What would you do?

It is the perfect spring day. 

The air is cool and clear with just the promise of rain and the smell of new life and growth is all around.  The sky and idyllic blue with wisps of cottony white clouds floating overhead.   
I'm there as an advisor.  
Meeting the local regiment commander as they roll out in a parade formation through the local neighborhoods to show off their new armaments and that they are maintaining order.  
They do not want to be seen as puppets, so before heading out I am given a uniform to blend in to the twenty or so other soldiers escorting the weapons platform through the residential streets. 
It seems showy and aggressive to me but my opinions on the matter have little bearing now that the deliveries have been made. 
We stop, the streets empty and looking of all intensive purposes like a west coast suburb right out of a 1950's television show. 
My interpreter turns to me "The Commander would like to know if you would only give one warning."  
As I look around, taking in the weather I say "Yeah." 
As I turn to look at the commander for clarification the blast of air caused by a truck mounted rocket platform hits me at the same time as the whistle of six of the things flying off in rapid succession towards an unknown target.  
I look at the Commander torn between disgust and battle ready hands reaching for a weapon that I wasn't issued before heading out. 
The explosions are close, very close.   Dirt and rocks rain down on us close and I duck into the alcove of a homes front door until it stops.  I and my interpreter jump into a pickup with the Commander and a couple of other soldiers as they head out to survey the damage.  

We drive less than two blocks, the distance further to the end of the streets than it was between launch and impact point. 
People are streaming from homes on the other side of the street to see what's going on.  Irritated and unarmed I look around to try and figure out what the target had been. As I'm doing this the Commander jumps back into the back of the pickup and they peel off leaving the Interpreter and I behind. 
there is a group of children between curious and scarred huddled together looking across the road.
A young person, dressed in layered clothes more suited to the wilderness than to suburban streets emerges from a house with what looks like a  potato gun in their hand.  I realize it's pointed at us and I dive to the side as it fires.  The blast fully catches the Interpreter.  Two more people come from the same house carrying similar devices and I scramble for cover behind a parked car as metal pings and pops off of it. 

I look back to see if the Interpreter is still alive to him shot point blank with one of these improvised weapons.  At the same moment a woman in a Bright, glossy, blue cocktail dress comes out wielding a small sub machine gun.   She opens fire at the three people in their wilderness clothes and hits one with a blast of fully automatic spray.   She's never fired in full automatic before and the gun kicks and bucks in her hand catching the kids in it's arc.   A young girl turns to me from the group, pocked with a series  of red dots from her face down to her legs.  She's trying to scream but there is not sound as she pitches forward onto the ground.  Behind her a forth kid, this one with an actual gun shoots the woman in the blue dress. 
The scrabble of footsteps coming around the truck pulls my attention the other direction and I barrel at the young kid with a weapon in their hand. 

As I examine the incident later I learn that the Commander was out to eliminate what they viewed as the enemy.   Three young radicalized people recently moved into the neighborhood, their homes having been recently destroyed by a military bombing campaign campaign.  The rockets had been meant for them but there had been a party taking place and the Commander had given the wrong firing orders while trying to prove he was in control of the area.
Instead they struck a party thinking it had been a recruiting effort by the insurgence. 
 The woman in the blue dress had been at the party.  The gun she had was her boyfriends, killed in the blast, that he kept in his car. 
The Commander fled as soon as the fighting started. 

Public reports were conflicting and both sides used it in their propaganda machine in the following weeks. 
 

This is a reoccurring dream I have.  
A cautionary tale that makes me question how I should have handled things differently. 
And an illustration of how these kinds of conflicts perpetuate. 

One of the several dreams that wake me regularly. 

Destined for the future

 Destiny Years 1, 2 and 6 

Destiny is an interesting game for me.  

And I refer to Destiny as one game even though there are technically two games and multiple expansions it has one continuous and progressive world.   The major events move in real time and the story continues to unfold over the years. The game play updates from release to release and fixes happen from week to week.  

