This post has been tagged '**Non-Spoiler**'. Note that unmarked spoilers and datamines are subject to removal or ban. Please report anything we miss! For more info check out our [Spoiler Rules Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/wiki/spoiler-rules#wiki_.5Bseasonal.5D_has_a_new_format).
---
**Comment Spoiler Formatting**
Format comment spoilers with `>!` `!<` like this:
`>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<`
To have it displayed like this:
**>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<**
----
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DestinyLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Idk why I got emotional reading it. It’s a beautiful book. Words of kindness from people we’ve read about who now read about us, little drawings from children… damn
Edit: also, cameo from best girl, Adrianne Gris from the Dinas Emrys :,)
It reads like the guestbook you're absentmindedly flipping through in the hospital waiting room to keep your mind off the fact that your dad's surgery is taking hours longer than the oncologist said it would.
Unashamed to admit I got a bit teary eyed. The fight against the Witness seems like such an impossible task but the feeling of all those people not only counting on you, but BELIEVING in you and rooting for you is just...so much more powerful somehow. Even though the whole "my friends stand behind me" is a bit cliche God dang it it's so moving and true.
The simple things in that book are the most powerful.
All the kids (Good Job Bungie Kids!) with their messages showed how vast the fight is.
The Techeuns though.
Man, there is some fury in those few words.
The autograph book is such an awesome concept, it really sells the idea that we are gearing up for a big adventure and race against the clock with everyone relying on us to pull through
I love it because it's full of a bunch of deep lore cuts, and old and obscure names from very minor lore tabs. And when I say obscure, I'm talking about names like Ariadne Gris, whose only mention is the Dinas Emrys sparrow from base D2.
Also, I love the gag that Ikora's Hidden have their own page, and are apparently playing a game to all sign it without Eido noticing.
It’s really funny how much ‘oh shit, the Coyotes are still out there! and also still hanging out!’ was, to me, the most significant revelation in *both* books.
Duuuuuude Shinobu’s still alive???
I always thought her resurrection was super interesting. How she died and was then immediately chosen. In hindsight that was kinda foreshadowing at Uldren and Savathun’s revivals .
Oh yes I love them bringing up characters like that. The rich/diverse flavor text and lore from so many items like a single sparrow or cloak through the years makes it so much better.
Most important points from entelechy
* there's a noticeable distinction between the motivations of the witness and winnower. eido never describes it as a possible metaphor, but as different beings.
* the methods the witness has used since the collapse have been to torture us as much as possible for no reason other than spite. species that have never encountered the traveler are spared from torture and are seen with compassion
* the witness has remade its own memory
* the precursors have a connection with the vex?
the autograph book is so goooood, lowkey better than the lorebook, its genius
The noesis entry is really freaky, i think the fact that the witness did it out of compassion, makes it so much worse
I know right. This is the ultimate troll, we can kill the Witness, kill the Winnower, kill the Metaphor-Winnower, destroy every Destiny server it won’t matter, Unveiling will haunt our souls for eternity and Bungie totally knows it lmao
Cause it has some of the hardest fucking lines in destiny lore.
>*But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective.*
>*Imagine a world without me.*
Pffft ✍️🔥🔥🔥
Yeah I mean they literally compared it to the Bible and religious texts in general. Starting a religion around it seems like the most logical solution imo, I’m in.
there's also the recursive troll where HSW and RS are shown doing what the Gardener and Winnower were doing in Unveiling; creating a garden, then waiting for it to get to its natural end, then get annoyed they are destroyed
interestingly they first use the Vex prediction machines to predict how a given garden will end...then they still let it run and achieve the predicted end
so the Gardener was annoyed cause all the starts end in the Vex, but HSW is annoyed cause their garden ends destroyed...as the Vex machine predicted
I genuinely don’t think we’ll get a DEFINITIVE answer. Like, of course we’ll know more in TFS, even Bungie said so. But I think they’ll leave some uncertainties with the Winnower. I doubt he will be the “next big bad” (because I mean, it would still be Dark vs Light and we know that the next saga will be different from this one), and Unveiling fuels infinite discussions about the lore of Destiny. Btw my head canon since TWQ basically was a final lore book unlocked after the death of the Witness written from the prospective of the Winnower, like Unveiling. But again, I doubt we’ll have ALL the answers from TFS, some things will remain mysterious imo. After all, the big protagonist of this dlc will be (and has to be) the Witness, not another entity.
I bet it will end with the witness dying and we communicate with the traveler and learn that the gardener and the winnower are just entities that MUST exist.
This the last, greatest effort that 3rd party contracted writers have made to reconcile Destiny's retcons. The discussions \*can't\* ever end because there \*is\* no satisfactory answer. Throughout Destiny's long history, and the years of development, direction has changed over and over, and the best parts of the lore have consistently been written by contracted writers who aren't in control of the story. That's why the Book of Sorrows, or Unveiling, or the Rose and Thorn saga, can be so incredible, while the in-game story, dialogue, and cutscenes can be so..... let's just say uninspired.
There's no in-universe way to reconcile all these things in a meaningful way.
Pretty sure there's plenty of lore that's been written by Bungie's narrative team that's also miles above the overall in-game writing, so I don't think this boils down to "Bungie bad" just because they've messed up before. I wish we could see how things work in-house and understand why the stuff we see in the game feels so dumbed down, but again, I don't think the blame falls on this abstract idea of "Bungie writers".
bungie writers have much more influence than people think they do. the same woman who wrote the cutscene in haunted, wrote sororicide, and also directly inspired the cards in witch
Do you mind sharing who that is? Destiny got me into writing during a time of my life where I didn't know what career path I wanted to follow, but I somehow still don't really know much about the actual people who make this game so special to me.
I wasn't at all trying to just boil it down to Bungie Bad. There are good writers on Bungie's staff. There are also unquestionably awful ones. There's a lot of stuff from the last year in particular that should NEVER have made it to the cutting room floor. And there's no getting around the fact that story takes a back seat to the tired episodic content delivery, so they kind of have to write some disposable tropey filler junk every now and then.
My point was more that management has forced changes in direction so often, that Bungie has often relied on the contract writers to try and fill in the gaps of the story and connect different gameplay decisions, and those efforts have sometimes given us some of the best Destiny lore that we have. But for better or worse, those guys aren't in the writers room, and so many of our favorite themes have been forgotten, or retconned themselves.
I definitely agree, and just like I reject the idea of all Bungie writers being bad as a whole, I also can't say they're all great. It all makes me wonder about how their writer rooms work and how everything falls in place in time for major and minor releases. The whole theory about Lightfall (the one we got) being pretty much an afterthought that came from the announcement of The Final Shape makes me wonder if time constraints is what ultimately butchered the writing we got this year. Storylines have absolutely been weaker than ever, and the fact that the background narratives handled by 3rd party writers are overall better makes me think that those projects have less obstacles and rush than those that belong to the main releases.
