Traveler (Destiny)

The Traveler is a mysterious, massive sentient planet-like sphere that travels to Earth to aid the progression of advanced technology and a Utopian society for mankind.

History
If we assume that the Darkness speaks truly, then here is the origin of the Traveler. Before time, there was a field of possibility that prefigured existence. In it, the Gardener and the Winnower played a game with the "flowers" that grew in the field. They existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes. The game of flowers resembles John Conway's game of life in the same way that a a seed resembles the star that fed the flower and all the life that made it. In their game, the gardener and the winnower discovered shapes of possibility. They foresaw bodies and civilizations, minds and cognitions, qualia and suffering. They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle. They learned those rules, because they were those rules.

The Gardener became displeased at the outcomes of the game, as one single pattern seemed to overwhelm all others and "win" the game, even though not even they could know whether a pattern in the flowers would cycle forever or someday halt. Seeking more interesting patterns, the Gardener proposed a change to the rules of the game, to reward those who make space for new complexity. The Winnower disagreed, proposing that the new rule will only create false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream as their rich blisters fill with effluent and rot around them, and when they pop they would blight the whole garden. According to the Winnower, whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. This would become known as the Sword Logic. But the Gardener made itself into a law in the game, the growth and preservation of complexity. In retaliation, the Winnower used the trowel in their hand as the first knife and fought the Gardener in the garden, creating the first knife, and bringing ruin to the garden. The destruction of the flowers, in the perturbation of the field that was the garden before the first tick of time and the first point of space, were the detonations that made the universes. The wrestling of the two pushed things out of the garden, namely, the Ahamkara which were worms in the garden, and the Vex, the dominating pattern of the flower game, into the primordial space of the new universes.

And so, the Gardener becomes the Light, and the Winnower becomes the The Darkness, and the two battle each other through the universes, presumably. In our universe, the Light is represented by the Traveler, whilst the Witness represents the Darkness. the furthest back we know of the Traveler's doings comes from the Book of Sorrow, the history of the Hive. The Traveler uplifted a sentient race known as the Ammonites on the 52 moons of the Krill homeworld, Fundament. Meanwhile, the Krill became targeted by the Witness. Determined to prevent the Traveler from sharing the Light with the Krill, the Witness fabricated a prophecy of a god-wave which would eradicate the Krill and relayed it to the children of the late Osmium King, warning them that they could not trust the "sky" to save them but can only find salvation in "the deep." Sathona, Xi Ro and Aurash followed the Witness' warning to the core of Fundament and discovered the Worm Gods, making a pact with them and embracing the Darkness, becoming reborn as Savathun, Xivu Arath and Oryx. By the time the Traveler and Ammonites realised what was happening, the Krill had already been corrupted and become the Hive. The Hive promptly waged war against the Ammonites and exterminated their kind, forcing the Traveler to flee.

Over the course of countless eons, the Traveler sought out numerous different species and granted them the Light, uplifting them into a prosperous interstellar civilisation. However, the Witness' fleets and armies would follow sometime afterwards, utterly destroying these races whilst the Traveler fled, repeating the cycle with the next species it stumbled across. While it could be assumed that all of the civilizations that the Hive destroyed in their crusade against the Traveler, only three are explicitly stated: The Harmony, whose position around a black hole and the technology to weaponize it were given by the Traveler, the Lubraeans, who devolved into a military dictatorship after the Traveler left them, and the Eliksni, who seem to be uplifted similarly to how Humanity would later be. However, the Traveler fled each civilization uplifted when beset by the Hive or the forces of the Darkness. The Harmony were wiped out by the Hive after over a century of war, the Lubraeans were betrayed and destroyed by one of their own who became a disciple of the Witness, and the Eliksni were reduced to wandering scavengers and pirates.

The Traveler eventually came to the Sol system and terraformed moons and planets such as Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, etc. Because of this, it wasn't long before it caught the attention of the Humans, who sent a team of astronauts to the next planet The Traveler was going to visit: Mars. Upon the arriving to Mars, the astronauts came across The Traveler in the middle of terraforming the planet by creating rain. As The Traveler came to Earth, it uplifted mankind by creating advanced technology for the humans and helped them achieve space travel. All of which led Earth into a Utopian era called the Golden Age.

Unfortunately, the forces of the Darkness eventually caught up to the Traveler. Not much is known about the composition of the forces, but the Hive, lead by Oryx's son Crota, are likely to have participated in the war, though it is also possible that the Witness' fleet of hundreds of huge, tetrahedral ships were the only assailants. Unlike every instance before, for reasons unknown, the Traveler did not flee again, but instead remained in the system to fight back, as if to say: "Here I prove myself right. Here I wager that, given power over physics and the trust of absolute freedom, people will choose to build and protect a gentle kingdom ringed in spears. And not fall to temptation. And not surrender to division. And never yield to the cynicism that says, everyone else is so good that I can afford to be a little evil."