But for me it's a bit more than that.   
When I play a game I like to roleplay and get into characters heads and explore the world as I think they would.  Sometimes this frustrates people that game with or join me on adventures because, especially on the first, second, and often third times through an area I move at almost a glacial crawl examining the scenery and getting a feel for the atmosphere, trying to learn as much about the world presented by the artists behind the game as I can from initial impressions.  

When I first started playing Destiny it was during The Taken King, invited by an old friend to join them and some of their gaming friends in going on the raids and large team events that the game offered.  
I played, mostly solo, through the major story events and worked to get weapons and armor to be able to run the team events I was asked to join in with.  

 I only made one character at the time, my attentions being divided between the multitudes of other games digital and physical I was in or hosting.   
I won't lie though, I was hooked.  I fell in love with the story, the world building, and the mystery of a far flung future trying to understand what happened to humanity before it collapsed into what it was. 

When Destiny 2 came out I pre-ordered it, convinced several friends to as well, and we worked our way through the year one content.   By this time my original character had made the jump from struggling fledgling to beefed out, done all the side quests, beaten all the bosses, collecting dust in the vault as two other characters from the other offered character classes were making their ways through the original story content so that I could refresh myself before the new game released. 

Destiny 2 year 1 was fun, many of my old 360 friends had made the move over to the PlayStation and we worked our way through the Year 1 content.  Excitedly theorizing over the story developments and what this meant or that meant.   While many of the people I had worked through the first Destiny content with I didn't game with anymore.   I'll be honest, most of them still played but as I played other more competitive games with with them between content drops I came to understand that most where from the toxic masculine side of the gaming world and I chose to play with a smaller group more invested in the story and character development than what the optimal load out for a specific mission might be. 

By the time Year 3 of the second game rolled out I was entirely a solo player, between distancing myself from the toxic players and events outside of the game distancing me from most of the people I played through the year one and two content with the haunted nature of the moon and it's story fit my mood almost too well.  

Now half way through year four, a years worth of content dropped between when my system went into storage on it's deathbed while I worked through some nightmarish times in my life to now.
My system pulled from storage, repaired by my own hands and running smoothly again.   I've spent the last couple of weeks "on vacation" so to speak and most of that vacation spent exploring the worlds and story of the Destiny universe. Both newcomer and grizzled veteran in the same breath. Solo, but meeting new adventuring companions and looking to see if any old friends still haunt the moon.

  

Meet the Characters
Since I do concoct and write elaborate back stories for characters in almost every roleplaying game I play let me introduce you to my fire team. 

The Warlock
"B" an exo.

Then
When first installing Destiny I didn't really know much of anything about the world of the game so I went through the character creation and took almost an hour developing "B"
In my original head cannon "B" was a Cybertronian, or quite literally Bumblebee from the Transformers franchise and in the first game where the Exo history was mostly shrouded in mystery I concluded that in this far flung future Cybertronians had so thoroughly integrated with humanity that their current evolution was the Exo.

Now
Especially since the revelations about Bray Tech and the origins of the Exo have been largely revealed and confirmed beyond snippets of Lore and Fan theory I've developed and actually started writing out "B"s in universe origins beyond "He's a Transformer" 
The short version is that he was one of the original Bray Tech scientists pioneering the Exo technology during humanities initial interactions with the Vex. After his conversion to Exo, and in memory of a child lost to an attack on Europa he adopted the moniker "Bumblebee"   Rather than adding a number to their name every time they were rebooted "B" would simply drop a letter from their name. 
"B" is the last reboot of this scientist turned warrior thought lost on earth during the collapse, an ancient toy sitting on the flight panel of their ship the only true reminder of the person they once were. 


The Titan
"Blue" 
In his former life Blue chose to help humanity rebuild and was killed during an expedition trying to salvage Golden Age tech when the Fallen slaughtered the entire expedition. 
As a Guardian Blue awoke and stumbled back into the safety of the last city still trying to figure out who he was.  He stopped in the market, lead by his ghost, to food and water.   A small child, giggled at his confusion when he saw a crucible match being broadcast at the little cafe.  
"You're precocious" He said to the little one as Lord Shaxx excitedly called out the play by play.
"You're blue."  the child said before turning back to their own meal.
After that Blue became a Crucible Champion between assisting other Guardians during the Taken Wars.

