(no subject)
Feb. 5th, 2015 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysIt goes without saying that the in-game introduction to Guardian life is somewhat briefer than seems helpful, so here’s a collection of headcanons on how it might actually work in-story!
• It’s rare for new Guardians to make it to the Tower on their own, as few are fortunate enough to be raised at the gates of a shipyard. The majority of Ghosts will instead put out a signal as soon as they have acquired their partner, which will then be acted on by the nearest active Guardian-Ghost pair; it’s considered a grave sin to ignore this beacon and leave a new Guardian stranded in the hostile wilderness. Those who do make their way to the Tower alone acquire minor bragging rights, not to mention an economic boost by way of being granted ownership of anything they scavenged along the way, but there’s hardly any shame in having survived in enemy-riddled territory long enough for your ride to arrive.
• Established Guardians are encouraged to take on a mentorship role to those they ferry back to the City, even if it’s just dropping around now and then to see how the newbie is doing.
• The formal introductions a new Guardian must make are to the Speaker, who will explain the spirit of a Guardian’s duties, and to the three Vanguard leaders, who will explain the body. Sometimes these meetings are grouped, if multiple Guardians have arrived within short space of one another. Most other introductions will occur over time as needed; individual enquiries are left to the Ghosts.
• Housing in the Tower units is neutral, with a disgruntled Warlock dealing with Hunter neighbours and a run of Titans down the hall toasting their good luck. Like most things, housing assignments are handled through the Vanguard staff and moving rooms without permission is heavily frowned upon as it interferes with the internal postage system and the speed with which new Guardians can be integrated.
• All new Guardians make a recording soon after arriving, in which they are prompted to introduce themselves and discuss what they remember of their past life. This recording serves as an early profile for the Vanguard to use in determining what support they might need, as well as a referrable source for the cryptarchs and their historical studies. The Tower archives are full of such recordings, and it can be both an entertaining and sobering experience to go through them and see the faces of those legendary and lost, fidgeting and stuttering and rubbing their faces in numb bewilderment in their first weeks of a second life. (No one will specify which belongs to the man who became Dredgen Yor, assuming it even exists.)
• Not every Guardian knows instinctively which discipline best suits them, though most will feel a strong pull in one direction or another. For those uncertain, there are tests which help determine which types of Light, and which methods of manifesting them, come most easily to the subject.
• Guardians with absolutely no combat experience in their past life will be invited to do basic training alongside the Guardian-supervised lessons granted to the City’s civilian militia. (One does not need to be a Light-blessed agent of the alien Traveler to learn how to change a magazine or throw a punch without breaking your thumb.) For those who simply need to get a handle on the new technology and powers available to them, there is the Crucible.
• As with the game, new arrivals are allotted a starter’s kit: a furnished room, a set of off-duty clothing, a portion of glimmer, and as decent armour and weaponry as there is to spare. The selection of giftable gear is drawn from the pool of items that the travelling Guardians trade in, sell, and occasionally kindly donate. Once in the field a Guardian is mostly expected to keep themselves equipped, but the Tower won’t let its operatives hang if they’ve struck upon serious misfortunate.
• Guardians are allowed to wander freely through the Tower, but a Vanguard permit is required to go into the City. This is one of the agreements pushed by the City Consensus, and those who breach it are taken to task quite severely. The Guardian lifestyle is not one that just anybody is suited for, and in turn those who exist to walk in the darkest places in the galaxy, to fight until and beyond death, are not always suited to interacting with civilians.
On the whole I envisage the Tower and the Vanguard to be as flexible and informal as possible while still being an organised society. They’re not an army as we would understand it, and outside of the Vanguard there aren’t hierarchal rankings; the Guardian tradition started off with solitary agents of the Light, after all, and to bury them beneath reams of red tape would be to neuter them on the field. That said, there are a couple thousand of these superpowered wrecking balls running around, and coordinating their actions can turn out better results than letting them all flail about independently.
It’s more or less up to each Guardian how much Tower oversight they want, and there are consequences for the choices they make in this regard. The Vanguard doesn’t discourage people from pursuing personal interests and vendettas to the exclusion of more mundane assignments, because that’s how some truly momentous victories have been won, but a Guardian risks courting a slight…wariness with such behaviour. A few too many have gone off the rails following that exact path, and sensitive Vanguard missions will be passed over to the Guardians they personally know and trust.
Which is more or less how I justify the reputation system working in-universe. The greater frequency with which you do odd jobs for the Vanguard, the greater number of doors will open for you within their system, and they’re firm believers in rewarding reliable service. It is nonetheless a time-consuming service and can bog a body down in fetch quests, and there are other doors that might call to a Guardian more persistently – the sly alliance offered by the Queen, Eris’ passionate hatred of the Hive, the future envisioned by one of the factions, a burning need to work out what the Cabal are running from. It doesn’t mean the Tower stops being your home.