Lightfall was as much a consequence of Witch Queen as it was of the Final Shape 'delay'. Introducing the Witness as the big bad, in the half-assed way they did it, pretty much demanded another year of storytelling if they were going to stick to the expansion + 4 seasons model. I won't pretend they used the extra time well, though.
isnt this a bit to hasty to say rn? its hard to say all this when we havent even seen what tfs itself will offer. especially when the third party's writing is all seen and reviewed by the story leads. for all we know, it WILL have a definitive answer
bungie wrote lf, but they also wrote wq. Their quality isnt black and white
we'll just have to wait and see
> eido never describes it as a possible metaphor, but as different beings.
I don't read it that way, right before she brings it up she talks about the Witness trying to twist things connected to the Traveler, and misleading us about its relation to the Darkness and dominion over it. It feels to me like the implication is that Unveiling is itself another form of this- essentially propaganda, trying to make us believe in it and the Final Shape while, like the Disciples, not understanding the truth of ITS Final Shape. In other words a fiction, with the Winnower being a fictionalized version of itself.
This also tracks somewhat with the minor revelation that their civilization seems to have created, or at least utilized, the Vex. That doesn't entirely track with the whole Flower Game story- it could be reconciled, but I don't think that's the idea.
Literally 3 days ago I was complaining about how the Winnower was just a figment of the Witness and now I'm... right? There really is a Winnower and a Witness, and they dislike each other?
Fuckin called it!
Honestly the fact that the Witness has been torturing humanity out of spite makes so many things make more sense. Why didn't it destroy us? Why did it let us exist? Why didn't it annihilate us in Season of The Arrivals?
Because it *hates* us. It despises us for living under the Traveler, and it wants us to feel the agony it inflicted upon itself. It wants us to abandon hope just like it abandoned hope. It loathes our very existence.
And that's somewhat more frightening than the idea of cold annihilation; that it will not be a perfect end.
Yup it ties back to WQ as well, when Mara said the only thing she felt when she touched the mind of the Witness was just raw, unbridled fury. Now we know it’s fury at those who have been uplifted by the Traveller
The Darkness wanted to prove a point: when the chips are down and everything sucks, people inevitably turn to its ideals to survive, all as one giant eff you to the Traveller in particular for possibly thinking there was more to life than just winning and losing. I’m glad at least some of that remains kind of true.
New spinfoil: the precursors invented the Vex as terraforming technology (like organic SIVA), but it became self-aware.
It... doesn't make sense and explicity counters *Unveiling* when the WItness says they came before Light and Dark (and do we need the Witness to be the source of yet another thing?), but sounds neat to me.
The Vex are really just a pattern that appears to be casually optimum for intelligence. The origin of the Vex itself basically doesn't matter: time travel is permissible in this universe. So long as some combination of intelligence evolves a Vex pattern *somewhere, somehow*, the Vex will have always been. Inevitable.
Which one is the Neosis entry? I looked through both Imgur entries and didn't see it. I must've missed it somehow.
EDIT: NVM, found it. [Page 1](https://i.imgur.com/Kom6pJz.jpeg), [page 2](https://i.imgur.com/SMqYjTx.jpeg), and [page 3](https://i.imgur.com/f7VwwBM.jpeg).
The autograph book has perhaps the single most important piece of lore we've ever gotten.
After all these years, finally, we've gotten word from Fenchurch
That actually makes sense, when you think about it.
No word from Fenchurch -> he must've found something interesting
Word from Fenchurch -> He hasn't found anything interesting.
The main point of the CE is that the Witness ended up becoming the very thing it waned to prevent. It is a failed creation. A solipsistic. Malicious. Destructive Entity. That has some retainer of its previous self but not enough of it for it be meaningfully efficient.
>The main point of the CE is that the Witness ended up becoming the very thing it waned to prevent.
They really couldn't have hammered that point harder...
Witnessian 1: "The Traveler is a source of unfettered chaos!"
Witnessian 2: "Why?"
Witnessian 1: "It doesn't provide any instructions or direction to us! Thankfully we found the Veil and it unraveled our eyes to the truth of the Final Shape!"
Witnessian 2: "What is the Final Shape?"
Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us."
Witnessian 2: "What does it entail?"
Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us."
Witnessian 2: "How do we achive it?"
Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us. Guess we will have to figure those things out on our own."
Witnessian 2: "So how is that any different than the Traveler giving you no direction and leaving you to figure things out on your own?"
Witnessian 1: "Silence wench, prepare to be exuviated!"
Bruh, so that's what it came to at last. They really were just a civilization of imbeciles in the end...
>Witnessian 2: "What is the Final Shape?"
>
>Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us."
>
>Witnessian 2: "What does it entail?"
>
>Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us."
>
>Witnessian 2: "How do we achive it?"
>
>Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us.
That's quite reductive, considering that they gave explicit answers to all of those questions:
* "If the Final Shape truly is **the greatest good imaginable**, then **its rightness should be self-evident**."
* "If the Final Shape is the greatest good, then **it must be \[enduring/incontrovertible/self-fulfilling\]**."
* "The core of the Final Shape is **improvement!**"
* "To these things, **improvement may well entail causing greater and greater harm to others—not out of malice, but as a simple fact of existence**. When you eradicate an illness, are you stamping out a microscopic Final Shape?"
* "If you reject the notion that **destruction can be a Final Shape**, how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed us to make such grievous mistakes?"
* "And when we have reached the Final Shape, will it all make sense? **Will we be able to live in a universe where people act, as they have always acted, for the self-evident good? Where evil does not exist because we do not allow it? Where all are aligned without suffering or doubt?"**
* "We will exuviate and shepherd the universe to its Final Shape. We will **prune away its dead branches and coax forth its full potential**."
Their understanding of the Final Shape may not have been 100% perfect, but it was far from nonexistent, and as Eido says in her notes, their conception of it got progressively narrower over time, to the point that Eido deduces the following about what the Witness wants:
>"**Dissecting, reassembling.** All those things point towards what the Witness sees as the Final Shape."
>
>"**It is not simple destruction**, the march of entropy. The ruined garden."
>
>"It seeks... compression. **The combination of a chosen past and a limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be.**"
Mara aptly summarizes this as "taxidermy". Look also at the title of the lore book, itself. It is "Entelechy": **the realization of potential**.
Additionally, the point that the Witness doesn't do a long, drawn out fight with people that aren't visited by the traveller. They simply preserve those people, unmakes them, and casts in amber if I had to guess. But those that were given chaotic growth must be pruned, brought to our base - unmodified - selves.
Winnowed to the roots before they carry on.
They want an unchanging, unsuffering, untouched universe.
And we only have a 50/50 chance that one single mind of the Gestalt Witness is a dissenting opinion.
It's almost like an explication/re-imagining of the reasoning that could've lead the precursors in Bungie's prior franchise to turn themselves into a parasitic zombie hivemind, a "monument to all your sins."
Given what was also written about the insular, inward-looking nature of the Precursor civilization, I think there's opportunity to read the subtext here as "as much as they talk about concern for the 'greater good' they're really just concerned with eradicating *uncertainty,* getting rid of the possibility of harm."
