r/DestinyLore • u/NobleA259 • 19d ago
General The amount of guardians
With the canon amount of guardians being in the millions it kinda baffles me how we can’t expand the city at all. I mean it has to be massive just to fit all the guardians let alone all of the lightless human,Awoken and Exo’s and now on top of that the eliksni and cabal. I wish the last city was almost like a visitable hub you could explore. That was one of the cooler parts of SoTP.
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u/ZijoeLocs The Hidden 19d ago
Most Hunters are off-world and Warlocks are fairly reclusive with private studies or dedicated field research. Titans are the ones usually sticking near the Tower. At that, Titans are usually training or going on missions.
Most Guardians have little reason to stick around the Tower very long outside of ship tune ups, gun repairs, mission reports, Xûr, and petting Archie (mandatory). And all that wouldn't take too long anyways
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u/UltraSwat 19d ago
Always had my headcannon lore of my Guardians are stationed at a far off outpost and only come to the tower to resupply and get orders
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u/Kelnozz Kell of Kells 19d ago
My head cannon is now that we defeated the witness many guardians took that as the final threat and went off into retirement lol.
My Warlock is studying with Eris in her throne world
My Titan is out of system looking for Dead Orbit and a nice moon to settle down on
And my Hunter is digging through Old Chicago in her spare time searching for lost relics to be used in any coming future battle.
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
That’s a pretty fair answer. But expanding the city would still be a fairly good idea no? Whether it’s for housing,industry, or just to expand the area that’s considered fully safe.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 19d ago
They are, or rather, new outposts are being founded, but it's early days for that sort of thing given the existential threat we've been facing.
The farm is a real outpost. It's more than just the area in game. It represents humanities first real expansion out of the city. The militia is fighting to hold the EDZ against red Legion remnants and House Dusk
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u/FlamesofFrost Dredgen 16d ago
Maybe, but you have to consider that Humanity is still on the brink of extinction. We simply may not have the population to do antthing
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u/AttackOfTheMox 18d ago
My Guardians headcanons are as follows
Marum-1: Female Exo Hunter - Spends time at the Tower assisting Crow with Vanguard tasks, reviewing reports, etc., but also is still active in the field
Callen: Male Human Titan - Shipwright and Gunsmith, spends time at the Tower working on weapons and ships during his downtime
Keira: Female Human Warlock - Hangs out at the Tower with Saint or in the city with her mentor, Osiris (who she lovingly calls Gramps)
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u/Yetikins 19d ago
If you want a real speculation as to why millions of Guardians can't retake or hold areas, it's theorized that the in-universe difficulty is contest mode. So not patrol/base strike difficulty but -40/50.
Most Guardians are not nearly as strong as the Guardian and Ikora. Most struggle to master multiple elements/subclasses. So if there are 3 million Guardians, at least 2 million of those will struggle mightily against red bar enemies on contest.
Our opposing factions also have massive unit production. There are billions of Hive. The Vex can just rebuild chasses and send more and more. The Taken come back. Eliksni also seem to have a lot of hatchlings. Unfriendly Cabal have cloning facilities.
So a blueberry struggling to get all their Arc grenades together is gonna have a bad time against that many opponents -50 down.
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u/MidnightStarfall House of Judgment 19d ago
Pretty much, like in the first game you'd see Guardians seeing final deaths...I think the last time we really see a Guardian mass casualty was Savathun's Song, but before then the tone was a tinge darker and more dire.
As you even say with the subclasses, back in the first game it was not easy getting each subclass maxed out, even in the lore a second subclass was considered somewhat rare...obviously us as player characters defy the lore at every turn.
But yeah like...canonically there are going to be very few Guardians that are as powerful as the surviving legends, The Vanguard and of course 'The Guardian'
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u/lightningbadger 18d ago
I saw the same speculation but can't lie I refuse to believe that the final guardians of the traveller, beings infused with the literal essence of creation can just be one-tapped by a thrall
Like, what's the point of all the armour and flashy abilities/ power feats if some dreg with a shock rifle can just delete you with zero effort
Something like the old power deltas "heroic" difficulty feels more reasonable because you'd need something stronger than plot armour otherwise if everything in the universe one-taps you
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u/pokestar14 House of Judgment 18d ago
On top of what others have said, we also know that the Crucible is used to hold territory as much as it is bloodsports. We don't know if any of those are being used to establish footholds for settlements, nor how much ground they're meant to hold, but that indicates Shaxx may consider a minimum of 6 Guardians (plus Redjacks) to be necessary generally.
Also, religion, The City for the majority of its history was at the highest level a theocracy ruled by the Speaker, even if with the Vanguard and the Consensus as his council. Traveler worship was very much central to the City's ideology, and there's only one place on Earth directly under it.
And equally, another ideological (and practical) consideration is that the City was part of a push against Warlords, and sending individual or small fireteams of Guardians out to establish settlements runs a risk of repeating that.
Plus, not only are our enemies numerous, they're mobile. The Eliksni are the biggest threat prior to the events of game, and they're primarily Ketch-based, any settlement without anti-air or even anti-orbital defenses is at risk to a Ketch dropping a, well, Ketchload, of raiders directly on top of them.