• It’s rare for new Guardians to make it to the Tower on their own, as few are fortunate enough to be raised at the gates of a shipyard. The majority of Ghosts will instead put out a signal as soon as they have acquired their partner, which will then be acted on by the nearest active Guardian-Ghost pair; it’s considered a grave sin to ignore this beacon and leave a new Guardian stranded in the hostile wilderness. Those who do make their way to the Tower alone acquire minor bragging rights, not to mention an economic boost by way of being granted ownership of anything they scavenged along the way, but there’s hardly any shame in having survived in enemy-riddled territory long enough for your ride to arrive.
• Established Guardians are encouraged to take on a mentorship role to those they ferry back to the City, even if it’s just dropping around now and then to see how the newbie is doing.
• The formal introductions a new Guardian must make are to the Speaker, who will explain the spirit of a Guardian’s duties, and to the three Vanguard leaders, who will explain the body. Sometimes these meetings are grouped, if multiple Guardians have arrived within short space of one another. Most other introductions will occur over time as needed; individual enquiries are left to the Ghosts.
• Housing in the Tower units is neutral, with a disgruntled Warlock dealing with Hunter neighbours and a run of Titans down the hall toasting their good luck. Like most things, housing assignments are handled through the Vanguard staff and moving rooms without permission is heavily frowned upon as it interferes with the internal postage system and the speed with which new Guardians can be integrated.
• All new Guardians make a recording soon after arriving, in which they are prompted to introduce themselves and discuss what they remember of their past life. This recording serves as an early profile for the Vanguard to use in determining what support they might need, as well as a referrable source for the cryptarchs and their historical studies. The Tower archives are full of such recordings, and it can be both an entertaining and sobering experience to go through them and see the faces of those legendary and lost, fidgeting and stuttering and rubbing their faces in numb bewilderment in their first weeks of a second life. (No one will specify which belongs to the man who became Dredgen Yor, assuming it even exists.)
• Not every Guardian knows instinctively which discipline best suits them, though most will feel a strong pull in one direction or another. For those uncertain, there are tests which help determine which types of Light, and which methods of manifesting them, come most easily to the subject.
• Guardians with absolutely no combat experience in their past life will be invited to do basic training alongside the Guardian-supervised lessons granted to the City’s civilian militia. (One does not need to be a Light-blessed agent of the alien Traveler to learn how to change a magazine or throw a punch without breaking your thumb.) For those who simply need to get a handle on the new technology and powers available to them, there is the Crucible.
• As with the game, new arrivals are allotted a starter’s kit: a furnished room, a set of off-duty clothing, a portion of glimmer, and as decent armour and weaponry as there is to spare. The selection of giftable gear is drawn from the pool of items that the travelling Guardians trade in, sell, and occasionally kindly donate. Once in the field a Guardian is mostly expected to keep themselves equipped, but the Tower won’t let its operatives hang if they’ve struck upon serious misfortunate.
• Guardians are allowed to wander freely through the Tower, but a Vanguard permit is required to go into the City. This is one of the agreements pushed by the City Consensus, and those who breach it are taken to task quite severely. The Guardian lifestyle is not one that just anybody is suited for, and in turn those who exist to walk in the darkest places in the galaxy, to fight until and beyond death, are not always suited to interacting with civilians.
On the whole I envisage the Tower and the Vanguard to be as flexible and informal as possible while still being an organised society. They’re not an army as we would understand it, and outside of the Vanguard there aren’t hierarchal rankings; the Guardian tradition started off with solitary agents of the Light, after all, and to bury them beneath reams of red tape would be to neuter them on the field. That said, there are a couple thousand of these superpowered wrecking balls running around, and coordinating their actions can turn out better results than letting them all flail about independently.
It’s more or less up to each Guardian how much Tower oversight they want, and there are consequences for the choices they make in this regard. The Vanguard doesn’t discourage people from pursuing personal interests and vendettas to the exclusion of more mundane assignments, because that’s how some truly momentous victories have been won, but a Guardian risks courting a slight…wariness with such behaviour. A few too many have gone off the rails following that exact path, and sensitive Vanguard missions will be passed over to the Guardians they personally know and trust.
Which is more or less how I justify the reputation system working in-universe. The greater frequency with which you do odd jobs for the Vanguard, the greater number of doors will open for you within their system, and they’re firm believers in rewarding reliable service. It is nonetheless a time-consuming service and can bog a body down in fetch quests, and there are other doors that might call to a Guardian more persistently – the sly alliance offered by the Queen, Eris’ passionate hatred of the Hive, the future envisioned by one of the factions, a burning need to work out what the Cabal are running from. It doesn’t mean the Tower stops being your home.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 06:45 am (UTC)(But also, thank you.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 02:14 pm (UTC)