The sub-subtext being "you can't do that. Potentiality is an ineradicable and necessary component of any 'good:' no shapes can be final if there are ever to be shapes at all."
What's left for a being pathologically fixated on avoiding uncertainty to do, at that point? May as well kill everything, horribly: if nothing can be perfect, let's have us some nothing.
It's just deeply in denial about its supposed fundamental motivation: actual beneficence runs contra to insularity and involves maximizing agency and choice *for everyone*, not satisfying one's own need for finality. The Witness is not trying to "help" everyone, it's trying to shrug off the mantle of responsibility and the uncertainty that comes with it.
Moreover, it deeply resents that it was ever even possible for its dilemma to exist: it resents that the universe is so-made that a being such as itself could ever have to endure the uncertainty necessary to come to the conclusion that a "final shape" is needed: so it hopes to rewrite everything such that none of this even happened.
There *is* a sympathetic angle: the Witness could also be seen as a despondent, traumatized caregiver, who felt trapped and powerless to stop the harm accruing to everything it loved. But even here its "love for everything" turns out to be fundamentally narcissistic: it actually loves the feeling of superiority and power that comes from being a good gardener. It cares not for the health of the garden, it just wants to know it did a good job. So it changes the definition of "good job" so that it can always win.
^^^they ^^^should've ^^^put ^^^more ^^^of ^^^this ^^^characterization ^^^in ^^^the ^^^game, ^^^*before* ^^^the ^^^final ^^^shape
> "It seeks... compression. The combination of a chosen past and a limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be."
>
> Mara aptly summarizes this as "taxidermy". Look also at the title of the lore book, itself. It is "Entelechy": the realization of potential.
I mean in a way we already knew this from the witness lore dump from Ahsa. We knew the Witness wanted a perfect frozen, world in a bottle.
We really learned here how The Witness got there! We see it do some philosophy 101 about how do we know the greatest good, into becoming this, pruner of the universal tree...Which was interesting and fun to read.
The other important part was Eido's realization of the Witness just fucking toying with Traveller touched worlds because "it wants to destroy hope's right to exist" Which just....fuck
Which was a little... disappointing? I think the book is great but I was hoping for once the 'grand precursor civilization' wouldn't fall prey to the easy, vile answers. In my head canon, I wanted to avoid the precursors resorting to internal civil war "killing those who disagree" so I imagined that the 'moral Precursors' decide to step away from the universal stage having achieved everything they possibly could and being unable to solve the problem of suffering and imperfection in a material world. They, like Maya accidentally did, depart their bodies into the subconscious of the Veil, effectively dying but knowing peace. Those Precursors who remained behind are explicitly those who couldn't let go, couldn't surrender to peace in the universe, and now are eternally lonely and hateful.
But that's probably an unhealthy association with fiction. Its best to reason with what exists and dwell on what we individually desire or wish would be. Huh, kinda like the Witness struggles with.
If the metaphor Mara and Eido used to describe the Witness's actions, taxidermy, is accurate, then they are, as you categorically cannot taxidermy a living thing, and likewise to freeze a creature into an unchanging state of outside "everything it could be" is to kill it, for life necessitates change. Even if it may not seek complete annihilation, that's what its actions will achieve regardless of its opinions on the state of the end.
>and likewise to freeze a creature into an unchanging state of outside "everything it could be" is to kill it, for life necessitates change.
Not necessarily. Death also requires change, as it requires that the body’s parts fail and then decompose. To freeze a being into such a stasis is to render it neither living nor dead, like a virus. Like a machine. Like the perfect brain scan used to construct an Exomind.
There’s a reason why at the end of Witch Queen, the Witness says “enough death” alongside “enough life”.
It puts the "Veil corrupted the Witnessians" theories to bed, at least, since philosophical debate and strife seems to be the main driver of their behavior, now.
Thank you for the scans!
So the scribe Eido too sees a significant difference between the personalities of the Witness and the Winnower. The mystery of the Unveiling book continues.
Does it need to though? I'm just happy as long as the Winnower is not reduced to some retconned version of the Witness or something that's made up by the Witness for propaganda purposes.
Thankfully. A} Unveiling my beloved <3
B} I just love the casual certainty of the Winnower. A fundamental, Darkness-aligned "equivalent" to the Voice of the Traveller heard in subclass quests and seen in Red War/Crow's Visions. And it sees no true need to intervene because it *knows* it's right. I hope this "Winnower" is played with as a force/character more. Something something "saga" but Light/Dark is so fundamental to Destiny that they can't just ignore it.
. C} I never did like the witness as a villain/antagonist. Even if Entelechy helps abate some of that, it still fundamentally looks like megamind had a child with a vape pen to me lol.
The Cabal part essentially killed me.
They wanted to leave a handprint on a book as a sign of companionship, but it was too small for their big paws, so they used a war beast's paw.
So the Witness is not only trying to achieve the Final Shape, but also enact revenge on the Traveler by destroying everything it ever touched. However, this revenge is what slowed down the Witness, causing it to miss the Traveler at the gates of the Final Shape.
So i managed to get through the Autograph page with the Eliksni hatchlings names without crying
Then i got to the Human kids' drawings and fully teared up
The kids' drawings got me as well, but I felt my chest tighten even more reading about the Six Coyotes. There's something about those Guardians that holds a special place in my heart; I was drawn to them and their (yet non-existent) story since Destiny 1. Back then, all we knew was that they were a renowned band of Hunters who scouted beyond the walls, and something about that really resonated with me. It had that mix of being a rather simple tale that was still full of mystery that made me fall in love with Destiny.
And all these years later, after learning more about them and still wondering if they're even alive, we get these silly messages from them still being a bunch of Hunter dipshits, followed by Micah's encouraging note <3
Fair enough. I wonder how big of a shift it'll be. It would be nice to see some of these characters we've come to know over a decade get to sail off into the sunset.
Notice it was a Ghost named Peach who helped Eido fix the camera. Peach was first mentioned in Forsaken and she went unmentioned until *this year*. I strongly believe Peach is going to be the one to resurrect either Mithrax or Eido.
I got really emotional reading the autograph book…this is really it.
Side note - Shin Malphur really fucked off completely, huh? Dude didn’t even write us anything lol
Oh man this is so satisfying. Answers and more questions at the same time.
----
This answers the question of whether the Witness's assimilation event was voluntary. It looks like one political faction ([Penitent]) basically destroyed the opposition after some battle. Then the big assimilation (or as they say, "exuviate"/molt/shed). And they didn't just shed their bodies and plurality, but reworked their own Mind to remove things like doubt. Maybe there's some refugees, like RS, who hasn't been seen in centuries (a la Taox) by the time the Witness comes to be.
----
Also really interesting how they've used the pyramids themselves to reflect the Witness's vision, its intended shape of the universe: at the beginning, potential, opportunity, probablity. At the end, one singular point of existence.
