Ketch Ascendant
Cosmodrome, the Rocketyard and a House of Dusk Ketch that lifts off mid-raid · Fireteam of 6 · About 120 min
A House of Dusk Ketch has clamped onto the Rocketyard's colony ships to strip them for parts. Board it on the ground, ride it up through the storm as the deck tilts and the lights die, and take the bridge before it clears orbit.
Mechanics
- 01Ether cores: dead Servitors drop a core that shields its holder but detonates after 25 s. Feed cores into hull vents to keep the clamps open; if all three vents run dry, the main gun wipes the team.
- 02Tilting hold: during the climb the cargo deck tilts every 60 s. Anyone not locked to a magnetized rail plate slides into the Wretch pit below and must be winched out by a teammate on the hoist plate.
- 03Bridge blackout: the would-be Kell kills the lights. Only the Arc conduit holder sees enemy outlines and calls positions; the conduit burns its holder after 20 s and must be handed off.
Phases
- 1
Mooring Lines
Rocketyard exterior. Three docking clamps, each guarded by a Brig. Kill Servitors, feed cores into vents to keep the clamps live, and cut all three ether lines inside the same 90 s window to force the launch.
- 2
The Hold
The cargo deck tilts every 60 s. Lock onto rail plates before each tilt, kill Vandal snipers on the gantries between tilts, and open the bulkhead by holding three rails at once for 10 s.
- 3
The Prime's Feeding
A Prime Servitor rotates immunity between three feeder Servitors. Kill feeders in the order its eye color shows (Arc, Solar, Void); a wrong kill heals it to full. Three full heals is a wipe.
- 4
Open Hangar
Traversal across the open hangar while the Ketch climbs. Wind gusts on a 15 s cycle shove players off ledges, so move only between gusts. Falling is death, and revives open only at the next platform's plate.
- 5
The Bridge
The would-be Kell in blackout. Overload three consoles while the conduit holder calls positions to drop his shield for a 25 s damage window. A 15-minute orbit clock ends the encounter in a wipe.
Why it works in Destiny
Guardians have fought through grounded Ketches in strikes but never raided one in motion, and the fantasy is built entirely from Fallen kit already in the game: Servitor tethers, Brigs, Wretch pits, gravity lifts. That familiarity keeps the encounters readable while the moving hull makes them new. It has to be Level 3 because the tilting physics, the launch sequence and a scripted Kell need new assets and raid-grade scripting that no editor primitive provides.