For those following along, Battleborn has had a fairly steady stream of updates since its rocky launch in May. The first additional character Alani showed up shortly after launch. Pendles sneaked into the cast in July (or maybe he was there the whole time but we just couldn't see him). Ernest drops tomorrow for the general public.
Along with the new characters, three new competitive maps were released. But that brings up a semi-sour topic for Battleborn's cooperative mode fans: where are the story DLC missions? The first two were originally planned to release in "late summer," but with only a few weeks left on that clock it seemed likely they wouldn't make it in time. A post on Battleborn.com confirms that suspicion.
The first story DLC mission "Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion" is set to release on October 13. It goes through a sort of origin story on the intelligent thrall who fights for the Jennerit faction. The second downloadable story mission now has a name and a premise: "Toby's Friendship Raid" tells the story of the attempted theft of Berg, his death machine. Both of these are described as being shorter than the levels that shipped with the base game, and they support up to four players instead of the usual five.
In addition to the release dates for the first two downloadable missions, the following three are planned for "later this winter." 2K also announced a new competitive mode called Face Off. It sounds a bit like neutral flag capture, except the flags are masks, and the masks are dropped by NPC Varelsi fighters. Face Off hits on the same day Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion does: October 13. A second new player-vs.-player mode was teased, but no more information was given.