicated to Osiris inquiring into the tones.

Another possibility is also that Osiris' memory of Vance was messed with because of Io and the seed and Tree (and then as a consequence, obviously, he would also forget about the tones).

There's also a possibility that Savathun is literally right now messing with me and she did it for no reason at all just to generate imbaru or mess with Osiris or maybe she even wanted to do one nice thing for him and remove the memory of the weird Cult and the tones aren't important at all.

But I don't know. The fact that they're the same thing that the whole Darkness network uses and that ultimately leads to the Witness seems like something that should be important. However, I don't think Mercury will return before TFS, especially since TFS CE has Eido writing about how Mercury is still in the Witness' grasp. But, consider also that we don't know the timeline of when Eido's writing is set. It has to be set after Ahsa's reveal about the Witness' origins, but before TFS. We don't have enough information to tell more. There's also Vex shenanigans to consider, something that will certainly be a plot point post-TFS and Mercury is a prime location for that.

Either way, there's something going on here, added also with the second lore tab release in Season of the Deep that tangentially ties to Mercury, which is Unexpected Resurgence. In it, Shayura is approached by Sister Faora, an incredibly niche character who was leading the Cult of Osiris before Vance. She's shown still wearing the insignia of the Cult. We never learned why she stopped leading them and why Vance took over; she just kinda disappears from the lore book (Trials and Tribulations, the one about the tones). But apparently she's in the City and she's still wearing the Cult robes and she's back in the story... for some reason??

It honestly feels like some sort of a setup for something in the future, something that might deal with Mercury's return. I need to stress just how small she is as a character: she only actually appears in three lore tabs before Unexpected Resurgence, all in the same lore book. The rest of her stuff is just flavour text on the Kairos Function armour pieces from Curse of Osiris. That's it. Why return her in Season of the Deep? Mind boggling.

This whole thing about the tones and Mercury consumes me every day and night. The fact that Deep mentioned Vance in a way easily dismissed as a joke (but also, note the name of the weapon: targeted redaction) as well as Faora coming back is just too wild to me to be a random throwback or a just a joke. Not when it's beyond clear that Osiris should remember Vance, the Cult, the tones and the rest of it. It's even unclear at this point if he remembers that he planted the seed on Io.

So what are the tones? What are they indeed. They're music from the spires of Mercury that reacts to death and uses the same frequency as the entire Darkness network with the Witness at the top. What is their purpose and what is the purpose of Mercury and why did the Witness take it and what is this plotline and when will it be resolved? Summary:

#destiny 2 #mercury #vance #osiris #darkness #witness #long post #lore vibing #ask #it's going to be funny when this turns out to be nothing at all. just like some noises that darkness makes #but no way. it has to be something. it has to be... bro...#but for real i would love if all missing planets got fully resolved #mars was resolved and ana was resolved #titan was resolved and sloane was resolved #io is.... questionable but asher was resolved #mercury and vance are just ?????????????????#i am the bearer of the curse. i haven't stopped thinking about the tones since season of the worthy when that lore book came out #seeing osiris losing his mind about them in immolant (the most important lore ever) just strengthened that #and then nothing. he got yoinked. and then he returned and apparently doesn't remember. HELP.#insane. kicking and screaming and throwing things. i understand the cult of osiris now #i get it vance. you're so valid.

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pepperstrawberry · 5 years

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While I am slowly working on art things... have a bit of fiction?

So, I did a post earlier about Elly, and figured that I should post this maybe for amusement. It’s a drabble I puttered on after being inspired by @wearepaladin‘s post that I linked up there... There is more that is starting to form. I was originally going to add her to my ‘Dragon Quixotic’ story (and she still kinda is, but becoming less and less direct so), since the main city I came up with has a strong history of Paladin stuff (now thanks to this drabble is called ‘Mithvalor’... for now at least XD )

Going to put it under a cut cause it’s like a few pages long on the googledoc XD

Note: This was tossed together as a sort of ‘character moment and background’ thing… Feel free to make any commentary, but please do it in the light that a) I haven’t really tackled Paladins until very recently in any tangible way and b) this is more or less a rough draft take on a scene that popped in my head.

