If you’ve played through Destiny’s story missions, you may remember hearing about the warlock Osiris back in the Shrine of Oryx mission on the moon: “OSIRIS: Every end crawls from the same pit, rising from the schism to swallow matter, Light, and life. It will not be stopped, but here it can be slowed. The Shrines of Oryx must be destroyed.”
This mission was first playable long before anyone had ever experienced the Trials of Osiris, so it’s understandable if you didn’t take mention of him at the time. While Destiny’s Trials of Osiris are undeniably a high intensity, fun, and competitive event, not everyone gives thoughts to the legend himself. The are no Trials of Osiris without the legend of the exiled warlock guardian named Osiris.
The next clue we receive about the warlock Osiris is from the Tread of the Hezen Lords. It tells us that, “Rumor has it that the exile Osiris came too close to understanding the Vex.” This is interesting. Shouldn’t guardians want to understand the Vex? Know thy enemy, right? And Osiris certainly wouldn’t have been the first to look into Vex secrets considering Dr. Shim and his team performed extensive Vex research in the Ishtar Collective on Venus. So why was Osiris exiled?
To better understand the exiled Osiris, we turn to his grimoire card. It begins by asking, “What drives a Warlock to madness?” and then begins to explain the untold burdens of being a warlock.
…Warlocks, by their nature, fight a second, internal war. This is the war to understand a universe of secrets— a world that expects Guardians to fight without full knowledge of what they are or what they might hope to achieve…
You were a mighty warrior. I watched you at Six Fronts, and heeded the call of Saint-14 to appoint you Vanguard Commander, even when the Concordat claimed to have records proving you were a Golden Age experiment mis-incarnated as a human by an inept Ghost. Saint-14 assured me you were just a man without much patience for obfuscation.
I watched as you grew tired of strike missions and the grueling, unproductive sessions with the Cryptarchs. That was when I took you under my wing. I saw our future in you. But your curiosity was voracious– How much of a Guardian’s personality and memories were true? How much had been fabricated by their Ghost? Did Guardians share particular personality traits– a willingness to yield to authority, a tendency to do anything anyone asked for the promise of uncertain reward, a blind knight-errant mentality? Had the Traveler manufactured all of you as living weapons?
These are interesting questions with a bit of a meta feel to them. The questions Osiris asks as a warlock within the world of Destiny are questions that many Destiny players could choose to either ask themselves, as Osiris does, or ignore them, as many of Osiris’ guardian contemporaries choose to do. When Osiris asks if guardians have a “tendency to do anything anyone asked for the promise of uncertain reward, a blind knight-errant mentality?” it’s interesting to note that we as players often pursue nightfalls and raids with a blind-knight errant mentality in hope for unknown rewards. We also sometimes tire of strike missions and become furious with the cryptarchs. The grimoire card continues…
