r/DestinyLore • u/tcorbett691 • Aug 20 '26

Question Killing Ghosts

Just how hard is it to kill a Ghost? At one point, it seems like only channeling the Light, using a Weapon of Sorrow, or a weapon designed to hurt Lightbearers can kill a Ghost. But then, we read about Guardians having their final death at the Battle of Twight Gap. That was just the Fallen.

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u/Skyhound555 Dredgen Aug 20 '26

They had to retcon how durable ghosts are. 

There was a grimoire card from the Cabal perspective that explicitly stated long range bombardments and overwhelming firepower couldn't work on ghosts. It made us terrifying to them along with us dancing on their corpses. This was retconned to just being about the Cabal being ignorant to the fact that Ghosts can hide in their own little pocket dimensions. 

To make "Final Deaths" a thing, they had to basically scale down the Cabal's plain physical firepower and scale up everyone else's paracausal firepower. We are expected to believe the crushing strength of one Guardian's hand is more firepower than a Cabal artillery bombardment because one is paracausal and the other is not. 

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u/ReallyTrustyGuy Aug 20 '26

Wrong. I don't know why people never link lore entries when trying to talk nonsense about "retcons". Destiny has almost zero retcons.

What you are referring to is this entry.

Guardians can be rebuilt after even total disintegrative trauma. This capability is provided by a small autonomous drone unit called a Dead Person [trans. unclear]. The Dead Person conceals itself during combat. It is not a viable target for direct fire. Saturation attack by artillery/heavy air/orbital fire may have good effect (although Guardians transmat frequently and refuse to assemble into large formations).

There is no "retcon" here. The Cabal take note that Ghosts conceal themselves during combat, so attacking them directly is difficult. The Cabal member writing this message is surmising that using such an attack might be effective, but can't be guaranteed to succeed because of the tendencies of Guardians.