Update: The event is now over and the travelers have been substantially more than distantly activated. A new mission in the Last City is now available to those who have reached the tower. Players who reached the tower would "investigate the disturbances." Here are some screenshots taken by Tim:

And his guess was correct. At the end of the event, the planets that were scheduled to leave Destiny 2 with the arrival of Beyond Light - Io, Titan, Mercury, and Mars - were all shrouded in darkness and disappeared from the in-game map.

Here is a cutscene of the ending:

Original Story:

With Destiny 2: Beyond Light set to launch tomorrow, players are gathering at the Tower to witness the closing of the "season of arrival." The promised event, which community manager DMG04 said "will be a small one," is already underway.

The Traveler, for those who don't know, is a sphere in poor condition that hangs just above the earth and is always visible from the tower. According to witnesses, it is glowing now, and some players speculate that it may be in the process of healing:

As of this writing, it is unclear what will happen the rest of the night, but the server will go offline at 7 pm PST and Beyond Light not expected to return until tomorrow at 9 a.m. PST when it launches. In the new expansion, the Guardian will travel to Jupiter's moon Europa to confront the Fallen Kel, known as Eramis, which harnesses the power of darkness.

For those unfamiliar with Bungie's loot shooter lore, the "darkness" is represented in the game by an ominous pyramid of ships, currently hovering over Io, Titan, Mercury and Mars. These four destinations and much other content will be "stored" (i.e. removed from the game) tomorrow, so it's safe to say that something bad is about to happen.

As for whether Traveler will recover (he was previously damaged as part of Destiny 2's vanilla campaign), resident Destiny fiend Tim Clark says: "It's certainly possible. I wonder if the Traveler is actually preparing to leave and if it will be a shocking turn of events. The arrival of the pyramid ship represents an existential crisis for the Traveler, so if the Guardians think they can't protect the Traveler, they may be planning to bunk with him."

Last week, Creative Director Luke Smith wrote that the event is "not so crazy, just a little time to relax in the tower before lights out. And what could be more chill than the spectacle of a skybox? This is the second in-game event in Destiny 2, following the logging of "The Almighty," which marks the beginning of "The Season of the Worthy." This involved a missile moving incredibly slowly toward the Cabal ship, which was on a collision course with the tower.

It took too long, Bungie later admitted, but the few seconds when the boom finally went off were pretty cool. So far, the game seems to be progressing in a similar style, with only a few visual changes to the "traveler" so far, and many players are having a hard time logging in at all.