The Eight Barons You’ll Be Fighting In Destiny 2 Forsaken

The eight Barons of the House of Scorn are party to blame for Cayde-6’s death at the start of Destiny 2 Forsaken. Prince Uldren might pull the trigger, but these guys had a hand in beating Cayde-6 to a pulp and getting him on his knees.

As a core part of the Destiny 2 Forsaken campaign Guardians are sent out to take down each of these eight Barons in whatever order they want. Some might be harder than others but Bungie want to give you the choice to kill them in whatever order you see fit. Bungie has also previously hinted that each Baron is unique and will have an encounter with the Guardians that feels as unique as they are.

Helpfully GameInformer have had an in-depth look at the eight Barons so we can understand a bit about them, who they are, what they’re good at, and maybe even why Cayde-6 put them in the Prison of Elders to begin with.

The Barons were exiled as Dregs from the House of Exile. Relying on each other they raided their previous Fallen allies in order to steal Ether and grow more powerful. They raided the Reef in the chaos of the aftermath of the Taken War, and now they’ve turned it into a lawless area of space where not even the Fallen are safe from their piracy.

Working with Petra Venj and an elite group of Guardians Cayde-6 brought down the Barons. Most were killed but seven of the original eight Barons were captured, and put in cells in the Prison of Elders that are darker than the coldest, emptiest part of space. The one Baron to escape them is called The Fanatic, but no one actually knew if he escaped or die as no body could be found. This is where we begin our in-depth look at the Barons.

The Fanatic

This guy thinks he is the bee’s knees. He believes that the Scorn, this almost mutated group of Fallen, are the future of the Fallen race. He submits only to Prince Uldren, and thinks that he’s created the evolutionary peak of the Fallen.

This guy used to be an Archon Priest for the Eliksni, a Fallen house who worship machines, but was thrown out when he began preaching heracy. When he fell in with the Barons he continued preaching against the great machine, saying that the Eliksni should have been wiped out long ago by the Whirlwind. He taught the Barons that in order to become eternal they needed to wipe out this Fallen house and achieve their destiny.

As an Archon Priest this guy will be fighting both up close and at range incredibly hard. Archon Priest’s are notoriously difficult to beat, and the fact that they can teleport anywhere on the battlefield means that you can’t find a good hiding spot and plug away at them. Let’s not forget that this Archon Priest is beefed up on extra Ether, making him way more powerful.

The Machinist

This Scorn Baron is second in command, and answers to The Fanatic. She’s also the most dedicated follower of The Fanatic, which could indicate that if you manage to kill him before her she will go at you with increased ferocity.

This Fallen female is a looter, and loves to hoard everything she finds. Consequently she’s got a massive arsenal of various weapons that make her extremely dangerous in basically every way. What’s interesting about her though is that she’ll be using different weapons to attack Guardians from all angles and Ranges, not elemental powers like other powerful Fallen.

The Machinist was a Bandit originally, and managed to raid and loot her way to the top with the help of the Barons. She shares whatever she has with them, helping them keep their weaponry up to date. She’s a known scourge in cis-Jovian and cis-Martian space, attacking all ships she comes across and taking every piece of weaponry that works. It doesn’t even matter if the weapon is part of the ship.

I’ll be honest, this is a heavily armoured Baron that’s armed to the teeth with state of the art nastiness. Taking her down isn’t going to be easy, and may even be something that you’ll have to do as a team instead of on your own.

The Mindbender

If the name didn’t give you a hint I’ll come right out and say it. This Baron is insane. The Mindbender spent years researching the Hive and their dark religion, and has somehow found a way to control them, presumably aided by the plethora of Ether he has at his disposal.

The Mindbender fell into The Hellmouth as a Dreg and has never spoken, not anything you can understand anyway, since. When he emerged he was changed, a Fallen unrecognisable because of his ability to control the Hive and seemingly able to survive against all odds in the Ascendant Realm.

This guy is a real piece of work, responsible for a number of crimes including;

• The Great Crow Heist, in which The Mindbender captured Prince Uldren’s Crows. He fed them misinformation which in turn led to increased tensions between Earth and the Reef.
• The Gaspra Slaughter, a man-hunt for The Mindbender which ended in a trap. He murdered 43 Awoken as a result.
• The Haunting of Nemesis. Asteroid 128 was a Reef outpost, but The Mindbender moved in and took it over in order to conduct sick experiments on the Hive. The Asteroid now has a shifting reality problem, meaning it’s sometimes in our reality, and sometimes in the Ascendant Realm.

I don’t even know how to suggest that we fight this guy. He’s obviously going to have an army of Hive at his disposal, but there’s no telling what else he’s able to do in order to mess with other races. We can’t assume that Awoken, Humans, and Exo are immune to total control, because that sort of attitude will lead to us all getting killed. Stay alert and watch out for anything suspicious when you face this Baron.

The Trickster

Not only an The Trickster talk, she generally tricks (see what I did there?) others into doing what she needs doing. She likes to stay behind the scenes and take you down without you even knowing it.

