I painted this for my mom awhile ago and kept forgetting to post it but seems like the last day of CR2 is as good a time as any. We both really loved the relationship between Jester & Artie.
I’ve seen people refer to the Traveler a few times as ‘ours’ or how the Hive tried to ‘take it from us’. Which would follow, since that was pretty much the reaction of the Vanguard in-game and the angle Bungie took with the marketing for the expansion.
The Light isn’t ours. Nor is the Sky. Nor is the Traveler. Merely because the Traveler chose to make her stand at Earth does not give humanity the ultimate right to make decisions for the Traveler or to exert our control of her. The Traveler giftedus the Light, it didn’t swear to be ours and ours alone.
Consider the wager. The Sky stands as gentle complexity. A good kingdom ringed by spears, where the strong defend the weak and life blooms in multiplicity. The Deep stands as the blade edge, the kingdom of war, that eliminates all life until there is only the last man standing.
By that Wager, the Traveler gifted us the Light. Upon us were weighed no demands and restrictions were not emplaced. The Light is to do with as we will, because it is willthat the Sky loves. Choice and the freedom of it. When warlords rampaged in the Dark Ages - did the Traveler chastise them and tell them no? When Rezzyl Azir threw down his burden and turned his face from the Sky, did the Traveler yank hard his reins and tell him ‘no’? When the Iron Lords slaughtered the warlords, when they crushed ghosts underfoot to break the cycle of violence, did the Traveler chastise them for not finding another way?
What we do with the Light is what is meaningful. For good or evil, right or wrong, each action and choice we take is precious and so the Traveler cannot, will not, speak. To speak would be to influence us and tarnish that precious choice.
By contrast the Deep commands. Though it gave us stasis, it constantly speaks to us, gives us hints, eggs us on, teases and leads us. It has demands of its own and what we want is not secondary - it is immaterial.
This may seem an aside, to explore the purpose of Deep and Sky, but I am illustrating a picture.
The Sky wishes for rich life and vibrancy of disagreement, of concord, of strife and peace. The Sky wishes for life, in all it’s beauty and pain.
When we claim the Traveler as ours, when we claim the Light as ours, when we look at the Lucent Hive with trembling limbs and curling lips and find palms on stocks and blades aquiver, we are asserting the Deep claim.
We are saying that “We alone are right. We alone are mighty. We alone may be the only Shape.” The Deep demands a single champion, the Light cherishes a billion. For us to jealously hoard the Light and the Traveler is to make us into the only champion of the Light. We are perverting it’s purpose.
Does it mean it is wrong that we fought off the Fallen, that we warred with the Cabal, that we threw down the Osmium Dynasty?
No.
For that is the freedom of choice the Sky desires for us. And besides - they wanted us dead first. It is never morally wrong to fight for your life.
But the Traveler is showing us a truth. We are beloved, we are precious - and so is all life. Perhaps humans did indeed have a spark that caught the Traveler’s eye, all those centuries ago, which is why She laid down here to fight.
But it was hubris to ever think that the Light would be ours alone. Ghaul was not deserving of it, because he demanded it, because he tried to steal it, because he impugned on free will.
Savathun chose to die. She accepted her fate, she took all her cards off the table, she threw them away. She wanted the Light, yes, but she did not demand it. She did not hold the Traveler at gunpoint, she did not try to tear Light from it’s body. She asked, and she died.
At the end of her long, long life, Savathun finally had faith.
Now the Lucent Hive are blessed. Truly blessed. No tricks, no stealing, no magics. And we war on them.
Again, that is not inherently wrong. The Light is freedom. For us to clash is natural. But the other side of the coin demands recognition too. The Lucent Hive are just as worthy as we to wield the Light. So while we may fight and while we may be at odds, the day will come when we must expect, and should expect, not to be. For the Light is not ours, and it is not theirs. It is the Light, it is given, and none can claim it solely. To do otherwise is to mantle the Deep, and that is a path none should tread.
We were asked to survive the truth, and it was not what was implied. The truth to survive was that all things change and that our humility should be reminded to us. The truth that our precepts were wrong. The truth that we always knew, but maybe had set aside.
In the Season of Arrivals the Darkness spoke with us, while Savathun tried to intervene. In Beyond Light, the Darkness granted Guardians with Stasis, giving access to it’s powers as an argument to the Sky - if the Sky posits that given the chance, individuals will choose goodness and decency, the Darkness gave the active avatars of the Light the chance to prove the Darkness’ thesis. That, when the going gets tough, all things turn to the logic of the blade.
The Dark Future is the conclusion of the Darkness’ argument against the Light. It is proof that the chosen of the Light, Guardians, will, like all life, turn to the brutal and simple logic of the Deep and become conquerors and butchers. It was quite a move on the board by the Deep, by giving Guardians Stasis. As far as we know, no other species has been directly blessed by the Light in the same was as Humanity. We know the Ammonite were aided by the Traveler through ‘paracausal weapons’ and that the Traveler indirectly blessed the Harmony through it’s manipulation of gravity and spacetime, but until Earth and Humans, there had not been, as far as we know, direct wielders of the Light.
