Last week, Destiny hobbyists were pleasantly surprised by the discovery of a secret quest which lead to the acquisition of the most powerful weapon in the game, Whisper of the Worm. The Worm is a returning weapon from Destiny 1, previously named Black Spindle, which was also acquired in similar fashion. Getting this quest honors the past, while giving us further reassurances to the future of Destiny 2.

Black Hammer & Spindle

Whisper of the Worm has a pretty incredible story. To understand the significance, we have to travel back to the days of Destiny 1‘s first year. The game’s first expansion, The Dark Below, introduced the game’s second raid, Crota’s End. Part of the weapon loot pool for that game was a legendary sniper rifle named Black Hammer. It featured 3 bullets in the magazine, relatively low for a sniper rifle, but then had a maximum impact stat. One of the perks of the gun was White Nail, a highly controversial perk which restored a full magazine after 3 successful precision hits.

The big deal was that the bullets were not pulled from your reserves, but rather completely free bullets that would appear out of thin air. In essence, you could hang back and whittle down a boss with infinite ammo and no reload downtime. It quickly became the go-to weapon because of the ability to completely circumvent the special ammo economy, as long you were a good shot.

New Dog, Old Trick

Fast forward a bit the the start of year 2 and the release of the game’s major expansion The Taken King. The expansion increased the level cap as well as the power cap. However, year 1 weapons and armor could not be brought forward, including the Black Hammer. We all kept our favorite year 1 weapons as trophies, but moved on to more powerful things. Then some guardians stumbled upon an alternative path down of the game’s story missions and found themselves the the start of a new mission which featured a countdown timer.

The objective was to clear multiple rooms of enemies before facing off against a final boss. Finishing the mission within the timer granted you a weapon that no one was expecting. It was an exotic version of the Black Hammer, renamed Black Spindle. Essentially, this was the same weapon, but the white nail perk pulled ammo from your reserves instead of granting you free ammo. This was still an incredible weapon, and showed us that Bungie is capable of being clever.

Whisper in the Dark

Now we have Whisper of the Worm. Last Friday, a few guardians discovered a few high value targets that hadn’t ever before appeared in the game. One of them would randomly appear during a very specific public event. Pursuing and defeating one of these HVT’s caused a portal to appear out in the clearing. Entering the portal loaded you into a brand new mission named The Whisper.

At this point, we still didn’t know what this was, but the timer in the upper left corner had some pretty strong indications. This time however, the timer was much longer at 20 minutes. Working out way past the entrance of the mission, we found ourselves going down into a brand new area never before explored. The space was dark and eerie, but opened up into a massive cavern.

It didn’t take long to realize that this was a massive jumping puzzle. We worked our way though steep walls and narrow ledges. A few minutes later we found ourselves at the doorstep of a massive room filled with enemies. Clearing 3 rooms of enemies brought us to a final arena where we squared off against 3 huge bosses. Defeating the bosses netted us the Black Spindle, renamed Whisper of the Worm to better fit its new lore. The change this time, was reverting white nail back to its original incarnation, granting free ammo instead of pulling from reserves.

7th Heaven

The quest also features a heroic version in addition to some extra secret nods to Destiny 1’s first raid Vault of Glass. Vault of Glass featured 6 hidden chests, and there were theories crafted around the existence of a seventh chest. The theories centered around the activation and use of a dormant portal, which sadly never came to fruition. During the Whisper, you can find a very similar looking portal, and through a special puzzle, uncover a final chest. It is strongly implied that this portal is the receiving end of the Vault of Glass portal, finally granting us the final seventh chest that we never got in Destiny 1.

Bungie later mentioned in an interview that the quest was crafted by the game’s live team, typically tasked with creating new and seasonal limited-time events. The existence of this event affirms that Bungie knows we love this kind of content. We love to explore the destinations and be rewarded for it. Parallels are now being drawn between this quest and the sorts of puzzles and mysteries we’ll be finding in The Dreaming City when Forsaken is released. And that is a very exciting prospect.

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