#sunbreakers

Sunshot

“Can’t outrun the sunrise.” —Liu Feng

Type: Hand Cannon

Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy

Element: Arc | Solar | Void

Perk: Sunburn - This weapon fires explosive rounds and highlights targets that take damage from Sunshot.

Trait: Sun Blast - Targets killed with Sunshot explode in Solar energy.

Ornaments: Red Dwarf, Quark Star, Burning Red, Vexplosion

Origin & Description: Ever want to light a thing on fire? What about every thing? Then you might get along well with the Sunbreakers, an ancient Titan order dedicated to Solar energy that preferred to live independently of the Last City. Sunbreakers hired on with people and organizations of the City as mercenaries until a botched contract with the Vanguard soured them on speaking to the Tower. Centuries later Zavala sent us to their base at the Burning Shrine on Mercury to kiss and make up so we could get them in on the fight against Oryx in The Taken King DLC, unlocking a new Solar Titan ability tree along the way. The Sunbreakers' symbol is the Hammer of Sol, an eagle-headed hammer of pure Solar energy that a Guardian must forge in the Shrine to gain admittance to their order. Two of the Solar Titan subclasses in D2 use the Hammer as their primary Super weapon; the third has it as a melee.

During the Red War the Lightless Sunbreakers went to ground, but the Red Legion caught wind of their location and a large Cabal force surrounded and slaughtered the order. Their leader sent a final message to the City that ended, "May history remember the Forge. Remember the Hammer. Remember the Sunbreakers."

Sleek and elegant, the Sunshot handcannon was made by the Sunbreaker Liu Feng, who also fought on Lord Shaxx's fireteam at the historic Battle of Twilight Gap. Sunbreakers like to make things and Liu Feng often left newly-forged weapons and armor to be found by "City Guardians" as a kind of challenge to lead them back to the order; she also crafted Sunbracers, an exotic armor piece for warlocks. Sunshot's weird perforated chamber vents heat when it fires, spitting little jets of flame with each shot. Its "sights" are two tiny flames directed upwards. This is a gun that lets you know right away what it's about.

So what is it about? Sunshot is the last in the accidental trio of exotic energy weapons that chain elemental damage, the other two being Graviton Lance (Void) and Riskrunner (Arc). Targets killed by Sunshot's explosive rounds burst in a flare of Solar energy, igniting anything around them in a quickly-spreading fire. Unlike Graviton Lance (pulse rifle) and Riskrunner (submachine gun), Sunshot's a weapon archetype that heavily favors single precise shots over rapid-fire bursts. It fires with a thick, meaty sound and has heavy recoil; precision shots hit hard and it deals extra burn damage on top of the impact. But its small magazine makes it harder to use in the same situations as the other two, as with only a few shots on hand you pretty much need the damage to chain off to benefit. One of the original exotics in base D2, it had a magazine smaller than legendary handcannons in the same 150 RPM weapon class and started to seriously lag in power level. Recently it got a damage buff and a significant upgrade in magazine size, bringing it back up to a solid workhorse option.

Sunshot's a beautiful gun. I mean literally it's beautiful. Look at that thing. Those sleek, clean lines, the geometric etchings, the iridescent scorching of the metal that speaks to the tremendous heat generated when it fires - Sunshot's aesthetic is keen enough that it's one of the few weapons with its own Ghost shell. Liu Feng knew what she was about. And every time a bunch of Titans get together to absolutely barbeque some Thralls, the Sunbreakers live on.

Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum

Made myself a custom Sunbreaker shirt!! Will post a selfie of me wearing it when it's washed.

Sunbreakers

“When one can wield the fire of stars, what use is flesh and bone?”

Class: Warlock

Subclass Preference: Sunsinger

Rarity: Exotic

Exotic Perk: Solar Grenades last longer and you gain an additional Solar Grenade charge

"Hey, Thomas!"

The human looked up to see his Awoken roommate coming through the library doors. And shouting. Of course.

"I can't decide if I want to call on the Titan stereotype or not, 'cos I think the Titans in here would be mad," he teased as he walked toward her. He checked the room to see if there actually were any other Titans here and found none.

She apparently had the same thought, because she stopped to check the room, even looking over her shoulder and he saw her eyes track up and to the left-- habitually checking her radar. On the helmet she wasn't wearing.

"You just get out of the crucible?" he asked, looking her over. Citan's and Mida, yep. "Why'd you come here? The apartment blow up?"

