It’s the BL1 main story final boss, and it has/had just one eye:
Which shoots out a giant laser beam. Hence why Jack used it in Helios (TPS) but amped up by pumping it full of slag. Interestingly, the eye itself seemed to have some level of sentience there, given its screaming when given too much slag.
I actually do not think that is the answer from a lore perspective. I think the answer is supposed to be that the Destroyer is, as you have hinted, some sort of ephemeral Lovecraftian Cthulu-type world-eater. It emerges however often the Vault is opened, and each time the Vault is opened, a different form or iteration of the Destroyer is unleashed, but the Destroyer cannot actually be killed permanently because you would only be killing its current/present form, not the immortal being itself.
Or at least that is the best suggested answer that I have seen to my original question (i.e., how does the Destroyer still exist in BL3, when we supposedly killed it in BL1). That answer makes enough sense, I guess, but unfortunately I also find it kind of unsatisfying from a lore perspective, but eh - whatever. It seems to be the best explanation.
I agree this makes the most sense, especially since every iteration of the Destroyer we have seen don’t lend itself to having to build a planet-sized cage to keep it in. It’s hard to imagine any of those being star-eaters, particularly since we can kill them with regular guns while imprisoning it in the first place wiped out an entire species. As suggested in one of the recordings, we only ever see a manifestation that comes out to feed, rather than the entire creature
Reminds me a little bit of the Ainur from JRR Tolkien’s universe. The bodies we could see were just clothes - the bodies could die, but not the spirit within, which could then take another form at will
There are implications that guardians are remade eridians, its very halo-y.
I think he did what “the Watcher could not” was actually imprisoning humanity in digitize form - Minos prime got imploded but there were no body nor any sign of humanity because they got digitized and imprisoned. Scourge think humans are vault monsters to be contained.