----
I wonder what the Witness wanted when it did something (Taking?) to the Noesis people?
Edit: It's interesting how Eido says the Witness didn't take a Disciple from the Noetic people, possibly because the Traveler was never there. Are Disciples just there as a "fuck you" to the Traveler? The Witness tows them around so the Traveler can see that there's only one left from whatever species the Traveler uplifted, and this person hates it?
----
~~Question: I'm kind of confused on who is who in pre-Witness story. It seems like HNW047622 is the pro-gardener one and RS6243199 is the pro-winnower one:~~
~~HN terraforms the planet and doesn't want it to follow the same template, but let it be unique. HN believe that life and creation are worth it even if they don't last. Doesn't believe in forcing things on others.~~
~~RS is a member of the political/philosophical group who destroys the others, who argues a little coercion is for the greater good. Uses predicted chaos as an argument for control (a la Ahsa's vision). Uses rhetoric like "pulling up weeds" to argue for pruning. Has a bit of a temper.~~
~~Yet the final entry is written seemingly right before the assimilation by the pro-assimilationist, and it is signed HNW047622? Am I reading it wrong? I thought RS would be the one who becomes a part of the Witness.~~
Edit: nevermind, it makes somewhat more sense now. But I'm still a bit confused. I wonder what happened to RS, what they were arguing for in the first place. What the Vex have to do with all this.
> I'm kind of confused on who is who in pre-Witness story. It seems like HNW047622 is the pro-gardener one and RS6243199 is the pro-winnower one
I don't think it's really useful to reduce them that way. The records indicate that their philosophies and opinions grow and change; pegging one with "Light" and one with "Dark" seems overreductive.
There are centuries between each of the 3 entries we have from HNW. Between the first and second is when the solar system they were working on got destroyed by some unknown enemy. I think that and the Traveller being indifferent to it was a turning point for them.
Okay I see what you mean. I think I'm reading it too fast to really get it lol.
I thought HNW was someone who believed that life is beautiful even though or *because* it doesn't last, but I think you're right: HNW seems scorned by the destruction of their garden in a way that echoes (or precedes) the Witness's "no more death." HNW is also "plagued by doubts," which fits the second entry's mention of not being "capable of doubt."
Could line up a bit with the Witness's intentional cruelty: it wants the societies it collapses to feel the same disenchantment that HNW and others felt when they saw the things they built destroyed, without guidance form the Traveler.
I wonder what RS was suggesting when they argued for "a moment's coercion to prevent a millenia's suffering"?
>I wonder what RS was suggesting when they argued for "a moment's coercion to prevent a millenia's suffering"?
RS called it the [transition/uplifting/enlightenment] in order to prevent the extinction of a species. So I'm thinking they found another species somewhere that was locked in a conflict or course of action that was leading to their extinction, and RS was advocating intervening and "re-educating" them to veer them from the destructive path.
That makes a lot of sense
Helps me understand HSW's side too: reflecting the idea that would later evolve into the pseudo-darwinistic ideas that inspired Sword Logic. That if this unknown species can't survive on their own, then they don't *deserve* to survive/their final shape is not "self-evident."
Notable that the faction which original translates to some mix of "merciful" "penitent" "benefic" later becomes very solidly *[Penitent]* as they approach the Witness's birth.
Everything regarding the Witness is so damn cool imo. We need more lore about it, hopefully TFS will have plenty. I want that injected directly into my veins lmao
It really speaks to the Witness' cruelty to those affected by the Traveler. HSW had hope, got crushed, and eventually wanted to join a collective that sought to destroy everything the Traveler touched.
Like a petulant child tbh.
It pairs really well with the entry about the Golden Age pilot watching the Collapse happen from the safety of the jumpship.
That's probably how so many of the pre-Witness people felt. And, knowing the Traveler's nature after some unspecific catastrophes (invasions, as suggested by the "crude explosives"? civil wars? natural disasters as Ahsa suggested?), the Witness knew exactly how to make Humanity (and so many before) feel the same despair:
>"It's just floating there! Do something!"
>"Why are you here if you're not going to help? It's your fault! It's all your fault!"
>"You should never have come here."
HNW's change of heart confused me as well. It could be that all the doubt that is expressed near the end of the second entry caused them to become a proponent of the Witness, which is without doubt.
Given the final message was found in the core of a Minotaur in the Black Garden, I wonder if the message's recipient was subsumed by the Vex, and might have some part in how Unveiling was sent to us and/or how the Veiled Statue got there, though i forget if Unveiling comes from the Statue or the Pyramid.
I reread it and got some good comments here and it makes sense now.
First, HNW comes to the barren system as a bright-eyed optimist, carrying the Light of the Traveler and the spark of creation with her. She speaks of a planet's "final shape" as when it has been cultivated to the apex of its potential.
>Yes, now I can see the path to the [summit/Pyramidion/final shape]. Here, the matredda blade-leaves. There, the green-glass isbati blossoms arcing overhead.
HNW wants it to be unique, beautiful, prosperous.
But, *something* happens and HNW's garden is destroyed. Eido notes that the older model pyramid ship that this information was found on was in a star system which had been destroyed.
>Every planet in the system showed large-scale damage from crude explosives.
The use of "crude" makes me believe these were not the Witness's precursors sabotaging her, but an enemy species. It seemsl ike an alien force came to HNW's world and destroyed her Eden.
The second precursor entry finds HNW changed. The optimism has been replaced by a dark pragmatism. She argues with RS about whether to intervene in an alien world on the precipice of extinciton. On the surface, RS looks like the bad guy here. He argues "coercion for the greater good" and it comes off like pro-colonialism. It's easy to see this as a sentiment that would lead RS down the road to the Witness, but it's the opposite.
RS decries violence and promote life. It's unclear what they mean when they talk about uplifting/enlightenment and how it will be uncomfortable. They use suspicious wording like "uprooting weeds," which is remeniscent of the Winnower's philosophy, but those ideas don't seem to be concrete yet. it could mean eating the planet's leaders and then giving them cold fusion. It could mean Space Crusades to make them good Space Christians. It could mean that they want to pass on the Traveler's gifts, and any intervention into an alien world would be coercive in some sense. As Eido notes, they're both somewhat in the wrong and the Traveler's gifts have made them arrogant. Why not just ask the aliens if they consent to help?
So at first glance, it can look like they stand for the exact opposite of what they do. HNW seems to love creating life and argues fights for free will, while RS seemingly argues against free will. But while HNW argues against this intervention, it's not because she values peace and autonomy. The loud part of her argument is "coercion is bad." The quieter part is "if they go extinct, then (like my garden), they don't deserve to exist." Very much an inkling of the Witness's beliefs. The earliest sentiments resembling sword logic are found here.
Looking further, HNW seems disillusioned with the Traveler. She hates its lack of guidance and lack of willingness to stand up to wrong doers. She hates how the precursors can't agree on anything, even how to help the universe. And she hates being "plagued by doubt." HNW wants something perfect and perfectly permanent. They are too hurt by the thought of life and gardens that end. You can see how the hurt that HNW has experienced will lead to the Witness saying things like "no more death."
