The year of The Witch Queen in Destiny 2 has been defined by preparation and trepidation in the run up to Lightfall. The Guardian has faced down returning foes such as Calus and Eramis in new forms, battled inner demons with Eris Morn during Season of the Haunted, and engaged with a newly Light-infused Hive. In Season of the Seraph, the final step on the road to Lightfall, the long-awaited return of Rasputin is at the forefront as Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War, arrives on Earth’s doorstep.
Season of the Seraph represents the culmination of many parallel narrative arcs, with characters like Clovis Bray, The Exo Stranger, Eramis, and Mara Sov unexpectedly present within the seasonal quest. With how crucial these characters will be to the Destiny 2 story going forward, understanding how we got here and the role they play in Season of the Seraph will set you up to have a much better grasp on their motivations in future lore.
Whether you missed out on the quest entirely this time around, or you’re playing catch up before Lightfall drops on Feb. 28, here are all the details you need to know about Season of the Seraph’s story and the state it leaves Destiny 2 in going forward.
Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph full story and lore recap
The return of Rasputin
Season of the Seraph has been a storyline multiple years in the making. It was in Season of Arrivals, the final season before Beyond Light launched in 2020, that the first foundations were laid.
During that season, the Black Fleet arrived in the solar system. Rasputin and Ana Bray attempted to fight back against the Pyramid ships with the Warsat network, but in one nearly effortless swing, Rasputin’s systems were disabled and the network went dark. It was only thanks to quick thinking by Ana Bray and her ghost Jinju that they were able to preserve what was left of him in an encrypted pillory Engram.
Since then, Ana has been entirely focused on the task of reviving Rasputin so that he can regain control of his network and aid humanity against the oncoming threats. This wasn’t an easy task and the answer evaded her for many years, however. An experimental Exo chassis was built to house the Warmind, but pulling him from the Engram and smoothly transferring him into it proved to be the greatest challenge.
After the Vanguard made tentative allies in Empress Caiatl’s Imperial Cabal and Misraaks’s Eliksni, Ana was able to employ the assistance of a Psion—combining their ‘mindscape’ capabilities with Eliksni Splicer technology—to verify the integrity of Rasputin’s Engram. He was alive, but weak and getting weaker, accelerating her timeline.
Ana gets the experimental Exo chassis set up in the H.E.L.M. It’s while she’s working there that Osiris arrives, newly awake thanks to the efforts of Misraaks during Season of Plunder, expecting to find Rasputin restored and being frustrated to learn he’s still offline. When Osiris regained consciousness, he became fixated on a vision of Neptune left behind by Savathun’s possession and believes that Rasputin holds the answers he seeks on its significance.
He suggests that Ana should get the assistance of her grandfather Clovis Bray. While the original Clovis is long dead, an AI upload of him has been based on Europa since it was brought back online by the invasion of the Deep Stone Crypt. Given the awful track record of Clovis, both with how he treats his family and the pacts he made with Darkness to create the Exos, Ana isn’t pleased with the idea. They are running out of options and time, however, so the Guardian is tasked with heading to Europa and getting Clovis’s help with bringing Rasputin back online.
A tentative alliance with Clovis Bray
When the Guardian arrives on Europa, the base of operations that Clovis is working out of is already under siege. Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War, seemingly has want of Clovis for something and has deployed Cryptoliths within the laboratory halls. As Ana and Osiris observe, Xivu’s Wrathborn forces are made up of the usual Hive but Eliksni from the House of Salvation as well. After Eramis’ failure to secure the relics of Nezarec in Season of Plunder, The Witness has seen fit to dissolve House Salvation into Xivu Arath’s forces until they act as one combined front.
The Guardian is able to save Clovis from the onslaught, and Ana successfully convinces him to assist her with getting Rasputin back online. It’s revealed that even in the Golden Age when Ana was first working on Rasputin before becoming a Lightbearer, Clovis found her methods for teaching Rasputin art and philosophy distasteful. He claims it was this focus on teaching Rasputin how to “feel” that led them to this now, but he would do what he could to make sure Ana’s plans were successful.
While it isn’t clear why Clovis is so ready to offer his assistance given his track record both in the Golden Age and since re-awakening as an AI recently, the Vanguard isn’t in a position to refuse his help on the matter. Clovis is given access to the experimental Exo chassis in the H.E.L.M. so that he has a window into all the operations and procedures, putting him in a position where he can more easily give orders to the Guardian.
Mara Sov and Elsie Bray join the ensemble cast
Despite Osiris’s encouragement for Ana to do so, not all of our allies are as enthused by the idea of allowing Clovis access to our operations around Rasputin. It isn’t long before Elsie Bray, the Exo Stranger, arrives to remind Ana of just how manipulative and self-important their grandfather is.
