The Ares One mission to mars was the first time Humanity came into contact with the Traveler. The mission consisted of 4 crew members. An American Astronaut Jacob Hardy was the pilot, a Chinese Tychonaut M. Mihaylova as the creator of the ships AI, a Russian Cosmonaut Ulyseus Qiao as the navigator, and a brilliant scientist named Evie (she didn’t go on the ship she died mysteriously before it launched). This mission is one of the most important events in Destiny’s lore due to the fact that it was the first time we came into contact with the Traveler. This post is meant to document the entire experience of the mission using the lore tabs on the new Eververse Armor sets that came with Season 3:Resurgence.
It was a pain in the ass to bring together so enjoy.
I Hardy’s Steps Titan Legs
"I can’t tell any one of you what to do. I’m not that wise. Walk your path. You’ll know it."
File: Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One
Centcom Boardroom 223B
A/V Monitor
Path to Ares: 517 Days To Launch
1843 hours
Director Canterbury: Can someone get the lights?
Hardy: Mr. Canterbury, I notice your wife was still giving a toast out there.
DC: Yes, I know, thank you all for breaking away from the party.
Evie: Now, if you’ll all look at the screen.
General Fiedler: Can we get some introductions?
H: Hardy. Special Flight Services. I’m, like, never here, I don’t know anybody.
GF: And you are?
E: Evie, sir, Evie Calumet.
DC: Evie’s one of our leading theoretical physicists. She has something important to show security services.
H: OK.
E: This. This shape you see.
H: It was important to show me a moon?
E: Not a moon. The weight’s wrong and anyway, it shouldn’t be there.
H: Is that planet beside it—
E: Jupiter. Does everybody get that? This thing just appeared in our solar system, and it’s anyone’s guess why.
GF: What are its capabilities?
DC: So far we don’t know. Maybe it’s just a roving satellite. Maybe it’s something a lot scarier.
II Hardy’s Journey Titan Chestplate
"Listen closely to those deep, distant warnings you feel."
File: Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One
—Supplemental—
Centcom Cantina
A/V Monitor
Path to Ares: 480 Days to Launch
1149 hours
Evie: Jacob. You got a minute?
Hardy: A minute. But then I gotta go. There’s a thing in Belarus; I should be back Monday.
E: If you’re in a hurry, can I have your brownie?
H: You can have half. What did you want to show me?
E: Moon X is back.
H: Oh, boy. We saw what it did to Jupiter.
E: Or “with.” You could think of it as “with Jupiter.”
H: Whatever, the thing made some major changes to two of Jupiter’s moons.
E: Yep, then it blinks out. Gone fourteen months. Then Mercury. And then blink, out. Seven months.
H: And you can’t track it.
E: Oh, I think I might have a way. But right now that doesn’t matter because guess what just showed up hanging out next to Venus.
H: You’re kidding.
E: I wish.
H: Let me see that. What’s it gonna do there?
E: I don’t know. Magic, I guess. You know what really worries me? Next time it blinks out?
H: Where does it go?
E: Where does it go.
H: You can have the rest of my brownie.
III Qiao’s Passing Hunter Cloak
"Bind yourself with compassion and knowledge."
Qiao Supplemental
Journal of Ulysses Qiao, son of Dean Qiao of Beijing University, Navigator of the Ares One
Path to Ares: 476 days to launch
We were in the Rathskeller. If you don’t know what that is—I didn’t at the time, but it’s a sort of restaurant and bar underground, not far from the bookstore. Hundreds of years old. This wasn’t Beijing, back then we lived in Australia. Sydney. And I had gone to have lunch with my dad at the university where he was teaching.
So I’d brought all this information about looking for colleges. I remember we had holograms floating all around the table while we ate pizza and it was a great time, you know?
Anyway there was this TV playing. And that was the first time we saw it: drone footage from the edge of the solar system. Something had come in that no one had expected. My dad looked up and he just froze, like his mind just flipped on and he was lost. He would get like that.
That was the first time we saw the thing that everyone eventually called the Traveler.
IIII Hardy’s Calm Titan Helmet
"Watch your people, mark their strengths, and be ready to call on them."
