Tear Jerker / Destiny 2

Im alone

what hurts me
is you are too

—The lore tab of Greasy Luck. A lot of heartbreaks leading up to it are like this, actually.

A world without Light all too often feels like a world without hope.

---

Red War/Base game (Sept. 6, 2017—Dec 5th, 2017)

• After trying to fight Ghaul one on one and the Light taken away your Guardian has only one true option... run away from the city they failed to protect. To put into detail:
  • You wake up two days after the fall of the Last City, after seeing a strange vision. You reunite with your Ghost, but he's incredibly weak, with his voice barely a rasp, and if you pull him out you'll see that his prisms are sagging limply. Worse still is when he talk. You're both physically broken at this point. But Ghost sounds completely bereft of hope.
  • Two more days after leaving safely, you come across a camp of dead Guardians, twisting the knife further. Without the Light, they can't revive. Your Ghost's voice as he realizes that is really happening sells how bleak the situation has become. Then you're forced to fight against a pack of War Beasts with nothing, but a pistol and SMG. The sounds of combat become muffled while you're fighting back while the soundtrack is increased, completely cementing how desperate your existence has become.
    • Even the SMG has a depressing undertone. Its name is "Sorrow," and it's a creation of Omolon... only, it's been completely stripped of any and all power and uniqueness. There's no Pre Ass Kicking One Liner written on the flavor text. The gun itself has no perks, and is utterly inflexible, something that is the antithesis to what Omolon stood for. Finally, it's been booted down to 10 damage, it's worn and has lost most of its charm as a foundry weapon (the sudden appearance of VEIST later on isn't helping any, either), and you get it from a dead Guardian. The story truly means it when they say everything is gone.
  • The next segment, a week has passed since the Fall. As you're hugging a cliffside, you're treated to a view of the imprisoned Traveler and the razed City. The game is giving you no break in telling you that you've failed to protect the City.
  • Throughout all of this, you repeatedly encounter a hawk, just like in the vision. The tone in which your Ghost notes this makes him sound in even worse shape than he already is. It's hard to tell if he's starting to lose faith in himself, confused, or just plain desperate for anything resembling a sign...
    Ghost: "It's that hawk again... Is it.. following us...? Or are we following it?"
  • Even sadder during this section, if you play as a Warlock, instead of their usual palm slap melee, they've been reduced to punching enemies.
  • It gets even worse when you read up on some of the other Guardian groups and orders through their gear. The entire Titan Stoneborn order was wiped out. The Firebreak order is ashamed that they couldn't follow in their steps, and the lore entry for the Hollowfire Heart says that the Sunbreakers have been wiped out as well, defending the Forge on Mercury.
    • This video discusses the Sunbreakers' end, with a poignant commentary on the nature of the Destiny universe and how the sense of loss is so deeply embedded into it's story.
    We fold tragedies into narratives and names so that we can process them. but in doing so, we also lose sight of the magnitude of what happened. "The Collapse" as a term helps us understand such loss and such suffering, but the story of the Sunbreakers isn't general. It isn't some long ago historical event to us at this point. It's imminent, personal, and something that a great number of us will have experienced. Even as we've been allowed to fold the traumatic narrative of humanity's near-extinction into a pair of words, the Sunbreakers and their story represent a real, tangible example of the fact that Destiny's story is filled with something terrible: Loss.
    So, the next time you hear the hammer strike ring out across the battlefield, remember this: The Sunbreakers may be gone, and the story of Destiny may forever be marked by their loss, but now, You carry their legend forward. It is you that has a chance to maintain their honor. To tend to the Forge and let their story live on.
  • The Armor descriptions for the ruined gear you wear in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of the City are universally depressing. Wrecked Titan Plate lamenting their failure to defend the City, Scorched Hunter Gear that tries to hide the sadness with sarcasm, and Damaged Warlock Armor that mourns the loss of their Connection to the Light.
    Wrecked Titan Helm: Every Aspect of this helm has been compromised.
    Wrecked Titan Greaves: These Boots are unaccustomed to retreat.
    Scorched Hunter Vest: Every journey has its ups and downs. That's what you keep telling yourself, at least.
    Scorched Hunter Strides: Survival now depends on your ability to outrun the enemy.
    Damaged Warlock Hood: A good hood keeps you focused. This one targets nothing but loss.
    Shattered Warlock Bond: A shattered bond marks a broken promise.
• The state of the Vanguard when you meet back up with them is heartbreaking:
  • Commander Zavala takes the fall of the City the hardest. On top of being unable to protect the very City he personally helped build with his own hands, he attempted to lead survivors to Titan in hopes of refuge, only to discover that it is infested with Hive. Zavala's confidence in his leadership is understandibly broken, and you can just hear the lack of hope in his voice.
  Zavala: Without the light...are we even guardians anymore...?
  • Cayde-6 may be the most humorous, seeing as his attempts to tamper with a Vex teleporter has briefly imprisoned him in a teleportation loop. However, once you bust him out, he explains that he was trying to set it up so he could teleport right to Ghaul's face and put a bullet in his head. If you read between the lines and note how increasingly frustrated he is, you wouldn't be crazy to think that he's effectively planning a suicide mission.
  • Ikora Rey does her hardest to hide it, but shows through nonetheless. After exiling herself to Io, the last place the Traveler touched before the collapse, she's been meditating for any hope of an epiphany for what should be done. Instead, she's come to realize that after centuries of immortality thanks to the Light, she's become terrified now that she's become mortal, and afraid she might fail.
• Strange and absolutely crazy as it is, Dominus Ghaul manages to inspire some sympathy. Born a runt, weak and unwanted, raised by the Consul seeking nothing, but strength and glory for the Cabal. And to do that, he set his sights on the Traveler, and desired the Traveler to recognize his determination. For as much of a bastard as he is, he started from rock bottom, and his throughout his interrogation of The Speaker, it's fairly easy to tell that he's starting to doubt his path and strength. Hell, a bit more time and self-reflection with The Speaker, and he could have been on the road for a Heel–Face Turn. Instead, The Speaker dies from his injuries, The Consul pushes Ghaul too far, leading to Ghaul strangling him, and Ghaul forcibly absorbing the Light, only for the Traveler to wake up, recognizing Ghaul's madness and destroying Ghaul's very existence.
• When you read through Calus' journals detailing his betrayal, you can see the horror and shock in his words as he talks about how he was betrayed by those he considered friends and family, including his personal bodyguards, his events planner, his personal confidante, and even his own daughter. On top of that is his sadness as seeing them turn the Cabal that he tried to build into another horrible war machine devoted to conquest and brutal battle. The betrayal hurt him so deeply that he implores anyone who would listen to bring the people who hurt him that badly to justice, including his closest friends and family, now nothing but traitors in his eyes.
• You can find a torn page from Cayde's journal in a cache on one of his treasure maps. It expands on his transhuman story - it's revealed that he had a wife and child whom he nicknamed "Ace." Before he became an Exo, it was known that he threw his life away gambling and sold himself into Clovis Bray's Exo program because the only other option was death itself. Now imagine what that would be like as a family situation, and remember that Cayde associated things with cards as an Exo, and likes aces a lot. The journal page turns a mere natural obsession, given his gambling background, into a cry for help as it's presumed the Collapse occurred before what was once Cayde-0 could make it back to his family.
  • A later journal reveals that Cayde can't even remember who Ace was or he even existed at all. He found the name in a journal on his person when his Ghost revived him the first time, and kept writing despite Ace being long dead.
  • Forsaken twists the knife even further - one of Cayde's past selves outright admits that Ace and his wife probably never existed. He made them up so that he'd have something worth fighting and staying heroic for. And then the postgame adds another twist; "Truth to Power" has an entry that accidentally implies Cayde's family was Real After All, but (ironically) it is never explained if anything in the book is truthful to begin with.
• The Failsafe's ship, the Exodus Black, was a colony ship of over 500 inhabitants headed off to colonize a new world, only to end up crash landing on Nessus. Stranding the crew and all the colonists, with the Captain's attempt to erect a distress beacon to call help failing and everyone perishing soon after. The Captain's last moments being filled with anguish and regret that he failed his crew and all the colonists. The only "survivor" being the ships "Failsafe" AI, who was activated after the crash and has been alone for centuries.
  • And the end of the O Captain, My Captain quest line really twists the knife upon hearing Captain Jacobson's last words. All from Failsafe's bitchy side no less. Who up to that point was full of funny quips.
  Moody!Failsafe: Captain Jacobson...is...Dead?
  Ghost: Yes. I'm so sorry, Failsafe. We'll see you soon.
• During the mission to regain the Titan's Sunbreaker class, one of the lessons you come across is Shaxx recounting the many times that he and his friends pulled off Crazy Enough to Work strategies. One such time he recalls is when Lady Efrideet used Lord Saladin as a javelin. It quickly turns heartbreaking at the end as Shaxx starts to lament how he misses the glory days. And more specifically he misses Lady Efrideet.
• One of Asher Mir's lines when talking to him on Io is surprisingly poignant and subdued for his personality:
  "I have considered ending my Ghost. None of my research indicates a way to extricate the Vex technology from her shell. This is how I know I am a coward.... because I can not bring myself to do it."
  • Asher's entire character becomes this once you get through the Crazy Is Cool Mad Scientist side of his personality; much like Eris Morn he lost his entire fireteam to Brakion, coming out with not only a cracked mind but a new Vex limb and a Ghost converted into Vex technology. He knows his condition is slowly killing him and there's slim to no hope of reversing the process, so he's gonna make damn sure that the Vex pay for what they did to him and his fireteam.

Warmind (May 8th 2018—Sept. 4th, 2018)

• If Nokris' words are to be believed in "Apocrypha", Oryx abandoned them when they were a child and was the one that erased all traces of them from the World's Grave, all because Nokris was "cursed". The only one that has ever seemed to care about them is Xol. This comes as a shockingly stark contrast to what we knew of Oryx's relationship with his family. Even when he warred and conspired against his sisters, threatened to feed his daughters to Eir, punished Crota by tossing him through a Vex gate, and imprisoned Alak-Hul for eternity after his failed coup, he still genuinely, truly loved them all and was proud of what made each of them strong. Nokris was left to die and to never be remembered.
• A console in the Warmind expansion will detail information about the Exos, explaining that the "projected" maximum number of times an Exo can be rebooted is approximately 20 before they become... nonfunctional from the repeated mental trauma. And at the Tower, we have Banshee-44...