Note the second: One of these days I -will- make a straight forward paladin, but I’m still in that beginning ‘break all the things/see where things stretch to phase of character creation ^_^;;; (I do have a whole story that plays with the idea of gods, paladins, right and wrong, good and evil, and all that where the heroes do end as more or less proper pallys, but the start isn’t what it seems… at the moment that idea is on the back burner though)

The Gods are fallible.

This statement was the backbone of her faith.

Elizabeth Camilla Makeda had come to distrust any priest that would proclaim the perfection of any single god. Not in that she hated them or thought they were leading people wrong. It was more that they had blinded themselves to the bigger picture.

In a world where there were multiple gods, each with their own domains and focus, she could not believe that any single god could understand enough of the universe on their own to be anything but a flawed, incomplete creation. For many, this revelation would bring a deep distrust in the gods if they believed in them or even a complete rejection of any value in religion if they didn’t. But for her?

It brought her a sense of relief.

If the gods were fallible, then it just meant that the problems of the world, how sometimes monsters could win, how children could die from plagues, or how people could fall to their own vices made more sense.

Some gods would show a streak of hubris just as man does. Other times, it was pettiness. Some gods tried so hard but their domain was limited in scope, and thus was their ability to change things.

If she viewed the gods much as she viewed her fellow man, it made a lot more sense.

It was these thoughts she took into the academy of her city of Mithvalor. Paladins were a traditional position in her home, a place of many faiths, working together to make a stronger world. Her home, a hub city of trade and community, had once housed a council of seven paladin kings known in legend as ‘The Faith’. It had been many generations since The Faith was broken, but the grand tradition of this land to be a bridge between countries as well as the material and the ethereal worlds made being a Paladin both a privilege and an honor.

While she had a leg up thanks to her mother being a Paladin of the God of Courage, it didn’t mean she had a free ride either. Her family had always been about hard work and helping others. Her father had helped her train her body by working the fields of their farm on the outskirts of the city. She was put to work during festivals to help bring food around to those that needed and deliver parcels of ingredients to cooks preparing the big feasts.

Her father was big on the God of the Harvest and while her parents where in a bit of a bet of who she would chose, they knew she would make the right decision for her and continue the proud traditions of both the city and her family.

And so it was that her training began. And trouble soon showed it’s head. When it came to lessons on the gods, she would ask strange questions. Not improper ones, only ones that kept everyone guessing with which god would she finally plague her oath to, let alone what that oath would even look like. Many thought she might side with either the God of Knowledge given her persistent questions, the God of Wisdom due to how they were worded and thought out, or even the God of Mischief given how vexing some of the questions could be.

It would be the day she found her weapon that would reveal all…

---

“Come on, Elly. I know you have been paying attention to your lessons.” Sir Dulgear sighed.

Elly was once more on her butt. Her sword and shield to either side of her, the result of being so astoundingly disarmed. Again.

“It… It’s just doesn’t feel right, Sir.” She growled.

Dulgear knew that growl well. It was not directed at him in the least. It was directed inward. Her mother, the Lady Gallamir Pearl Makeda was one of the absolute best with a sword and shield. Having actually been her training partner when they were in Elly’s position, he could confirm it without any doubt. And he could see some of the parent’s talent in the child. Hell, she was worse with a warhammer or even a mace. They had tried many other combinations and while she wasn’t bad with any, she was never that great either.

And the forces she might have to face needed to be met with greatness in all aspects.

This girl had something in her, he knew it. It’s why he kept as an instructor. His best was in seeing through the rough bits to the shining gems that were waiting to be revealed. Still, he was getting worried. While she excelled in all other areas, she needed to be able to protect those around her as well as herself. And right now, she was barely above a regular great of soldier.

“Come on Elly. I know you can do this. Remember…”

Elly stood, picking up her arms and took her stance. “Think around the problem, then push through” she repeated. It was Sir Dulgear’s way of saying ‘stop and think’. She rather liked it, and it had fit her own way of thinking very well.

And thinking was what she was doing. Dulgear stood ready. She was to make the first move, so she had time, not forever, but some. She, too, stood. It was a perfect stance, the forms where never an issue. She could swing any weapon as is with just as much aptitude as any other recruit. Of course, those were also practice weapons designed to do little damage and be primarily for training and nothing else.

In her hand was a live sword. A dull blade, sure, and her trainer had protections all over him. But it was still a live blade.

