he is chinese, not japanese (douyin is the chinese version of tiktok)
this is pump it up (middle and diagonal arrows), not dance dance revolution (vertical and horizontal arrows)
yes this game can be played with 1-3 players, however when theres more than 1 player the colours of the arrows change so each player follows a different colour. this is the default colouring (yellow for middle, red for upper diagonals, blue for lower diagonals), which means this is meant for one person and is probably a custom map for people like him lol
SO. I’m still working on this one, and it’s Bungie so there’s like a 70% chance it’s something brand new and completely out of left field. But one of the few bits of info we got from the showcase implied Neomuna was the result of a ship that escaped the Collapse. That made me think of an old plot thread from a D1 grimoire card:
I fear my will is not strong enough to shape these worlds. Only the Tyrant can do that, but he will not be a part of my journey. Even his reach has limits, and we will be nine billion miles away.
I whisper my concerns to the Tyrant in tiny magnetic bursts. He does not listen.
The Tyrant says take the SIVA, and so I take the SIVA.
The Tyrant says go to the stars, and so I go to the stars.
Sometime around, but before, the Pyramid Fleet hit the system, Rasputin dispatched a colony ship carrying SIVA to a destination "nine billion miles away”. That line always made me roll my eyes because while it sounds like a lot, in astronomical terms nine billion miles isn’t very far at all. It’s barely 100 AU; the orbit of Neptune is 30 AU out and the Kuiper Belt tails off around 55 AU, and there are dwarf planets like Eris with its high-eccentricity orbit that range out that far. It’s less than a tenth of the way to the Oort Cloud that marks the real edge of the Solar System. At the time I chalked it up to Bungie’s writers grabbing what sounded like a big number and not bothering to do the math.
But. Remember the Solar System wall map in Rasputin’s bunkers during Season of the Worthy? After Neptune it had a few rings for the Kuiper Belt and then an additional planet the same size as Neptune. Astronomers have long debated the possibility of a tenth (or ninth, now) planet, usually nicknamed “Planet X”, that orbits waaaaaay out there*. Planet X is a staple of scifi and unless Rasputin’s playing a bizarre joke on us the Destiny universe has one in the form of a world of significant size way out past the Kuiper Belt. A planet at 100 AU - nine billion miles - from the Sun would fit Rasputin’s map and line up with older theories for a real-world Planet X.
* It may seem absurd that we could miss an entire planet, but planets don’t emit visible light, only reflect the Sun’s, and a world that far out would appear to move so slowly it could be mistaken for a fixed star. These days space-based IR sky surveys have mostly ruled X out - but only mostly.
Golden Age human spacecraft ranged as far as the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt, and Clovis Bray’s journal contains a passing reference to what sounds like a Vex incursion at a research station on Pluto, but the line of permanent human settlement hadn’t yet passed Titan. When Rasputin started building the Exodus program as insurance against the possible extinction of humanity, Planet X would be an ideal candidate for the first wave: close enough to quickly resettle our system, far enough from human settlements that a force targeting Earth might miss it, especially if they kept their heads down. So I’m now thinking maybe the colony ship he sent out with SIVA really was going a mere nine billion miles away - to pitch camp on Planet X.
Pulling an entire Golden Age city out of thin air is a stretch even for Bungie. They’ve had this reveal up their sleeve for a long time, long enough to put Elsie’s fish in the Beyond Light reveal trailer and maybe the mystery power armor Sloane found on Titan in Season of Arrivals. Therefore: what if Neomuna was the reason they included Planet X on Rasputin’s bunker map in the first place? The lightmap was a significant setpiece they knew players would be watching closely, so the artists probably didn’t add it just for funsies. Casually dropping in a new solar system planet is a pretty crazy piece of worldbuilding. And yet it’s barely remarked on in written lore, either then or since - same as Elsie’s fish, which those bastards played the long game on for two solid years. I will bet you a hundred dollars that when the map assets for Season of the Worthy were made, Neomuna was on Planet X. I bet it started out there and got moved to Neptune the way the Deep Stone Crypt was originally going to be on Enceladus (hence Cayde’s message to Petra) but got moved to Europa later in development. I bet the story’s going to be that the colony ship was headed for Planet X, but the Pyramid Fleet hit the system early and they dove for cover on Neptune.
The few early bits of info we’ve gotten on Neomuna suggest their tech is all based around extremely advanced nanites, like the constantly-morphing Quicksilver Storm. Elsie even calls out SIVA the first time she encounters the Neomuna nanites, but says Neomuna’s bugs are vastly more advanced - which you might expect if SIVA were the original city’s lifeblood and they’ve iterated on the tech out of necessity ever since. We also learned the Cloudstriders have very short (10 - 15 years) lifespans because of how much cybernetic enhancement they do to their bodies. Remember the secret experiments Willa Bray was doing with SIVA? She was infusing it into people, trying to enhance physical and mental prowess. And it worked, too - but it drastically shortened their lifespans. To the tune of weeks for Willa’s subjects, but like Elsie said, Neomuna’s had a lot of time to improve. And for meta reasons it would explain why Bungie hasn’t revisited SIVA in recent years even though it’s a popular request from D1 players; they already had a whole expansion of “SIVA, but neon chrome this time,” in the pipeline.
Given that Neomuna’s hidden in the atmosphere of Neptune, there’s a good chance it’s the NEFELE STRONGHOLD mentioned in the Collapse-era Rasputin message - a human settlement that Rasputin then erased all mention of, even from his own memory. If he knew that ship had gotten a foothold on Neptune, he’d probably also know the Pyramids hadn’t found it yet (was this, potentially, because of Savathun? is this the trick her worm claims she played on the Witness? that seemed to be more about the Traveler though.) Exodus Black had crashed, Green disappeared into a singularity, and Red and Blue hadn’t even made it off Earth. Rasputin knew every Exodus ship was a mad gamble anyway. At that moment he would likely consider the Neptune colony to be humanity’s best shot at avoiding extinction. So he cancels its defense as part of his general retreat but also takes the time to erase all traces of its existence, including his own records. He won’t help them, but he will give them a chance to stay hidden and escape the Black Fleet. And since he’s now forgotten the colony exists, he doesn’t check up on them in the following centuries or mention them to us.
Like I said, it’s Bungie, so there’s a 70% chance the lore justification will be completely new and out of left field. But it does line up. In a month of guessing I wouldn’t have called the swerve they took for Lightfall, but now I think they’ve been leaving breadcrumbs for this one longer than it seems at first glance.
“I must not feed the algorithm. The algorithm is the mind-killer. The algorithm is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face the algorithm. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the algorithm has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
the thing IS. is there’s blood in my veins instead of lightning. my chest house’s a beating heart rather than light. and the only reason any of this is acceptable is because the mechanisms that keep me going are miracles in themselves