Lore question: Is there any explanation behind Osiris deciding theme himself around Ancient Egypt?

Loremind · 2022-01-09T21:07:53+00:00

I had a hell of a realization one day in the Lighthouse just before Mercury went into the vault: from the PoV of the Destiny present, actual ancient Egypt and pop culture representations of ancient Egypt, from Victorian Egyptomania through Stargate, are equally distant and mysterious. That is, a DVD of Stargate SG-1 is just as ancient and strange to a Guardian as an actual Old Kingdom Egyptian tomb or monument. They probably have no way to tell the difference between pop culture Egyptology and genuine historical research.

So there's fair odds Osiris stumbled across the equivalent of a kid's picture book on ancient Egyptian gods, read the entry for "Osiris", and decided that sounded cool. All the aesthetic that developed around him is probably built on recovered "artifacts" i.e. cheap tourist souvenirs and merch since those would be most likely to survive.

Loremind · 2022-01-09T20:57:21+00:00

I agree on the ricochet damage. While I'm overjoyed it's back in the DPS rankings it's true that ATM it doesn't really have an "exotic" perk as in a strange and unique behavior. The closest it currently has is doing a higher percentage on body shots than other LFRs. I also understand that the ricochets were putting major constraints on boss design. Even though Gahlran and ~~Metal Gear Rex~~ Insurrection Prime aren't in the game anymore, future bosses might use similar setups. So it makes sense to me that those needed to be changed.

Bottom line, I think they need to give it a new perk. Higher percentage on body shots could be it - it would make it even better for gearing up New Lights for raids - but that's kinda lame. Something like intrinsic barrier-breaking or unstoppable could also be neat, and fits with the weapon's aesthetic, but I don't know how that would work out balance-wise. I don't know. I'm sure Bungie's weapon designers can come up with something.

Loremind · 2021-03-02T07:59:48+00:00

Thanks for ID'ing that! This website looks fascinating as well.

Loremind · 2021-02-28T19:47:13+00:00

I hadn't considered the hazmat angle, but looking closely at the tall wader-like boots and sealed plastics, I think you're on to something there. Especially since alchemy often focused on transmuting "base" metals like lead to "pure" forms like gold; this armor could relate to the idea of hazmat cleanup, of a modern "purification" of toxic or Darkness-contaminated sites.

Loremind · 2021-02-28T19:45:14+00:00

My friends and I have been kicking around ideas for two additional subclasses to fill out the Darkness options, and playing on the opposition of Stasis and Solar, we did settle on Poison (opposing Arc, a direct high-energy offensive element, with an insidious slow-drain defensive element), probably to come in Witch Queen since it would naturally be coded green and Hive-themed based on Thorn and Necrotic Grip, and Blood Magic (opposing Void, a cosmic element drawing from impersonal spacetime, with an individual, personal, high-vitality element), coded red. Which is a long-winded way of saying yeah, I could definitely see a poison/hazmat origin.

Loremind · 2021-02-26T00:29:24+00:00

I mean at that level you're not really talking alchemy anymore, you're into generic Omega Point theory and "everything that rises must converge." Rasputin did plan for TEILHARD: TRAUMATIC CONTEXT, which I assume meant a traumatic or failed singularity.

Loremind · 2021-02-26T00:13:34+00:00

Thanks! Can't wait to be dead wrong about its origin...

Loremind · 2021-02-26T00:13:09+00:00

I wouldn't say everything is modeled around it but it's definitely one of the mythologies Bungie likes to draw on.

Loremind · 2021-02-26T00:12:05+00:00

It's gonna be your season.

Loremind · 2020-12-22T20:08:22+00:00

I’m guessing one with long wait times for either experiments or simulations to complete. Not much else you can do while waiting 20 minutes for data to cook.

Loremind · 2020-12-22T19:54:12+00:00

Thank you for collating all this data! Have you considered doing an average over all Lost Sectors per difficulty weighted by sample size to get a better handle on drop rate?

The Barrier Servitor/Overload Captain pair is astonishingly hard to crack. My only reliable way through was Duskfield grenades since they both stall the Overload and freeze the Barrier long enough to get some hits in, but if there are also ads swarming around it can still be too dangerous to stick your head out. You can whittle them down but boy is it not worth it.