The Hunters
Ray and Violet

Ray
In, her former life was a born during the Dark Ages, Knowing  little more than a life of desperate struggle and bloody conflict.
As a Guardian she was pulled from the Siva infested wreckage of the Plaguelands by "B" and Blue.  The three fought back the infestation. 
Rey was one of the lost Guardians during the Red War.

Violet 
During the Red War there was a young Rangers working with Devrim and Hawthorn to get refugees to safe Havens outside of the city.  
Violet awoke in the Dark forest with B and Blue using light restored from a shard of the traveler battling back Taken.  Before the Ghost, as confused as the young ranger about how the Guardians hand their light restored and it was able to pull her from death when so many of its friends and their guardians had so recently fallen, could explain the young Hunter had snatched a sidearm from Blues belt and began fighting back along side the two.  
When the fighting stopped, the void energy still thrumming through her body, she looked down at her hands in confusion.  It was Blues gentle touch on her cheek that brought her back to the moment.
"You must be Violet." he said gently.
"...How do you know my name...?"
She trailed off as his hand touched a lock of her vivid hair then removed his helmet and touched his cheek and offered a kind smile. "I'm Blue."
"Am I..." She started. "A Guardian."  The ghost finished.

The shock on Devrims face when the three arrived at his checkpoint in pieces of scrounged together armor was was palatable. "How..." Devrim started.
"I'm Violet." She said forstalling him.
A look of sadness, joy, hope, and loss all tangled themselves on Devrims face before he nodded in acceptance.  
"Would you like a cup of Tea Guardian?"  He asked as the trio started repairs on their salvaged equipment.

The Nuts and Bolts

As I pick the game back up during Year 4 of Destiny 2...
or Year seven of the Destiny universe...
...or year 6 of my playing of the game... 
It's a very Vexian way of looking at a time line isn't it?

I lament many of the quests and missions, particularly the raids, that I missed out on since the new updates. 
I feel sorrow for the friendships that grew and crumbled over the course of the past six years.
But I find a strange comfort that "B" and their fire team have new places to explore.  That there are still other Guardians running around the universe in places new and old. 

Gameplay wise it continues to have smooth gunplay, satisfying power abilities, well maintained severs, and an active player base. 

Development wise it feels like in year four they've found a good balance between the "too short/small and story driven" content of year one and the "Story light repetitive grind" of much of the year two content."
I have not comparison of year 3 content as I missed much of it due to life and hardware failures on my end. 
But I'm enjoying the progression of the Beyond light Content especially since it's largely Exo centric and Even though the Season of the Champion content does fall back to something of a grind, (though not nearly as bad as the Black armory or Season of the Drifter) the way that it develops the story through dialogue and character interactions between, and more importantly, during the grind actually has me looking forward to replaying it with Blue and Violet once I've finished all of the main questlines with "B"  so that I can pick up on story pieces I missed on the initial run.  

As for the future of Destiny.  As I revisit and log into some of the other MMO's I've played over the years and see dead servers and empty friends list I can't help but feel that the Destiny community has something more to it than that.  
Even without going to forums, less than two weeks in and I've already met several other players who enjoy helping "new lights" as the free to play and brand new players are called, or are very welcoming to older players returning.  
Yeah, there's still a bit of toxic gaming in there...that's just a problem for the industry as a whole though...Largely though I think it comes from the care that the artists and developers put into the world and characters that they're building and that they actually engage and listen to the community at large has helped build that. 
I guess for me Destiny just scratches all the right itches, especially now. 
Deep expansive story, fast frenetic gameplay, or slow paced explorative wandering depending on the mood. 
I like it and if you're new to the game, or old and just need a reliable fire team member just send an invite.  

Eyes up Guardian. 
The future is bright