We’re just about three weeks into the new storyline in Destiny – the Season of Plunder – and what a contrast there is to the previous one. The Season of Haunting traumatised our little fireteam with tales of loss, regret, and the healing of old wounds. By contrast this is a bright and merry jaunt into space piracy – even down to music that wouldn’t be out of place in Pirates of the Caribbean. No more gothic horror with merciless ghosts, now we have big explosions and jumping between spaceships to capture treasure…
And yet…
The lorebooks unlocking are tales of the Eliksni diaspora after the fall of their civilization when The Traveller abandoned them in the face of The Darkness. We have narrators wondering if it would have been kinder to kill their offspring, and stories hinting at cannibalism and the pillaging of less capable craft just to survive – of the emergence of a harsher and crueller nature needed to survive.
The mighty Eliksni hero Misraaks (known to the people of the Last City as Mithraks because they can’t pronounce his name properly) has taken centre stage this season, and his daughter who acts as the historian/scribe of his people is starting to ask questions about his past. Like our superficial reaction to the new themes of the Season, she is caught up in the romance and drama of pirate life – and the more she digs into history, the more Misraaks is trying to deflect her attention.
On one level this is a much-needed change of pace to the gloom of last Season, but thematically we’re rapidly closing in on the end game of Destiny, and the next expansion is called Lightfall. We look to be heading towards a new Collapse of human civilization as the forces of The Witness gather around our system – and I wouldn’t be surprised to find these seasons foreshadowing and preparing the ground for the turmoil to come.
But that’s to look forward as the story unfolds. I’ll even stake my tinfoil theory right now that the Darkness-infused relics we’re recovering are remnants of the mythical Nezarec scavenged by Eliksni during their pirate rampages and it was the experience of drawing on Darkness from them that inspired Eramis to seek Stasis powers in the first place. Given I just unlocked an ornamental piece meant to be Nezarec’s robes, and we also have his helm as an exotic armour piece, and his glaive, we’re having a lot of breadcrumbs dropped.
With all that, yes we’re enjoying the new Season and all the explosions and mayhem that comes with it.
TimMaidment.Com 