Forsaken/Season of the Outlaw (Sept 4, 2018—Dec 4, 2018)

• The E3 trailer for Forsaken left many Guardians dumbstruck with what was shown. Cayde is heavily damaged, his Ghost is fretting over him before being shot out of the air, the eight Barons are closing in at all sides, and Prince Uldren, supposedly the leader of the Barons, shoots Cayde with the Ace of Spades. The closing art has the Young Wolf cradling Cayde's Lightless body, cementing why the story for Forsaken is going to be one of revenge. What's more, the project lead confirmed the worst in case there were any doubts: Cayde-6 is gone.
  • The music. The freaking music. Especially the last line.
  "Why can't I leave well enough alone, and go to the light?"
• Bungie released another trailer for Forsaken, and it may be worse than the first one. It shows Cayde fighting down the Scorn as a one-man army, and he gets severely injured in the process. The Barons approach, and Reksis Vahn activates his cauldron. Before Cayde is finished off, he says "I'm coming home, Ace." as Reksis gives the final attack. Jeez, Bungie...
• In the Forsaken Launch trailer, Uldren has Cayde at his mercy, and asks him if he has any last words. Cayde's answer:
  Cayde: How's your sister?
  • What makes it even more tragic is Uldren's reaction. Does he yell, scream, or shout at Cayde? No. He simply closes his eyes without saying a word, and pulls the trigger. Which ultimately is sadder than if he had shouted in response.
• The entire first mission of Forsaken cold be seen as one. Players know that Cayde is going to die, and that no matter how fast they are or how hard they fight, nothing can stop it. Which makes the entire mission leading up to it all the more tragic. Cayde is having an absolute ball on the mission, whooping and cheering as he drops prisoners, praising the player's ability and talking them up like they're completely invincible.
  • Cayde's taunt at Uldren is particularly heart-breaking. "Any second now, my partner is gonna roll in here and kill… Every. Last. One of you." Except you didn't.
  • Even worse? He's still alive when you find him, but there's still nothing you can do except stay at Cayde's side as he chokes out his final words and the light in his eyes literally goes out...
  Cayde: Listen, kid. This... This ain't on you. This... is what I get for... for playing nice. You tell Zavala and Ikora... the Vanguard... is the best bet... I ever... lost...
  • The reactions of the other characters is almost as gut-wrenching. Ikora is ready to go an a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for her friend, Zavala is torn between his duty as Vanguard Commander and his sorrow of losing Cayde, and even the normally stoic Banshee-44 is urging you to put down Uldren. But the worst of it has to be Amanda. She lost her parents trying to reach the City, and the Guardians (Cayde in particular) became her new family, one she never thought would die on her.
  • Even Failsafe isn't immune to it. While her interactions with Cayde suggested she was annoyed by him, both aspects of her personality are torn up by his death.
  Snarky Failsafe: "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
  Perky Failsafe: "I feel terrible!"
• A couple of lore tabs detail what happened to Mithrax after he was spared on Titan. In the Lord of Wolves lore, he remarks about how humanity destroyed the Eliksni culture by refusing to even acknowledge both it and the language - the House of Wolves used to be called the House of Gentle Weavers before the events of both games. Even though Mithrax ultimately chose to forgive humanity for doing so, it's still quite sad to hear.
• In the end, despite everything he had done, it's hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Uldren. For all of his pettiness and hostility towards the Guardians, all of it was done to protect his sister, and he was a legitimate hero to his people. And then the corrupted Riven used all of that love and grief against him, twisting his mind to make him commit horrible atrocities in the misguided belief that he could get Mara back if he did so. And all it got him was an even more broken Reef, the enmity of the few people close to him, nearly being eaten by an Eldritch Abomination, and a bullet between his eyes.
• Throughout the Young Wolf's Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Uldren, their Ghost shows signs of feeling a bit uncomfortable with the Guardian's relentlessness to wipe out everyone responsible for Cayde-6's death. The biggest example of this is the lore behind the hand cannon "Thin Line". The Young Wolf's Ghost seems absolutely heart-broken.
  "I don't think this is why the Traveler chose you."
  • What possibly makes it even worse is the last thing on the list of things your Ghost won't tell you: "I love you."
    • A particularly notable line of dialogue highlights this further; after disabling the last Splinter Mine shortly after killing Kaniks, Ghost tries to reassure the Guardian that they aren't a murderer, and that what their doing is for Cayde... and even THEN his tone implies he's trying more to convince himself rather than his Guardian.
• When the Young Wolf returns to the Tower after finishing the main campaign of Forsaken, while Ikora says that she's proud of them, Zavala... Is less than pleased. He states that while he will not shed a tear for Uldren, he makes it clear to the Young Wolf on no uncertain terms that their actions will have consequences.
• While Fikrul is a fanatical Fallen dedicated to killing his own kind to raise them as undead Scorn to uplift them from their dependency on Servitors, when he fights you on the way to the Watchtower, you can hear the sheer anger and grief he has from how you simply butchered them for vengeance.
  "You enjoyed killing them? You enjoyed putting them in dirt - where you belong? Did it make you feel good? Kaniks... Reksis Vahn... Yaviks... Pirrha... Araskes... Hiraks... Elykris... Tell me that killing my friends made you feel good. TELL ME!"
  • While some may be inclined to ask why Fikrul is basically sobbing over the loss of the Barons if the Scorn have Resurrective Immortality, repeated revivals of individual Scorn actually have a degenerative effect - this is how Screebs are formed. Now imagine watching your closest friends turn into unrecognizable, mindless masses of humanoid flesh, only able to do nothing but die, and die again. When he comes back in his own strike, he's basically taking his own risk for revenge, much like we did with Cayde.
    • This could also be an explanation as to why the Barons' English is broken, or why they roar and shriek like animals- they've already suffered brain damage from previous deaths and resurrections. For all we know, we could have caused the death that reduced them into shrieking, insane wretches.
  • A compelling theory on why Hiraks didn't deserve to die. He was incredibly resilient and intelligent, and could easily pass off as one of the many poster children for perseverance on paper; he even found love in a world where one would expect none. But by being there with the rest of the Barons when they broke out, he lost everyone and everything he held dear.
• Cayde-6 prepared a stack of recordings for the people he assumed would kill him. Cayde being Cayde, there's a fair amount of joking in his multiple-choice final words. But then there's the the message to Ikora.
  "But, uh... well, if you did hate me, the feeling was NOT mutual. In fact - yeah, I'll say it - don't even mind that you killed me. I figure if we threw down... first off, no one can blame me for losing. And... I know you'd be in the right. So... thanks? I guess? You were a... good friend. Better than a guy like me could hope for, anyway. So yeah, thanks, Ikora. For everything."
• The entirety of Cayde's Will is a tearjerker since you're trying to take up Cayde's signature Hand Cannon after his death, but the most crushing part comes at the end when Banshee-44 reassembles the gun for you; He wonders why he hasn't seen Cayde around lately. The man's undergone so many reboots and his memory is so faulty that he might be stuck in a constant loop of wondering where Cayde went only to find out and be crushed all over again. It's like an Alzheimer's patient having to be told a loved one is dead over and over again and never remembering.
  Banshee-44: Parts are all in place now. Ace of Spades is as good as new. When you wield it, remember... remember... Now, wait a minute... Hey, have you seen Cayde around lately?
• If you side with the Vanguard over the Drifter in “Joker’s Wild”, he initially seems fine with it. He’s upset, but understands that you don’t trust him yet, says he respects your integrity, and promises that he’ll prove he’s not the backstabber people think he is... then he casually dubs you “Snitch”. And from that point onwards, his dialogue becomes extremely cagey and hostile towards you, even during Gambit, and he generally makes it clear he no longer trusts you. Pretty harsh, especially given how he seemed to genuinely want to be friends with the Young Wolf.
• The Vanguard has not been doing well since Cayde's death. Between that and the death of The Speaker, there has been a lot of skepticism, both in-universe and out, about the Vanguard's ability to adequately defend The City. Zavala has become overly cautious and unwilling to make any moves against the enemy, and Ikora has become withdrawn. It really does show how much Cayde was The Heart of the group, and how his willingness to take risks and make big plays helped balance out the more reserved leadership styles of the other two-thirds of the Vanguard. As for the Speaker, the leadership of The City has effectively stalled due to his death. Because he was a Guardian, and therefore Immortal, there isn't any official mechanism in place to replace him as Speaker. Since the City is a Theocracy with him as the leader, there's a massive hole in the power structure of the government.
  • During the 2019 Festival of the Lost, if you idle near Eva Levante, she tells your Guardian to cheer up and that Cayde would have wanted them to be happy. She also mentions that 'he would not want to see you this way'. That means the player Guardian is still broken over Cayde's death, enough for their grief to appear visibly; the pain probably intensified by the whole meaning of the festival.

Season of the Drifter (Mar. 5, 2019—June 4, 2019)

• Back during the Dark Age, the Drifter kept his ghost secret as he wandered, sometimes dying of hunger before being brought back by his ghost. One time he managed to find refuge in a small village that gave him work. One day, the Iron Lords wandered into town, offering the town several months' worth of food and resources to use them as bait to ambush a local Warlord. The resulting battle razed the town to the ground, and the Drifter was the only resident that survived.
  Drifter: My neighbor's kid told me something that still bounces around my head to this day: Right before the light went out in her tiny eyes, she whispered, "I can't feel anything." Yeah. I couldn't either.

Shadowkeep (Oct. 1, 2019—Dec. 10, 2019)

• Shadowkeep's Dawning includes a ship called Amnestia-S2 whose lore tab gives a sad tale of a lonely Guardian during the holidays. The Guardian in question is the former Uldren Sov. He spends his days alone, avoiding other Guardians, because they either respond with grief or hostility to him when they see him, forcing him to keep his helmet on if he ever has to be around people. He wears his funeral shroud as a cloak or cape, but it reminds him that he must have come from some place nicer than the rusted out shipping container he squats in. His Ghost is a relentless well of optimism, and tries to cheer him up with talk of the Dawning, but he's still too lost in misery to really be cheered.

Season of Dawn (Dec. 10, 2019—Mar. 9, 2020)

• Exploring the Corridors of Time revealed an interesting memorial to an unknown Guardian. After solving a complex community-wide puzzle, we discovered an echo of a future Saint-14 giving a memorial to the one entombed - his mentor, aka, you. His speech is just as heartrending as you'd expect, and what's more, following the messages left on the Bastion weapon you get for completing it leads you to another future artifact - one of Saint's weapons, which a Fallen named Reysk stole and killed us with; a final insult.