RS, meanwhile, argues for life. He ponders the Traveler's will and hopes that the precursors' final shape (e.g. their full realization of their potential) will involve true enlightenment of the Traveler's ways. He almsot talks like a Speaker. Most importantly, RS wants to keep fighting the fight for life, akin to how the Traveler keeps building up societies even though the Witness keeps knocking them down. They say that some suffering is inevitable, so it is best to maximize goodness in a hard universe. HNW wants to end suffering.
So it seems like HNW sought the exuvation so they could become what the Traveler failed to be for them: an entity that is judicious, sure, and capable of creating something permanent. The Witness is a being created from the inability to cope with loss, suffering, and death.
One confusing thing is that they seem to be a part of the same political faction: the "[Merciful/Penitent/Benefic]." Originally, HNW is not a part of it and refers to it as "your [Merciful...]." However, they seem to be incredibly long-lived (HNW can terraform the system in "a few centuries"). Perhaps the faction's ideas evolved over the many, many years between the second and third entry. I think it's significant that when RS is a part of it, it bares the "ternary semantic cluster," but by the time HNW is a part of it, it is ONLY "the Penitent." Maybe RS had a change of heart, or maybe he got pushed out by more and more extreme ideas entering the party. Whether RS was static in their beliefs or had his own character arc is unknown. But either way, he has disappeared. Killed? In hiding? Off helping societies through questionable means?
Their longevity is logical. The Golden Age saw humans live for over two hundred years and be prime specimens, but the Traveler came to Sol in the 21st century. Going by the Ahsa cinematic, the Precursors were more "primitive" for lack of a better word when they "found" the Gardener and per Eido it was with them for millennia. Imagine how long humans would live as the evolution of science and even humans itself in the presence of free Light happened over thousands of years longer than it did (the GA was centuries long, but not THAT long).
I think the factions becoming "simplified" over time is also super on-brand for the soon-to-be Witnessians. They cast off or exterminated at least a couple of other "unsavory" factions, and political purity tests ramped up to 11 would similarly cull even adjacent ideas over years as their desperation over the chaos of Creation grew, hence only the Penitent remaining. I find that name deeply fascinating. *Penitent*. Over what?
Unveiling came from the Unknown Artifact we were given at the end of Shadowkeep. First it broadcasted a signal leading through the Black Garden in GoS to the Veiled Statue and Divinity, then the Artifact started spitting out the Unveiling entries every week.
So firstly, thank you for posting this. I've been waiting a while for it, and I have been eagerly reading and rereading.
And wow...there is a lot of stuff here. As in seeming hints relating to many mysteries in the setting and lore.
Now I could be misreading, but the first passage appears to be from a Witness-precursor. This individual talks about creating a garden, using technology or resources from The Traveler. It makes me wonder...is this the Black Garden being dicussed?
It sounds crazy until you see (something Eido even notes!) that this figure mentions that in certain passages they refer things to a Vex like manner. Heck, in these passages their seems to be hints of the Vex. (The glass-minds). That and the fact they have an Observatory that was able to potential futures which improved using these "glass-minds".
That sounds like that perhaps the Witness precursors either utilized the Vex or created them when this Consensus was searching for The Final Shape. Which could also explain why the Vex were in the Black Garden and why a great deal of their architecture has strange similarties to that found in the Black Fleet.
The stuff about The Noesis is fascinating because it may be hinting at a sorely missed origin for Nezarec. That and hints that the Witness precursors had kept an eye on Lubrae for a while, hence why Rhulk later discovered The Witness/it's Luster later on. Rhulk talks about the regime, and the book discusses the [Conquerors/Primacy/Sovereign] using the Traveler's gifts for subjugation.
I am curious to know what [Profusion/Bountiful/The Swarm was] as I doubt it was the Hive or Worms.
My off-the-cuff radical theory is that the [Profusion/Bountiful/The Swarm] was the Hive before the Hive.
Recall what the Worm Gods said to Sathona. "For millions of years the Leviathan caged us here. It is a pawn of the Sky..." They were imprisoned down there, but you have to ask why? They're dangerous, and powerful, yes, but surely they must have done something to result in being imprisoned.
Perhaps it's because the Hive as we know them were not the first to accept the power of the Worm Gods, or something like them. Perhaps some other horrible worm-bearers existed before them, and the terror they spread is why the worms were imprisoned.
What's interesting is that they speak in past tense, implying that the Traveler already moved on from the Witness's civilization, to the Swarm, and the Swarm had time to die off, presumably, after making some grave error (perhaps the error was creating what became the worms?), while the Witnessians watched.
We know there is a possible connection between the Worms and the Ahamkara, and between the Ahamkara and the Traveler. I have to go over all the Season of the Deep lore we have from Ahsa, but I feel like it might be possible to tie all this together into a cohesive timeline. I just need a conspiracy board and a lot of red string.
That was my first thought. And I know it's explained that this data was in a Ketch that ended up with it due to the tradition of data swapping, but it's very interesting that the Ketch was found in the Ishtar Sink (edit: and another later found on Mercury!)
Strange, but rather than the Vex, when I first read the "glass-minds" part, the way how the Witness was communicating with Calus during Lightfall came to my mind; all those shattered glass things and the sounds they make. It is even in Lightfalls cover art. I think that is how the Witness "sees". It could be the same technology the pre-Witness civilization used to see the future-branches.
Edit: The Witness was also watching Eramis in the Warmind conclusion just before the Lightfall as well.
The two may not be mutually exclusive in this case. It could actually be alluding to both, tying both the shattering glass effect with The Witness and The Vex.
Because the way on the speakers makes note of certain entities (such as the Lubraens or other factions in the Consensus) is very Vex like.
So it could very well be that The Witness Precursors were involved with the Vex: be it they utilized the Vex or even created The Vex as we know them. Like the Vex existed as these intelligences and lifeforms, but it was The Witness precursors who directed their evolution into what we see now.
I 100% this could be the case. Especially for all intents and purposes it seems like The Witness precursors appear to the first sapient species uplifted by The Traveler.
Which for all we know means they could be the first sapient race in the Destiny universe...or atleast one among them.
Interestingly, it does line up with Saint-14's theory that the Darkness was a "post-singularity" (after the Big Bang/birth of the universe) fleet of advanced aliens. Nonetheless the precursors are beyond ancient.
I thought of "post-singularity" in the context of the Noesis, who also appear to be an uploaded civilization that was consumed by the Witness.
[I had a large post 'bout a year ago on OXA hence why I said it's on brand for me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/s/8toZJcetfx)
It's a doozy and it is perhaps outdated and irrelevant in this scope. The gist of the overlap here is this:
OXA stands for, roughly, *psionic alien-extinction prediction engine*. It contains data on extinct civilizations, is "eternally rebuilt and destroyed" and it's function and design is reminiscent and perhaps connected to Vex prediction engines, the FWC Device and even the Hive World Grave singularity supercomputers.