The Trickster is the envoy for the Barons, the one who always goes first, and the one who’s always sent if someone wants to talk with them. She’s also a first wave of attack.

She never was any good at fighting, and in fact she’s still no good at it. The problem is that she’s spent years honing her mind while the other Barons honed everything else. Now she’s got a world that’s constantly altering to counter what her enemies do, and that’s usually what kills them. She’s also responsible for a number of crimes, not that any of them exist because she was cloaked and hidden the entire time.

In The Amethyst Heist/Massacre The Trickster used clever tactics and ploys in order to pit 12 different teams of bounty hunters against one another instead of raiding The Queen’s mines. In the meantime she raided the mines for herself and the Barons.

However, the problem with The Trickster is that she’s created a lot of the legends and stories surrounding her, so you can’t trust anything you know.

Fighting The Trickster is going to be easy, it’s reaching her that’s going to be the problem.

The Hangman

In the entire history of the Eliksni there has never been a creature more obsessed with torturing Servitors, ripping out there Ether generators from the core of them with his bare hands. This is painful, as you’d expect, but that’s fine for him because he’s a complete sadist.

This guy fell in with The Fanatic because of his complete rejection of the Servitors, the machines that were created in the image of the Traveller and decide who gets Ether, and who doesn’t. I’d hesitate to say that he’s as against the machine worship of the Eliksni as The Fanatic, because he may just be acting that way so he gets to kill more Servitors, he really enjoys doing that. The Hangman was abandoned at birth, no one knows why, but what is clear is that it shaped him and made him the torturer her is today.

This guy is the reason the Barons have so much Ether. He just loves killing Servitors and ripping out those Ether generators, meaning every Baron is in a frenzy. He’s also known as the Keeper of the Aurora Caves, a place where, for a bloody price, outlaws of the Reef and other Fallen can get the Ether they need to survive. He is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the last House of Wolves, because he eradicated every single Servitor they had, and they starved to death.

Fighting this Baron will be very interesting because he likes to get up close and personal. Melee combat might be your best friend, but remember to watch out for that pain he likes to inflict.

The Mad Bomber

A bit more on the nose, this guy loves the thrill of a bomb and a kill. He’s been known to cause an entire location to explode in order to kill one target.

The Mad Bomber has lost his mind because he’s been too close to those bombs he’s so fond of. Now he lives his life on the edge, not really caring if he lives or dies, but he does care about a good bomb.

This guy is responsible for the Accretion Mines, an area of the Reef that contains thousands of mines laid everywhere, and they still claim lives today. He targeted the three remaining vestiges, Origin Libraries, of the Reef Awoken in an effort to take down the last remnants of Awoken royalty.

Fighting this guy is going to be crazy, you’re going to get bombed and you’re going to have to deal with that. I think the key to fighting him could be drawing him into any bombs around you that he’s set, but only if they’ll actually damage him. Otherwise why not use bombs against bombs and see if you can detonate a could of his stashes?

The Rifleman

The Rifleman loves to stay at range and kill you without you ever seeing him. He watches the Baron’s backs, and has taken out a number of Ghosts so make sure you keep yours close.

The Rifleman’s cybernetic eye allows him to constantly watch his back, and every Baron’s back as well. This is why no one has ever snuck up on them. No one knows where he claims his home to be, but when he’s not out watching the Barons he’s guarding that with help from a satellite network that’s said to be impenetrable.

He assassinated the Awoken Paladins Loris Pol, Tellos Cir, and Hollis Eso. He’s also know to have held control over what remains of Ceres by using salvaged holo-tech to lure anyone getting close into his range of fire.

Fighting The Rifleman is going to be a sniper battle, there’s no way he’d let himself get cornered into anything else. Having a Sniper Rifle that you’re comfortable with will be key to this fight, so get looking at your Exotics to see what will give you a helping hand.

The Rider

This Baron has engineered the Fallen Heavy Pike into something much faster and more powerful. The Rider has her own Pike Gang and everywhere they go they pollute the air in order to harm their enemies and generally cause havoc, as any good biker gang does.

Her Pike Gang has been gathered from the various rejects of other Fallen Houses. The Rider gave them a purpose and in return they give her loyalty until death. Her gang’s aim is to wipe out any semblance of hierarchical ranks leftover from the Fallen Houses, burning every spec of their old lives. Anarchy is one of her most powerful weapons and she’ll use it wherever possible.

The Rider’s gang destroyed 8 Awoken outposts, killing 489 Awoken, and infecting 89 allied Fallen camps. This forced the Awoken into the Mayhem incident with the Barons. They also destroyed 6 Techuen temples with zero survivors.

The fight against The Rider is going to be dirty and messy. Obviously a lot of it’s going to need to take place on a modified Pike because there’s no other way of catching The Rider otherwise. It’s hard to offer advice because your weapons are limited to what’s on offer from your ride, not your equipment.

Let us know what you think of the Barons and the different style in antagonists they’re bringing to Destiny 2 in Forsaken in the comments.

Images Source: GameInformer