Drifter's Ghost

This article is about the modified Ghost of the Drifter. For other uses, see Ghosts.

The Drifter's Ghost
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Earth
Species:	Ghost
Gender:	Unspecified (referred to with it/its)
Political and military information
Affiliation:	The Drifter

The Drifter's Ghost is the nameless Ghost partnered to the Drifter. Though it typically keeps itself hidden, it is distinguishable by its red eye, inability to speak and a shell reinforced by the innards of five dead ghosts. This appearance is the result of extensive modifications it underwent during the Red War that granted it access into spectrums of Light beyond any other Guardians know of, and even into spectrums beyond the Light and into the Darkness, which lead to the creation of Motes of Dark, Gambit and The Derelict.

Biography

"For the breadth of my formative years, I had one goal: find my—well, we all have our own word for them—my chosen. And every moment thereafter was dedicated to keeping him alive, whether he liked it or not. They were turbulent times, before the Last City. Before humanity found hope for the future. I was prepared to kill for it. Die for it."

— A Ghost of the Dark Age

The Ghost raised the man who would eventually be known as the Drifter during the Dark Age and immediately found him intractable. When it advised him to head towards a nearby settlement where they would find allies, the Drifter began running in the opposite direction and was promptly run over by a vehicle piloted by a Risen raider. The Ghost rammed through the Risen's skull, killing him, before reviving the Drifter and again advising him to join with its friends in the settlement. When the Drifter again went in the opposite direction, his Ghost had no choice but to follow.

Refusing to give either himself or his Ghost a name, the Drifter continued to reject his Ghost's advice and assistance even if doing so harmed him. His Ghost respected his wishes in that regard and would allow him to die if his stubbornness killed him, though it would always bring him back afterwards.

Eventually, the Drifter settled in a village called Eaton, adopting the name Germaine and attempting to live as a normal person. "Germaine" would indirectly bring food to the hungry village by scouting for game with his Ghost and then secretly driving it in for his friend Judson to catch. However, on one scouting mission, the Ghost "got carried away" and was detected by a Warlord, the Red Man, leading him and his forces into an ambush by a contingent of Iron Lords under Lord Dryden. The ensuing battle razed Eaton and left Drifter the village's sole survivor. His Ghost recorded the disaster from above. In the aftermath, at the Drifter's request, his Ghost found him a spade to bury the bodies with. The Ghost reprimanded him for "[playing] house with refugees" and wasting his potential, but was ignored.

Later, the Ghost kept the Drifter from freezing to death when he climbed Felwinter Peak to personally condemn Dryden (the battle's only survivor, and whose misconduct and violation of several Iron Lord taboos were directly responsible for the disaster) before Lord Felwinter. It provided its records of Eaton's destruction to Felwinter's own Ghost.

A Lightless World

At the dawn of the City Age, the Drifter and a subset of his crew set out to leave the Sol system, in search of something "greater than Light" due to the conflicts that Light had created on Earth. They traveled for centuries, eventually finding a cold, desolate planet which gave off an energy that seemed to repel Light, much like the exotic weapon Thorn. The Drifter and his crew landed with the intent to study this energy and render it portable, although the Drifter felt that humans were not supposed to be on the world. The extreme cold of the planet took a toll on the Lightbearers and caused them to occasionally freeze to death and require Ghost resurrection, yet the Drifter and his comrades were hopeful they could find something useful and confident in their skills to survive the planet.

The Drifter's crew found a series of abandoned monolith-like structures on the planet, which they discovered contained strange, amorphous shadow-like creatures imprisoned in cryogenic suspension. They determined that these entities were the source of the Light-repressing fields and that they shared some characteristics with the Hive, although the Drifter regretted not having a scientist among his crew who could study them better. They soon discovered that not all of the creatures were imprisoned in the monoliths and that some roamed out in the wild. One night while they slept in the frozen wilderness due to it still being warmer than inside the cryogenic monoliths, a member of the Drifter's crew froze to death but was unable to be revived by his Ghost due to the proximity of one of the creatures. This loss angered them, but it also increased the Drifter's determination to find a way to take the creatures off-world as they could change conflicts between Lightbearers forever. However, the crew also started becoming paranoid due to how unlikely it seemed for one of the creatures to be in close enough proximity to prevent resurrection, particularly so soon after they had realized the potential to weaponize the creatures.

Not long after this first death, the Drifter and his crew moved into one of the monoliths to get better protection against the roaming creatures despite the cold. The Drifter continued examining the technology within the monoliths to try and understand the cryo-technology but was unable to figure out how it worked. Tempers began rising, which only worsened when a second member of the crew died due to the proximity of one of the wandering creatures. Some members of the crew began to believe one of the others had lured the creature close, although the Drifter thought the creature itself had deliberately only killed one of them as a warning to leave. When one of the Lightbearers drew his gun, the Drifter warned them all that the next time one of them did that he would kill them all. A little over a year after they arrived, only the Drifter and three others remained and their ship had ceased working due to the cold. The cold had killed them thousands of times and their paranoia had begun turning into insanity. As they settled in for another night in a monolith, they all suddenly lost their connection to the Light due to Dominus Ghaul entrapping the Traveler in a cage. However, they each believed that the others were responsible and drew their weapons. Unsure if they really intended to kill each other, the Drifter still lived up to his promise and murdered all three of his remaining companions. Angry and seeing one of the frozen creatures seemingly watching him, the Drifter flipped it off and contemplated that he was now alone and stranded.

The Drifter's Ghost 'snapped' at this point, informing the Drifter of a way they could capture the creatures. The Drifter asked how they would do such a thing, as the creatures were undoubtedly dangerous. His Ghost told him of a set of modifications they could perform on his shell, but that they would require components from other Ghosts - the Ghosts of the Drifter's deceased teammates which had now scattered across the icy planet.

Drifter hunted these Ghosts, being sure to stay away from the Shadow Creatures as much as possible. The Drifter, having killed the Ghosts to obtain their parts, began the modification process of his own Ghost, trying not to freeze to death before the process was completed. With the modifications complete, the Drifter's Ghost could see and emit light and energy in spectrums no other Ghost could - eventually inspiring the tech used in Gambit banks, Motes, and Portals.

Return to Sol

Centuries later, Drifter was asked by Osiris to check his creation: the Sundial. Drifter arrived on Mercury, and the Ghost scanned each of the spires, before projecting a hologram of statistics for Drifter, who concluded that the Sundial would work.

List of appearances

• Destiny 2: Forsaken (First mentioned)
  • Season of the Drifter (Mentioned only)
  • Season of Dawn (Mentioned only)
  • Season of Arrivals (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Deep (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Witch (Mentioned only)
• The Hidden Dossier (Mentioned only)