Season of the Worthy (Mar. 10, 2020—June 9, 2020)

• Season of the Worthy's "Legacy" lore follows Ana, Jinju (her Ghost), and Rasputin's journey through the old Seraph Bunker network, discovering many long-lost protocols and technologies. Ana - who this entire time has been Clovis Bray's most vocal advocate - also discovers that Dr. Anastasia Bray was in charge of some of its most heinous experiments.
• The "Felwinter's Lie" questline has Rasputin telling Ana and the Young Wolf a story about a tyrant and his son, where the tyrant sent his son to live among his people until a calamity struck. The son changed and rebelled against his father, and in turn, the tyrant decided If I Can't Have You… by using his love for the people against him by telling him of a technology that could benefit the people, only for the son to die of a plague instead. After the deed was done, the tyrant looked upon his tyranny and wept. Sounds like a typical bedtime fairytale you'd tell your kids as you put them to bed, right? Not quite. Rasputin illustrates the tale by projecting holograms - more specifically, holograms of Felwinter. Ana speculates that Rasputin tells is actually about him and Felwinter, with the "plague" being SIVA. And if Felwinter is Rasputin's "son," then it's clear the Warmind lost just as much as Saladin that day when the Iron Lords sealed SIVA away at the cost of their lives.

Season of Arrivals (June 9th 2020—Nov. 10,2020)

• Season of Arrivals is jam packed full of despair. The Darkness is finally here, and absolutely nothing mankind has done so far can even slow it down.
  • The tearjerker comes from Ana Bray and Rasputin. Ana was so confident that Rasputin was the key to saving mankind from the Darkness, but instead the Darkness shut him down as easily as flipping a lightswitch. And somehow in doing so they even corrupted the software that is his true self, meaning that he may have actually been killed, and not just disabled. This drives Ana into a Heroic BSoD, leaving her just sitting there, staring listlessly at blank screens.
  • The second part of the Exodus quest, rewarding the exotic version of Traveler's Chosen, is a last-ditch attempt to pull everyone on the invaded planets/moons back to safety before the Pyramids consume everything. However, by the end of it, nothing is truly gained in that regard (except for the possibility of saving Rasputin) as the quest only makes clear how dire and despondent things are for the City. No one sans Ana is willing to come back, instead only sending back the last of some supplies and research data and insisting that they'll be fine as they look to face the Darkness head-on - and indeed, the associated lore book leaves each of them surrounded by enemies with no help in sight. Once the nigh-fruitless (for the City) venture is complete, the Traveler's Chosen is finally acquired... except rather than being a beacon of hope or resolution like the Khvostov from the previous game, it's a sign of desperation, and instead of a rousing talk in its lore as one might hope for, it's Savathûn using Shaxx's Ahamkara skull to look upon the despairing Vanguard and Guardians, and laugh.
    "All we have now is our faith."
  • When we first saw it, the Tree of Silver Wings left on Io by the Traveler was a beautiful thing. However, as the weeks progressed, the Darkness' influence began to subtly warp the Tree, until the end of the Season when it turned completely black. It's a symbolic message from the Darkness to the Traveler: "Everything you grow, I will corrupt". And the Darkness has already stated its intent to turn the Guardians to its own cause...
  • The seasonal event for Season of Arrivals is a bittersweet example. After having spent so long being inactive and injured, the Traveler finally pieces itself back together. For the first time in a while since the Darkness came knocking at their front doorstep, things are finally looking up for the City. That is until the end of the event, where Io, Mercury, Mars and Titan are seemingly fade into the shadows. The first cutscene in Beyond Light tells us that those planets weren't destroyed or taken over by the Darkness. They disappeared. Everything the Guardians have done to help everyone on those planets, including their attempts to aid Commander Sloane and Asher Mir, is rendered utterly pointless as they are now gone. That is a very raw deal.
  • The cliffhangers that Sloane and Asher are left on as the Darkness consumes(?) the planets they were on. Sloane gears up in a suit of ancient Power Armor and goes to make a suicidal Last Stand against a Pyramid that is heading towards her position, while Asher goes into the Pyramidion (the Vex just let him walk through after a certain point) and brings the radiolarian lake crashing down on himself, presumably finishing what Brakion started and turning himself into a Vex unit.

Beyond Light/Season of the Hunt (Nov. 10, 2020—Feb. 9, 2021)

• "Immolant Part 2" offers a very heartbreaking explanation for why Osiris was so easily jumped by a Hive Knight in the Season of the Hunt trailer: Sagira, his beloved Ghost and once the Ensemble Dark Horse of Curse of Osiris, is dead, having sacrificed herself on the Dreadnought to stop one of Xivu Arath's celebrants from killing Osiris, all while he is Forced to Watch as his once-Only Friend dies in front of him, wishing that it was him over and over again until the bitter end. Just before Sagira finally explodes, he becomes utterly despondent:
  "Osiris, why don't you ever listen to me?” She compiles in front of him.
  "What are y—"
  "Shut up! Listen to my words!” Her iris is bright with Light. “There are great things still left for you; don't lose hope in the darkness." She is luminant.
  Osiris breathes the word, as if he could hold it back: "No." He would understand in time. She had seen it.
  [...]
  Osiris draws breath. Alone.
• Crow's situation. He's in Spider's employ, and seems to be finding good enough work and safety among his associates... but then it's revealed that his Ghost, Glint, has a bomb planted inside of him. Should Crow ever wander somewhere Spider doesn't want him to go... It's very clear at this point that Spider's gone from "shady but decent enough mob boss" to "brutal and cruel boss who takes advantage of a poor Lightbearer", and generally serves as a sobering reminder that Affably Evil is still evil.
  • There's also the fact that many of Crow's lines, both in person and during Wrathborn Hunts, are chock full of Dramatic Irony. Though Crow doesn't seem to be aware of it, he says a lot of things that - considering he's saying them to the Young Wolf - just make it hurt all that much more. Especially since, as Uldren, all he got for murdering Cayde was nothing except death and then revival as a Guardian forced to work for Spider. It really makes you want to give the poor guy a hug and let him free from Spider's clutches.
  • One conversation he has with you involves him having to Mercy Kill a Dreg he knew of, known as Savek. He had worked with her a few times before, and then, he suddenly sees her among the Wrathborn. Despite restraining her and trying desperately to bring her to her senses, the corrupted Savek keeps thrashing against her bonds in a desperate attempt to murder him. At that point, he realizes that she's gone, and decides to "give her what peace he could".
  • On the bright side, The Dawning 2020 lets you make cookies for him. His response is to take it and stuff it behind his cloak without actually checking what it is. It's only when he notices the smell of it that he "looks at you with gratitude". While it's nice to give him gifts, there's also the implication that he's paranoid about Spider potentially punishing Crow for accepting things his boss doesn't approve of. Still, the fact that he appreciates the gesture can be a happy Tearjerker.
• While the lore tab for the Hawkmoon hand cannon features the Guardian and the Crow bonding over their shared survival over Savathûn's Taken by getting drunk around a campfire together, it is notably bittersweet in several respects. It's implied that neither entirely trusts the other in spite of their bonding, but more than that, Savathûn herself is watching it, bewildered by the rekindled hope in Crow's eyes, finding herself emotionally touched by the celebration. Throughout, she repeatedly questions, "What is this feeling?" as it conjures up long-buried memories of her childhood with her sisters and reminds her of what she's done and the acts and atrocities she has committed.
  I am reminded of my home. I am reminded of the warmth of the sun and the embrace of my family. I am reminded of my father's face. I am reminded of everyone I betrayed. All the blood spilled in the name of immortality. The warmth of the sun burns me with its memory.
  What is this feeling?
  I do not want it.

Season of the Chosen (Feb.9, 2021—May 11th, 2021)

• The lore tab for the Brass Attacks sidearm has Banshee-44 inspecting the gun after some retired combat Frames dig it up near the HELM's construction site. Up until this weapon, it's suggested that the Battlegrounds weapons are old Cabal firearms, with Banshee speculating that the Brass Attacks must've been buried after committing a horrible crime. But that theory at least partially falls apart when he decides to disassemble it to find a maker's mark. And a maker's mark he finds: "B-44.4.C-6," which he doesn't recognize and thinks is just a part number or serial. However, it's painfully obvious that it's an abbreviation for "Banshee-44. For Cayde-6," meaning that Banshee worked on the Brass Attacks himself and wanted to give it to Cayde. The poor guy will never be able to truly remember that his best friend is gone or even all the things they did for each other, no matter how long it's been since his passing.
• In Season of the Chosen, Crow manages to save Zavala from being assassinated by a Cabal Psion assassin. The problem? He did so without his mask on. While Zavala wrote it off as a hallucination, Osiris tears into him as the Vanguard cannot risk dealing with Caiatl while also dealing with the drama of Cayde's killer being a Guardian. When Osiris asks Crow if he didn't learn that the tiniest mistakes have consequences when he served as the Spider's enforcer, Crow retaliates.
  Crow: I suppose you learned that chasing Xivu Arath.
  (charged silence)
  Osiris: Choose your next words wisely.
• Season of the Chosen's three exotic chest pieces tell the story of a Guardian and a Legionaire trapped inside the wreckage of a crashed ship. Initially they engage in the expected posturing and threats, but before long they begin developing something of a bond and even start to see each other as potential friends. Then you get to the last entry, which is an after-action report; it tells of a rescue of a guardian from a crash site, with the only resistance being a Cabal warrior that was easily neutralized, but the traumatized guardian having to be knocked out to be rescued.

