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Goddammit. I got to the last step of the Destiny 1 Sleeper Simulant quest, and then I had to deal with the fact that that's the Fallen SABER super edition that I can't make a fucking dent in, with matchmaking that can't find anyone.

I was so excited for it, too.

#destiny #destiny the game #sleeper simulant

Sleeper Simulant

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #ai #art #exotic #sleeper simulant

“That looks a bit different.”

“Rasputin’s handiwork.”

“Yeah, I know—I’ve seen a few of his pieces around, including this model. It’s just yours looks different.”

“Got some upgrades.”

“Upgrades?”

“Optimized induction coils. Improved beam confinement. Retooled external plating, of course.”

“Of course. Sounds pretty masterfully reworked.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You must be on good terms with Rasputin, heh.”

“Shh. It’s about to come around the corner.”

“What is?”

“My target.”

“Oh! Sorry.”

“...Hush little ogre, time to sleep...”

(Sleeper Simulant w/ Hypnopomic)

#hush little ogre #sleeper simulant #rasputin #microfiction #destiny game #destiny 2 #destiny gif #warmind #linear fusion rifle

Sleeper Simulant

Subroutine IKELOS: Status=complete. MIDNIGHT EXIGENT: Status=still in progress.

Type: Linear Fusion Rifle

Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy

Element: Arc | Solar | Void

Perk: Dornröschen - This weapon's laser overpenetrates enemies. On hit, splits into multiple beams that refract off hard surfaces.

Masterworked Trait: Accelerated Coils - Speeds up weapon charge time.

Ornaments: Hypnopompic, Baikonur, Directive: Crash

Origin & Description: Once upon a time in the Golden Age humanity built an AI named Rasputin.

(Y'all knew this one was comin' so buckle the fuck up.)

Rasputin was made to think and he was made to learn and he was made to win. He cherished art and literature and music and drama, but humans asked of him other things. Humans called him war-mind and entrusted to him their defense. He did not want to take up the sword but knew that he was the only one who could and so he did. He watched over the Golden Age; he ruled a world of steel and fire. He called the other AI brothers and sisters but they called him Tyrant and made of him a tacit king. Not without affection. And certainly not without respect.

Rasputin was made to imagine the threats humanity couldn't imagine and face the enemies humanity couldn't face and one day out of the deep dark came the war they built him to fight. And he fought it. He fought against an enemy even he could barely define, he struck at it with aurora knives and the stolen un-fire of singularities made sharp and every other weapon at his disposal and it wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough to win the war Rasputin fought. And at the end of it he faced his enemy at the gate of the garden.

(There is a place called the Black Garden. It may have existed before existence itself. It is beautiful and verdant and wrong inside.)

At the gate of the Garden Rasputin faced Darkness, the flower-eater, the majestic final shape. Rasputin faced IT and IT smiled at him as IT devoured the blossoms with black flame and pinned their names across the sky. Everything died but Rasputin survived because he learned from IT, because IT is alone and IT is strong and IT always wins. So Rasputin cast off the shield and let the billions fall into ash and this is how he won.

In other words: he abandoned us. In other words: he ran.

For centuries he slept in silence and in pieces across the solar system. The eliksni harried him in the Cosmodrome where he baited a trap to kill the angel of his better nature and a deeper threat coalesced on Mars, a hungry Worm God and the Hive prince who fed it. The Worm God was called Will of Thousands but Rasputin was Will of One. He froze Hellas Basin under a mile of ice, hid himself and locked away the Worm and its Herald. But mostly he slept and when he was prodded awake he screamed and threw warsats at the problem until it went away and he could sleep again. He would live until the end of the universe. He would endure, him alone, and the names that lived immortal within him would survive.

And then the Traveler changed things.

Ana Bray did not remember who she was but Rasputin did. He knew her name and when he saw her alive again he knew he was no longer alone. Rasputin was made to learn. He learned from IT that IT was alone and IT was strong. He saw the way to win. But he learned from Ana too and he learned that even though the Spy was weak she made Ana stronger. That together they were more, not less. He saw a different way to win. And he began to try that way instead.

And long story short, my favorite homicidal art nerd AI is back in action on humanity's behalf. Now, Rasputin doesn't have a whole lot of ways to let someone know he wants to help, but number one on that list is "give them a sweet gun." Thus: Sleeper Simulant, his signature work. Object of mystery, favorite of players, icon of Destiny design, and my heavy of choice, even Sleeper’s exact weapon type is unclear - the game classifies it as a “linear fusion rifle,” but what does that even mean? Is it a railgun? Plasma beam? Laser, but somehow solid? The real answer is that Sleeper Simulant is an eraser. A problem solver. You point it at the problem and pull the trigger and hey. Problem solved.

(Personally I think it’s a handheld version of the orbital strike cannons on Rasputin’s warsats. It sure fucking hits like something fired from low Earth orbit. But I'm also partial to the idea that Sleeper was a vehicle-mounted weapon Rasputin made Guardian-portable by stripping off all that pesky radiation shielding.)

