A single word etched onto the inside of the weapon's casing: Now.
Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy
Element: Kinetic | Stasis | Strand
Perk: Rewind Again - Precision shots and shots against combatants slowed or frozen by Stasis will return to the magazine.
Trait: Time-Slip - At 10 stacks of Rewind Again, a small portal will open, shooting bullets from an alternate timeline version of this weapon. Precision hits extend the portal's duration.
Masterworked Trait: Blast from the Side - Projectiles from the time portal shoot more frequently.
Ornaments: Frozen in Time, Golden Days, Chronos Exegesis
Origin & Description: What do you think Guardians would do if they discovered how to manipulate timelines? If you said, "Make a gun out of it," congratulations! you've read too many of these entries. The real physics must be fiendishly complex, but in Guardian math it goes, "I have one gun, but what if...two gun." Thus No Time To Explain is a pulse rifle that, in order to increase its rate of fire, casually punches through the multiverse and snags another version of itself from an alternate timeline where it's also firing, piping those rounds through a small portal-friend who hovers around spitting bullets at your targets like the Arc-Buddy from a Warlock Rift. I feel like there might be a less dimension-ripping way to double your fire rate, but hey, I'm not Elsie Bray.
Speaking of Elisabeth "Elsie" Bray, this is her weapon, except not, except now it is. D1's No Time To Explain was an exotic retooling of the Legendary weapon The Stranger's Rifle made by, of all people, Praedyth. Yeah, the warlock held captive in the Vault of Glass. From his vantage point in the Vault, which stands outside normal spacetime, Praedyth could see Elsie stepping from time to time - and the Pyramid ships advancing on us. Knowing Guardians pay attention to their gear above all else, he fashioned the first No Time To Explain and, just before he set it adrift in the timestream to make its way back to us, etched a warning inside its casing: "Soon."
Elsie Bray has a hard life cleaning up other people's messes, and the name of this gun comes from her days serving as "the Exo Stranger,"* holding together the patchwork storyline of base Destiny 1 with both hands. She got stuck playing tour guide because of whatever time shenanigans incidentally created Worldline Zero, since at least getting locked into a Groundhog-Day loop of the darkest timeline also lets her teleport in at important moments to aim the player at the next objective. When both players and characters demanded an explanation, or at least narrative consistency, she famously replied, "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain," and hence this weapon was named.
*We didn't find out Elsie was the Exo Stranger until D2's Warmind DLC, but since her D1 outfit and this weapon's perk symbol use the same split-circle Bray emblem worn by Ana Bray and Banshee, she was likely always a Bray.
In Beyond Light Elsie's back (from outer space!) and she comes bearing gifts, with plenty of time to explain, and inside her rifle's casing is written only: "Now."
Turns out there's a bleak future in our...future, a grim potential outcome in which the Guardians - including Elsie's sister Ana, whom she desperately attempts to save, every time, and loses, every time - fall to Darkness. Her efforts as the Exo Stranger directing us to slay the Black Heart were part of her latest attempt, but so far we're still on track to destruction. To help us avert it, she brought us two things. The first is the D2 version of this gun, but its penchant for time manipulation isn't the lead item. In fact it's barely a footnote compared to the second thing: Stasis, the first Darkness-empowered subclass.
See, in her playthroughs of the bad ending Elsie always sees Guardians lured in by the paracausal power of Darkness manipulation, a shadowed mirror of the abilities granted by the Light, and slowly corrupted by their influence. All her attempts to stand between Guardians and a new paracausal toy have, predictably, failed. So this time she's decided that if she can't keep Guardians from using Darkness she'll introduce it to us up front instead so that we learn how to control it instead of letting it control us. In other words she's the Cool Mom of Darkness Powers: she'd rather we try it at home first to make sure we're being safe, except it's not so much "safe" as "not wholly corrupted by Darkness' own avatar and bent into instruments of its will." I don't know what type of Cool Parent that calls for. But Elsie's trying!
When, during the events of Beyond Light, we first encounter wielders of Darkness - eliksni of House Salvation on Europa learning to use Dark Splinters - Elsie intervenes to tell us what that power is and how we can learn to use it ourselves before we try to work it out on our own. She confirms an old lore theory: that though the Traveler and the Pyramids (or "the Entity," or "the Voice," or even "the Veil" - we haven't settled on a name) function as avatars of their respective powers, both Darkness and Light exist ambiently as universal, amoral forces. That ambient paracausal power can be harnessed by anyone through training and intermediaries like the Splicer Gauntlet or the Splinters; harnessed by anyone, not just Guardians, though we have a head start. A substantial head start, since it only takes the story campaign of Beyond Light for us to work out the basics of our new powers and start shredding face with them.