Season of the Splicer (May 11th, 2021—Aug 24th, 2021)

• Season of the Splicer sees Eliksni refugees of House Light move into the city. It should purely be a heartwarming moment, but it quickly shows tragic sides when the sheer amount of pain the Last City and the Houses have caused each other becomes apparent.
  • A human nearly shoots his son, while suffering under a traumatic flashback to fighting against marauders.
  • One lore entry shows an Eliksni exploring the city and trying ramen noodles for the first time. The sheer awkwardness of him and the nervousness of every human around makes it a rather funny episode. Unfortunately, this same Eliksni attempts to complement the chef using a series of expletives that he heard Amanda use to describe the Spider, which she stated meant a "kind and generous individual". Other lore tabs show that he's since gone missing after a group of civilians attempting to murder him for that faux pas, and his brother Vriiksis is set upon by a lynch mob spouting Lakshmi-2's propaganda and has to be saved by a Revenant Hunter, Aisha.
    • When Aisha saves the Vriiksis by scaring off the mob, he doesn't thank her like expected; he's terrified of her because she uses Stasis and flees as if she's some kind of soul-eating monster, even accusing her of being corrupted by the Darkness like Eramis was.
  • Arrha (the associate of Spider that helped you in the beginning of Forsaken) is pretending to be a refugee, and while his thoughts on the House of Light paint him as a greedy bastard projecting his woes on the House, it shows how awful Fallen life has been that showing niceties now seems pointless, even fatal to some.
  • Mithrax and Saint-14's partnering up during Overrides goes about as well as you'd expect, with the latter often ranting at length about the horrors he's seen the Fallen commit. In another post-mission dialogue, Saint bitterly reminds you that you are "a Guardian first" and shouldn't be getting as close to Mithrax as you are.
    • You can also see a marking drawn on some walls in the Eliksni Quarter, which Eido explains is something Eliksni parents sketch above the resting places of children to help them sleep, sort of like dreamcatchers, saying that it's so scary it wards off enemies. Said marking is a crude drawing of Saint's helmet.
  • In the lore entry for the Survivor's Epitaph, Lord Shaxx and Mithrax run into each other in the Tower and talk. Shaxx ends up admitting that he was half-considering just killing Mithrax by throwing him off the wall as revenge for all the humans killed by Fallen. Then he bitterly trails off into how hypocritical that would be because not only has he butchered countless Fallen, but he has also killed plenty of humans himself during his time as a Warlord, being particularly haunted by an incident where he murdered three thieves in cold blood because he caught them stealing food in a time of famine. This prompts Mithrax to confess that he has gone through the same thing; in addition to killing "too many" humans (in self-defense or otherwise), he also once took part in a raid on a rival Fallen House's ship and personally executed a bunch of POWs by throwing them out an airlock, simply because that was "simpler" than bartering them off as prisoners. Nobody has clean hands in this situation.
  • In Week 4 of Season of the Splicer, the Eliksni Quarter was sabotaged by human civilians influenced by Lakshmi's propaganda, with Mithrax being outraged at Lakshmi at what happened.
    • When Saint-14 responds to Mithrax's anger with how civilians refuse to live with monsters, Mithrax retaliates on how the Eliksni see Saint-14. Mithrax explains how none of the Eliksni were spared from Saint's crusade upon them, even defenseless Eliksni were seen as Fallen and were slain. His brutality towards them led to them constantly fearing him, with a marking being made in his image. Now they have to see this monster every day.
      Mithrax: If we wish to survive, we must all learn... to live alongside our monsters.
  • In Week 5 of Season of the Splicer, you go to talk to Saint-14 no doubt wanting to see his response to Mithrax's story. Well, it hit him hard. Not just hearing the story of what he did from the eyes of his victims, but actually seeing them as well hit Saint-14 something deep. It's to the point when you talk to him he knows that he is in the wrong in his position against the Eliksni.
    Saint-14: To be seen as a terror. A destroyer. To know that children tremble in fear at my name, and mourn what I have taken from them. This is not the Saint-14 I know.
  • Even sadder is that right after this Mithrax informs us that Saint-14 tried to greet an Eliksni child that had run across him only to flee in terror. Saint-14 has always seen himself as a defender of children, a main point of his hatred for the Fallen came from what he saw the desperate houses do to children. Now that he's starting to see the Eliksni as people, a child running from him is truly heartbreaking.
• The lore tab for Empty Vessel shows that following his open opposition of the cease fire with Caiatl, Saladin has to find out from Osiris that many younger Guardians opinions of him have thoroughly soured; with some even speculating that it was him who caused the attempted assassination of Zavala at the negotiations. While he agrees to let Osiris handle things, it is obvious that the accusations of wanting to kill one of his oldest friends and pupils deeply wound him.
  • Empty Vessel's lore also confirms that Saladin is a Shell-Shocked Veteran, constantly haunted by sounds of gunfire and screams from battles long past. And given Saladin was one of the first Guardians raised after the Collapse, that's a horrifying number of battles. The only times he can ever silence this is when he looks at the Traveler. There's a reason Saladin Forge insists on killing every enemy on the battlefield: it's because he can never leave it.
• Lore entries for the new Splicer weapons in Season 14 show the terrible fate of a curious Eliksni at the hands of Last City residents. An Eliksni is unloading some cargo Crow stole from The Spider for Amanda Holliday, who calls The Spider a very unflattering word. The Eliksni, still new to Earth language, asks her about it. Amanda hastily covers the insult up by saying it means "they're a kind and generous person". Later, the same Eliksni tries ramen for the first time, and after being told the meal is free, they compliment the chef by using the words Amanda had said. This takes a turn for the dark when the next lore entry focuses on a little girl of the Last City. She's outside of the City proper, with her mother and mother's associates, and the girl is not sure why they're here. Her mother is shoving things into bags and raves about how the Fallen are dangerous... and how one said something in a ramen shop. The girl rifles through a trash pile in the corner, finding towels soaked in fluid and a distinct item that belonged to the curious Eliksni. Whether the Eliksni was murdered or managed to escape, whatever they had planned isn't revealed.
  Her voice was small. "Mama, what did you do?"
• After Lakshmi's failed coup, a memorial is held in the City for those that lost their lives in the attack: men, women, and children of both the Human races and Eliksni were lost in the crossfire.

Season of the Lost (Aug. 24, 2021—Feb. 22, 2022)

• Upon finding Osiris with Mara Sov, Saint-14 begs his friend to come back to the Last City. Unfortunately, as he soon realizes, it's not Osiris he's speaking to and watches in horror as his friend changes in form.
  Saint-14: No, no, NO!
• Really, almost every character that interacted with "Osiris" gets one of these, blended with Harsher in Hindsight.
  "Trust me." -Savathûn as Osiris
  • Shayura went from a survivor of an ill-fated mission to Old Chicago to a Knight Templar over the course of Year 4, launching a one-woman crusade against “enemies of the Light”, i.e. murdering anyone who uses Stasis/anyone who disagrees with her, including refugees and children. The Reed’s Regret linear fusion rifle states that "Osiris" offered her counseling shortly after her trauma began to manifest, an option that her fireteam (including the titular Reed-7) encouraged her to take. The lore tab consists of him realizing the full implications of this, and that Shayura almost certainly wasn’t the only one.
  • Saladin gets an implied one too. “Osiris” was a stabilizing figure and confidant for him. Remember how Empty Vessel involves “Osiris” advising him not to further complicate matters by talking to Zavala about his concerns, as Saladin’s name was tainted due to his actions in Chosen? Or how "Osiris" tacitly encouraged said actions? Saladin does. And he is pissed.
• Season of the Lost features the moment fans have been dreading since Forsaken: the Awoken discover that Uldren was resurrected as a Guardian. As bad as it was when random Guardians found him and vented their fury over Cayde on him, the Awoken's reactions are much worse:
  • With Season of the Lost marking Mara Sov’s return, it's almost inevitable that Crow learns the truth; either we, one of his closest friends, killed him, or Petra Venj, a critical ally, did.
  • Crow and Mara come face to face for the first time at the end of the first story mission Cocoon. Crow, naturally, remembers nothing of his past life and asks if he knows Mara. There is absolutely no outward reaction from Mara. As far as she's concerned, he's just another Awoken that the Traveler took from them, and this is her own brother we're talking about.
    • That being said, however, completing Astral Alignment has a chance for Mara to tell Crow that she could show him the Distributary for real, something she has never done to a Guardian. This and the shred of emotion she ends up slipping while telling him so suggests she's secretly mourning the loss of Uldren and genuinely wants him back.
  • Speaking of Petra, she finally learns about Crow, and she is not happy. She treats him coldly despite his best attempts, though she herself justifies her harsh actions: While Crow may not be Uldren, he's too much like his old self and is desperate to earn validation and praise from the Guardians much in the same way Uldren tried for Mara's.
• In Week 3 of the Wayfinder missions, Crow gets into an argument with Petra, stating that he thinks of Osiris as a father figure. While normally this would be heartwarming, keep in mind that "Osiris" has been Savathun using his body as her own personal meat suit. Petra correctly points out to him that he's never actually met the man himself, but Crow honestly believes there might be some good in the Witch Queen and continues to press the matter. The argument reaches its head when Petra tells Crow he's becoming a liability, and under no circumstance will she let him ruin all the hard work she's given in keeping the curse of the Dreaming City under check and Crow questioning Petra's loyalty, which promptly earns him a knife pressed up against his neck. If the events of Forsaken and Petra's cold attitude towards Crow didn't clue you in, whatever friendship the former Awoken Prince and the Queen's Wrath once had is all but gone.
• In Week 6, Crow goes to confront Savathun in spite of orders to stay away from her. As he rages at her for her deceptions, Savathun offers to tell him the past that hounds him. Worse still, she shows him by having him touch her crystalized body. We don't see exactly what or how much of his past she showed him, but we know at least know he saw his final moments as Uldren when staring down the barrels of the Young Wolf and Petra's guns as he repeats "Everything I did, I did for her!" at the end of Forsaken. When we go to speak with him afterward, he's clearly hurt and angry upon learning the truth, but he does admit he understands why they would withhold the truth from him, but he wants time to process everything and requests that Ikora takes him off the mission. His conversation with the Warlock Vanguard leader makes it clear just how bad it is for him.
  • Crow's Heroic BSoD is further expanded in the Isolation entry of the Ripples lorebook. To Glint's confusion, he goes to Venus and gets into a fight with a Vex, only to die at the hands of a Minotaur. When Glint resurrects him, he demands to know why Crow refused to use the light and even asks him if he was trying to get himself killed on purpose. Crow's responds that he fought the Vex to see if he could do what Uldren Sov did^note When Uldren first discovered the Black Garden and went through the same process the Young Wolf did to reach in the first game, he fought a Vex Minotaur and managed to kill it with zero assistance without his light, to prove to himself that he was not the Awoken Prince.