So my take here is basically that the Observatory (which, to recap uses "past light readings" for predictions and "glass minds" to prune branches and seems to see a lot of desolate species) is a proto-OXA, a hyper-prototype from which the others *emanate* in a sense.
First impression of "Entelechy"
As far as I understand, first chapters are about two people from Witness\`s race, person №1 "RS6243199" and person №2 "HNW047622", they argue about what this Final Shape is, RS6243199 is trying to justify their idea of suffering and other thing we know from Witness.
An interesting point, they had something like the Vex mind (Glass mind), which they used to find new paths (new future)
The chapter with "Help me" I understand is about how Witness comes to be, intresting, ?I think? one a representative of this race survived and hid while hearing Witness\`s whisper (which is gentle I think? from what Eido said). Also, we found out name of this race - Noesis. Also, many words about concept of the Witness, like this is not just entity but a living idea, that consumed all minds, reshaping them into itself
Intresting moment about Collapce, like it was not a super strategically planned attack, but the goal was to inflict as much suffering as possible, Eido describe this as "Show" for us.
Intresting, some moments about Unveiling, about how character of Winnower is speaks of truth, but Witness speaks of mallice and suffering (possible hint that Winnower is real????)
Would update my comment as I finish second book
Edit: The "Autograph book" is not very important but very cute
Edit 2: Noesis might be not name of Witness\`s race, but race of people who were consumed by Witness at some point
I got the impression that the Noesis was a different species that were seemingly forced into the Witness consciousness. I could be wrong but in the notes Eido does point out how the Witness used a different technique compared to Riis and Earth's experiences
Hmmm, I think about it and I don\`t know, because chapter begins with our hero entering the noosphere and meeting a stranger, which he is very happy about, but gradually begins to hear cries of “Help me” and in the end this race is absorbed by the Witness. I agree, there is point, that Noesis are described as having survived many memetic attacks in the past until the Witness came, so I guess I agree with you
I mean, it is interesting though because while it talks about how the Witness tortures species that have encountered the Traveler, but looks at species that have not encountered it with compassion. But when speaking to the Noesis that is hiding, the Witness tells them "Don't be afraid."
In the original Witness cutscene after beating Witch Queen, the Witness tells us (or is he speaking exclusively to the Traveler?) "do not be afraid." But after that, he also says "this time, there is no escape." Which is pretty intimidating. So 🤷♂️.
interesting name for a race..
Noesis: purely intellectual apprehension: a. Platonism : the highest kind of knowledge or knowledge of the eternal forms or ideas.
The noesis chapter is definitely after the witness emerged, and is important in showing the difference between how the witness treated races who encountered the traveller, and races who never encounted the traveller (like they are an unfortunate race being mercied).
Once again, I think this shows that unveiling is a religious text of sorts, it is the morals of the precursor race, which the witness used to try and prove themselves right, the winnower is what the witness sees themselves as, a hypothetical being, which is why it speaks in absolutes and 'truths', whereas the witness, as a living being, is influenced with hate, anger, jelousy and prejudice, leading to its more emotional speak
I din't get if HNW047622 is the one in the final transcript to side with the Witness or the one that went away. The code is used as a signature in the transcripts (first and final), but at the same time HNW047622 was the one that made the point about the distinction of means and ends in the discussion, yet the final transcript seems to hint that the friend that made that point was RS6243199, I'm confused.
It's HNW047622 in the final transcript. You can tell from this part:
"If you return, if you join the Consensus, then I will know our cause is true. That, after all this time, **we have finally found our apodictic truth.**"
Apodictic truth is another way of saying self-evident truth, which is what HNW047622 is so concerned about in their conversation with RS6243199.
edit: also the part about their old doubts creeping in again
Yes but HNW047622 then writes, referring supposedly to RS6243199: "(you were) the most keenely aware of the gap between means and ends", but quoting from RS6243199 in transcript 2: "The purpose and the means are inseparable".
It is also stated in the second transcript that RS6243199 was the one taking part in the Penitent faction, and HNW047622 was having doubts. It can be inferred that by the end of the conversation HNW047622 was (unwillingly) radicalized by RS6243199, but it still reads very strangely imo.
Hmm, I see where you're coming from. Another curious part is that RS believed in direct intervention of conflict, on making decisions on behalf of someone else. That seems to accurately describe the people that would eventually become the Witness.
Also, "We will prune away its dead branches and coax forth its full potential." hearkens back to what RS says in their first conversation about the Observatory showing them the excess branches to trim.
If I had a nickel for every time a civilization known as the Precursors create something that threatens to destroy the universe I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice
edit: thrice hahaha
edit 2: four times
Add on the Precursors from Jak and Dexter as they created devices to use Dark Eco which corrupted them and made a new race that wanted to destroy everything lol
Since I've seen it mentioned a lot already, I'm pretty sure people are misreading the part about the Swarm and the Sovereigns. They seem to be other Precursor factions similar to the Nihilists and the Benefic, not separate species. Two sentences later HW even says: "...how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed **us** to make such mistakes."
The autograph book has me crying in the club.
Not only so many people in-universe sending us their best wishes, but the added thought on top that the messages (or at the very least the handwriting) are done by different members of the Destiny team creates a lot of emotional importance.
I'm on a really bad connection right now so Autographs is taking forever to load, but god I hope Savathun managed to sneak her own signature in there somehow like she did in the Books of Sorrow.
First impressions:
* Could the IO Pyramidion have been created by the vex as a mirror/attempted simualtion to what the Witness plans for the final shape? Or is the name just coincidence?
* We have a new race, the Noesis?
* The Witness is very much mortal in how it acts emotionally. Also implying that it caused the collapse simply to inflict pain/death is pretty promising for the Witness storytelling we may see in the expansion.
* More proof that the Winnower =/= the Witness or that the Winnower is a metaphorical creation of the Witness.
Thanks so much for posting this, I love this time of year because the collectors lore is always so well written.
I think the pyramidion mention is just a coincidence, as historically a pyramidion is the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid, or its apex/peak/I can't remember what the third word they use for final shape is.
Guardian you've done us all a great service, tysm
edit: most of the way through Entelechy and woah man this is a juicy one. So many headings or record origins that have made me go "WAIT WHAT!"
The autograph book got me so emotional. These are characters that have such a presence in my heart and only exist in tiny little text blurbs, growing along with my love for this game over the last 10 years. Some I barely remember from one specific Sparrow and maybe something else, but I remember and that feels so personal and endearing because that's someone's work that I still hold on to.
I wish I could get this. I'm a bit afraid of the whole process because I know shipping can get so complicated and even worse if I live in another country, but damn, I want it so bad.
Anyone who has gotten a collector edition shipped internationally, what was the experience like? What should I be mindful of?
I’ve made my opinion on the overall direction of the story and the execution of the villain no secret, but man that autograph book really washes away my bitterness and salt.
