On the eve of Destiny 2: Beyond Light, something is happening to the Traveler

Update: The event is now over, and it ended up being more substantial than just the Traveler distantly revitalising. For those who managed to make it into the Tower, a new mission located on The Last City became available. Once reached, the player was tasked with "investigating the disturbance." Here are some screenshots Tim took:

And yes, the speculation was right: the Traveler did heal itself. At the end of the event, all the planets scheduled to leave Destiny 2 with the arrival of Beyond Light—Io, Titan, Mercury and Mars—were enveloped in Darkness before disappearing from the in-game map.

Here's the ending cutscene:

Original story:

Ahead of the launch of Destiny 2: Beyond Light tomorrow, players are flocking to the Tower to witness the closing of the Season of Arrivals. The promised event, which community manager DMG04 said will be "small", is already underway: something is happening to the Traveler.

The Traveler, for those unaware, is the worse-for-wear sphere hanging just above earth, and always visible from the Tower. According to eyewitnesses the thing is glowing right now, and some players are speculating that it may be in the process of healing:

At the time of writing, it's unclear how the rest of the night will play out, though the servers are expected to go offline at 7 PM PST, and won't be back until 9 AM PST tomorrow when Beyond Light launches. The new expansion will see the Guardians travel to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to confront a Fallen Kell called Eramis who has harnessed the powers of The Darkness. 

For those not in thrall to the lore of Bungie's looter shooter, The Darkness is represented in-game by a bunch of ominous pyramidal ships which are currently hovering over Io, Titan, Mercury and Mars. Those four destinations, and a bunch of other content, are being 'vaulted' tomorrow, (ie removed from the game), so it's safe to say something bad is about to happen.

As for whether The Traveler is healing (it was previously damaged as part of Destiny 2's vanilla campaign), here's what our resident Destiny fiend Tim Clark has to say: "It's certainly possible. I do wonder if The Traveler is actually preparing to leave, and that's going to be the shock twist. The arrival of the pyramid ships represents an existential threat to it, and so it may be planning to do a bunk if it thinks the Guardians aren't up to the job of protecting it."

Last week, creative director Luke Smith wrote that the event is "nothing too crazy, just a little time to chill in the Tower before the Lights go out". And what could be more chill than a skybox spectacle? This is the second Destiny 2 in-game event, following the the felling of The Almighty, which rang in the start of the Season of the Worthy. That involved some missiles travelling incredibly slowly towards an incoming Cabal ship that was on a collision course with the tower. 

It took way too long, something Bungie acknowledged afterwards, but did result in a fairly cool few seconds when the boom finally went off. So far this one seems to be playing out in similar style, with only slight visual changes to The Traveler to watch so far, and many players struggling to log-in at all.