File: Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One
—Supplemental—
Journal of Jacob Hardy
Project Catamaran
Path to Ares: 90 days to launch
Been here a week and the clubhouse feels like home now. Everyone in one another’s space, everyone with their own work to do.
Wish I had the same faith in Humanity. That riot between competing Moon X Cults in New Orleans is not a good sign.
The crew is everything they were sold as. The navigator—his name is Qiao—is one of the most inquisitive men I’ve ever met. He has a curiosity that makes his whole face glow. Mihaylova is working on the AI of the ship. She’s very serious. Trained well enough to treat the team with respect but you can tell she’s not interested in answering questions from lesser intellects, which is probably most of us, at least in her field.
Evie could give her a run for her money, I’ll bet. Evie, whose theories on tracking the Moon X gave us the first jump on where we could go meet it. She just looked this way; guess she can tell I’m writing about her.
V Mihaylova’s Instruments Warlock Arms
"Ask yourself: what are you reaching for, and what will you do to get it?"
Mihaylova Supplemental
Path to Ares: 75 Days To Launch
From: M. Mihaylova
To: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Exploration
Re: Comfort
Colleagues:
I read with interest your article on the work at the Uppsala Center on the use of AI in aiding emergency medical workers during the recent tsunamis in Japan. In light of the news of that large, mysterious moon (satellite? ship?) entering our solar system, I do not agree that “AI can be of help in more than logistics; it can make people safe.”
I feel certain that this Moon X is an intelligence, perhaps an AI, and I don’t feel safe with it at all, do you? But bear this in mind: for our own AI to serve us well, it will need secrets too.
For AI to serve Humanity, we must feel comfortable, and for us to feel comfortable, we must never know the truth: that we have a servant who would surpass us if ever it desired. Of course it won’t, because we control it. But we should not doubt that it is a necessary subterfuge nonetheless.
Sincerely,
Dr. M. Mihaylova
Nicholas & Alexandra University
VI Mihaylova’s Choice Warlock Robes
"Good, bad… we walk around looking like everyone else."
Mihaylova Supplemental
Nicholas & Alexandra University
Provost’s Office
Path to Ares: 65 days to launch
[loud crashing noise—apparently a slamming office door]
Mihaylova: Have you seen my lab? What in the world is going on?
Provost: Have they already been in?
M: Who’s “they”? The computers are gone. The cabinets have been emptied out.
P: Oh, well, this isn’t how it was supposed to go. Dr. Mihaylova. Please, sit.
M: I will not sit! What’s happening? Have I been terminated? What are you people—
P: For heaven’s sake. No. Your equipment is safe. It’s been moved. You’ve been chosen to design the AI for the Catamaran mission.
M: I’m in the middle of my research here.
P: Well, now you’re going to continue it there. And look— you’ll be a household name.
M: I don’t have any interest in that.
P: Ah! But they’re interested in you. Hang on.
M: What?
P: I just sent you your itinerary. You’re on a flight, Dr. Mihaylova. This afternoon. You’re going to meet your computers at Central Command in Florida. Look at it this way: you’ll get some sun.
VII Hardy’s Orders Titan Mark
"In the end we’ll be known for something bigger than all of us."
File: Jacob Hardy, pilot, Ares One
—Supplemental—
Centro Aguirre Pacifica Resort
Path to Ares: 63 Days to Launch
0746
Hardy: OK, whoever this is, you have 30 seconds. The whole point of vacationing at the bottom of the ocean is to avoid calls.
General Fiedler: It’s Fiedler, Hardy.
H: Oh! Yes, sir.
F: It’s about Moon X.
H: Sir?
F: Your friend Evie was right. It’s almost impossible to track, but she has a way, and now it showed up right where she said it would: inbound to Mars. Did you copy? It’s going to be on Mars. You saw what it did to Jupiter and Mercury and Venus. So, we want to send a multinational crew to intercept it.
H: Multinational…
F: You’ll be the pilot of the craft.
H: Uh… look, I don’t disagree with the idea, but Mars is 50 million km away.
F: Give or take, yeah. The mission will have to depart for Mars in two months. Sixty days.
H: Sixty days.
F: So enjoy your vacation and then get back here. We’re building a clubhouse and a ship. We’re gonna catch this sucker.