His megalomania and obsession with genetics in the Golden Age were what led to the deaths of most of his family, and a tortured upbringing for both Ana and Elsie. Furthermore, his creation of the Exos—human minds uploaded into robotic bodies—required a parcausal force he called “Clarity” that came directly from the Darkness.
With Ana out of options, she remains determined to work with Clovis nevertheless. Because of this, Elsie agrees to assist with the operation as well if only to make sure that Ana has a person she can trust by her side as well. With the initial point of conflict defused, Clovis explains that returning Rasputin to his former state will require two things: submind data and access to the Seraph Station orbiting Earth.
The submind data was an easy enough ask, located in hidden bunkers throughout the solar system. However, the Seraph Station would require a launch pod to reach without getting shot down by its defense systems and Rasputin had long ago locked Clovis out of access to the codes that make those launches possible.
Over the next few weeks, the Guardian would retrieve multiple bouts of data from two of Rasputin’s subminds called Malahayati and Charlemagne. They would also gain access to a central hub located on Europa containing further usable fragments for rebuilding the AI. The Seraph Station, however, remained out of reach. Throughout this time, Mara Sov would also join the allies present for the operation. She is equally doubtful of Clovis’s intentions and sees Rasputin’s reconstruction as an important enough task for the upcoming war with the Darkness that her personal oversight is necessary as Queen of the Awoken.
Operation: Seraph’s Shield
After multiple operations into the launch site for the Seraph Station, the team is finally able to get access to the pods that will take the Guardian up into orbit. Guided by Ana and Elsie, equipped with a virus destined for its systems, the Guardian begins the operation.
The goal is to reach the Warmind integration core aboard, where the virus can be uploaded and open a backdoor into the station’s network. With that backdoor open, Rasputin would be able to access and take back control of the Warsat network with no difficulty once he was back online. These Warsats serve as Rasputin’s weapon array and can be found in orbit around multiple planets throughout the system. While they were useless in dealing with the Black Fleet itself, their utility against ground forces such as the Hive—and their utility to an enemy like Xivu that’s able to steal away control of them—makes them too crucial to ignore.
The Guardian is successful in achieving this goal but discovers a horrifying truth on the path there. Praksis, one of Eramis’s lieutenants previously killed on Europa, has been resurrected as a Scorn in service of The Witness. Eramis unexpectedly comes over the comm channel to confirm this, explaining in a defeated voice that The Witness has plans to curse all of her dead Eliksni with this fate. With her waning allegiances already showing in Season of Plunder, it’s even more apparent now that Eramis’s faith in the Darkness and her ability to protect her people is all but shattered.
Having a backdoor into the Seraph Station thanks to our subterfuge is a massive step forward, but the rest of the restoration process for Rasputin continues on at an agonizing pace due to the limited utility of submind fragments to rebuild an entire AI. Clovis Bray’s frustration at this only continues to grow.
The Warmind awakens, a threat is revealed
Realizing that they are running out of time with Xivu Arath and The Witness right on Earth’s doorstep, Ana comes up with a plan. During the Dark Ages, Rasputin segmented off a portion of his code to develop on its own. This independent AI was housed in an Exo chassis, and one day, thanks to the winds of fate, ended up becoming Lord Felwinter. Felwinter was a legendary Guardian and Iron Lord, and the remains of his Ghost Felspring are still stored with reverence at the Iron Temple on Felwinter’s Peak.
Ana believes that Felspring alone could still contain a vast array of memories and data attributed to Rasputin and Felwinter if the data core is still active. The rich linguistic and personality data it might have archived is too good of an opportunity to pass up, so the Guardian sets off for the Iron Temple once Ana is granted access to the Ghost’s remains by Lord Saladin.
There is some resistance from House Salvation on the Peak, but it’s a limited invasion force that the Guardian is able to easily dismantle before heading over to the temple. As Ana was hoping for, Felspring’s data core is intact and she’s able to transfer the archives over to Rasputin’s Pillory Engram. In a shocking turn, a new yet familiar voice replies back in response. Rasputin himself comes over the comms channel, utilizing Clovis’s voice pattern to speak to us privately with his functionality newly restored.
Unfortunately, Rasputin comes bearing bad news. He reveals the truth of his creation and his past, of how Clovis planned to use him to destroy the Traveler and become a god himself. With Rasputin in a vulnerable state currently, the Warmind has no doubt that Clovis is using this opportunity and access he possesses to now wield the power of the Warsat network himself, skipping the go-between entirely.
When Ana and Elsie return to the H.E.L.M., they waste no time confronting Clovis with the truth that Rasputin revealed to them. He doesn’t entirely deny the accusations, instead arguing that his plans are entirely for the good of humanity, once again displaying the megalomania and egotism that led to tragedy in the Golden Age as well. Ana doesn’t give him a chance to further explain himself, transferring Rasputin directly into the Exo frame alongside him. Rasputin and Ana seize control of the Exo frame by force, effectively deleting the secondary personality matrix of the Clovis AI that previously inhabited it.