Stasis is the first Darkness-based subclass of Destiny (players anticipate it won't be the last, but Bungie hasn't confirmed.) Its three iterations, Behemoth (Titan), Revenant (Hunter), and Shadebinder (Warlock), are ice-themed, maybe a deliberate inversion of the fiery Light-based Solar subclass. Its three keywords/action verbs are Slow, Freeze, and Shatter. Despite the chilly aesthetic and us first encountering it on the frozen moon Europa, Stasis itself is less "frosty cold" and more "cosmic ice." It invokes a primordial stillness, energetic motion quieting into an underlying universal structure typified by a distorted, gridlike pattern that appears when Stasis crystals form.
Mechanically Stasis is less about direct damage and more about battlefield control. The abilities and grenades don't pack much of a direct punch, but they slow, freeze, and block enemies, locking them in place and silencing their own abilities. Some Stasis abilities create Stasis crystals, large blocks of paracausal ice, which can incapacitate enemies, create temporary barriers, and even build platforms to let Guardians jump, crouch, and worm their way even further out of bounds. Stasis crystals can then be shattered in a number of ways, dealing sharp AoE damage as the shrapnel takes out whatever's nearby. Because it doesn't do much direct damage, Stasis is built for combos, especially weapon combos, and has many knock-on mechanics built around freezing and shattering enemies. It's also a hell of a lot of fun, for the record. If Darkness has this caliber of stuff on tap, no wonder all those Guardians fell for it.
Stasis also comes with a new system for subclass trees, by which I mean "not subclass trees." Light subclasses have three trees, each with its own twist on the Super plus benefits based around an expected playstyle; for example the Solar Warlock tree "Attunement of Sky," meant for aerial play, comes with a special mid-air dodge and the ability to hover while aiming down sights. Stasis on the other hand debuted the new system, Aspects and Fragments. Instead of three preset ability trees, players equip 2 Aspects and some number of Fragments from a pool of options. Aspects are class-specific and have a significant effect on your gameplay, while Fragments are class-agnostic and let you mix and match minor benefits. You pick up new Aspects and Fragments via research questlines from Elsie as together you work out new ways to wield Darkness (and get some good lore tidbits in the process.)
This experimental new system has been a hit with both players and devs - players because it allows more fine-tuning, and devs because it greatly expands the creative space for unusual non-Super powers like the Shadebinder's Bleak Watcher turret-creation ability. Following on this success Bungie announced in Fall 2021 that instead of designing new Darkness subclasses they'll be overhauling the Light subclasses to use the same system with brand-new abilities. Void is up first, dropping with Witch Queen in February, and personally I'm very much looking forward to the Warlock ability that lets you create a tiny black hole to be your friend :D. So really Elsie, how bad can this timeline be?
Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum
[ Ace of Spades | Ager's Scepter | Anarchy | Arbalest | Bad Juju | Bastion | Black Talon | Borealis | Cerberus+1 | The Chaperone | Cloudstrike | Coldheart | Collective Obligation | The Colony | Crimson | Cryosthesia 77K | DARCI | Dead Man's Tale | Deathbringer | Dead Messenger | Devil's Ruin | Divinity | Duality | Edge of Action/Concurrence/Intent | Eriana’s Vow | Eyes of Tomorrow | Fighting Lion | The Fourth Horseman | Forerunner | Gjallarhorn | Grand Overture | Graviton Lance | Hard Light | Hawkmoon | Heartshadow | Heir Apparent | The Huckleberry | Izanagi’s Burden | The Jade Rabbit | Jötunn | The Lament | The Last Word | Legend of Acrius | Leviathan’s Breath | Lord of Wolves | Lorentz Driver | Lumina | Malfeasance | Merciless | MIDA Multi-Tool | Le Monarque | Monte Carlo | No Time to Explain | One Thousand Voices | Osteo Striga | Outbreak Perfected | Parasite | Polaris Lance | Prometheus Lens | The Prospector | Queenbreaker | Rat King | Riskrunner | Ruinous Effigy | Salvation's Grip | Skyburner’s Oath | Sleeper Simulant | Sturm | Sunshot | SUROS Regime | Sweet Business | Symmetry | Tarrabah | Telesto | Thorn | Thunderlord | Ticuu's Divination | Tommy's Matchbook | Tractor Cannon | Traveler's Chosen | Trespasser | Trinity Ghoul | Truth | Two-Tailed Fox | Vex Mythoclast | Vigilance Wing | The Wardcliff Coil | Wavesplitter | Whisper of the Worm | Wish-Ender | Witherhoard | Worldline Zero | Xenophage ]