A blade can cut with ease, sometimes too easily. She had seen even veteran guards accidently do too much damage to someone they were trying to subdue during a tavern fight. A mace can disfigure or even cause permanent brain damage with a strike to the head. A warhammer can crush unenchanted platemail with ease.

Deadly. All her options were decided to kill as their primary function, with little thought to what other potential these things might have.

Of course, staves, saps, and other blunt weapons didn’t quite feel right to her either, but they rarely served as good weapons for a Paladin. Those you would more often see in the hands of a monk or a cleric. Not that she didn’t try them. Still, a stave felt too ‘reed’y to her and even a sap felt like it would be better just to…

She had an epiphany.

Dulgear saw Elly square her shoulders and then charge him. He could already see the sword strike a mile way. Infact, there was even less finesse then before. Could Elly be getting tired? Or maybe she was about to try something? He smiled and brought up his shield rather than dodge. This lesson was about getting used to live weapons and focusing the potential of using a Paladin’s most universal and signature attack: Smite.

Sure, the magic the trainee’s were bless with only simulated the power, as they had yet to take their oaths, but the mook smite could be used against anything with a nice pop of pressure to give positive feedback for a success.

The sword hit the shield as was intended by both parties. Dulgear flicked his gaze to the shield being raised. For a split second, he wondered if she was going to try to bash him with it. She was always a touch more defensive minded then many of the other recruits, and while exceedingly rare, it was not unheard of for a paladin to make their weapon of choice some modified take on a shield.

However, he discarded that notion as soon as it came to mind. With how quick her bulky frame was, he would have been already feeling it. Clearly she was assuming he would strike back, and he did so not wanting to disappoint.

His sword came down and she moved the shield to properly block him. The clang didn’t have time to fully echo when he noticed something felt off about the block. She twisted and pulled to her right. That didn’t make any sense. That was her sword hand, and you don’t get another chance to strike if your opponent has locked swords with you.

The moment Elly felt her trainer’s sword make contact, she flicked both shield and sword down to her right, letting them go. Her foot work shifted, sliding her right foot back and around her left, before left followed along. She turned her entire body around, a clockwise spin, bringing her out of danger of counter attack as her shield was still between her and Dulgear’s sword.

The first weapons she learned would always be her most trusted. She had to use them against thieves in dark alleys when they tried to catch her unawares when on errands for her mother. She had employed them against drunks that would get a bit to roudy when she visited her uncle’s tavern. And she made plenty of use of them in play with her elder brother.

Spinning her body completely around was a showboat move, but it was the easiest way to allign her attack and make sure it connected. With concentration, she pushed the energies down her arm. Her right fist clenched within the gauntlet.

Dulgear had a split second to see Elly had already fully turned herself around, and her fists up near her face. His eyes widened in complete surprise.

Elly’s feet finished their turn and she planted the ball of her left foot to the ground, twisting her hip, continuing the force of her spin, drawing power from the earth, through her leg, the alignment of her hips, her upper body leaning into the motion and finally the strike.

The last thing Dulgear saw was the golden energy collecting at the knuckles of her gauntlet as Elly’s left fist fired out. The strike connected right against the side of Dulgear’s helmet right at his cheek. And then a burst of light blinded him as he felt his entire body followed with the arc of his head being thrown back. He flew through the air and landing square on his back several feet from where he once stood.

Pieces of her gauntlet floating in the air as her fist made it’s follow through, the armor not built to handle power flowing through it in such a fashion. The glove under was smoldering from the radiant fire that exploded from impact.

Many of the other students that had been watching, as well as a few of the teachers, were rooted to the spot in shock. They had never seen something like that from a paladin before. All of them stared save her mother, who had subbed in that day for a friend. Her smile was incandescent.

Elly didn’t mean to knock him back that hard. She ran over quickly, checking her instructor for injury. While the side of his helm was dented a bit, the magic protecting him was still intact. Fortunately for him, the wards on his armor were ‘one size fits all’ in that they didn’t just keep it to the power level that should have come through the pseudo-smite effect, but from a full attack. Of course, the enchantment was also one shot, so the helmet needed to be repaired and re-enchanted before the next time it’s used. But that was just working as intended.

What was less expected was being thrown that hardback by a punch from a girl a spare few years from full adulthood. Even one as strongly and stoutly built as Elly.