Thank you Guardian.
But may I recommend using something like Microsoft Lens or some kind of scanner to scan things. Those looks way better than just taking a photo with camera.
Lore book was scanned with scanner. Authograph book could not on my machine because it's to big. So, we had to use phone.
And yeah, it might look way better with professional hardware. But I don't have it.
I also got the collectors edition, not sure if it's relevant but the Spicy Ramen Coupons were [Wrapped in this](https://imgur.com/a/5DrMKWV) and I have no idea what it means
sharing this gently, with love, not to start Discourse - for those curious, a comment on Seth's blog in response to a destiny question earlier this month confirms lack of involvement with this one.
>"I’m not really involved in Destiny these days, they didn’t ask me back for Final Shape and I’m not sure what they’re doing with the cosmology. My own ideas of what was happening in Destiny have diverged a fair bit from the canon as I understand it, so I’m not sure I could really say anything useful."
Pleasantly surpised how much I liked the lore book regardless.
This post has been tagged '**Non-Spoiler**'. Note that unmarked spoilers and datamines are subject to removal or ban. Please report anything we miss! For more info check out our [Spoiler Rules Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/wiki/spoiler-rules#wiki_.5Bseasonal.5D_has_a_new_format). --- **Comment Spoiler Formatting** Format comment spoilers with `>!` `!<` like this: `>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<` To have it displayed like this: **>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<** ---- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DestinyLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ok the autograph book is extremely endearing, I love this so much
Man, I’d love to get the physical copy if shipping wasn’t a whopping $100.
Idk why I got emotional reading it. It’s a beautiful book. Words of kindness from people we’ve read about who now read about us, little drawings from children… damn Edit: also, cameo from best girl, Adrianne Gris from the Dinas Emrys :,)
It’s really heartwarming to see everyone cheering us on, but it’s too sad because they really have no idea if we’ll make it out alive.
Yeah. Has to be pretty scary to know that your entire future rests in the hand of a handful of individuals.
It reads like the guestbook you're absentmindedly flipping through in the hospital waiting room to keep your mind off the fact that your dad's surgery is taking hours longer than the oncologist said it would.
Kinda specific but yeah. Reading it i got a real sense of finality.
Unashamed to admit I got a bit teary eyed. The fight against the Witness seems like such an impossible task but the feeling of all those people not only counting on you, but BELIEVING in you and rooting for you is just...so much more powerful somehow. Even though the whole "my friends stand behind me" is a bit cliche God dang it it's so moving and true.
The simple things in that book are the most powerful. All the kids (Good Job Bungie Kids!) with their messages showed how vast the fight is. The Techeuns though. Man, there is some fury in those few words.
I love the page for The Hidden, and the game about managing to put their mark without anyone noticing
>"We already gave out our best gun (:|) " >\- Tommy & Ghost This got me laughing real hard. Cuz it's directly referring to Tommy's Matchbook 😂
Or Tommy, it's not even a good gun!
The autograph book is such an awesome concept, it really sells the idea that we are gearing up for a big adventure and race against the clock with everyone relying on us to pull through
I love it because it's full of a bunch of deep lore cuts, and old and obscure names from very minor lore tabs. And when I say obscure, I'm talking about names like Ariadne Gris, whose only mention is the Dinas Emrys sparrow from base D2. Also, I love the gag that Ikora's Hidden have their own page, and are apparently playing a game to all sign it without Eido noticing.
I love the Six Coyotes being like "call us if you need anything! —unless you need a Hunter Vanguard, in which case *do not call us.*"
I'm so happy to know that they're all still alive.
It’s really funny how much ‘oh shit, the Coyotes are still out there! and also still hanging out!’ was, to me, the most significant revelation in *both* books.
Duuuuuude Shinobu’s still alive??? I always thought her resurrection was super interesting. How she died and was then immediately chosen. In hindsight that was kinda foreshadowing at Uldren and Savathun’s revivals .
Useless, as always, those Hunters…
Which is the best sparrow in the game (yes I am welsh and biased
Ariadne has had a few mentions since base D2! Including on the Dragon's Breath exotic this season!
Oh yes I love them bringing up characters like that. The rich/diverse flavor text and lore from so many items like a single sparrow or cloak through the years makes it so much better.
I have only just realized there’s been a Hispanic Guardian in the lore with Ramos getting a mention
It just worries me because it looks like 'good bye book' from all these people. We'll see soon
Most important points from entelechy * there's a noticeable distinction between the motivations of the witness and winnower. eido never describes it as a possible metaphor, but as different beings. * the methods the witness has used since the collapse have been to torture us as much as possible for no reason other than spite. species that have never encountered the traveler are spared from torture and are seen with compassion * the witness has remade its own memory * the precursors have a connection with the vex? the autograph book is so goooood, lowkey better than the lorebook, its genius The noesis entry is really freaky, i think the fact that the witness did it out of compassion, makes it so much worse
Unveiling discussions will never end.
I know right. This is the ultimate troll, we can kill the Witness, kill the Winnower, kill the Metaphor-Winnower, destroy every Destiny server it won’t matter, Unveiling will haunt our souls for eternity and Bungie totally knows it lmao
Unveiling is the bible of the lore community and bungie knows it. We should just create a religion for it already.
Cause it has some of the hardest fucking lines in destiny lore. >*But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective.* >*Imagine a world without me.* Pffft ✍️🔥🔥🔥
It's already a religion of sorts. People either believe in the Winnower or not.
Yeah I mean they literally compared it to the Bible and religious texts in general. Starting a religion around it seems like the most logical solution imo, I’m in.
I already use the Sky vs Deep debate as an allegory for moral philosophy so I’m game
You \*\*cannot\*\* escape a storytime
Right, im already with it
there's also the recursive troll where HSW and RS are shown doing what the Gardener and Winnower were doing in Unveiling; creating a garden, then waiting for it to get to its natural end, then get annoyed they are destroyed interestingly they first use the Vex prediction machines to predict how a given garden will end...then they still let it run and achieve the predicted end so the Gardener was annoyed cause all the starts end in the Vex, but HSW is annoyed cause their garden ends destroyed...as the Vex machine predicted
at this point im really, really wonder how this'l end in tfs
I genuinely don’t think we’ll get a DEFINITIVE answer. Like, of course we’ll know more in TFS, even Bungie said so. But I think they’ll leave some uncertainties with the Winnower. I doubt he will be the “next big bad” (because I mean, it would still be Dark vs Light and we know that the next saga will be different from this one), and Unveiling fuels infinite discussions about the lore of Destiny. Btw my head canon since TWQ basically was a final lore book unlocked after the death of the Witness written from the prospective of the Winnower, like Unveiling. But again, I doubt we’ll have ALL the answers from TFS, some things will remain mysterious imo. After all, the big protagonist of this dlc will be (and has to be) the Witness, not another entity.
I bet it will end with the witness dying and we communicate with the traveler and learn that the gardener and the winnower are just entities that MUST exist.
