Ticuu’s Divination
Three points, pushed through forever.
Type: Combat Bow
Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy
Element: Arc | Solar | Void
Perk: Sacred Flame - Hipfiring this weapon fires multiple tracking projectiles. Targets marked by these projectiles explode upon death, or when struck by another Sacred Flame's explosion.
Trait: Causality Arrows - Arrows fired while aiming down sights cause Sacred Flames to instantly detonate.
Masterworked Trait: Causality Quiver - Perfectly-drawn arrows that detonate Sacred Flame increase arrow damage. Striking targets unaffected by Sacred Flame instead refreshes Causality Quiver's duration.
Ornaments: Hasta Solari, Ferromancer, Solar Astrolabe
Origin & Description: Combining the best traits of Le Monarque and Graviton Lance, Ticuu's has my name written alllllll over it. And also Ticuu's name, because Ticuu was a person. A Cabal psion Flayer, to be specific, who with typical psion inscrutability decided that if he was going to make a bow, he was going to make the most confusing bow possible. It almost certainly cost Ticuu his life, or worse, his existence, to arm this bow; but once it was armed, it never needed to be reloaded. The three arrows inside this bow are not quite real arrows; or maybe they are real, but they're the same three real arrows looped over and over again through time. You don't need any more than three, because the bow doesn't fire them. Instead it fetches a future in which the targets have arrows in them. Or Ticuu fetches that future. Or he already had it, pinned into the bow by the three points in his mind harmonized across time's empty wheel. Consider the name: divination. There are many words for attempting to predict the future, but "divination" in particular evokes the examination of signs and symbols to discern what's already been fated to happen. You didn't choose to put arrows in those targets. They already had arrows in them, in the future, and this bow just fetched that future into the now. Yeah. Psions have an odd relationship to time.
And an odd relationship with the Cabal. The Cabal Empire uses the term "Cabal" to refer to both the empire and its main species, the seven-foot-tall exosuited space rhinos we so often dispatch. While the empire had a number of "client species," annexed races that lived under Cabal "protection," the psions are the most directly subjugated - likely an early conquest by Cabal military seeking to weaponize their abilities. Psions exhibit unique mental powers that function outside the common paracausality-fueled abilities known to Guardians, Hive, eliksni, etc. The Cabal keep the psions "indentured," at best skilled specialists with little hope of advancement, at worst outright slaves, in order to make use of said powers. Within the military psions function as engineers, pilots, and long-range fighters; many serve on the more intellectual side of combat operations, working as after-action analysts and intelligence experts.
A select few are "allowed" to grow into their full adult state, known as a Psion Flayer, though it isn't clear what missing element lets them do so. One theory says they need pure accumulation of knowledge, which might explain why a group tried tapping Rasputin nodes to enable the transformation.* Emperor Calus had a number of psions loyal to his cause, as he seemed to have been the most charitable towards their race - even claiming he would have freed them had he not been deposed - but it was his daughter Empress Caiatl who finally declared all psions free and equal citizens after Xivu Arath's attack, offering them the choice to stay and fight or leave the Cabal fleet. Surprisingly some did elect to continue fighting for the Empress, though the splinter sect that remembered the attempts at the Sundial and with the Almighty expressed their displeasure by attempting to assassinate Zavala (don't worry, he's fine).
*It worked, though Ana opined, "they're just gonna make [Rasputin] mad," so those Flayers might not have lived too long even if we hadn't intervened.
Even in their deliberately weakened state psions are capable of telepathy, telekinesis, and a harmony of minds known as "metaconcert" that allows several psions to pool their mental abilities to solve problems and create shared realities. Psion Flayers wield far more dramatic powers, calling down fire and lightning, freezing combatants in place or teleporting them around at will. A detachment of Psion Flayers assigned to the forward Cabal forces on Mars successfully lowered the small moon Phobos into a physically-unstable orbit around the planet, maintaining a dangerously-low altitude in order to use it as a staging base. One Psion Flayer, Otzot, constructed - or reconstructed - the clairvoyant OXA machine that could view both past and future, though it dispensed that information in maddeningly vague ways. Psions themselves have a complex social structure that included a domination early in their history by a small group of powerful individuals known as "God-Thoughts" who imposed their command on the rest of society by pure mental might; certain schools of religious thought are still considered verboten among them. They have a powerful sense of the community over the individual and a shared reverence for ancestors, implying that their spirits are still present - which, given the odd psion relationship with time, might literally be true.
Whenever I'm called upon to explain Ticuu's Divination to new players, I describe it as "mark for deletion." The tracking hip-fire arrows tag enemies to be deleted, and the ADS ones delete them. Simple. Less simply, Ticuu's is another exotic that has different behavior in hip-fire vs. ADS mode. In hip-fire mode Ticuu's will put up tracking markers on the first three enemies it picks up. Firing it in that mode - you don't have to draw the bow all the way, just pluck the string - sends marker arrows to seek those three targets and tag them with Sacred Flame. You can have more than three marked targets up at a time, limited by the timer on Sacred Flame. Tagged targets don't take burn damage but do show a visual flame effect. That part's important for the next step: switch to ADS mode, draw the bow properly this time, and precision-hit one of the marked targets. Nailing a Sacred Flame aura with an ADS-drawn arrow causes that aura to detonate - and if that detonation nicks another Sacred Flame aura, it'll go off as well. It's like a little homebrew Graviton Lance chain reaction, but only through the targets you've marked.
The catalyst adds a more complicated firing pattern that makes it more useful for heavy single targets: precision hits on a Sacred Flame target give stacks of Causality Quiver, which increases arrow damage. Sending out the marking arrows instead refreshes the timer on the Causality Quiver buff. So you can mark a heavy target with Sacred Flame, detonate it with a precision hit to gain a damage buff, then mark it again to refresh the timer. It requires more thought to pull off but expands the bow's range nicely. And yes, precision arrows will detonate Sacred Flame auras laid down by a teammate, so you can have one player doing nothing but marking targets and a second doing nothing but detonating them when they reach critical mass - or two people marking targets and a third killing them with a different weapon, since Sacred Flame will also detonate if the enemy just dies.
With the addition of Ticuu's Divination in Season 13 (the seasonal exotic of Season of the Chosen, to go with the Cabal theme) we now have crowd control bows in all Light elements: Ticuu's for Solar, Trinity Ghoul for Arc, and Le Monarque for Void. We don't have a Stasis bow yet, but I'm sure they're working on it; if it follows the current pattern for Stasis exotics it'll be in the kinetic slot rather than energy, a welcome addition that would double the number of exotic kinetic bows. In the meantime I'll be out here marking some fools to get deleted.
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 ]