Dulgear was surprised, “That… wasn’t the test spell. You… used the power ‘Smite’. The actual ability…” It wasn’t unheard of for those that had already taken an oath to seek formal training here. Hell, he was one of those sort. When he had sworn to his god, the divine being specifically led him here for training. But no one was aware that Elly had taken any oath. In fact, by all accounts, no god seemed fit for her in any direct manner, at least if her many questions during lectures and her interesting debates with some of the scholars was any indication. “When did you take the Oath? And with whom?”

As Dulgear took her hand, Elly smiled warmly, “I took no single god. The gods are fallible. I do not deny their greatness, but nor will I ignore that if all the stories are true, they are no less weak to lying, cheating, avarice, or any other vice known to mortals. I could not swear any more devotion to a god then I would to any man.”

Once her trainer is standing again, she holds his hand in both of hers, turning his hand palm up, “Faith in a friend is a powerful thing. I have that faith in many gods. But I can not worship them. I do not worship anything. For many, worship is liberating. For me, it’s stifling.”

She looked back into his eyes, “Sir Dulgear, I swore my oath on the roof of my home, laying and staring at the stars. I had thought to myself, ‘The gods are fallible’ and I was not afraid. I was happy. A god is like a king, a force for good or ill, a seat of wisdom and a source of authority and hope. But a king can fall.”

Dulgear wanted to say something, but he remained quiet. This wasn’t just one of her debates with a scholar, she was speaking her oath. “If an Angel can fall, a Devil can transcend. A god can make a mistake just as a mortal can. And we work together, we strive for better. So to do the gods together. I seek no one master, but I vow my word to the very heart of what a Paladin is: the hand of the gods in the world of man. A hand to help, a hand to defend, and when needed a hand to bring low the true monsters of the world.”

She looked back at her sword, “Blades kill too easy. But my fists are my hands. A sword must be sheathed to be seen as peaceful. I need only open my hand and offer it to do the same.”

Having spoken it out loud for the first time in years, Elly was able to start to form a more codified version. Stepping back, she held her hand out, palm down, “The gods are fallible as are men. My oath is to the very concept of Honesty, Compassion, Honor, and Duty. That I might serve the needs of all gods, all men, all that have good will and the need of help.”

She turns her hand palm up, “The Angel can fall, and the Devil can transcend. I will give quarter to any that ask save a true monster. A true monster is that which has actively rejected all light from their heart. Such beings, whether in heaven or hell, deserve my full wrath.” She punctuates her statement by clenching her fist and punching it into her left palm.

She spread her arms wide, hands open again, “I pledge to help any that I can. To do the least harm I am able. To strike down the true monsters. To lead the fallen and the lost to the light, and I look to all the gods and all my friends to help me stay in that same light.

“My oath is to the Hallowed Hope that springs eternal in every heart”

Sir Dulgear smiled, “Unorthodox, and while I don’t fully agree, I can’t see any personal fault with your view point. Such an oath would normally be a tenous thing. Swearing to the very nature of things. So nebulous. But… you don’t look at it that way. Your faith is in a deeper ideal.” He offers his hand, “I hope you find strength in your oath always and that the gods find favor in your devotion, even if it’s not directly to them.”

Dulgear smiled. Sure, a paladin could get silly with their speachafying, but it was also a part of what they did. It wasn’t so much pageantry of words as much as their words guided by their faith and hearts. “Elizabeth Camilla Makeda of the Sacred Oath of Devotion to the Hallowed Hope. I welcome you.” He grinned wider, “Now, let's look into designing you some ‘hallowed knuckles’ to go with that oath of yours.”

#Pepper Writes #Elly #Elizabeth Camilla Makeda #Hallowed Knuckle #Paladin #Pass a fist pally

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 6 years

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After the Warmind DLC, the major question on every Destiny lore nerd’s mind is, “What’s Rasputin's next move?” The lore tab for the D2 Sleeper Simulant represents our most current communiqué from Rasputin. So let’s take it apart and see if we can suss out his current state of mind.

AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//ARESN//IMPERATIVE Rasputin’s usual address line at the beginning of his messages. It’s sent by him (I’m amused he still refers to himself as AI-COM/RSPN, as if AI-COM still exists. It’s like introducing himself as a citizen of the Soviet Union), it’s an IMPERATIVE (meaning a command), and it’s sent to ASSETS//ARESN.