The Witch Queen/Season of the Risen (Feb. 22, 2022—May 24, 2022)

• In the Collector's Edition book, there's a lot of retrospective from Ikora Rey spread out across various logs and letters. While some of it is "just" a discussion of Stasis, Ghosts, and paracausality, there's also an emerging narrative of how she still hasn't gotten over Cayde's death. Why? Because in the resulting self-loathing, she begins to realize that the Guardians followed his lead because they were using his personality as a Living Emotional Crutch that the Witch Queen and the Winnower have very easily exploited by talking in a similar manner as the dead Hunter Vanguard, and is clearly distressed that trying to be honest and protective is instead eroding their approval. To really send it home, in a list of potential work titles that soon turns into Angrish Ophiuchus just so happens to be recording, Ikora finally faces the reality of how utterly socially stunted Guardians really are — and given her whole business as the Warlock Vanguard in terms of managing her subordinates is philosophy and maintaining a moral high ground, the realization is crushing.
• When you enter Savathûn's Throne World, you come across an eerie, but strangely beautiful, palace infused with Light and a swampy but lush courtyard, not at all like Oryx's Dreadnaught. Fynch later reveals why it doesn't look all that much like a Hive base - because it looks like a Krill base, a recreation of the Witch Queen's dead homeworld of Fundament. Deep down, she's still Sathona, and it's a rather melancholic moment to realize how homesick she is.
• Ikora makes a heartbreaking discovery when she taps into the fossilized Worm's memories: The Traveler nearly helped Sathona and her sisters, but the Worms tricked her into freeing them. If it wasn't for the Worms, the Hive would've never turned to evil, and would've never killed so many species. It also reveals the real reason why the Traveler revived Savathûn: It felt guilty over being too late to help the Hive and tried to save her from the Darkness. The Ammonites, and many other civilizations that The Traveler itself had helped in the past, would never have been destroyed if it had come to the Hive's aid sooner.
• Even the Worms are revealed to have a tragic backstory. They don't serve completely of their own free will: Rhulk kidnapped their mother Xita and is now holding her hostage in a catatonic state, forcing her to breed Hive larvae for the Witness's armies. If Savathûn's worm's dialogue is anything to go by, after billions of years the Worms still grieve for her and honor her sacrifice. Xita's observations, read in the Titan's version of the Resonant Fury Suit, are heartbreaking; she's worried for her children and she's still being tortured by Rhulk. Her last words are a cry that the suffering her, her children, and the Hive have all undergone not be for nothing.
• Hearing your normally cool headed and calm Ghost loose his temper at Savathûn when the latter communicates with you at one point is genuinely depressing and rather hard to listen to, as Ghost is essentially unleashing all of his bottled up anger upon the Witch Queen for for everything she had done to not only him, but to his family and allies as well.
  Savathûn: Little Ghost... you were asked to accept the Darkness. Asked to turn against your cousins. Asked to defy the will of the Travaler... My Ghosts make no concessions. We serve the Traveler's true interests.
  Ghost: No concessions? How stupid do you think I am? You and your siblings, YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS! I remember Crota and the Great Disaster! I remember Oryx and the Taken! I remember what you did to the Awoken and the Dreaming City! I'll never forget what happened to Sagira. To Osiris. I would die before I ever chose to help the Hive.
• There's something surprisingly humanizing, even poignant, about Savathûn's final moments when she approaches the Traveler with the hope of being given the Light. Granted, The Reveal that she deliberately laid out and exposed her life story and her schemes to us so that she herself could reclaim her memory of them after becoming Risen suggests that she knew, or at least expected, full well that she'd die (and thus that she'd be brought back by the Traveler), but when she beseeches said Traveler for salvation, her voice audibly quavers when she finds herself faced with the possibility that she might be simply left to rot where she kneels, as well as just before she collapses and passes away. When one remembers just how and why she, her siblings, and the Hive as a whole became the way that they are, it can stir up sympathy for her in spite of everything that she's done... and when we learn soon afterwards that the Traveler had always planned to come to the Hive's aid, only for them to be damned by The Witness' lies to both Savathun herself and her father before her, one's sympathy for her might increase.
  • There's also Savathûn's reaction to you revealing how badly she was tricked. Initially, she spits in your face that she isn't fooled, but as the fight continues, she slowly realizes how much of an Unwitting Pawn she was of the Witness, and starts emotionally falling apart as she realizes the Krill would have been saved by the Traveler if she had chosen to trust the Leviathan, or considered that the Worms may have only been telling her things that she wanted to hear. By the end, she's clearly given up hope, bitterly remarking that the Guardians are stopping her from saving the Traveler before letting herself die.
• Amanda learns the truth about Crow and spends upwards of several lore tabs thoroughly unable to handle it, believing all the stuff she did for him was pointless just because he used to be Uldren. Making things even more heartbreaking is the note that she is so deep in the throes of grief that she may even be attempting to deny the events of Harbinger despite it being well over a year since they took place; among her gifts that she no longer wants anything to do with is an auto rifle themed after the Radiant Accipter, i.e. the ultimate culmination of the Young Wolf fully understanding why he was resurrected.
• In Week 2 of the Season of the Risen, the Crow meets with Lord Saladin in the Psisorium in the H.E.L.M., where Caiatl's Psions are working on extracting intel from the minds of comatose Lucent Hive Lightbearers. Crow is uneasy about the whole thing, wanting assurances that it's painless, and argues they should be freed as a mercy. Saladin retorts by relating the story of his greatest failures during the Dark Age. He'd come across a poor village in the old forest, which was having problems with a thief. When he found the thief, he discovered it was a young girl, fearless despite being confronted by one of the Risen Iron Lords. Although the punishment for theft in those days was death, Saladin showed mercy to her and let her go, but tracked down the bandit clan who'd forced her into the life and slaughtered them. When he returned several years later, the village was destroyed, all the people therein dead, at the hands of the new bandit chief— the now-grown girl that he'd spared. Saladin's point to the story is that mercy for their enemies shouldn't come at the expense of mercy for the victims, and that sometimes one must make hard choices.
• As monstrous and boisterous as Rhulk was as The Dragon to the Witness, "Shattered Suns" implies he wasn't always this way. After destroying Lubrae at the behest of the Witness, Rhulk is horrified by what he's done, and experiences a vivid flashback of his life on the planet before his family betrayed him. Meanwhile, the Witness repeatedly justifies Rhulk's atrocities to himself before he eventually gives in to their dogma and leaves with them for the rest of the cosmos. Granted, none of this excuses Rhulk becoming a Complete Monster, but it does give off the impression that Rhulk became so evil not because he finds value in the Witness's teachings of his own volition, but because the Witness gaslit him into becoming this way.
  • When you're investigating the inside of his Pyramid after your defeat him and come across the Upended, he'll begin to elucidate a bit on his time as a member of the Regime- specifically, as a guard for the energy-siphoning device for one of Lubrae's suns. When he gets to the part of how "[...] Lubrae died" by reversing this very flow of power, he briefly pauses before he finishes the thought, breathlessly... but not in a way that suggests his usual fanatical reverence or pride. No, it's blunt- rushed, even- in a way that contrasts with the rest of his eloquent and poetic way of speaking, as if he wants to get it over with so that he doesn't have to think about it any longer than he has to. Probably because, even after all of this time and even after becoming so entrenched in the Witness' dogma, he probably doesn't. And him immediately following this up with the insistence that "it was necessary" comes off more like he's trying to justify it to himself, rather than any sort of words of devotion directed towards the Witness.
• In Week 4 of Season of the Risen, Crow is missing throughout the first playthrough of the Moon PsiOps Battlegrounds. Upon returning to the HELM, we see why: he had attempted to shut off the Psisorium, only to kill the Psion running it and wipe all of the intelligence stored in the room. Naturally, he doesn't take it well, as he's on his knees and distraught at what he's done, before angrily telling off Saladin for giving him the conviction to do such an awful thing. Later, after a heated exchange in the Hangar that ends in Saladin permanently indentured into the Cabal War Council, we see that Crow wanted Caiatl to just end him right then and there.
  • There's also the matter of why Crow shut off the Psisorium to begin with. At first, we're led to believe that he misinterpreted Saladin's story from Week 2 as an excuse to free the Lucent Hive inside, but upon completing the quest, page 4 of "Quintessence" drops. It reveals that Crow learned that the war was coming to an end, thus making the Psisorium no longer necessary from a tactical standpoint, and therefore tried to let the Psion go himself. But instead of being rewarded for what was little more than a genuine nicety, Crow would end up blowing out the brains of someone the Vanguard and Caiatl considered a true friend, and nearly condemning an entire alliance to total failure.

Season of the Haunted (May 24, 2022—Aug. 23, 2022)