So the Darkness reached out to the direct avatars of the Light and gave them a nugget of it’s power. A power move.
Now - with Witch Queen, we see that Savathun has a ghost, has the light, and more - so does her brood. The phrasing around it is couched in terms of 'stealing the light’ or in some way wresting control of it, but that’s through biased voices like Ikora. I suppose we may see for sure this season, depending on the conclusion, but that remains in the future.
However. Consider Savathun. She was the first adopter of the worms. She led Aurash and Xi Ro to the worm gods beneath Fundament. She threw herself fully into the deal with the worms. In time, Oryx may have surpassed her as the truest, and closest adherent to the Deep, as seen by his actions, his theories and the Touch of Malice, but Savathun was the first.
What greater weapons of the Darkness were there than the Hive? This trio for a billion - billions? - of years have enacted the will of the Deep across the universe. Untold species, unimaginable complexity, all of it cut away by the sword.
But then Savathun started to question. She started to wonder. She started to buck the tenets of the Deep. She doubted her worm, and she had from long ago in the Books of Sorrow. She sought ways around it, loopholes - she betrayed the Darkness. Oryx never questioned his role or his position. He embraced the prospect of death, faithful that whoever slew him was merely doing the work of the Deep and helping the universe to it’s final, brutal shape. If he died - he was meant to, as the Deep teaches. Savathun never accepted this.
And now, at long last, she turned her sight on the Light. Savathun wants to live at all costs. At all costs. This has been her driving force since she was a little krill all those eons ago.
But if one wants to live at all costs, is not the answer the Deep? After all, to become the Final Shape is to become synonymous with existence, to be the last man standing at the end of all things. No better immortality, right? But Savathun doubts that, despite being so steeped in the Darkness for so long. One who should be completely dedicated to this, but she questions. She isn’t like Oryx, or even Xivu Arath as it seems.
So we return to a conversation, spoken by an agent of the Sky to three wayward krill.
—Quick-breeding krill people, I tell you++
++For eons I have watched your struggle—
—Clinging to the sharp edge of survival++
++Balanced between the Deep and the Sky.—
—FOR THIS IS THE DEEP CLAIM—
++Existence is the struggle to exist—
—When the struggle seems lost++
++when the safe place crumbles—
—everything turns to the Deep to survive++
++I REJECT THE DEEP CLAIM++
—You will turn back, sweet krill of hope.±±
++You will choose the Sky instead.—
“Existence is the struggle to exist. When the struggle seems lost, when the safe place crumbles, everything turns to the Deep to survive.”
Emphasis mine. From the Leviathan of Fundament, this is the Deep claim. This is the position of the Darkness, which has been proven over and over again.
Savathun has turned on the Deep claim. She has rejected it. She is at the bitter end, when the struggle seems lost, when the safe place crumbles - she has fled her throne. She has left her brood. She is hunted by her own sister, with her brother slain. Her worm’s hunger is insatiable. All of her plots and infinite plans have failed. Her murder battery failed. Her Taken were useless. IMBARU is IMBARN’T.
And at the bitter, deadly edge of this desperation, where did Savathun turn? Not to the Deep. She turned to the Light.
Oh, I’m sure she can dress it up however she wants, as sardonic or skeptical or cynical as she likes. But the fact remains that when the cards came down, she abandoned the Deep.
She rejected the Deep claim.
And she chose the Light.
What better retort to the Deep could the Sky possibly supply other than to bless Savathun with the Light? To take one of the fiercest, oldest, deadliest agents of the Darkness and give her the Light? To give her the chance to prove, like all life, that the Deep is not the answer. That there is more than just the mindless struggle of slaughter. This is the Traveler and the Sky’s rebuttal to the argument made in Beyond Light. If the Darkness wants to try to tempt Guardians - the Sky can and will prove that nothing is beyond realizing the allure of the gentle nation, ringed by spears.
I hope that this is what occurs, that there is no deception, no stealing, no necromantic trickery. That the Traveler blesses Savathun and her brood with the Light because in the eschatological debate between these two forces, such a move brings the Sky closer to checkmate.
Final thought - but why would we fight Savathun? Why not? The Light doesn’t demand, doesn’t act, doesn’t direct. That’s the blessing of the Sky. Freedom of will, of choice, of being. Lightbearers have done atrocities in the past, during the age of warlords. Some do even now. That is part of life, there is good and there is evil. What matters is what you choose. Savathun has spent aeons practicing violence, she’s not going to change overnight. But! The question is if she can. If she can prove the thesis of the Sky.
I think that killing Savathun and her brood, in this case, might be the worst possible outcome for the Light.