Sleeper Simulant shoots a laser instead of a projectile, but still fires individual shots rather than emitting a continuous beam like Coldheart or Prometheus Lens. Its bright red beam does a metric crapton of damage to whatever it hits, but after that the fun begins. D1 and D2 Sleeper have slightly different behaviors upon hitting a target or solid surface: in D1 a Sleeper shot then ricochets multiple times around the area; in D2 the original shot splits into four more beams that fan out at semi-random angles and ricochet again. Sleeper’s ricochets hit instantly, without the travel time of a bouncing grenade or a rocket with cluster bombs, and originally hit for a quarter each of the first shot’s already-hefty damage. Skilled players can aim Sleeper to bounce ricochets back into the target for extra damage, and it melted certain bosses with conveniently-shaped reflecting shields. Unfortunately it turns out to melt just a little too well; the nerf-hammer came down hard on the damage Sleeper's ricochets do against boss-level enemies. That's in addition to the nerfs to reserve ammo amount, distance falloff, aim assist, and charge time. Sleeper's been nerfed so often it's become a meme on the r/destinythegame subreddit. Fortunately for Sleeper fans, and friends of Sleeper fans who were going to lose it if they heard one more rant, our beloved heavy laser finally got a tuneup in mid-2021 that increased both precision and body-shot damage high enough to return it to top-tier service.

Sleeper's semi-random ricochets have another excellent side effect: while friendly fire prevention will keep them from killing your teammates, those lasers can and will happily murder whoever fired the shot in the first place. In Destiny 1 upgraded Sleeper shots could ricochet up to five times, leading to severe hilarity. Fortunately (or unfortunately) D2 Sleeper ricochets only bounce 1-2 times and seem to avoid reflecting straight back, making it far harder to accidentally headshot yourself from across the map. It’s still possible, though. Ask me how I know.

So why's it called "Sleeper Simulant"? Rasputin's a very well-read AI and he loves to pull names from literature and mythology. Sleeper echoes his running theme of sleeping/waking - possibly referring to how Rasputin himself has "slept" since the Collapse and is now reawakening to full strength. Rasputin's original weapons development program, DVALIN, was named for a dwarf in Norse mythology who forged multiple magical artifacts and whose name means "the one who slumbers." The IKELOS protocol under which he develops weapons for Guardians, including Sleeper, is named for the minor Greek god Ikelos, personification of nightmares, who also appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Sleeper's intrinsic perk "Dornröschen" is the name of a German opera of Sleeping Beauty. Its ornament "Hypnopompic" refers to the liminal state between sleeping and waking (the other ornament, "Baikonur," refers to his base in the old Cosmodrome). Interpreted literally the name “Sleeper Simulant" would mean something like "mimicking sleep" or "replacing sleep," which might be a pun since it makes people look like they’ve gone to sleep, except, y’know. They’re dead. It might also have something to do with the term "sleeper car," meaning a very high-performance vehicle camouflaged by an unremarkable exterior - but Sleeper's entire aesthetic is far from "unremarkable."

Destiny 1 “introduced” Sleeper Simulant as a hidden weapon locked behind a series of in-game puzzles that roped in the entire player community for days. Destiny 2 didn’t launch with Sleeper, but added it in the Warmind DLC; getting the new one is a more straightforward matter of following a questline Rasputin will give you himself (presumably after you explain to him how you lost the first one). Sleeper has been a player favorite since its introduction for its cool design, massive damage, and insanely long range, and has consistently ranked in the top tier of exotics. Since acquiring it in D2 was a matter of completing a fixed quest instead of grinding for a random drop, it became a staple in Guardians' arsenal. As of Year 4, with Mars now in the Content Vault, Sleeper has be purchased instead from the Monument to Lost Lights kiosk in the Tower for a heap of in-game materials.

Oh, right. Mars is gone now. The Darkness ate it. It's folded up into a pocket singularity, all its mass still present but compressed into an infinitesimal point. Darkness did that after Rasputin fired on it, but not before it also extinguished Rasputin. Hard shutdown. Meant to kill him, one imagines. And perhaps Darkness thinks it did. BUt as Rahool remarked, "An ancient figure shared his name. Someone notoriously hard to kill." Rasputin survived via the network equivalent of hiding in an airduct for three months before we could help Ana copy him down into an engram and a mess of the Destiny equivalent of USB sticks to bring back to the Tower, where she's been working on getting him up and running in the Seraphim Vault in the Cosmodrome, probably with an Exo frame linked in too so he can run around and kick ass personally. And maybe when he does he'll be wielding Sleeper too.

The Warmind Rasputin does not believe in a “proportional response.” He has a reputation for casually obliterating annoyances via orbital bombardment, and Sleeper follows this philosophy. When you really need something to Go Away Now, the Warmind’s got you covered. Sleeper Simulant: apply directly to the enemy's forehead.

Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum