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Eramis has broken free of her Stasis Prison from Beyond Light and is now reassembling old Fallen pirate crews under her banner, plundering the system for golden-age artifacts. With the Vanguard otherwise occupied, the Guardian joins forces with a motley crew of The Spider, Mithrax, Eido, and The Drifter to put down the rising tide of piracy... and perhaps do some plundering of their own in the process.
Season of Plunder contains examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Serves as one for the Spider, The Drifter, and especially Eido, who has a much stronger presence here than she did in Season of the Splicer.
- Aborted Arc: The Lucent Brood are revealed to be gunning for the Relics as well in Week 6, showing that they're still a major player even after their Witch-Queen's demise and countless Lucent Lightbearers being slain permanently. After the conclusion of Plunder, however, this plotline abruptly comes to a halt, with their part in the story fizzling out and putting them in the background again.
- Appeal to Tradition: Attempted by Spider in the Seasonal Lore. With Spider now staying with House Light, he's expected to abide by their laws, and Mithrax has outlawed the practice of docking. When Spider protests, bringing up that Eliksni have been docking Dregs since the Whirlwind, Mthrax makes it clear that House Light does not and will not tolerate the practice under any circumstances. Mithrax drives the point home by asking Spider if the latter wishes to be the sole exception to that rule.
- The Big Damn Kiss: The season ends on one between Osiris and Saint-14 after the former finally wakes up from his coma.
- Blood Magic: Week 3 reveals the relics Eramis is after have biological components inside of them that grant their power, and are described as "rotting meat" or "fingernails". Considering they constantly radiate Darkness, it's implied that a Disciple or similarly-powerful being was cut up and distributed across each relic. The Week 5 story reveals that the relics contain pieces of Nezarec, a Disciple of The Witness.
- Breather Episode: Coming off the heels of the Wham Episode that was The Witch Queen and the emotionally heavy Season of the Haunted, Season of Plunder sets itself up as a relatively lighthearted, swashbuckling Space Pirate adventure. While it still ties into the ongoing story, it's made clear early on the Vanguard is still responding to the events of Season of Haunted and Ikora's spy network always stays low, restricting the people involved to the player guardian, Drifter and Eliksni allies.
- Crossover: The seasonal armor sets sold during this season consists of characters from Fortnite rendered in the artstyle of Destiny 2. Titans get the Black Knight (Knightly Noire), Warlocks get Drift (Hooded Kitsune), and Hunters get Oblivion (Eternal Vengeance.)
- Dark and Troubled Past: Mithrax is known to have done some unsavory things prior to turning over a new leaf at Titan, but this Season implies things are much worse than he let others know, with Eramis and the Spider all but stating as much. In Week 3 he admits to the Guardian that there are things he never told Eido about his past, and desperately wants to keep her from learning those things.
- Distant Prologue: One of Lightfall is included in the update for the season launch, accessible by reading the lore tabs for the Speed Metal Shell and the Quicksilver Storm. It flashes back to Elsie during Season of Arrivals as she accidentally uncovers a piece of derelict technology (the Quicksilver Storm) hinting at Neomuna's existence.
- Everything in Space Is a Galaxy: Despite this season's story being confined to the Sol System, there are at least two occasions where the conflict is made out to be on a galactic scale. The description for this season's trailer includes the phrase "stop Eramis and her crew from wreaking chaos across the galaxy". Also, when Eramis explains the history behind the relics of Nezarec to Eido and the Young Wolf, she mentions how the Eliksni scattered the relics across the galaxy.
- Funny Background Event: During the conversation at the bar, Drifter makes drinks for the Young Wolf, himself, Mithrax, and Eido. Eido gets an umbrella in hers, and while the rest continue to chat, she seems adorably confused by it, idly picking it out of her drink and then dropping it to the floor.
- Future Imperfect: The more lore the player acquires during the 2022 Festival of the Lost, the more apparent it becomes that everyone's research into the Human element of the Headless Ones is just misinterpreting Halloween festivities as elaborate religious rituals and giving certain documents undue weight due to information decay. Eido is led to believe pumpkins are sentient and misreads the name of the holiday as a rite called "the Hall Between," the Drifter thinks costume-wearing is entirely religious in nature, and the Cryptarchy interprets a fourth grader's book report on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as an elaborate research paper on a real explorer. Later pages also suggest they may also be lumping Halloween and the Hispanic holiday of the Day of the Dead together, as Eido thinks the Hall Between is a way for the dead to cross over to the realm of the living.
- Harmless Freezing: A justified and downplayed example for Eramis. While she was trapped in Stasis for two years and therefore unable to do anything, she was still alive, and left to ponder over her situation. Stasis, being a power born of the Darkness, makes it so that she's simply unable to move instead of being literally frozen.
- Lighter and Softer: After the last two seasons being substantially Darker and Edgier, the overall atmosphere of the game gets dialed back a fair bit for this season.
- MacGuffin: The relics are treated as this. Though they are spoken of as containing pieces of Nezarec and seemingly are able to influence dark thoughts inside of people, all their narrative impact really amounts to is "get them before Eramis' forces can secure them".
- MacGuffin Melee: Near the end of the season, the Lucent Brood are revealed to be gunning for the relics as well, creating a Mêlée à Trois situation. They come close to taking one or two before the Guardians intervene.
- Mood Whiplash: The main playlist activities for the season lean heavily into the pirate theme and encouraging players to have fun with the swashbuckling, but the ongoing narrative story told in between involves learning of Mithrax's history of being a violent raider and trying to keep that a secret from his daughter Eido, while conflicts between Eramis, Mithrax and the Spider are a reminder of the chaos the Eliksni faced when their race was scattered.
- Nostalgia Level: All of the Pirate Hideouts are geometrically identical to the layout of a vaulted Lost Sector, just stuffed into an asteroid somewhere outside the Reef.
- The first hideout is the Trapper's Cave from the Tangled Shore in reverse.
- The second hideout is the Ma'adim Subterrane from Mars frozen over.
- The third hideout is the Empty Tank, also from the Tangled Shore, in reverse. The jukebox is missing, presumably because the Ether Tank in the Eliksni Quarter already has one with the same songs.
- Oh, Crap!: When the Spider suggests they use the relics for themselves, Mithrax says that if he ever suggest such things beneath the Traveler again, Mithrax will end the Spider right then and there, using the Spider's true name "Rakis" for further emphasis. Spider immediately realized that he crossed a line and is terrified of Mirthrax after that. Even after Mithrax leaves, Spider is still rattled, yelling for the Guardian to Get Out!.
- Pirate Episode: This season is set up as a swashbuckling adventure with treasure hunts, pirate-themed gear and weapons, and alien Space Pirates as the season's antagonists.
- Punny Name: As the entire Season is pirate-themed, it should come to no surprise that there are plenty to go around:
- A Servitor in Spider's employ you could summon during seasonal activities is named Scur-V.
- One of the bosses for the Ketchcrash activity is Aye-I.
- Relationship Reveal: The resolution of the darkness artifacts is handled in a stylized cutscene narrated by Saint-14. Mithracks refine the artifacts into a tea that is given to Osiris, who emerges from his coma. While he reveals some secrets he acquired from Savanthun's mind, apparently his first words on seeing him was "Saint, my love!" and they kiss. This relationship was previously only
revealed by a writer. - Shout-Out: The Festival of the Lost event takes place during this season and the armor designs are Humongous Mecha themed, more specifically emulating Gundam designs. The Mechabre sniper rifle even has the chevron head crest mounted on the scope, and otherwise looks a lot like the Wing Gundam Buster Rifle.
- Space Is an Ocean: With the pirate theme, the Fallen ketch ships are redesigned from traditional, if scrapped together, space ships into vessels that help lean into the ocean swashbuckling adventure tone, with an above deck observation post, sails and "cannonballs" fired by gravity launchers at opposing ships. The key game type is "Ketchcrash" where you have to dispel a boarding party and then launch yourself to the opposing ship to sabotage it and defeat the captain, most of it in the vacuum of space.
- Space Pirates: The whole theme of the Season. Eramis has escaped and is rallying the Old Crews under her banner. Faced with bands of vicious Space Pirates, the Guardian decides to team up with some outlaws (Spider and Drifter) and fight Space Piracy with Space Piracy.
- The seasonal ornaments let you get in on the fun by looking like various flavors of pirate!
- Super-Speed: The Arc 3.0 revamp released in this season decided Arc was based around movement, and a brand new ability is if you acquire the Amplified buff (via arc multikills or other fragment options) your natural sprint can near double for as long as you keep running.
- The Bus Came Back: After having no narrative presence since Season of the Hunt and being completely MIA since the Tangled Shore was sunset with Witch Queen, The Spider finally returns to prominence in this season's story arc. This also applies to Eramis, who has been essentially left forgotten as a frozen statue until she was broken free; and the Eliksni Quarter and its residents, where it looks much more like a settlement for them, given how eliksni-style walls have been erected around the place and the main building has a functional bar.
- Downplayed for the Lucent Brood, as the spotlight was taken off them for Haunted and most of Plunder, before they're revealed to also be after the relics.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Spider fills this role for the season. Absolutely nobody trusts or even likes him, and they do not hesitate to let him know. In one Expedition, Spider asks about his cut, and Mithrax informs him that his "cut" is that he's allowed to be in the Eliksni Quarter without being killed on sight.
- Took a Level in Badass: The Arc Subclasses get the 3.0 rework established earlier in the year, letting them use Aspects and Fragments. In particular, Arcstrider Hunters gain a new Super altogether: Gathering Storm, where they throw their staff like a javelin at the target area to decimate enemies with a localized electric field.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Eramis was the Big Bad for a major expansion, but her use of Stasis there was a strange and exotic power that quickly became commonplace and easily handled. Her threat in this season is less about her personal danger (even her use of Stasis feels more limited than before) but her connections within unaligned Eliksni raiders and the Darkness artifacts she is trying to recover.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: The Tarnished Mettle's lore tab is from the perspective of a Dreg who has just lost his best friend to a gunshot wound during Ketchcrash, too deep in the throes of grief and coping to fight back and has resigned to Faking the Dead since they don't have the relic the opposing crew is looking for. Makes you wonder how ruthless the Privateers really are, doesn't it?
