I believe that with all the talk of the traveler and the darkness being a sort of symbiotic or conflicting natural balance that the goals of dead orbit are in fact futile. Now my characters are in dead orbit sure but for Me I just like the colors. But when it comes to the plan to leave, to abandon the traveler I flat out don't think guardians can. I think that we are either bound to the traveler in that are powers and those of our ghosts and out Longevity are tied to the traveler and the idea is if we leave we die. But that isn't all, does anyone remember Guilty Spark? The dick robot ball/covenant oracle in halo. When enacting its primary directive it is efficient and unquestioning, following that directive to the letter. The ghost and guilty spark share remarkable similarities, y'know aside from being a humorless floating light ball. They are helpful and well informed about things we have no idea about and serve as trusted advisors to the guardians. But I believe that only extends to the idea that the ghosts revive us for the sole purpose of protecting the traveler. With some people believe Rasputin in fact attacked the traveler to keep it from leaving and the traveler released the ghosts to create us to protect it while it repairs itself indefinitely. If the guardians left wouldn't our ghosts try to stop us? Maybe even kill us? Guilty spark reacted violently when master chief didn't go along with following its primary directive to protect the halo and wipe out the floods food. Maybe the ghost follows a similar logic. Guardians are only as useful as we are to them as long as we help the traveler. If we leave we might be either betrayed by the ghosts or abandoned by them, because we are no longer helping them achieve their goals. Not to mention that vast portions of the actual history of the collapse are gone. It's easy to indoctrinate new guardians to follow the ghost and traveler because the city says so, but that is too convenient knowing the travelers history with the fallen and what we as guardians are doing to them as they try to reclaim the great machine that spurned them. All guardians are following the directive of the traveler, through their ghost proxy.