Who is Asher Mir?
Destiny 2‘s Asher Mir was a Warlock from the Last City and a researcher with a group known as the Gensym Scribes. The Gensym Scribes come from the homeworld of the Awoken race, the Distributary, and they are said to be descendants of a band of roaming storytellers. They are a collective of scientists and researchers who specialize in the Vex. When Eris Morn suffered injury from the Hellmouth on Luna, Asher Mir served as her caretaker and assisted in her recovery.
While fulfilling his duties in researching the Vex, Asher hired two Hunters to work with him, and they eventually decided to explore the Pyramidion on Io where they found a constantly changing geometric landscape. Asher and his team failed dozens of times to navigate the system but eventually stumbled upon Brakion, Genesis Mind near a radiolarian lake in the depths of the Vex network. Brakion attempted experiments on the Guardians by trying to inject radiolaria into them, and the team tried to escape. On their way, Asher Mir witnessed a Fanatic enemy explode and tear apart his Hunter companion, killing him instantly.
As he was reloading his rifle and looking for his other teammate, she used her Nightstalker bow to destroy an army of Vex approaching him. More Vex appeared behind her and killed her too. Asher continued to search for a way out, but a tentacle grabbed his Ghost and he passed out after feeling a searing pain in his arm.
Asher managed to get back to the Last City but fell into a coma, with the clearly Vex-infected arm trying to spread the infection through his body. After waking from his coma sometime later, Asher Mir worked with the Guardians during the Red War by researching the Vex and the Taken from his Io outpost.
After the Red War victory, Asher Mir and Ikora worked together to confront other threats on Io. Guardians were investigating reports of Taken capturing Vex. After the Guardians fought Ir Arok, Asher told his allies that he felt something happening to the Vex through his arm. He described it as a presence that wanted to tear his essence out of his body.
Asher explained that he believed the Taken were going to take the Pyramidion and repurpose it as a means to take all of the Vex within through the warp gates. At some point following these events, a Strike mission became available where the goal was to infiltrate the Pyramidion and destroy Brakion, Genesis Mind. Our correspondent on this mission was none other than Asher Mir himself.
Asher Mir’s Deterioration
Despite the victories on Io and gaining vengeance against Brakion, Asher was still suffering from the effects of the Vex infection. As the infection spread, he noticed that his coughing was becoming painful. Ikora Rey suggested he go to the Reef, as Tyra Karn believed that Ives and the Reef’s Cryptarchs could help Asher with the infection, as well as Osiris, and the Techeuns. He dismissed her theories, believing instead that only the Vex knew how to cure him.
After some time, he visited his friend Eris Morn at the base of the Tree of Silver Wings to share a drink. He sensed his time was near, having not found a cure for his Vex infection, and they concluded together that the Darkness was studying the Vex. He stated that he would fight any agent of the Darkness seeking to claim the Pyramidion at the shore of the radiolarian lake where his arm was lost.
Asher entered the Pyramidion, defeating all Vex security measures ahead of him. As he continued through its corridors he noted that it appeared to welcome him, and the security measures simply bent to allow him to pass through. Instinctively, he pulled the radiolarian lake down to himself and entered a Vex terminal. He registered himself to the Vex Collective to halt his transformation, and escaped into the Nexus as Io vanished. Asher disappeared alongside it, not to be seen for years.
Asher Mir’s Digitization
Asher continued to explore the Vex Network as a digital entity for unknown reasons. He revealed his presence only in the event that Nexus bled into reality by sending a Harpy or creating projections of his original body. Asher began to appear in Vex predictions regarding Lakshmi-2 accompanying an invasion of the Last City. On the Last City version of the Override activity, Asher’s Harpy overlooks the events near some computers and emits a series of beeps that translates via Morse Code to read ‘Assistant’. This is the term that Asher frequently gave to the Guardians.
Asher also discovered an access point to a portion of Nessus connected to Neomuna, the city discovered in Destiny 2: Lightfall. He now uses this to monitor Guardians as they lead excursions into the network in an attempt to stop the Shadow Legion from damaging it. Quinn Laghari, Neomuna’s archivist, has also found cryptic messages with signatures matching Asher Mir’s.
A week after The Witness communed with the Veil and vanished into a portal on the Traveler, Asher used the Nexus to contact Mithrax and the Guardian from the EDZ using a Harpy as he had done previously. It was then that a rebuilt Brakion was discovered, pursuing him for tampering with the Nexus’s data. After Brakion was stopped, the special glaive Vexcalibur was rewarded and repurposed to bypass the Vex security protocols in order to weaponize the barriers that Brakion had previously used to fight Asher, the Guardian, and the Vanguard.
It is still unknown what state Asher Mir’s physical body is in, or whether it exists at all.
Destiny 2: Lightfall is out now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
