Destiny 2's first Faction Rally on PC goes live tomorrow - here's what you need to know

If you've finished the campaign and gained access to the new Tower, you may have noticed three NPCs who haven't had much to offer you yet. These are ambassadors for humanity's many factions, each representing a different vision for the future of our species in these trying times.
If you've completed the campaign and reached level 20, you'll be given a new Milestone introducing you to these factions at the start of the Faction Rally week. Take the chance to listen to their pitches and preview their loot, and when you've decided which is right for you, you can 'pledge' your support to them.
You can't change pledges during a rally, but can pledge to someone else next time, and different characters on the same account can support different factions.

How it works

When pledged to a faction, the following activities in Destiny 2 will drop faction tokens:

• Daily Faction Rally milestone
• Public events
• Lost Sector chests
• Quickplay or Competitive Crucible games
• Trials of the Nine
• Strikes
• Nightfall strike
• The Raid

You know how these work by now: trade them in to your faction's ambassador for reputation. Twenty tokens will earn you one engram containing faction gear - each faction has a full armour set and several weapons in the loot pool, which you can preview at the faction vendor.
There's a limit on the loot you can get from each rally. After you open 30 engrams, any more will only grant shaders, rather than armour or weapons. Any tokens you have left in your inventory after each rally will also be reset.
At the end of the week, the faction that earned the most engrams will win the rally. The following week is 'victory week', during which time the winning faction will offer another of their weapons for sale. If you pledged to that faction during the rally, you'll be able to buy it for just 1,000 Glimmer. If you pledged to a rival faction - or none at all - you can still buy it, but it will cost you 50,000 Glimmer.

Faction Rally rewards, November 2017

This month's faction rally rewards have been detailed by Bungie. New Monarchy's sniper rifle, hand cannon, sidearm, and pulse rifle, have been added to their engram loot pool, and they're offering a sword as their winner's reward (it was the sidearm last time). The Hakke and Suros foundries make many of New Monarchy's guns.
FWC's loot pool has gained their SMG, grenade launcher, pulse rifle, and sidearm, with a fusion rifle as their winner's reward. The pulse rifle was the reward last time and looked pretty good, but no-one could buy it because Dead Orbit won. You should consider pledging FWC if you like Omolon guns.

Dead Orbit's loot pool has gained two new scout rifles, an SMG, and an auto rifle, with a grenade launcher if they win. One of the scout rifles was their winner's reward last time and it was a worse version of Call to Serve - not bad, but clearly inferior to a gun that's obtainable elsewhere.
A popular Internet conspiracy theory holds that Bungie are deliberately making Dead Orbit rewards weak because they know they're the most popular faction, and are trying to give the others a fighting chance.

Faction Rally changes, November 2017

Based on the first (and, so far, only) Faction Rally, held last month on console, Bungie have tweaked November's incentives. Here's what's new:

• Strikes now drop 5 to 9 faction tokens per completion (up from 3 to 7) 
• The Nightfall strike now drops 10 to 18 faction tokens on first completion per character 
• Heroic Public Events now drop 5 faction tokens (down from 8)
• Destroying enemy resources (crates in Lost Sectors) no longer awards faction tokens
• Lost Sector chests now award 3 faction tokens for each fireteam member

The Factions

Dead Orbit

Affectionately known as 'space goths', Dead Orbit are ruthless pragmatists who believe humanity should cut its losses and forge a new future for themselves among the stars. This involves abandoning the Traveler, and indeed abandoning Earth. I wonder whether they reckon the Traveler's reawakening has proven them wrong. Critics call them nihilists, cynics, or even cowards - defenders argue their colour scheme is pretty metal.
For reasons which escape me personally, Dead Orbit are probably Destiny's most popular faction, and they won the first faction rally on console last month. Their gear is a reskin of the EDZ's rugged Wildwood set.
Their representative is Arach Jalaal, who can be found in the Tower Hangar beneath a silly camouflaged net.
Future War Cult

The coolest club with the coolest club house, the FWC are a secretive faction with an agenda that's probably deceptive in its simplicity: they see chaos and conflict as constant states to be embraced, rather than transient processes to be survived, much less avoided. Destiny 1's lore suggests that the most closely-guarded of their many secrets is a machine that grants visions of the future, and which forced the Cult's founders to confront the truth that humanity would never again know peace.
The FWC's representative is Lakshmi-2, an Exo voiced by The Expanse's Shohreh Aghdashloo. You can find her in the FWC's lovely headquarters in the Tower Hangar - look for the massive blue banners.
New Monarchy

Invoking Plato's ideas of philosopher-kings and boasting a gloriously regal armour set, New Monarchy are iron-fisted oligarchs who seek to re-establish humanity's Golden Age by uniting the City under their own rule. They object to the fragmented, squabbling governance of The Consensus, to the FWC's secrecy, and especially to Dead Orbit's defeatism. As with Plato, there's a strong hint of authoritarianism about them, but they'd probably argue that dictatorship is fine as long as it's benevolent.