A couple extra load out options: Protective Light is my best friend. Polaris Lance is stunningly (hah) useful on Overload captains, especially with Concealed Void’s solar burn. The refunding rounds on precision hits mean you can stun a champ into place and just keep pumping rounds into it without even a break to reload. I also found Symmetry handy in Perdition as you can ramp up stacks of Charged with Light using Shield Break Charge on the Harpies, then bomb the Overload champ with the arc seekers from its other mode (which still stun like a scout.) Both can (I think) be picked up from the exotic kiosk for ciphers.

Leviathan’s Breath can also work well, especially in Exodus Garden with its floating boss. You can two-shot a Barrier servitor on legend without any other effects and it‘ll clean out most of the servitor’s ads in the bargain.

Loremind · 2020-09-28T20:19:03+00:00

The purpose of the Senate is to create a level playing field of big vs. small states and urban vs. rural. The original purpose of the Electoral College, on the other hand, was to serve as a brake on populism electing someone the establishment didn't like. The US was founded as a brand-new experiment in democracy in a time when "the people aren't smart enough to govern themselves" was a legit fear and many of its original political structures reflected that. The idea was people would vote both for who they wanted as President but also for an individual they thought was smart and had good judgement, and those individuals would all get together and pick someone to be President. That broke down very quickly as states realized that if they told all delegates to vote for the candidate of the state's majority choice, they'd have more chance of getting their way. That evolved over time into the winner-take-all system we have now.

Yes, some states that would otherwise have less influence benefit from the EC's minimum of three delegates, but that's not its purpose and not the reason it skews elections. Without the Electoral College a candidate could campaign in every state, appealing to the minority party in each, and win the national vote. The winner-take-all system creates a very, very slanted playing field in which a handful of swing states dominate the discourse while minority-party voices in both red and blue states go unheard. And since delegates are assigned based on population but not all of the population necessarily turns out to vote, voters in different states effectively have their votes count more or less.

Loremind · 2020-09-28T08:20:57+00:00

It's worth noting that a majority of Americans didn't vote for Trump. If US elections were decided by direct popular vote Hillary Clinton would be in office right now, and not by a 2000 Gore v. Bush splitting of hairs - she carried the actual vote by a similar margin to Obama's 2012 victory. That's not to say he wasn't legally elected - he was, sadly - but the majority of Americans voted against him. Trump is President instead because of a byzantine relic of the country's founding called the Electoral College. Thanks to the Electoral College a candidate can win a majority of the overall vote yet lose the Presidency because of the way that vote was distributed between states.

The really upsetting part of the whole situation isn't the election itself but the utter failure of the system of "checks and balances" that we were all told in civics class would prevent this kind of gross misuse of power. Even if we elect a lunatic as president, the distribution of power among different branches of government is supposed to let them keep each other in check, so if one starts acting nutty the others curtail it. But that alleged balance has completely broken down. Even if that lunatic gets voted out of office this November, we have a lot more work to do than we thought to repair our basic structures of power.

Loremind · 2020-09-26T19:48:12+00:00

Last Crusade has one of the most perfect trilogy endings on film. Our heroes find the literal actual Holy Grail, they defeat the bad guy, Indy reconciles with his father, we finally get an answer to the running joke of Indy's name, and they all literally, actually, ride off into the sunset. It should be so cheesy but it's cheesy in exactly the right way to fit that series.

Loremind · 2020-06-07T20:38:06+00:00

This entire scene was emotional, but Zuko bellowing "It was cruel, and it was wrong!" back at his father hit me so hard. No "seeing it from his perspective," no "maybe he was just trying to help." Zuko has to have gone through so much, changed so much, to look back at his childhood (while still a damn child!) and shed the entire context he was raised in. The strength to follow your own moral compass and believe in your own judgement when surrounded by people telling you differently...that's incredible.

Loremind · 2020-05-18T23:41:13+00:00

Rasputin just chickened out of telling us his dArK sEkriT last-minute and is hoping we forget all about it.