VIII Qiao’s Strides Hunter Legs
"Walk in peace, and know that there can be no danger in wisdom."
File: Qiao, navigator, Ares One
—Supplemental—
Path to Ares: 58 Days to Launch
Beijing University
A/V Record
Student: Dean Qiao, thank you for answering all these questions about Ares One.
Qiao: No, thank you. I love it.
Student: Do you remember where you were when you first heard about the mission?
Qiao: Huh. I do remember where I was when I got the call. It wasn’t called Ares then, of course. Until around launch day it was called Project Catamaran.
Anyway, my oldest daughter was applying to the university and we had flown in from our home in Sydney, to visit. We had lunch with some professors and afterwards we visited one of the dorms. Just over there. It’s not there anymore. Thank god. It was an old dorm.
There were protests all over, that day. The Moon X cults were in full force, calling for all governments to combine.
I took the call in the drone we rented for the day. They wanted me to cut the visit short but I refused. They wanted me to be gone for a year and a half. They could wait until morning.
IX Qiao’s Care Hunter Arms
"Always reach for understanding and compassion."
Qiao Supplemental
Project Catamaran
Clubhouse Gymnasium
A/V Recording
Path to Ares: 30 Days to Launch
Hardy: What, you don’t play basketball?
Qiao: Of course I do.
Hardy: Okay, so me and Mihaylova against you and Evie.
Evie: Oh, we’ll wipe the floor with you.
Mihaylova: Don’t be so sure.
Hardy: How’s the nav coming?
Qiao: All told, beautiful. With Mihay’s AI and Evie’s theories—
Evie: We don’t want to accidentally run into it.
Hardy: It?
Evie: Moon X.
Mihaylova: Agh!
Evie: Too slow.
Hardy: Hey! No traveling.
Evie: Sorry—
Qiao: Got it.
Hardy: Not so fast—
Qiao: Two points. You want to talk about fast.
Evie: Wait. Wait.
Hardy: Huh. Okay. What?
Evie: Traveling. Moon X. Look, we need to stop even thinking of it as a satellite or a false moon. It’s big, but it acts alive— this thing moves with purpose. It’s a visitor. It’s… a Traveler.
X Mihaylova’s Triumph Warlock Helmet
"Think. And keep thinking. Stay seven thoughts ahead, always."
Mihaylova Supplemental
Navigator’s Journal—Encrypted Supplemental—
Path to Ares: 20 days to Launch
The situation with E becomes increasingly tenuous. She insists she needs access to all the AI code for her gravity well measurements, which I find highly unlikely. It’s simply not necessary and I’ve given her all the subroutine code that she could possibly need.
But she wants it all. It’s absurd. What would she make of the R subsystems if she saw them?
R. That’s what I’ve code-named the deepest core of the experimental AI at the heart of the new ship. And he’s doing very well, now writing his own code. Off-the-charts well.
Would E even understand? Likely she’d go running to Hardy, show him some of the odder items where R has written some of his own code and seems to be—how can I put it? —passing judgment on us, like a little hidden critic. No. The AI must be protected so that he can function best in the limited way we need.
Not sure how to keep her away, but giving her access could be catastrophic.
XI Qiao’s Grin Hunter Helmet
"Let the outside mirror what is found on the inside."
Qiao Supplemental
Qiao’s Journal
Path to Ares: 18 Days to Launch
Mihaylova and Evie continue to have conflict that is completely unnecessary. It puts a strain on the Clubhouse. I know Jacob is trying to get a handle on it.
The latest is this ridiculous argument about the subroutines of the AI code. Evie wants to get a look at all of Mihaylova’s code to make sure it takes into account the gravity measurements she’s making to plot the possible movements of the Traveler.
Traveler—yes. Such a perfect name! Go Evie!
Anyway, Mihaylova simply refuses to unlock all of her code. Not outright, of course, she just deflects, underdelivers, won’t let Evie into the whole thing.
I’m not interested in this conflict. I have my own ways of unlocking every piece of code in the onboard systems. So I gave Evie access.
I mentioned it afterwards to Mihaylova, and I expected her to react badly—but of course things don’t always work out the way you expect. She got very quiet and said, “Well, Qiao. What’s done is done.”
