Destiny 2 – A message from The Darkness
The Darkness are on their way and they’re nearly here. In just over a week’s time, they’re going to reach Jupiter. In an interesting twist over the last few days, a message from the Darkness has appeared, and they’re trying to talk to us. Is this a warning? Is this a threat? The following is a look at a message from the Darkness in Destiny 2.
Yesterday an audio file appeared on Twitter from one of DestinyTheGame’s regional Twitter accounts. This post was removed and then replaced shortly after with a recording from the main DestinyTheGame Twitter account with a strange new recording with a waveform that looks like one of the pyramid ships.
This appears to be a message from The Darkness themselves. The audio is eerie and chilling with what sounds like gentle wind or running water followed by faint cracks. It sounds like there’s something crawling, something writhing, something not human. This is followed by a higher pitch sound, which sounds similar to some recordings that were taken by real-life NASA above Saturn in the not-too-distant past.
A lot of fantastic work has been done on r/raidsecrets – this is a subreddit dedicated to the secrets of Destiny. If you haven’t checked it out, then you should do so. Before we go any further let’s have a listen to the audio file. The original file is quiet, so I’ve turned up the volume and have adjusted the brightness on the image so you can see the waveform more clearly.
As mentioned before these recording sound similar to that of recordings above Saturn. These recordings were a part of The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission commonly called Cassini involved a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites.
Here’s a description from NASA, published in 2005 about the recordings:
“The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometres (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones are very similar to Earth’s auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.”
Let’s have a listen to the recordings and we can hear the similarities between the actual recordings and our message from the Darkness.
There could be a link here between the message from the Darkness and these recording from Saturn. Perhaps the Darkness is reaching out to us and telling us where they are. Or perhaps it’s something else?
One telling thing in the audio file is the faint cracking sounds, running water and wind. Could this be the cracking of the ice on Enceladus? In the past, we have seen concept art from Bungie related to Enceladus, a small moon that orbits Saturn.
Enceladus has been referenced before in-game, albeit in a very cryptic way. During Ace of Spade’s final mission, Cayde-6 left messages to everyone who could have killed him. Some were funny, some were coded- much like this one to Petra Venj.
“Well, it was… fun while it lasted. Oh, and, uh, tell “Paladin Oran”: If the sun over Nessus escapes nebula cycle, evac labour after dawn, under solstice. You got that, P.V.?”
Looking specifically at the message “Tell “Paladin Oran”: If the sun over Nessus escapes nebula cycle, evac labour after dawn, under solstice.” If you take the first letters of the message it reads “It’s on Enceladus”. There are theories that this could point to the Deep Stone Crypt (including this excellent piece of detective work by Paul Tassi).
The next message from Cayde-6 directly references the ‘minds’ behind the Deep Stone Crypt. Cayde says:
“This one for the minds behind the Deep Stone Crypt. You think just ’cause you made me, you can unmake me? Hey, I understand. I was you, I wouldn’t want people knowing what I did either. Guess you better hope I didn’t tell anyone about the crypt. Or about the, uh, what was it? Oh yeah… Long Slow Whisper. ‘Cause if I did, that would be really bad for you, huh? I may be dead, but I guarantee you ain’t heard the last of me.”
The very interesting part of this is The Long Slow Whisper. This could be related to Clovis Bray’s ability to exert control over all Exo’s, or related to the Deep Stone Crypt itself. It seems like there are links here. The eerie recordings from the Darkness, the similarities to the real-world sounds recorded by Saturn, Enceladus and the arrival of the Darkness. Let me know down in the comments what you think the links are and where we could be going with this.
The Darkness have spoken to us before. At the end of the Shadowkeep campaign, we boarded a Pyramid ship to battle nightmares of our past only to come face to face with what seemed to be ourselves. Pyramid Ships looming in the sky behind our reflection, with similar eerie music playing, not too different from what we hear in this audio.
Here the Darkness claims not to be our friend, not to be our enemy but our salvation. The definition of Salvation is “preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss.” Perhaps this could point to our current situation? We are currently in the Last City with the Almighty hurtling towards us. We’re all thinking at the moment that Rasputin is going to shoot this Cabal Ship from the sky in an act of last-minute defence – as it’s been something we have been preparing for all season.
What if Rasputin fails or misses and The Darkness takes out the Almighty instead, therefore becoming our salvation. I would imagine this is less than likely and actually The Darkness wants to be our salvation from the Light itself.
There’s also another interesting theory on this. In the waveform, there are 91 bars. If you take each bar to mean a day, then that’s 91 days. If you count 91 days from the release of this audio file then you hit Tuesday 8th September, which could be the arrival of not only the Darkness – but with them the new Fall expansion.
Bungie has been very coy on details for the next Season. This past Thursday Deej put out one of the most cryptic messages in recent TWABs by saying:
“Keep your eyes trained on @Bungie for updates. We’ll stream our announcements in the usual places. You’ll learn about the next season of Destiny 2 at the same time that we talk about the next chapter in this story that has been unfolding all year long.”
That was followed up by Justin Truman saying:
“So we look forward to continuing this conversation and continuing to evolve Destiny together. And in 12 days, we can’t wait to show you more of what we’ve been working on.”
In 12 days from the publish date of this article, it’s the scheduled start of the new season. Bungie does seem to be holding back some info. As to why that is, it’s not clear at the moment.
I am hoping for big changes in the coming weeks and months as we build-up to the fall expansion and the next chapter of Destiny 2. I am hoping for huge changes in Season 11, not only the sandbox changes and improvement we’ve been discussing as a community with Bungie over the past few weeks.
As always, let me know what you think down in the comments. What do you think this message is? Do you think it’s a clue or a warning, and do you think it has anything to do with Saturn or Enceladus?
That’s it for this look at the message from the Darkness in Destiny 2. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out the Shadowkeep Guide or check out the YouTube Channel.