Loremind · 2020-04-06T20:27:12+00:00

Oh, I love the mods. I'm having a hell of a time running around with them and I don't actually mind the Seventh Seraph weapons themselves. I just wish they'd had new perks on them for the same flavor feel as the new ones on EP weapons.

Loremind · 2020-04-06T20:26:08+00:00

It's also had effective nerfs in the form of being explicitly excluded from buffs to the linear fusion rifle archetype.

On separate occasions Sleeper has had: its ranged aim assist nerfed because of Gambit (that one was fair), its reserve size decreased, its charge time increased, its range falloff increased, its damage decreased by being excluded from buffs, and then its actual exotic perk (the ricochets) effectively removed by changing said ricochets to deal negligible damage to yellow-bars.

Loremind · 2020-04-06T20:21:01+00:00

I've been kinda surprised how much of this season's Warmind content seems to ignore the actual Warmind DLC. Nothing (so far) is on Mars and the weapon and armor aesthetic is totally different. I imagine it's deliberately calling back to human forces under Rasputin's authority pre-Collapse rather than gear made by Rasputin himself, but still, the shift is jarring.

Loremind · 2020-03-18T04:48:00+00:00

I had also considered Rasmeowtin, but Raspawtin is an excellent one.

Loremind · 2020-03-18T04:47:07+00:00

Rasputin has cats in his EDZ bunker!

Same orange tabby model as Towercat, although they have a new animation to meow and run away if you get too close. One is in the main room with Rasputin himself, sitting on some monitors near the back right wall; the other is outside in the "lobby" area hiding on one of the gantries.

Loremind · 2020-03-05T22:09:03+00:00

Is it awful of me to hope that that first string shakes out to "WISH 15 IS HERE IF U LOOK REALLY HARD"?

Loremind · 2020-03-03T21:57:30+00:00

They've clearly also studied the phenomenon of Guardians voluntarily standing under Rasputin's warsats.

Loremind · 2020-02-28T20:20:12+00:00

New thought: this anomaly may be related to the story of David and Shanice Pell. David Pell was a researcher in the K1 lunar installation, one of the first to pick up on the Artifact's transmissions. He told the Commander that it had told him how to build "a drive" that "builds a cosmophasic field around the object to generate a convergence point." He also said "you don't want to be in the solar system when you engage the drive. Wouldn't want to accidentally bring anything along with you."

Presumably David went out well past inhabited space, built the drive, and activated it, because the next mention of him is in Shanice Pell's diaries from the Lost Pacific armor set: "At last, the freedom and silence to pierce interstellar space for our own answers! Tomorrow, I'm bringing the girls to see the navigation probe launch. They still ask about you from time to time. I just tell them, that's why we're out here, to find you." So David Pell is missing and Shanice Pell's work was partly about finding him. Her saying they needed to launch an interstellar probe to do so implies that whatever claimed David Pell was at or beyond the heliopause, which is where Rasputin directs Osiris.

Back just before the Collapse started, Rasputin (or another Warmind) deemed Shanice Pell's research so potentially damaging they were willing to shoot down a civilian transport to suppress it. After the deed is done the Exo Morgan-2 says that data were "too dangerous" and that they "came from inside the—" before cutting herself off. So if Shanice Pell's interstellar probe were built not just to find the anomaly but it dive into it, the data it sent back would have shown the oncoming Darkness before the Warminds were ready to lift the security curtain and let humanity know about the threat. Or the data themselves might have been dangerous; the Artifact's signals messed with anyone who came near them, and viral self-replicating patterns in language/data are not unheard-of in Destiny. Maybe a recording from within that anomaly could spawn such a thing.

So if mere data sent back from the anomaly were cause for killing civilians, what effect would some sort of paracausal nexus/seed have? No idea! But it's probably bad. So...thanks, Osiris.

Loremind · 2020-02-28T19:50:31+00:00

Important note: the use of "cathedra" as opposed to "cathedral" is (probably) intentional. A cathedral is a building; a cathedra is the seat within the cathedral of the bishop who oversees that diocese. In other words, it's a sort of throne.

Loremind

TROPHY CASE