"Needed to stop and eat, got academic historical questions rolling in my head," she announced all at once. "Had some thoughts, considered how freely we teach each other the hammers, how much for granted I take my firebaths, especially since we learned the splash, and my favorite gun, thought I'd look into the Old Order of the Sunbreakers. And as I am not at all so handy with a catalogue of old books as I am literally anything else, I thought I'd ask my nearby brains. You're even wearing the bracers."

He glanced at his sunbracers and wagged his head. "I like them," he said with a shrug. "There's not a lot I'm good at, but throwing fire is definitely one of them."

Freija grinned merrily, concurring without a word.

~

"Alright, Sunbreakers," he hummed, leading her into the basement stacks. Most of the data here was remnants of useless information salvaged after the Red War. It wasn't particularly valuable but no one wanted to entirely eliminate it, and so rows and rows of databanks lined shelves, each compiled on the end into its own databanks that had to be booted up manually. It was outdated, but most of the information on them was either common knowledge or there was so little to know that it was hardly worth looking up. Somehow, the Sunbreakers had become both.

Freija offered Sunny forward to let her access the stuff as Thomas started flipping switches, and Sunny blinked at him.

"You want to do it?" they said together.

"Sure?" they replied together, and all three laughed, and Sunny perched on Freija's mark. "Go ahead."

Thomas waited for the old computer to boot up and then pulled the set of "books" to the screen. At the top of the screen, in tiny print, it said, "this archive is complete" followed by the date of its completion, shortly after the Red War.

"The stories we have are mostly scraps that survived by being blasted away from their archives, probably a diary or a personal memoir autobigraphy thing, following the ascent of Ourus, the last Empyreal Magistrate, through the order's power structure.

"Stories became attached to Liu Feng's tools, of their creation and design, but-- and this is why I think the other one is a private work-- it's all purple prose and very sweet to Liu, and I think Ourus was fond in a really deep way. There's also a sweet bit about their facing off against a pair of Ahamkara.

"The Sunbreakers were an old Order of Titans wielding Solar Light, often shaped like hammers, working outside the vanguard and, in their words, 'forging their own path'. The first bunch got overzealous and it really thinned out the whole Order, from what I can tell-- One of the stories about the ascent includes sunspots burning allies when allyship lost meaning, and was part of why they had to leave the City.

"Osiris and Zavala fought about including their help during the Taken War, they really didn't like Zavala's attitude about it, and they only allowed The Guardian to enter the forge because when they found it overrun by Vex, they killed everything.

"After that, the secrets of the Forge became known and eventually common knowledge, and some of the earliest lessons for a Solar-wielding Titan.

"The Order fell in the Red War. After the fires went out, they held on as long as they could, and the last message of Ourus, the Third Empyreal Magistrate, was 'Remember the forge. Remember the Hammers. Remember the Sunbreakers'. Last records indicate that the Cabal still held it when Mercury disappeared."

Thomas stopped reading and looked to Freija, who was frowning away and refusing to look at him, blood rising in her face and leaving a strangely purple undertone. "You okay?"

It took her a second to answer, mouth twisting twice before she finally opened it. "It. Feels. Like. I lost something?" Her eye watered but she wiped it away immediately.

The warlock didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't, and instead rocked to his heels and tried to look like he was listening intently. "I knew I was taking it for granted," she said quickly, and she took a clumsy step backwards. "I feel like I miss something." She shrugged, but Thomas saw the armor crackle, giving away how unsettled she really was.

Sunny was uncharacteristically quiet on her perch, but he only glanced to see her looking up at him from Freija's hip.

Thomas turned his attention back to the computer, not sure what else to do. "There's a few records you can look into. Great Guardian of Legend, the one that brought the Hammer back to the Vanguard, that's a whole thing we've got in this bank. I think there's a few things fished out of the Ishtar Collective? More details on the construction and function of the gear. Shaxx has a great story about holding Twilight Gap with several Sunbreakers."

Freija shrugged again, sending another ripple of Light along the blades of the redecorated armor. "Call it Titanic, but I don't think learning anymore history is gonna help. Not 'til Mercury comes back and I need to start triangulating landing zones to look for the Forge."

"Yeah?" Thomas chuckled. "Wanna 'Find the Forge'?"

The sound the awoken woman made could have been a laugh or a sob, or a really disturbing hiccup, and she turned a full one eighty and was halfway out the door. "Thanks," she remembered to shout before she slammed the door.