ARESN is a new designation; the message itself suggests this is an abbreviation for “Ares-North.” In context that must mean the Clovis Bray research base and Aurora Reach, Rasputin’s primary facility in the Martian ice cap where the Warmind DLC takes place. Previously this area has been codenamed POLARIS in Rasputin’s transmissions. Now that the ice is clearing, his operations are expanding, and Guardians are maintaining a regular presence there, Rasputin seems to have upgraded its designation.

IMMEDIATE EVALUATION DIRECTIVE This is not a direct order to do something right now (those are marked “IMMEDIATE ACTION ORDER”) but an order to evaluate the situation. Rasputin is gathering his many distributed parts to examine some target and make a decision based on what he finds.

This is a SUBTLE ASSETS IMPERATIVE (secured/CONFERENCE) “SUBTLE ASSETS” seems to refer to assets that Rasputin either keeps secret or controls indirectly. This message itself is “secured,” so it’s only sent to a certain group and meant to be kept secret, and it’s sent to “CONFERENCE.” Given context, that marking likely means just Rasputin himself. This command is meant for subtle assets, so whatever he’s doing is maybe meant to fly under the radar.

This is an INTERNAL ALERT. This is a message from Rasputin to Rasputin himself. Again, because he exists in a very large distributed network, Rasputin’s various parts must coordinate to make major decisions. He’s getting himself all together.

Hypothesize that incomplete analysis of subtle assets has compromised synergy potential of resource GUARDIAN pool. Heeeeeee. This line is Rasputin admitting he underestimated the Guardians. “Incomplete analysis” has “compromised synergy potential.” In English that means he misjudged the Guardians and because of that he hasn’t been cooperating with them to achieve shared goals as much as he could have.

Rasputin often refers to Guardians as “subtle assets,” perhaps meaning that in his mind the Guardians are under his authority and he controls them indirectly; alternately, he could mean that incomplete analysis of some other subtle asset he could have been using with Guardians has made them less effective. He also refers to the Guardians as a resource. He’s still fighting a war, and everyone available is a resource to be used to fight that war.

Re-engage non-transactional dispensation protocol. "Give the Guardians fun toys for free.” Rasputin is considering sending the Guardians a bunch of free weapons/armor/etc. so they can better achieve their mutual goals, because he’s finally convinced they’re useful.

Operation MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is NOT YET COMPLETE. Requested protocol deferred. Aaaaaand then Rasputin hits the same roadblock that’s been constraining him since the Collapse: MIDNIGHT EXIGENT. MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is the massive protocol Rasputin enacted at the end of the war to prioritize his survival over protecting humanity (interestingly he says MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is “not yet complete” - implying that MIDNIGHT EXIGENT has an end goal, and maybe an end date). If MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is still in place, Rasputin doesn’t think the existential threat is over. He still doesn’t consider himself safe.

Because of MIDNIGHT EXIGENT, Rasputin can’t reactive the “non-transactional dispensation protocol.” Rasputin doesn’t think he can afford to give the Guardians free shit. Why? He may be strapped for resources, or he may need the promise of such weaponry as a bargaining chip to get what he needs in return. The rest of the message makes me lean towards the latter.

Stand by for GALATEA REFLEXIVE to generate new function. More of Rasputin’s love of mythology. In Greek mythology, Galatea is a statue created by the sculptor Pygmalion and brought to life by Aphrodite. In this scenario, Rasputin is Galatea - the being crafted and brought to life by someone else. “Reflexive” means “instinctive” or “referring back to itself.” GALATEA REFLEXIVE is therefore likely a protocol for Rasputin to examine himself, consider self-improvement/self-modification, and consider what to do (”generate new function.”) He may be looking to re-examine his intentions and decide whether to act purely altruistically.

GALATEA requires suspension of MIDNIGHT EXIGENT. ...Except, uh oh, GALATEA also isn’t allowed under MIDNIGHT EXIGENT. That’s not a great sign. Rasputin has deferred introspection and self-examination till after MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is complete. Even under MIDNIGHT EXIGENT Rasputin already shows signs of guilt over his actions. If he executed a full GALATEA protocol he’d probably be nonfunctional with grief and guilt for some time.