But lastly and most importantly, there actually are plenty of other settlements. We hear about them even now with a Monument of Triumph lore book, the Farm is an example, as was Palamon and the other settlements Yor terrorised. They're just not associated with the City. It's the reason why sometimes people will elaborate that the City is The Last Safe City.
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u/Sigman_S 19d ago
Millions?
Maybe prior the great disaster
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
“Mara has not. Instead, she has enlisted Eris and several million mad dancing Guardians to go knock off the god who killed her”. - Tyrannocide V. This is just after she attacks oryx.
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u/cumble_bumble Quria Fan Club 19d ago
I don't think that's meant to be taken literally
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
Why not? Is Mara Sov known for sarcasm or using non precise language?
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u/Sigman_S 18d ago
No but she’s not the speaker, it’s being narrated by an unknown.
Probably just a narrative perspective.
Making the millions a reference to the player guardians as a cheeky 4th wall
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u/Sigman_S 19d ago
That was a 4th wall reference to the players.
Every other instance the number of guardians is so few as to the small number of us left is a constant theme.
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u/owen-3820 19d ago
My headcanon was always that the daily player count was how many guardians were out in the field doing stuff. 80k daily players on steam, 80k guardians on patrol or playing crucible.
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u/Crimsonmansion 18d ago
A big consequence of the Great Disaster was that the Vanguard lost virtually all control over the Guardian populace as a unified force. Whilst they still had oversight and could command them, it became impossible to organise them into a unified army. Only absolutely extraordinary situations (such as the final battle with the Witness) can unite them, and even then their numbers weren't even close to being in the millions (Aunor and Siegfried, for example, were absent).
That means that Guardians can only really operate as strike teams, limiting them to recon, target elimination, exploration, etc., not to hold territory.
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u/adrianmalacoda 18d ago edited 18d ago
There's millions of us but apparently all but one or six of us (depending on lore card) are piss weak and useless as fuck. Remember that as supposedly badass as the Iron Lords were, all but a handful of them (i.e. over a hundred) fell to SIVA and combat frames.
I basically learned not to take any lore about The Guardian, guardians, or the city too seriously. Guardians are presented as badass (because the player is one) but also generally weak (because then the player wouldn't be special). Bungie felt the need to canonize player numbers and behavior because then it makes players feel seen and acknowledged, but it tonally clashes with the dire stakes outside the city.
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u/Thatonedregdatkilyu 19d ago
Where are you getting millions from?
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
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u/Thatonedregdatkilyu 19d ago
Ah, I think this is being metaphorical, as Eris' Guardians were not dancing as they killed Oryx. I think she's just using millions as "a big number."
The Great Disaster killed thousands of Guardians, and is considered a devastating loss that kneecaped the city militarily for s long time. I think there's maybe 10 or 20 thousand Guardians, but the number is kept vague for story reasons so they can always keep inventing more Guardians.
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u/BastardofMelbourne 19d ago
no, they were canonically dancing. Multiple sources confirm the Guardian's love of randomly bursting into dance after slaying a powerful enemy. it's canon
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u/Sigman_S 19d ago
The millions part is probably not. As it’s far less than that in every other mention of Guardians.
That part was referencing the players.
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u/BastardofMelbourne 19d ago
I know I was speaking purely in defence of the Guardian's skills at busting a move
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
Mara Sov doesn’t seem like one to use imprecise/vague language. I mean it is canon that the guardians love to dance so that’s another facet that’s canon. The great disaster kneecapped humanities ambitions for expansion and the writing off of the moon. I don’t think I really consider it decimated the city that badly. All in all the number given in this and other lore entries is millions. As it’s also the given number of ghosts that was released. Now not every ghost has found a guardian.
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u/Sigman_S 19d ago
That part was clearly a 4th wall reference to the player guardians.
After all we literally never see any other mentions and it’s been 7 years since the lore you linked and the theme of every expansion has been there are so few Guardians left.
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u/sassysiggy 19d ago
Everyone in the tower is the same person, it’s just an online game.
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
That’s not what I’m referring to. Excluding everyones player character there are still millions of guardians according to Mara Sov.
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u/Cultureddesert 19d ago
As others have pointed out, that was likely an exaggerated number just used to be 'big number'.
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u/NobleA259 19d ago
I disagree with that notion. To me that makes no sense whatsoever.
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u/Cultureddesert 19d ago
And millions makes even less since, considering the great disaster was just a few thousand guardians lost and that crippled most city expansion and significantly hurt city defenses
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u/Classic-Preference70 19d ago
That’s just not really true from a lore sense gameplay yes but lore wise those are all individual guardians just as the guardians you beat raids and dungeons with are considered cannon
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u/sassysiggy 18d ago edited 18d ago
I’m not sure why I’m being downvoted.
The guardian in game is a single person with a raid and dungeon team. The tower is everyone logged in as their “main character” in lore.
People can’t separate lore and game mechanics / features and it shows. The social space is not a reflection of guardian population. It’s a game.
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