• The first radio message of the season is nothing short of brutal: it's Amanda Holliday unloading three months-worth of misplaced rage and borderline-dehumanizing levels of denial onto Crow, making it clear that she doesn't even think he exists anymore and is still just Uldren. Above all, though, it shows that given its actual intent and what the Nightmares are doing to Crow, the Hawkmoon quest is ultimately a complete failure.
• The Deep Explorer armor set from Duality finally reveals Calus's true Freudian Excuse for being motivated by the Darkness: he feels useless for not being there for Caiatl when it mattered.
• Zavala's fondness for crochet has always been treated as a funny, if trivial, spot of Hidden Depths up to this point. Since then, it's been confirmed that he also once had a relationship with a Lightless woman named Safiyah, whose memory haunts both The Guardian and Zavala himself throughout "Operation: Midas". When Eris conducts the ritual that binds the participant's Nightmares to them, just what is Zavala's offering to the ritual? A pair of crochet needles.
• Like Zavala above, Crow's offering to the ritual is not without importance. At first glance, it looks like a tattered piece of white cloth. Nothing of real importance, right? Some eagle-eyed players might recognize it as the shroud that was used to cover Uldren's corpse in the Dreaming City. Crow kept the shroud because it meant to him that, despite whatever actions his past self did to earn the hate and animosity of the Guardians, and possibly the Awoken, he had at least one person who cared about him.
• The Nightmare of Uldren absolutely loves to Kick the Dog. If you complete a mission, there's a chance you'll hear the Nightmare fondly recount the feeling of shooting Cayde-6 with his own gun. That's to say nothing of his goading towards Crow during the Seasonal Story Mission "Sever - Shame". The banter between them reiterates why crow wants nothing to do with his past, and his vehement refusal is all the more poignant when Crow explains one of the many reasons why he despises Uldren.
  Nightmare of Uldren: You're awfully bitter.
  The Crow: Damn right I'm bitter. You had everything, and you set it on fire for HER [Mara]!
  • On top of this, Crow is revealed to be actively cutting off all contact with Mara. She knows this, and has quietly accepted that, no matter how much she legitimately cares for him, she may never be forgiven.
    • Even Petra, who is sycophantic to a fault towards Mara, recognizes that the latter really fucked up.
• The Duality Dungeon, for all its disturbing atmosphere and delving into Calus' warped mind, ultimately shows what lies beneath all that pomp and opulent. Calus genuinely loves his daughter, calling her his star and hopes that she will shine brighter than any other. The Final Boss of the dungeon is even a Nightmare of Caiatl, to whom Calus refers to as "my betrayer".
  • To top it off, he's so ashamed by it that the Nightmare of Caiatl can only be accessed by breaking open a vault and delving deep within... and as you come closer and closer to breaking the seal, Calus chimes in with heartbreaking pleas for you to stop. In that moment, his otherwise unflappable demeanor vanishes as he realizes you're going to find his greatest regret.
• As if Uldren's Nightmare wasn't enough of a sucker punch, the lore tab for the exotic sidearm Tresspasser adds another Nightmare to the mix. It's Cayde-6, and worse, the Nightmare's convinced it's the actual Cayde and not a representation of the Guardians' worst fears and traumas. Worse still, it's taken to mocking Ikora, reminding her of the empty promise she made to "mount Uldren's head on his throne" and calling her a hypocrite for allowing his murderer into the ranks of the Guardians.
• In Week 3, an audio log transmission has a conversation between Zavala and Amanda discussing the situation. Amanda's still clearly rattled by everything going on and mentions how she said some hateful things to someone who didn't deserve it (Crow) and how the tiniest things make her snap. They also talk about the people they've lost and how they can't really remember them no matter how hard they try; Amanda can't remember anything about her parents, and Zavala can't remember what his son's voice sounds like, no matter how hard he tries.
• Week 3 also finally gives us the tragic backstory of Zavala and Safiyah: She was indeed his wife, with whom he raised a son, Hakim, and for whom he briefly left the service of the Light to live in peace and quiet. Sadly, that peace didn't last, as a band of Fallen raiders attacked their home, and Hakim was killed while fighting alongside his father. After this Zavala and Safiyah go their separate ways, but Zavala never lets go of his grief and guilt.
  • In the weekly Sever mission, the Nightmare of Safiyah uses all of this against Zavala, accusing him of causing their son's death and abandoning his family in the name of the Traveler, a Traveler that's just given its power to one of humanity's greatest enemies, the Hive. The ritual fails, and the usually stoic and unflappable Zavala is left a shattered wreck, believing himself to be what the Nightmare branded him as:
    Zavala: A hollow man leading others to die... for a silent god.
  • In the same mission, Zavala and the Young Wolf are jumped by Nightmares of the same Fallen squadron that killed Zavala's son. At the same time, the Nightmare of Safiyah tells him that "my son's killers should meet" before the squad materializes on cue. Note the plural, implying Zavala is just that deep in his guilt over Hakim's death, which the sociopathic Nightmares are all too eager to try and physically brutalize him with.
  • The lore book "Triage" details Zavala and Safiyah's history together, with the last book revealing that Safiyah had a daughter after she and Zavala parted ways. Zavala kept track of their family, including before they made it to the Last City. While Safiyah's descendants survived the Red War, the last one was killed when the Vex hijacked Lakshmi's portal during the Endless Night, and their bodies weren't recovered, leaving Zavala without even a grave to mourn at. In retrospect this makes his Zavala's Freak Out upon discovering Savathun was given the Light even more painful: as Savathun was the one who manipulated Lakshmi, the Witch Queen took Safiyah's legacy from Zavala as well.
• Week 6 brings us orbs in the Derelict Leviathan containing dialogue to the player by the memories of Uldren, Safiyah, and Ghaul, and they sometimes reveal more moments of sadness.
  • Of all the people in the Midnight Coup, Ghaul genuinely considered Calus his friend, but could not abide by his rule over the Cabal. While he did wish to execute him instead of exile him, he could not look his friend in the eyes when he betrayed him.
  • The Memory of Safiyah and Zavala recount the night they buried Hakim, with Zavala having considered killing his Ghost right there and then until Safiyah talked him out of it.
  • The Memory of Ghaul and Caiatl reminisce about the past glory of Torobatl, with Caiatl lamenting that now that it has fallen in Hive hands, it's likely become as wretched as the Derelict Leviathan. The Memory of Ghaul urges Caiatl to keep the memory of the better days, and when the time comes, avenge Torobatl.
• After finally making peace with her Memory and his past, Zavala watches Safiyah's Memory dissipate into nothing once Calus is defeated at the end of "Catharsis", bidding her farewell before he does something you've never seen him do before: he starts crying.

Season of Plunder (Aug. 23, 2022—Dec. 6, 2022)

• The first entry in the Above All Else lorebook, "The Long Drift", is basically a chronicle of its narrator Inaaks' descent into depression and hopelessness as her house endures the titular exodus from their homeworld Riis after the Whirlwind. Inaaks describes the fear and isolation felt by her people after traveling through space for years without encountering other survivors, and how, as resources continued to dwindle, her "gentle hands" went from weaving memorial shrouds for the dead to butchering their corpses to avoid starvation. By the end of the entry, she sounds utterly broken, showing no reaction when the father of her child dies and even considering crushing the egg of said child to prevent him from being born into such conditions. And then things get even worse when they finally meet another Eliksni house and are all but forced into a one-sided bargain in which they take on more crewmembers than they can support. It ends with Inaaks contemplating how she'll go about thinning her house's numbers.
  • Just as sad is the state of the House of Dancers, the Eliksni who Inaaks makes the bargain with. This once-great house known for its generosity and charity only gives aid to another house when they realize they can't just overpower them and take their Ether, and said "aid" is outright stated to be offloading extra people onto another Ketch rather than continuing to feed them or simply shoving them out of an airlock. At least two of the crew the Dancers are getting rid of are hatchlings, barely old enough to walk.
  • There's some bonus Fridge Horror and Sadness in the fact that the one negotiating with Inaaks is Eramis, implying the House of Dancers will go on to become the House of Devils, the same Fallen house that burned down London, unleashed SIVA upon the Cosmodrome, and were a general plague upon humanity well into the timeframe of the Destiny games.
• In Week 4 of the seasonal story, Eido calls for a parley with Eramis. After the Guardian kills Arask, the Bully, Eramis contacts Eido and agrees. During the parley, Eramis reveals the truth about Mithrax: that his mother found the remains of Nezarec in the Lunar pyramid, and Mithrax inherited one of the relics his mother carved from the Disciple. It's power corrupted him and he killed other Eliksni in the name of finding more pieces. His crew also turned on each other, and it's suggested that Mithrax marooned some of them on lonely asteroids to die. Eramis concludes by telling Eido (and the Guardian) that Mithrax "will always be a liar, a thief and a killer". Mithrtax begs Eido to let him explain, but she shakes her head and transmats out without a word.
  • Eido then speaks to the Guardian over the holoprojector, telling them that hearing the truth was difficult, but the sharpest pain was that Mithrax didn't tell her himself.
• The third entry of the "Above All Else" lorebook has a shockingly depressing moment near the end. Mithrax narrates the entry, describing how he was now an adult, and how his mother couldn't keep him "swaddled to her chest" in perpetuity. As he goes on to describe the medallion around his neck, and how his mother seems incensed by its existence, it eventually ends with her remarking how he's a brave and curious man... who doesn't understand the world's brutality, in her words. And then she abruptly jams a knife in his side, splitting his carapace open. All to drill in the concept that with captains like her are not to be disobeyed lest they incur the captain's wrath. No wonder Mithrax in the present day tries so hard to be better than the eliksni of old. His own mother was no better, regarding him as just another underling whose head will find itself on the chopping block if he dares to step out of line.
  • Completing the lore book rewards you with a page that describes in much more detail the story Mithrax recounted in the lore tab for Survivor's Epitaph a year ago in Season of the Splicer. After the incident, he returned to his mother hoping for some kind of approval, only to be met with a Thousand-Yard Stare. In the present day, he laments that only now he realizes why she looked at him that way: she was not disappointed in Mithrax, but horrified at herself.
• At the end of the season's story, Eido sends out a communique to Eramis, pleading with her to stop her mad agenda and "come home" to the new Eliksni society House Light seeks to build. A lore entry unlocked afterwards reveals that this communique actually did reach Eramis, and she actually did genuinely consider Eido's proposal, but sadly admits that she's gone too deep into the Witness' service to back out now.

Season of the Seraph (Dec. 6, 2022—February 28, 2023)