Side note: if any of this were happening in a human we’d be severely concerned. Rasputin is preventing himself from thinking about his actions and his own state of mind because he can’t afford to right now, because it would cripple him while he’s still in danger. But that danger isn’t going away anytime soon. Rasputin does have emotions, much as he may conceal them. At some point that denial and compartmentalization will break down and he’s going to have to deal with what psychologists call “some seriously heavy shit.” I hope the City has a therapist for AIs, is all I’m saying.

ALERT ALERT ALERT event rank is SKYSHOCK: INSIDE CONTEXT. Being blocked on executing GALATEA protocol causes Rasputin to check if MIDNIGHT EXIGENT can be suspended. The first answer he gets is a SKYSHOCK alert.

SKYSHOCK seems to designate a major space-based threat to humanity. In his first message reporting the detection of the oncoming Darkness, Rasputin classifies it as SKYSHOCK: OCP. OCP means “outside context problem,” a phrase coined by scifi writer Iain M. Banks (whom Bungie loves, and for good reason). An outside context problem is something a civilization could not possibly have anticipated and has no frame of reference for. They usually end badly; Banks said a civilization “tended to encounter [an OCP] rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."

But this time the SKYSHOCK event is INSIDE CONTEXT. It’s a normal threat Rasputin understands - probably the many hostile factions still present in the solar system (Vex, Cabal, Hive, etc.) Rasputin evaluates these threats and concludes both he and humanity still face lethal danger even though the Darkness itself is gone.

MIDNIGHT EXIGENT must remain active under deniable authorization. Given said lethal danger, MIDNIGHT EXIGENT must remain in place even though the enemy that prompted it (the Darkness) is gone. Rasputin doesn’t consider himself - or humanity - safe enough to risk lifting emergency survival-only protocols.

“Under deniable authorization” is odd. Rasputin doesn’t need “authorization” to do anything, and why does it need to be “deniable”? The best I can come up with is that he’s authorizing himself to continue MIDNIGHT EXIGENT, and the “deniable” part means he’s concealing that fact and if you ask him about it he’ll pretend he has no idea. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s still prioritizing his own survival.

Execute emergency SKYSHOCK diagnostic. Having determined that a SKYSHOCK threat is present, Rasputin decides to further evaluate it, and to do so quickly. Rasputin wants to assess the hostile factions in more detail and refine his estimate of their threat level. He doesn’t have time to do it himself, so he’ll have to use the Guardians to do it.

STAND BY: Usually this line in a Rasputin message means “I am making a decision” and is followed by the results of that decision. In this case it’s used in an interesting way: what follows is not explicitly a decision on MIDNIGHT EXIGENT and the SKYSHOCK evaluation, but an apparently separate message sent in the clear. The header and footer transmissions are not repeated, so it’s still sent to the same recipients (Ares-North), but the two parts are marked at different security levels - unsecured vs. secured. The first half of this message is meant to be seen only by Rasputin himself, but the second half is public to all “assets” in Ares-North. Why would Rasputin’s decision on SKYSHOCK take the form of a broadcast message? We’ll see later.

This is an INTERNAL ASSETS INVESTIGATION (unsecured/BRAY) The first half of the message was sent secure and only to Rasputin himself. The second is being sent unsecure and to group “BRAY.” Who’s that? Probably not Ana, since Rasputin designates her “AUTHORIZED USER.” More likely it’s everyone around the Bray facility, and hence it’s unsecured so everyone can hear it.

We haven’t seen Rasputin send an INVESTIGATION order before. Perhaps this means he’s, again, taking stock? Is he investigating himself or something else? While it’s sent to INTERNAL ASSETS, it’s not marked as an INTERNAL ALERT, meaning it’s being broadcast to other people. Rasputin may therefore be directing his assets to undertake an investigation of some target.

Justification resource GUARDIANS may be utilized for non-networked ad-hoc operations during CTESIPHON CLARION. The grammar is weird here. I’m not sure if he means to say “Justification: resource Guardians...” or if he’s calling them a “justification resource.” But anyway, he says the Guardians can now be used for “non-networked ad-hoc operations,” aka public events. He also implies an operation called CTESIPHON CLARION is now going on. We’ve never seen that codename before. Parsing it out, Ctesiphon is a city of the ancient world that at one point was considered to be, well, the pinnacle of cities. “Clarion” means “clear” and/or “loud” and usually refers to sound.

