Destiny 2’s New Poison Subclass May Be Rooted In Egregore

It has been a long, long-running theory that Destiny 2 will end up with a fifth subclass based on the concepts of poison or decay. For a while, the idea was that perhaps it would be rooted in Hive Soulfire, which seems like it could lend itself to the concept.

Now? The true source of our next subclass may have been staring us in the face for years.

Do you remember the first time we saw Egregore, the weird growths currently coating the Leviathan? Nope, it wasn’t on the Glykon in Season of the Chosen. Rather, it was the first time the Drifter showed up in Forsaken, as he had a growth kept behind glass from his wretched journey to a Darkness-infected ice planet (not Europa).

Now, as Egregore is currently on its way to take over our entire HELM spaceship, a growing theory is that it may be the basis of our next subclass, and that maybe the way that we get our poison-based powers in the future, likely with Lightfall.

Why Egregore? Because it’s another manifestation of the Darkness, similar to Stasis, but different. The lore from the Eidolon Ghost Shell this season has the best explanation, told secondhand by someone relaying the info from Eris:

“BUT a certain Hidden contact, Eris Morn, has informed me that the fungus is similar to a synapse within a nervous system. She claims it is a physical manifestation of the Darkness, like Stasis. But unlike Stasis, it appears to be an “impure” manifestation—her words, not mine. ”

This joins a whole bunch of other Egregore lore, most of it attached to the new armor set we got this season (pieces of which have green liquid flowing through tubes on them), which has Eris wanting to study this further. Here, she’s talking to the Drifter about his sample, and where he got it:

“Do you at least remember where you found it?”

“Sister, you don’t wanna know.” Eris locks her eyes on the Drifter’s face. He staggers back awkwardly and shrugs. “Icy little nothing in the middle of nowhere. Doesn’t have a name, and you don’t want to go there alone.”

“But you could take me?” Eris tests his defenses.

Drifter brushes off the mottled fur of his shoulder guards and leans against a poorly fastened railing. “Only if we take your jumpship. And I drive.”

Later, she burns Egregore at the Pyramid Ziggaraut to test how it reacts with that tech:

“The Ziggurat resonates like a tuning fork. The vibrations themselves take shape within the smoke, and Eris is drawn toward somewhere distant and empty. She follows, and the smoke swirls with points of color like stars, separated by lonely rifts of black expanse. Echoes radiate from the black deep like graviton ripples through space. They wash distortion over the stars until breaking against four other points—two greater, two weaker—ghostly strands of incorporeal egregore between them.”

So while the Egregore seems to be a form of communication to some degree, given that it is a manifestation of Darkness like Stasis, merely “impure,” it stands to reason it could be utilized similarly to Stasis which we use to uh, kill a lots of things. We were essentially “gifted” Stasis by the pyramid, as was House Salvation, but here, I wonder if Eris may manually be working to craft Egregore into a tool we can use, and this is the beginning of that process.

It stands to reason that the poison/decay idea could carry forward with what appears to be just…a lot of gross organic material. I don’t know if this will be something like us shooting Egregore vines out of our hand or blanketing an area in spores as a super, but who knows.

It’s just a theory, but keep an eye on the next few seasons and further experiments with Eris and Egregore as we head toward Lightfall.

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