While the Traveler was terraforming Io, the Darkness entered the system. In response, the Traveler teleported itself to Earth to make its final stand, presumably somewhere in the middle of Asia or Europe. Using the Light, the Traveler pushed back the Darkness, but not before most of humanity had been killed. However, it sustained massive damage during this attack, which caused chunks of the outer casing of the Traveler to fall across the planet, the biggest of which landed in a zone in Europe. This massacre from the Darkness and fall of humanity's societal growth is known as an event called The Collapse. According to recent revelations, the Witch Queen Savathun, having grown disillusioned with the Witness, prevented the forces of Darkness from finishing off the Traveler, creating an illusion which convinced the Witness that the Traveler had been destroyed entirely, prompting the Black Fleet to leave. With the last of its available power, the Traveler created and released millions of tiny, sentient, flying robots called Ghosts before it went dormant. The Ghosts then searched long dead soldiers and warriors on planet Earth and across the solar system to resurrected them with Light, turning them into Guardians who use the Light given to them by the Ghosts to fight the Darkness and protect humanity and the Traveler.

In the centuries since the Collapse, the last remnants of Humanity assembled within the Last City, built in the Traveler's shadow. This city is ruled by the consensus, an assembly of factions including the Guardian leadership known as the Vanguard, and is recognised as a safe haven for Humans, Awoken and Exos. Over time, More and more Guardians became risen and called upon to join the city's defence, cementing their position as protectors when they saved the Last City from a major Eliksni invasion at what is now known as the Battle of Twilight Gap.

Hundreds of years after the collapse, the Guardians of the Last City realized that something was poisoning the Traveler and stopping it from repairing itself. With the help of a mysterious stranger, a Guardian gained access to the Black Garden, a Vex pocket dimension with a gate on Mars, that had been found to contain a pulsing mass of Darkness which some of the Vex had started to worship. After destroying the Darkness there, the Traveler was finally able to begin to rejuvenate itself.

Several years after the events in the Garden, the Red Legion of the Cabal attacked the Last City in a surprise attack. The Guardians tried to repel the attack, and one even made it to the capital ship to confront the emperor of the Cabal, Dominus Ghaul. But even as the Guardian reached Ghaul, the Cabal revealed their greatest weapon, a Cage to entrap the Traveler and drain its light. Once the six prongs of the cage encircled the Traveler, the Light the Guardians called upon to use their powers and revive themselves was cut off. Thousands of Guardians died, but some were able to escape along with regular citizens of the city. Ghaul brooded for a time, stalling to see if the Traveler would acknowledge him, and grant him the power of the Light, but it never reacted. In response, Ghaul continued expansion of the cage, until it completely encompassed the Traveler, and was able to drain the Light from it, for use by the Cabal.

Meanwhile, the Guardian who confronted Ghaul while the cage was attached had survived his fall from the capital ship, escaped from the city and made their way to a group of survivors. While helping the survivors, the Guardian starting having visions of the Light, and followed them to the huge chunk of the Traveler that had landed in the European Dead Zone during the Collapse. There, the Guardian regained use of the Light, and began to use it to fight back against the Cabal across the Sol system. After a time, the surviving Guardians and citizens of the Last City mounted a counter attack to take it back. After using a Vex Teleporter to gain access to Ghaul's ship, the Lightbearing Guardian confronted Ghaul a second time. However, Ghaul's cage had extracted enough Light from the Traveler to empower him with Light. After the battle atop Ghaul's ship, the Guardian emerged victorious, until Ghaul used one of the lightbearer's abilities to spontaneously resurrect themselves known as Radiance. Being empowered with an enormous amount of Light, the Radiant Ghaul was huge, bigger than the capital ship. He angrily berated the Traveler and the Guardian, thinking he had ascended to godhood. At this, the Traveler finally awakened, destroying the cage, annihilating Ghaul in a wave of Light, and fragmenting its own outer casing. This wave propagated for millions of light years, far past the bounds of the Milky Way, into intergalactic medium, and reached the dormant Pyramid Ships there. Realising the Traveler still lived, the Black Fleet reactivated, and began their Journey back towards Sol to finish what they started.

A few years after Ghaul and the Light Cage, the Pyramid Ships finally entered the Solar System. Slowly making their way across it, the largest ships settled over several celestial bodies, namely, Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and secretly, on Europa. There they waited, while the Darkness contained within the ships tried to communicate directly with the Guardians. After several months of communication, the Darkness decided to act, seeming to consume the planets they occupied, sans Europa, in a black hole. The Darkness moved to consume the entire solar system, and finally the Traveler repaired itself, and reacted. It repaired its outer casing, and threw back the Darkness once more, preventing it from consuming more planets. But the Pyramid Ships remain, the planets are still gone, and the Traveler remained silent.

Some time later, Savathun made contact with the Traveller after rejecting the Darkness and removing her Worm-God Larvae. Near death, Savathun offered herself as the Traveller's supplicant before dying from her wounds, only to be resurrected shortly afterwards by one of the Traveller's oldest Ghosts. Empowered with the Light, Savathun convinced numerous wandering Ghosts that the Traveler's favour lay in the Hive rather than the Humans, creating an army of Hive with Guardian-like powers. Horrified by these Hive Lightbearers, the Guardians became convinced that Savathun had somehow "stolen" the Traveller's light for her purposes. Through observing Savathun's memories within the Altar of Reflections in her Throne World, the Guardians discovered her plot to seal the Traveler within her Throne World, as well as the revelation that she was, like them, one of the Traveler's chosen. Despite their new doubts about the Traveler, the Guardians were determined to prevent Savathun from taking it and their Light. The Guardians defeated Savathun, revealing to her the truth about the Witness' deceptions, and returned the Traveler to Earth. However, Savathun implied that she was not trying to steal the Traveler, but protect it from the Witness.