Clovis is able to send back a warning to his central hub on Europa, but for now, the Rasputin project is safe once again. Better yet, with his core now fully restored thanks to Felspring, Rasputin is operational enough to assist with the continued efforts to acquire control of the Warsats and take down Xivu Arath and Eramis’s forces.
An uncertain stalemate
Rasputin needs time to formulate a proper plan of action. The Guardian continues to push back against the forces of Darkness, but it only seems to be temporarily holding back the coming wave later down the line. Mara Sov believes that Xivu Arath must be planning something big, currently dedicating so few of her forces to the ongoing fight for Rasputin’s submind bunkers. Back at the H.E.L.M., Osiris confronts the now rebooted Rasputin about his visions of Neptune and a secret city located on it, but Rasputin explains that he has no information on such a thing’s existence.
Despite the lack of additional submind cores, Rasputin believes that continued extractions from Malahayati and Charlemagne can still provide the final remaining pieces of his code that he needs to take control of the Warsats once more. It’s due to his incomplete code that he remains unable to assist Osiris’s investigation into Neptune, but the submind caches that the Guardian retrieves repeatedly reference something known as “Nefele Stronghold” that Osiris believes must hold the key.
Elsie also confides in the Guardian that she has fears about where the current path is leading. Despite being able to stop Clovis’s plans, Elsie has experienced many different futures where Ana’s obsession with Rasputin’s restoration has led her down a dark and corrupting path. She wants to trust her sister this time but worries that if things continue as they are, she might see Ana falter again.
Rasputin, pleased with how his reintegration is coming along, discusses his plans to lay waste to what remains of Xivu Arath and Eramis’s forces. However, Mara Sov and Osiris suggest that caution is necessary. Xivu Arath’s worm gorges on warfare—it does not matter which side wins or who falls, she grows more powerful from the carnage regardless. This is later discussed again in a meeting with Zavala, Caiatl, and Misraaks, where the reality of it settles into a simple plan of action: hold the line.
The Abhorrent Imperative
Limited to an almost passive state and unable to utilize the power of the Warsats against the enemies of the Traveler, Rasputin ponders what purpose he can even serve as a Warmind against the forces of the present day. For now, he requests the Guardian to retrieve some highly classified files from a secret Warmind bunker in the Cosmodrome while he runs more potential combat simulations.
The terminal in question isn’t linked to the rest of his network, cordoned off in a place that even Ana is unaware of. As the Guardian infiltrates the facility, Rasputin discusses his past and the awful things he’s had to do to complete his primary objective of ensuring humanity’s survival. One order—the Abhorrent Imperative—could have been devastating if enacted.
During The Collapse, Rasputin feared the Traveler might run and abandon humanity. The Abhorrent Imperative would have turned the Warsats onto the Traveler and immobilized or destroyed it, forcing it to remain on Earth. He ended up aborting the firing sequence then, but the existence of the protocol at all makes him fearful of the power he possesses and the devastation he could easily cause. The Guardian retrieves the sensitive files and Rasputin hands them over to the Vanguard for safekeeping.
The existence of this order doesn’t take long to come back into focus. With House Salvation still in control of Seraph Station beyond the Guardian’s brief moment of subterfuge, Eramis was able to study the Warmind’s systems. After discovering the virus and backdoor planted in the network, she purges it from the system and begins to take control of the Warsats herself. With dread and urgency in his voice, Rasputin notes that she is planning to initiate the Abhorrent Imperative and destroy the Traveler.
The Guardian immediately sets off for the Seraph Station, battling through the House Salvation forces stationed there as the clock continues to tick down toward the Traveler’s destruction. With no easy options left, Rasputin makes a choice—he can be directly uploaded into the network, sacrificing himself to destroy it all in the process. All it requires is uploading his Pillory Engram aboard the station.
The Guardian does so, but time has run out. Sensing the threat of the Warsats, the Traveler begins to flee into orbit, leaving the Last City behind. Misraaks’s opens up communication with Eramis, pleading for her to not do this, but the ever-watching eye of The Witness on Eramis’s actions stops her from turning back. She begins the firing sequence, but Rasputin is able to shut down the Warsats seconds before the Traveler can be destroyed. He falls offline once again but for the final time this time.
Lightfall
The Traveler remains trapped in Earth’s orbit, unable to return to the Last City and unable to run from the system with the Black Fleet now on its doorstep. Ana mourns the loss of Rasputin, but the Warmind leaves behind one final piece of information. Osiris’s visions were correct, and the city on Neptune is real.
The story will continue when Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion releases later this month on Feb. 28, and the scale of The Witness’s invasion has to be properly reckoned with.
Published: Feb 14, 2023 04:07 pm