So CTESIPHON CLARION may be Rasputin’s designation for this current period of open communication and cooperation with the Last City, or it may mean that he intends to investigate the City/Guardians and understand more about them. Either way he’s telling Guardians that as long as he’s on good terms with the City, they’re allowed to do public events in Hellas Basin. Wow. What an honor, Rasputin.

Reassign 4 percent of reclaimed CHLM assets to new directive: declare IKELOS- Confirmation that the Warmind Charlemagne was a submind of Rasputin, one that he’s now “reclaimed.” It may be that Charlemagne was cut off from Rasputin like the Cosmodrome fragments were, and that Rasputin only now woke back up and reconnected. Either way Charlemagne seems to have been reabsorbed and its assets are being redistributed by Rasputin. At the moment, four percent of said assets are going to the new directive IKELOS, which you may recognize from Destiny 1 as the protocol under which Rasputin developed and provided weaponry to the Guardians. Rasputin is now declaring IKELOS (restarting it) and states two goals:

Declare primary goal: military fortification. IKELOS’ first priority is to beef up the military strength of the Guardians and Rasputin’s own defenses.

Declare secondary goal: prolong ARES-NORTH occupation by AUTHORIZED USER and resource GUARDIANS. IKELOS’ second priority is to keep Ana Bray (”AUTHORIZED USER”) and the Guardians around the Aurora Reach facility for as long as possible. Rasputin wants the Guardians there. Why? Perhaps he’s finally decided that having Guardians around is better than not having them, and their presence makes it safe for Ana to continue her work.

But remember: these two goals are being declared in the clear. He knows Guardians will read this part. This message wasn’t issued alone; it’s Rasputin’s “decision” on how to evaluate the SKYSHOCK threat. Rasputin’s true, unstated goal in restarting IKELOS is to use Guardians to evaluate the threat posed by the various hostile factions. To do that he gives the Guardians some weaponry of his own construction which he knows all the properties of, and he uses the promise of this powerful weaponry to get Guardians into all these minor skirmishes to protect the area.

Rasputin says in the secure half of the message that MIDNIGHT EXIGENT has to continue “under deniable authorization.” Thorough evaluation of all threats is quite important to ensuring his own survival, but he’s not publicly disclosing that motivation for doing it.

Execute short hold for partial shutdown and reactivation. Last of all Rasputin says he’s going quiet for a bit. Given all the damage he took from Xol, he’s probably got a lot of maintenance backlogged. Him being occupied with self-repair explains why Ana is mostly speaking for him at the moment.

SO. To sum it all up: where is Rasputin’s head at right now? CTESIPHON CLARION indicates he is, for the moment, communicating and cooperating with the City/Guardians in good faith. Privately he admits he underestimated the Guardians and wants to help them unconditionally - but MIDNIGHT EXIGENT is still active and SKYSHOCK rank is too high to end it. Rasputin still doesn’t consider himself safe enough to back down from “survival at all costs” mode.

Publicly he restarts IKELOS to buff the Guardian forces in the area, with the secondary goal of having them stick around. He implies that granting IKELOS weaponry is contingent on a Guardian presence in Ares-North. Concern for his own survival under MIDNIGHT EXIGENT means that instead of giving resources away, he trades them for protection. That tallies with the public events you have to complete to get said weaponry - Rasputin rewards you for defending him.

However, secretly (”deniable”) Rasputin has another motive for restarting IKELOS and keeping Guardians in the area: he’s running a “diagnostic” on the nature and severity of the current SKYSHOCK threat. In other words, he’s gathering data on the Hive/Cabal in combat by throwing Guardians into fights and watching what happens. He has no intention of publicly disclosing this goal, since it’s related to MIDNIGHT EXIGENT and he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s still prioritizing his own survival.

It’s...not a great sign that Rasputin is already acting with hidden motives. But he isn’t acting purely selfishly either. The two stated goals of IKELOS likely are real goals, just of lower priority than threat evaluation. And this decision was made as part of re-assessing the nature of the current SKYSHOCK event. If the current SKYSHOCK severity rank is low enough, Rasputin can lift MIDNIGHT EXIGENT and start returning to an altruistic pre-Collapse configuration.