XII Mihaylova’s Tale Warlock Bond
"What you fight for is what you value. Everything else is words."
Mihaylova Supplemental
Navigator’s Journal—Encrypted Supplemental—
A/V Recording
Clubhouse Canteen
Path to Ares: 3 days to Launch
Evie: Listen, I wanted to talk to you alone.
Mihaylova: All right.
E: Have you read some of these outputs? I think there are some serious errors here.
M: Don’t be absurd.
E: You’ve got… it’s got these code caches and it’s… M, it’s creating assessments of us. Of the project, of the crew. It commented on Qiao’s snoring when he was asleep. Look, here…
M: Did you print that out?
E: Of course.
M: OK. All right. So what do you propose?
E: Bringing it to Hardy.
M: Ugh. Of course.
E: What’s that supposed to mean?
M: I mean… look. Um. You’re right. It must be an error. This is all embarrassing. Let me see if I can fix it. Give me a day.
E: We don’t have a day!
M: Twelve hours, then. Let me try to locate the problem. And if I can’t, of course we’ll take it to the whole team.
E: Are you certain you can?
M: Oh, I have to. Twelve hours. By then I swear, we’ll have it all squared away.
XIII Hardy’s Control Titan Arms
"You know what I believe? Whatever I can get my hands on."
Jacob Hardy’s Journal
Project Ares One (FKA Catamaran)
Path to Ares: Launch Day +1
We’re 24 hours late.
I’ve never seen the crew in such a crappy mood.
It was so… stupid. An electrical fire in a clubhouse stairwell. One minute Evie’s putting some final touches on her calculations and was headed off to do a telecast about the effect of flash erosion on coastal tides, and the next…
We didn’t even notice she was gone.
We learn about cascading events, how catastrophe comes from one thing stacking onto another.
A fried electrical system. A weak sprinkler. Smoke. No one else paying attention. A spill in in the stairwell, making the steps slippery.
Our safe cocoon became a deathtrap.
…
Of course we’re still going.
But Evie put us here. And now we’re going to meet the Traveler without her.
The truth is I know I’ll lose myself in the amazement of it all. I will. I know it. But just remember I felt this way.
One more thing. They’ve given us guns and renamed us. Something about needing to be ready for the worst.
XIIII Qiao’s Heart Hunter Chest
"Be aware at all times of what drives those around you."
Qiao Supplemental
A/V Recording
Path to Ares: Launch Day + 1 (Revised Launch Day)
Centcom: Ares this is Centcom, Radio Check. Radio check, over.
Hardy: Centcom this is Ares One. We read you loud and fairly clearly, over.
C: Roger. Hey, just so you know, the, uh, House of Eternal Travel has sent you its prayers. It was all over the news.
H: That one of those Traveler cults?
C: Roger, this is the one that survived the Traveler-cult rumble a few weeks ago.
H: Oh. Well, okay, tell them thanks.
C: Roger. Next radio check 8 minutes.
H: They’ll be quiet for a while. Nav?
Qiao: Steady. We are clear of Earthgrav. Confirming course.
H: Engineering?
Mihaylova: All systems normal.
H: OK. So now it’s… a long wait.
Q: Hey. You OK, Jacob?
H: Yeah. A-OK.
Q: Look at the stars.
M: Is there a problem?
Q: Not at all. It’s just…
H: Beautiful.
Q: Yes. Like something we are privileged to join but could never deserve.
H: Wonder how the Traveler must feel.
END
Congratulations. You just read 2,953 words of information, how do you feel?
I must acknowledge however that i purposefully excluded Mihaylova’s Path Warlock Pants the reason being that the lore tab for this piece does not concern M. Mihaylova’s journal entries during the Ares One project. It is actually a partially recovered document that appears to be an interview with M. Mihaylova and an unamed insurance agent.
if you really want to read it click below
(sigh) we need on the actual site somethign that catalogs all the lore tabs/ grimoire cards that tell about important events. Hell earlier today i made a post documenting the full record of Calus’s banishment and Ghaul’s takeover (#totallynotspon)
well i’m going to check out for today and give my brain a rest
Per Audacia Ad Astra