Rampant Speculation (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, August 30, 2013, 22:54 (4102 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by Ragashingo, Friday, August 30, 2013, 23:17

The Traveler stopped whatever was attacking us, at least for a while. But if humans survived scattered across Earth, perhaps we also had remnants on other worlds. What happened to them? Could the Bridge of Chains or possibly even the Hive be glimpses of what happened to the rest of us? Maybe there are pockets of Humanity still in power elsewhere in the system?

The enemy that defeated us during our Golden Age must have been fairly powerful, but if it was totally overwhelming and it is still out there then won’t we eventually be crushed? Or does access to The Traveler’s power give us an edge we didn’t have before? And does that edge only extend to ground engagements (Halo all over again?) or can Humanity wield The Traveler’s power on a larger scale?

If Humanity has a nearly unassailable base in The City why does it bother with Guardians and ground attacks? It’s said that an air force can’t hold terrain, but surely nukes or an introduction to the magic of orbital bombardment could do a lot to break our enemy’s hold on our worlds. We’re already going to have to dig though our past to find the secrets of our Golden Age. What’s a bit more digging in exchange to ending the threat posed by our enemies. Or at the very least, wouldn’t denying them access to our worlds be victory enough?

Instead of looking for the products of our Golden Age maybe we should be looking for whatever’s left of the enemy that knocked us down and stamped us out. Anything powerful enough to attack us and damage The Traveler, which is still one of the most powerful objects in the system even in its damaged state, would surely be very useful to us.

Why are our enemies probing us for weaknesses anyway? They surely have more access to our Golden Age technology than we do and The Traveler seems unobtainable since it can apparently still defend The City as well as itself. So what would killing the last few million Humans get them that they don’t already have? If it’s The Traveler they want, how will removing the Humans beneath it bring them any closer to obtaining it or destroying it?

How do we know The Traveler isn’t the thing that tried to stamp us out? I can see a few different scenarios:

What if The Traveler's job was to terraform ALL the planets of our system. Maybe we were grateful as it made the planets we didn’t live on habitable, but changed our minds when it began to change the Earth and a battle ensued?

Or maybe its entire goal was to get us to expand throughout our system developing cities and mining and production facilities before wiping us out to make way for whoever was coming to inherit the fruits of our labor. Maybe after we had expanded into a Golden Age it turned on us, but we proved powerful enough to save ourselves? …After a fashion…

Or maybe The Traveler was the friendly sphere we’re sorta being lead to believe it is right up until some idiot or group of idiots, be they terrorists or a legitimate government, attacked The Traveler. Perhaps the life giving sphere turned around and went all Iron Giant on us. In defending itself it could have nearly wiped us out until we were able to damage it enough to make it stop.

In all these cases I would think the shield The Traveler is generating over The City is more of an automated defense mechanism than a deliberate gift to us. And if it was Humanity that fought The Traveler, for one reason or another, maybe the aliens that hate us do so because they found out we had damaged The Traveler. Might be nice if our destruction really was the will of the gods this time around, right?

The deployment of tanks suggests that the enemy that knocked us down made landfall on Earth. It’s easy to imagine The Traveler destroying large starships in space but how did it deal with forces attacking us on the ground?

That’s all I’ve got this week, but I can’t help but feel something is missing… Oh, I know! It’s your ideas and comments! Be sure and leave them!

Next Saturday: The Fallen

The Fallen are currently our most detailed foe, the one we know the most about, but can we glean anything new about them? I bet we can, and I hope you’ll join me next week for more Facts, Informed Supposition, and Rampant Speculation (and hyperlinks!) Until then:

Back to The Facts
Back to Informed Suppositions

All Speculation Saturdays:
Speculation Saturday #1: The Golden Age
Speculation Saturday #2: The Fall
Speculation Saturday #3: The Fallen
Speculation Saturday #4: The City
Speculation Saturday #5: The Gameplay
Speculation Saturday #6: What's New?
Speculation Saturday #7: The Hive
Speculation Saturday #8: The Vex
Speculation Saturday #9: The Cabal