And Rasputin does seem to want MIDNIGHT EXIGENT to end. He repeatedly checks whether it’s still required before making the IKELOS decision, and keeps trying to do things that get blocked by it. On an emotional level, previous lore cards suggest he really doesn’t like the person he’s become under MIDNIGHT EXIGENT. He would like to stop being that person, and stop being in lethal danger, as soon as possible.

tl;dr What does this mean for his future actions? Rasputin has no intention of taking orders from the City, but he’s opened communication in good faith and intends to intervene in solar system affairs more frequently and directly. However, his own survival is still top priority, he’s still keeping his true goals and motivations secret, and his aid to Guardians comes with a price: he’s using the dispensation of IKELOS weaponry to maneuver Guardians into skirmishes with Hive and Cabal forces in order to gather combat data on those forces. Rasputin would really like to be an unconditional ally, but he still thinks he can’t risk it. In the end he’s the same he always was: a powerful ally, but one who’s playing his own game/fighting his own war, who can only be relied upon so far as the City’s goals align with his.

#Destiny #Destiny 2 #Rasputin #Warmind #Destiny lore #Warmind expansion #Warmind spoilers #overthinking is my superpower #ra ra Rasputin Mars' greatest war machine #words words words #I hope you like words #I DON'T EVEN GO HERE #but I'm overthinking it anyway!#I DON'T EVEN GO HERE except now I do

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radredrecluse · 6 years

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Survival of the Richest

The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

Douglas Rushkoff

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity. As technology philosophers have been pointing out for years, now, the transhumanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data, concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? These billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy — the same survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that’s fueling most of this speculation to begin with.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures — something to predict and make bets on. So nearly every speech, article, study, documentary, or white paper was seen as relevant only insofar as it pointed to a ticker symbol. The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.

This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities. Technology development became less a story of collective flourishing than personal survival. Worse, as I learned, to call attention to any of this was to unintentionally cast oneself as an enemy of the market or an anti-technology curmudgeon.

So instead of considering the practical ethics of impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few, most academics, journalists, and science-fiction writers instead considered much more abstract and fanciful conundrums: Is it fair for a stock trader to use smart drugs? Should children get implants for foreign languages? Do we want autonomous vehicles to prioritize the lives of pedestrians over those of its passengers? Should the first Mars colonies be run as democracies? Does changing my DNA undermine my identity? Should robots have rights?

Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy, and the demise of local retail.

But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment and global poor. The manufacture of some of our computers and smartphones still uses networks of slave labor. These practices are so deeply entrenched that a company called Fairphone, founded from the ground up to make and market ethical phones, learned it was impossible. (The company’s founder now sadly refers to their products as “fairer” phones.)

Meanwhile, the mining of rare earth metals and disposal of our highly digital technologies destroys human habitats, replacing them with toxic waste dumps, which are then picked over by peasant children and their families, who sell usable materials back to the manufacturers.

This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.

The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.

Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor. Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.

Our movies and television shows play out these fantasies for us. Zombie shows depict a post-apocalypse where people are no better than the undead — and seem to know it. Worse, these shows invite viewers to imagine the future as a zero-sum battle between the remaining humans, where one group’s survival is dependent on another one’s demise. Even Westworld — based on a science-fiction novel where robots run amok — ended its second season with the ultimate reveal: Human beings are simpler and more predictable than the artificial intelligences we create. The robots learn that each of us can be reduced to just a few lines of code, and that we’re incapable of making any willful choices. Heck, even the robots in that show want to escape the confines of their bodies and spend their rest of their lives in a computer simulation.

The mental gymnastics required for such a profound role reversal between humans and machines all depend on the underlying assumption that humans suck. Let’s either change them or get away from them, forever.

Thus, we get tech billionaires launching electric cars into space — as if this symbolizes something more than one billionaire’s capacity for corporate promotion. And if a few people do reach escape velocity and somehow survive in a bubble on Mars — despite our inability to maintain such a bubble even here on Earth in either of two multibillion-dollar Biosphere trials — the result will be less a continuation of the human diaspora than a lifeboat for the elite.

When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

#eat the rich

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restless-stirring · 6 years

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They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

0 notes