So I was thinking, we always assume humanity has some special connection with the Traveler. That it chose us. But what if it is entirely indifferent to our presence in the Solar System?
What if, in fact, the Traveler is merely an advanced piece of agricultural equipment. A machine sent out to terraform distant worlds so that one day its creators can inhabit them. Like an automated unit in an RTS game, blindly moving from rock to rock, oblivious to any contact it makes.
It just so happened that this solar system was not empty when it got here. We studied it, learned from it, and moved into these newly terraformed worlds before the colonisers showed up to claim their garden worlds.
It came to rest on Earth, its work complete. Perhaps we trapped it here. Perhaps for the first time it felt a connection with one of its gardens, since we were there.
Then, as it rested, human civilisation went into decline, no longer propelled onwards by the Traveler's work.
Little did we know that one day its makers (the Cabal?) would arrive to take over. Sweep us aside like fleas. And a whole bunch of scavenger and parasite armies would arrive too, hoping to grab a piece of the pie, like barbarian clans picking at the edges of the great Roman Empire.
But maybe Rasputin knew, and did something about it...
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Then why did the traveler create ghosts and send them to find guardians to fight the darkness?