• We learn the consequences of Eramis's failures: the Witness and Xivu Arath forced her to sign over tons of House of Salvation loyalists to the Wrathborn, where they will have their minds destroyed and die as mutant flesh golems that are too unrecognizable to be Eliksni and too lobotomized to be considered a sentient species. While she is very much an Asshole Victim for all the atrocities she's committed, it's incredibly sobering to consider how she tried to reclaim her race after the "bargain" with Inaaks, only to have to do it all over again with even worse stakes.
  • Long-deceased members of House Salvation aren't safe from the Witness's wrath either, as we find out when we face Praksis the Technocrat, now revived as a Scorn, at the end of the Seraph Station mission. Even as Eramis taunts us during the fight that all Eliksni killed by "Machine-spawn" will be reborn in such a way, the sadness and resignation in her voice can't be hidden.
• Week 3 sees Mara attempting to convince Eramis to join House Light. When Eramis responds by comparing Uldren to Eido, believing that there can be no better future, Mara responds that simply by naming her House "Salvation" already proves that she wants there to be a better future, that the name "Salvation" is something right out of Uldren and Eido's stories. When Mara reminds Eramis that she was a mother, once, Eramis hangs up without another word.
  Mara: We both want the best for the future, but we've pretended to be people we're not for so long that we've forgotten what else we are. Not just a Queen, not just a Kell. A sister... a mother.
  (no response)
  Mara: Eramis? Are you there?
• Week 6 reveals something REALLY troubling - Xivu Arath has made it so that she'll win no matter who has the warsats. Vanguard wins? Her Deathsingers use all the death that would follow to empower the war god. Xivu wins? She deals a crippling blow to humanity and manifests in Sol anyway. The current solution is to keep the Hive and House Salvation at bay still, and then preventing them from getting control once Rasputin is uploaded without using the warsats at all... and Rasputin himself is very sad over this. He expresses how, for all his desire to protect humanity on his terms, he's faced with a problem that he can't just take out with a Kill Sat barrage. He's explicitly left wondering what good he is to humanity if he can't find a solution in time. That tugs the heartstrings, especially considering he's been waiting so long to be reborn and shut Clovis out for good.
• Season of the Seraph ends on a bittersweet note.
  • The Traveler decides to pack up and leave, with everyone watching with sorrowful expressions and can do nothing but watch helplessly as their protector and source of Light re-enacts the Whirlwind that devastated Riis so long ago.
  • Eramis refuses to allow the Traveler to leave, at least not unscathed, and prepares to fire the Warsat Network at it. She even openly broadcasts her intentions, with Mithraks begging her not to go through with this. Sadly for him, the Witness is expectantly watching Eramis, and her tone makes it very clear even if she doesn't want to destroy the Traveler when she has every reason to, she doesn't have a choice.
    Mithrax: Eramis...please do not do this. If you care at all for our people, if there is anything left in your heart—
    The Witness: —-Make it know your pain.—-
  • The only way to bring down the Warsat Network is to erase Rasputin. Not just the Warmind, but everything he's involved in. Watch Ana's face as she prepares to take her best friend offline (not to mention destroy what Clovis called her life's work). She just got him back up on his feet and ousted Clovis, but now she has no choice but to give up someone she views as family if they want to save the Traveler. Rasputin, for his part, is wholly willing to Face Death with Dignity.
    Rasputin: Ana... It's time.
  • To Eramis' shock, the Traveler suddenly stops in its escape, almost as if it's changed its mind and wishes to continue looking over humanity. The mere sight confuses her as she fails to understand why it's not leaving. One can only imagine how it must feel to watch her once-revered "Great Machine" decide humanity's worth standing beside when it left her and the Eliksni for the Darkness when it left Riis.
    • Not to mention that it invalidates literally all of her efforts ever since the events of Beyond Light. She kept trying to bring her people back to glory and get revenge on the Traveler for abandoning her and her species, and when it looks like it's doing so, she's eager to punish it... but then it stays put. It's only a minute or so, but it's enough to render everything she's done pointless. The Traveler abandoning humanity was something she hoped for, and now, it deciding to stay after all takes that hope away. Now, she has nothing.
      Eramis: (sounding nearly broken) Why?! Why does it not flee?!
      The Witness: —-Because...it has nowhere else to run.—-
• Replaying the Heist Battlegrounds activity after the final cutscene yields new interactions between some of the major characters in the season, further punctuating just how... bittersweet and empty this “victory” feels.
  • One of the more prevalent characters in these interactions is Eramis. It’s clear that the events of the Final Dawn have left the Kell of Darkness shaken and questioning her allegiance, as she solemnly reminisces on the friendship and camaraderie she had with Phyris prior to being turned into a Scorn. Prior to that, she’s bitterly pleading with the Guardian to make Phyris’ death quick in order to spare her any further suffering. Another interaction has her offering some measure of sympathy for a grieving Ana, relating a tale of Eliksni culture and advising her to choose how to “fill the hollow space in her chest.” With all that being said, however, the lore for this season has made it increasingly clear that even if Eramis’ allegiance to the Witness is beginning to waver... she still doesn’t have a choice other than to serve or watch her people be further enslaved—whether it’s as Scorn or Wrathborn.
  • Equal parts heartwarming is an interaction between Mara Sov and Elsie Bray, which has the latter reveal that Lord Saladin returned to the Tower to spend time with Ana after Rasputin’s death, and to help her through her mourning. Even though Rasputin was responsible for the death of Saladin’s friends and compatriots, the Warmind’s ultimate sacrifice deemed him worthy of respect, redemption, and forgiveness.
• Returning to the Exo Frame shows it looking slumped over now that there's nothing inhabiting it. It's revealed to house one final recording left behind by Rasputin, who confirms Osiris' visions of Neomuna and potential disaster on the way... and he ends it by saying how he's glad to entrust such information with you, and that he's honored to call you his Seraph. It makes things all the more bittersweet, because while he's gone for good, he still took the time to say goodbye and encourage you to continue being a hero for humanity.
• The epilogue additionally confirms the lorebook "Persona" exists in-universe. In what manner is absolutely heartbreaking: it's Rasputin's final gift to Ana.

Lightfall & Season of Defiance (February 28, 2023—May 23, 2023)

• Despite all he's done, Calus' final death is oddly somber, with Caiatl quietly telling his corpse that his long journey is finally over and he can finally rest. Even with how much she's grown to hate him, he still holds a place in her heart.
• Despite all of the Guardians' efforts, the Witness wins! They're able to acquire the Veil and use it to open a portal to the inside of the Traveler, allowing them to finally begin achieving the Final Shape. All the Vanguard, the Cloudstriders, Caiatl, and your Guardian can do is watch as their end begins.
  • How does the Witness activate the Veil? By using your Ghost. When she realizes what's happening, Caiatl orders your guardian to fire on their Ghost, and from what we see, they seriously seem to consider it, but take just a little too long to lock on. It's left up to the player to decide why: were they too shocked to aim in time, or were they unwilling to hurt their Ghost?
• In the campaign, Nimbus comes across like they don't take much seriously, only momentarily getting choked up by Rohan's sacrifice before resuming their normal behavior. The quest to retrieve his weapon, Deterministic Chaos, is another story - it turns out that they really didn't know how to process it at the time, and hid it with humor, and once most of the action had passed, the weight of it finally sunk in, striking them with immense grief. And while their upbeat demeanor isn't lost, it's clear that losing Rohan has had an effect on the young Cloud Strider.
  • There's also the fact that, unless a new, second Cloud Strider is made, Nimbus will be the last Cloud Strider to ever exist when they inevitably expire.
• Completing the Thrilladrome Lost Sector often yields fun interactions with Ghost, where he proclaims his excitement and curiosity over arcade machines and spending your free time playing video games. One interaction post-Lightfall is a lot more somber and sobering in comparison, as Ghost ponders on whether or not he's a person or just a machine in the Traveler's absence.
  Ghost: I worry, Guardian, that I'm nothing more than another machine, like these games. I haven't just switched off, like during the Red War. Is that because I'm a person? Or am I just plugged into something else now? But I suppose a game machine can't feel the absence of its creator...
  • In fact, a good third of Ghost's post-Lightfall Lost Sector dialogue counts as this. While everyone around the Guardian has reacted to the Traveler's silence with relative shock and confusion, they never had as intrinsic and pure a connection to it like Ghost has. Though he may pop in with little bits of optimism here and there, losing the Traveler has left Ghost lost and distraught, questioning his own identity and with a gaping hole in his very being that he can't seem to fill.
    Ghost: This is more exhausting than it used to be, like drawing water from a well instead of a tap. Did losing the Traveler take something vital away from me? Or am I still just... sad?
• The Farm returns as part of Season of Defiance, and coming back to the game's original social space is a bittersweet affair as time, and the Shadow Legion, have not been kind to it. The buildings are much more worn down, while the farmhouse has started to collapse in on itself, and the house where Tyra set up shop having been pulverized by a bomb that's still embedded into it. Even the beloved soccer field is now in tatters, with several craters now breaking up its landscape. The fact that the barn is even standing and can house people is nothing short of miraculous. This is all accompanied by All That Matters, a somber piece with elements of the Farm's original theme, highlighting that what was once the Vanguard's sanctuary from the Tower during the Red War has now too been affected by this newest conflict.
• Amanda still can't forgive Crow, as shown in the conversation she has with him in the first week of Season of Defiance:
  Crow: Amanda. I need to talk to you.
  Amanda: What, "before it's too late"?
  Crow: Yes.
  Amanda: Crow, don't...
  Crow: I thought I'd lost you.
  Amanda: Don't talk to me like that. [sighs] Look, I know you're sorry. I know it wasn't really "you". I wanna forgive you. I really do. I... I tried to pull Crow and Uldren Sov apart.
  Crow: I tried too. But it wasn't right.
  Amanda: I wish I could see you another way, but... I don't. I—I can't. Not yet.
  Crow: Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.
  Amanda: It's not like that. [sighs] I know it ain't fair to you. And maybe I'll feel different someday. But not now.
  Crow: ...I understand.
  Amanda: There's tough times ahead of us — we gotta work together. It's like y'alls Ghosts always say... "Eyes up, Guardian."
• Asher Mir is still alive in the Vex network, to a degree. That should be cause for celebration, and it is, but it comes with a tinge of sadness - there's no way to physically interact with him yet. Any time he's approached, his static image quickly dissipates and he reappears elsewhere. Unless he manages to find a way out, the poor guy is stuck there for the foreseeable future.
  • Week 3 of the Avalon secret mission reveals that the entire thing was a last act of heroism by Asher. In order to extract the information that the Vex had on the Witness/the Veil, Asher had to integrate himself into the network. The mission ends with Asher delivering the last of his research, and assimilating into the greater consciousness of the Vex.
• Although many predicted it happening this season, Amanda's death following Mission: Jailbreak is still very sobering. Especially as Crow begins to slide down the same path of vengeance we did after Cayde's death in Forsaken.
  • What adds to it is that Zavala appears at the farm to mourn. Given the passing of Lance Reddick only a few days earlier, hearing Zavala's lines hit a lot of people harder than intended.
    "Devotion. Bravery. Sacrifice. Devotion... Bravery... Sacrifice..."
    • In "Season of the Haunted", the Memory of Safiyah told the Guardians that Zavala looked upon Amanda much the same way as he did Hakeem, his and Safiyah's son who they lost to the Fallen. Zavala just had to experience the loss of his surrogate child again.
  • Mara, in a rare moment of sympathy for her, tries to console Crow, knowing how close he was to Amanda. Crow, however, is still deeply bitter over how she had tried to manipulate him back in Season of the Lost, and coldly rebuffs her. Talking to her after the fact has Mara sound audibly shaken by Amanda’s death, with a noticeable quiver in her voice as she tells the Guardian to soldier on and defeat the Shadow Legion, and make Amanda’s sacrifice worth it.
  • Crow, for his part, sounds very much like the Young Wolf does after Cayde-6's death- broken, hollowed out, and gunning for vengeance. Whether we can keep him from going down the same path we did or not remains to be seen.
  • Mithrax is in complete It's All My Fault mode, saying that if he had heeded Eramis' warning and not gone in, Amanda would be alive right now. Even pointing out that this would have condemned the captives doesn't sway Mithrax's guilt.
  • Empress Caiatl is in in full anger stage, saying that Mithrax's guilt dishonors Amanda's memory and she should be celebrated for giving her life to save the prisoners. Even if it comes across as Tough Love, it's pretty clear Caiatl is grieving in her own way as well.
• The "We Stand Unbroken" mission follows the aftermath of Amanda's death, and it's clear everyone is still reeling from it. Devrim confesses he can't enjoy the morning sunrise like he used to, saying his heart wasn't in it. Zavala is found standing by Amanda's memorial stone giving her a eulogy (and wearing her scarf around his pauldron as a form of remembrance). Arguably the most heart-jerking moment is the intercepted transmission between Crow and Mara. It's blatant that Crow is still angry and wants nothing to do with her, while Mara tries to make him ease up and share his grief with others rather than wallow in it and destroy himself in the process. She manages to succeed when she asks him what Amanda was to him.
  Crow: She was... (voice cracks) She was a sunrise.

Season of the Deep (May 24, 2023—August 22, 2023)

• The lore tabs for the armor of Season of the Deep detail Sloane's life since the Witness whisked away Titan. For several years, she's done nothing but employ guerilla tactics against the Taken, moving from one place to the next just to survive. It got so bad that she had no choice but to imbibe Taken corruption into herself, risking not only her Light but also her own sense of self just to have a chance at survival. Were it not for Ahsa, she might have become one of the Taken under Xivu Arath.
• The Drifter's reaction to seeing Sloane with Taken corruption. He doesn't make jokes to help lighten the mood, and he's not smiling. He knows the risks Sloane's taken to survive and wants to bring her back to the Tower to get her help.
• Another lore tidbit sheds more light on Shayura's fireteam, and it's a doozy - they were the ones who were cut down attacking the Witness. But while Shayura and Aisha turned out to be Not Quite Dead, Reed-7 was Killed Off for Real, and both of them have severe Survivor Guilt.
• The "Ghosts of the Deep" dungeon has memories showing of Xivu Arath at differing points in her life, including from when she was still Krill. While these memories serve to show how far Xivu Arath has fallen since becoming the Hive War God, they also show how close she was with Oryx, who she adored and affectionally calls "our navigator". The fourth memory shows her reaction to Oryx's death, her emotions swinging to outrage for his death, grief that she's lost her brother, and hysteria over the fact that the Guardians reject the "all-edged truth" of the Sword Logic and refuse to take Oryx's place as the Taken King, even asking whether all they did to spare themselves of a fate worse than extinction was All for Nothing.
  • To look at the memories another way, it's becoming increasingly clear that Xivu Arath is on the verge of a Villainous Breakdown if she hadn't already reached it when Oryx died. She's furious at Oryx's death and moreso over the fact that the Guardians are spitting on the Sword Logic, the ideal and faith she's long-since subscribed to, by refusing to succeed Oryx as the new Taken King and actively continue to do so. Her rants of how "the Sky lies" sound less like a zealot spouting her religion and more like someone desperately trying their hardest to convince themselves of what they're saying.
• Week 2 starts with Zavala revealing that he filled in Sloane on everything that had happened up to now, ranging from Guardians' experiments with the Darkness, Savathûn's impersonation of Osiris, the events of Lightfall... and Amanda's death. The last one hits Sloane particularly hard, seeing as her and Amanda were apparently quite close.
  • An even bigger tearjerker is Zavala stating immediately afterward that Sloane buried her grief not long afterward to focus on the mission. She's not even giving herself time to grieve her dear friend's passing.
• Week 2 has Saint-14 demanding Saladin to tell him why his messages for Sloane are being blocked. Saladin tells him it's to prevent Sloane, already putting up with a lot of stress, from being even more overwhelmed by the well-intentioned but overbearing efforts of Saint. Though they both reconcile, it's very clear that both men are acutely aware of how much pain Sloane may be feeling even if she won't admit it, and though both of their approaches have their flaws, the fact that they care so much about her says volumes.
• The log entries from Chioma Esi in Neomuna's optional "Veil Containment" quest are full of these. From the moment they land on Neptune, Maya Sundaresh becomes obssessed with with Veil and how it can help the settlers survive, to the detriment of her relationship with Chioma. Along the way, they both conduct and take part in experiments attempting to utilize it, only for it to backfire. Eventually, even after succeeding in creating "Lakshmi", Maya is killed; Chioma finds her in the conductor's chair, alone.

Season of the Witch (August 22, 2023—November 28, 2023)

• Eris Morn's transformation into a pseudo-Hive God is nothing short of a Painful Transformation mixed with Body Horror, depicted in a cutscene where you see her limbs twisting, her bones audibly breaking, and what looks to be bone growing out of her body. This isn't a one-time transformation, either, as Eris can freely switch back to her human form. On the other hand, this means Eris has to repeat these transformations in order to help commence the rituals needed to begin the tithes and strengthen their forces if they want any hope of defeating Xivu Arath.
• "A Matter of Distrust" entry in the lorebook Rites of Passage shows Elsie's reaction to Eris becoming the "Hive God of Vengeance". If you recall the contents of the Dark Future lorebook, Eris' foreay into hive magic and turning into "The Witch" was one of the central recurring events in timelines where the Witness succeeded. As one might imagine, Elsie is not happy to hear Eris, who knows of what transpired in the Bad Future, is ignoring her warnings and lambasts Ikora for allowing her to go through with this plan.
  Elsie: Were you even listening? How many reports, Ikora? How many times did I tell you what I saw?
  Ikora: Elsie, I know the future you came from. But that is not this future.
  Elsie: I have seen what happens when Eris Morn has unchecked power. I have smelled the corpses.
  Ikora: The Eris in your timeline was corrupted by Darkness. We now understand how to wield the Darkness without becoming lost in it.
  Elsie: Eris Morn was corrupted by POWER, Ikora. The same power you're encouraging the Guardians to-to-to tithe through Hive rituals! And you think that's somehow BETTER?!
• The end of “Proportionality”. Saint has just finished giving Savathun some long-overdue payback for what she had done to Osiris. She initially assumed that Saint was doing this as his revenge for Osiris, but once it’s over, he corrects her; Saint wasn’t doing this for Osiris, he was doing it for himself. He’d never forgotten the pain he suffered over seeing the man he loved using as a puppet by the Witch Queen, and this moment was finally him venting that pain. The final blow comes at the end of the story, when he returns home to Osiris. Osiris asks him if he’s hungry, and what does the weary Saint do when he sees his phoenix?
  ”And Saint-14 - the greatest Titan who ever lived - fell into his open arms and wept.”

Season of the Wish (November 28, 2023-June 4, 2024)

• The lore for the season's gloves/gauntlets/grips has a surprising one for Shaw Han. Reading through the entry reveals that he's not actually well respected by other Guardians, and repeatedly goes through fireteams because his teammates bail on him when he needs their help. Combined with his own struggle to keep up with relevant gear, and it's implied that he's what a casual player who's just started to get into endgame activities would look like in-universe. It turns into a Heartwarming moment another Guardian offers to help him out at the end, though.
• Repeat runs of Warlord's Ruin to complete its Collection Sidequest reveal the true, depressing nature of the Ahamkara within the castle, Hefnd. He was once a member of his species on Riven's caliber, but did something no other Ahamkara was able to do: make a friend that he could support entirely out of the goodwill of his heart. Unfortunately, said friend, the Warlord Naeem, was killed by Fallen in the castle they lived in, and in her dying breath, made a last wish to curse them beyond the grave. While Hefnd agreed earnestly, wanting to do anything to avenge his Only Friend, it took centuries of luring the Darkness to their castle — and by the time it develops into what you see in the Warlord's Ruin dungeon, he's but a shell of his former self, so sick of war and the vengeance he swore upon that all he wants now is to disappear with Naeem and be with her again. Once the Young Wolf destroys the Scorn and Taken under his thrall using what remains of his wish magic, it's indicated that Hefnd wanted them to do it, so that they could purge his Taken infection and allow him to finally pass on to the afterlife by reassembling his skeleton and terminating his master's last wish.
  Enough of this sad world. All is soon to be well. I am coming to see you again, Naeem.
• Week 4 gives one of these for Riven of all people. In this case, the “Starcrossed” Exotic Mission. At the end, after acquiring the “Wish-Keeper” Exotic Bow, you learn of its creator: Taranis, Riven’s mate. For the first time, Riven actually pleads to someone, to Crow, so Taranis to use him as a vessel, to speak to his mate one final time. Riven then goes on to reveal her life with him - and how it ended in tragedy. Unlike most Ahamkara, rather than being a Jackass Genie, Taranis fulfilled wishes exactly as they were requested, no strings attached, rather than twist them for more power. Riven, intrigued by this, became close to Taranis, he in turn amazed by her powers. The two fell in love, and within the Black Garden, they mated and Riven made her eggs. Riven admits that, with Taranis, she sensed something greater than love, she sensed freedom. Specifically, a freedom from twisting wishes to sustain herself and continually watching for betrayal from others. Then, the Great Ahamkara Hunt happened, and Mara imprisoned Riven, forever separating her from her beloved. Desiring vengeance, she agreed to allow Oryx to Take her. Unfortunately, through the bond they still held, Taranis could sense his mate being corrupted and even heard Oryx’s voice come out of her. Understandably terrified, he granted a wish for himself, scattering Riven’s eggs across the Ley Lines to save their children, placing them even beyond her mother’s reach. Unfortunately, Ahamkara cannot grant wishes for themselves, and as a result of doing so, Taranis killed himself, leaving behind the Wish-Keeper Bow in the hopes that someone would emerge to save his brood. While she calls him a “sentimental fool”, Riven expresses sincere, profound pain and sadness over losing the one she loved.
  • This in turn draws two sad parallels to the story of Hefnd. The first is with Taranis. Like Taranis, Hefnd was an Ahamkara who realized kindness, finding a genuine friend in the Warlord Naeem. As a result of that friendship, he granted her final wish to curse her enemies from beyond the grave, to avenge her. Hefnd’s kindness eventually cost him his heart. Taranis’ kindness cost him his life. The second parallel is with Riven. Hefnd dove into Taken corruption due to the death of a loved one. Riven’s own Taken corruption instigated the death of her loved one.
  • It gets even worse when one remembers why Riven was able to corrupt Uldren - because of the grief, sorrow, and rage he felt over losing his sister Mara. In other words, the same feelings Riven herself felt over losing Taranis. Riven’s own pain led her to manipulate Uldren’s. Then you have Mara, who still feels pain over losing her own lover, Sjur Eido. Now, Riven and Mara now have something painful in common: the grief of losing a lover.

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