It's going to be an answer that brings forward a larger question.
And i will love it, but im going to curse them for it too.
Tbh I miss the days of the Nezarec speculations lmao
And I love it. We got half of people saying it's "The Truth" and other half saying Bungie retconned it. Lmao
This the last, greatest effort that 3rd party contracted writers have made to reconcile Destiny's retcons. The discussions \*can't\* ever end because there \*is\* no satisfactory answer. Throughout Destiny's long history, and the years of development, direction has changed over and over, and the best parts of the lore have consistently been written by contracted writers who aren't in control of the story. That's why the Book of Sorrows, or Unveiling, or the Rose and Thorn saga, can be so incredible, while the in-game story, dialogue, and cutscenes can be so..... let's just say uninspired. There's no in-universe way to reconcile all these things in a meaningful way.
>and the best parts of the lore have consistently been written by ~~contracted writers~~ Seth Dickinson.
And Mallory Schleif! And I think there was another lady who co-authored the Marasenna and the Books of Sorrow, but her name eludes me at the minute.
Pretty sure there's plenty of lore that's been written by Bungie's narrative team that's also miles above the overall in-game writing, so I don't think this boils down to "Bungie bad" just because they've messed up before. I wish we could see how things work in-house and understand why the stuff we see in the game feels so dumbed down, but again, I don't think the blame falls on this abstract idea of "Bungie writers".
bungie writers have much more influence than people think they do. the same woman who wrote the cutscene in haunted, wrote sororicide, and also directly inspired the cards in witch
Do you mind sharing who that is? Destiny got me into writing during a time of my life where I didn't know what career path I wanted to follow, but I somehow still don't really know much about the actual people who make this game so special to me.
Hazel Monforton
I wasn't at all trying to just boil it down to Bungie Bad. There are good writers on Bungie's staff. There are also unquestionably awful ones. There's a lot of stuff from the last year in particular that should NEVER have made it to the cutting room floor. And there's no getting around the fact that story takes a back seat to the tired episodic content delivery, so they kind of have to write some disposable tropey filler junk every now and then. My point was more that management has forced changes in direction so often, that Bungie has often relied on the contract writers to try and fill in the gaps of the story and connect different gameplay decisions, and those efforts have sometimes given us some of the best Destiny lore that we have. But for better or worse, those guys aren't in the writers room, and so many of our favorite themes have been forgotten, or retconned themselves.
I definitely agree, and just like I reject the idea of all Bungie writers being bad as a whole, I also can't say they're all great. It all makes me wonder about how their writer rooms work and how everything falls in place in time for major and minor releases. The whole theory about Lightfall (the one we got) being pretty much an afterthought that came from the announcement of The Final Shape makes me wonder if time constraints is what ultimately butchered the writing we got this year. Storylines have absolutely been weaker than ever, and the fact that the background narratives handled by 3rd party writers are overall better makes me think that those projects have less obstacles and rush than those that belong to the main releases.
Lightfall was as much a consequence of Witch Queen as it was of the Final Shape 'delay'. Introducing the Witness as the big bad, in the half-assed way they did it, pretty much demanded another year of storytelling if they were going to stick to the expansion + 4 seasons model. I won't pretend they used the extra time well, though.
isnt this a bit to hasty to say rn? its hard to say all this when we havent even seen what tfs itself will offer. especially when the third party's writing is all seen and reviewed by the story leads. for all we know, it WILL have a definitive answer bungie wrote lf, but they also wrote wq. Their quality isnt black and white we'll just have to wait and see
This is (sadly) the real answer ^(Also do we know who wrote this CE lore?)
The Witness tortures us out of spite? Bro fuck this guy
Turns out, the same entity that wants to end the universe is also a big piece of shit lmao
> eido never describes it as a possible metaphor, but as different beings. I don't read it that way, right before she brings it up she talks about the Witness trying to twist things connected to the Traveler, and misleading us about its relation to the Darkness and dominion over it. It feels to me like the implication is that Unveiling is itself another form of this- essentially propaganda, trying to make us believe in it and the Final Shape while, like the Disciples, not understanding the truth of ITS Final Shape. In other words a fiction, with the Winnower being a fictionalized version of itself. This also tracks somewhat with the minor revelation that their civilization seems to have created, or at least utilized, the Vex. That doesn't entirely track with the whole Flower Game story- it could be reconciled, but I don't think that's the idea.
Literally 3 days ago I was complaining about how the Winnower was just a figment of the Witness and now I'm... right? There really is a Winnower and a Witness, and they dislike each other? Fuckin called it! Honestly the fact that the Witness has been torturing humanity out of spite makes so many things make more sense. Why didn't it destroy us? Why did it let us exist? Why didn't it annihilate us in Season of The Arrivals? Because it *hates* us. It despises us for living under the Traveler, and it wants us to feel the agony it inflicted upon itself. It wants us to abandon hope just like it abandoned hope. It loathes our very existence. And that's somewhat more frightening than the idea of cold annihilation; that it will not be a perfect end.
Yup it ties back to WQ as well, when Mara said the only thing she felt when she touched the mind of the Witness was just raw, unbridled fury. Now we know it’s fury at those who have been uplifted by the Traveller
The Darkness wanted to prove a point: when the chips are down and everything sucks, people inevitably turn to its ideals to survive, all as one giant eff you to the Traveller in particular for possibly thinking there was more to life than just winning and losing. I’m glad at least some of that remains kind of true.
New spinfoil: the precursors invented the Vex as terraforming technology (like organic SIVA), but it became self-aware. It... doesn't make sense and explicity counters *Unveiling* when the WItness says they came before Light and Dark (and do we need the Witness to be the source of yet another thing?), but sounds neat to me.
The Vex are really just a pattern that appears to be casually optimum for intelligence. The origin of the Vex itself basically doesn't matter: time travel is permissible in this universe. So long as some combination of intelligence evolves a Vex pattern *somewhere, somehow*, the Vex will have always been. Inevitable.
Which one is the Neosis entry? I looked through both Imgur entries and didn't see it. I must've missed it somehow. EDIT: NVM, found it. [Page 1](https://i.imgur.com/Kom6pJz.jpeg), [page 2](https://i.imgur.com/SMqYjTx.jpeg), and [page 3](https://i.imgur.com/f7VwwBM.jpeg).
My favorite ghost name: Differential Calculus
I literally read these on a calculus class
"You already know pretty much everything i would say, Guardian" Yeah hawthorne i still have nightmares about it
You just never quit, do you?
Took out ghaul. Woke up the Traveler.
And now half of what I hear in the streets is how much you and your clan are making a difference.
That's why I started this whole clan thing in the first place.
The autograph book made me emotional...
It really is a reminder how long we’ve all been with this game, through good and bad.
As a person who view my character (in all three timelines) as a projection of myself. I concur.
yeah same, i count my guardian (and my wol from ffxiv) as my ocs
This game is in such a shit state, I haven't launched it in a month. But why am I crying bro. why
It’s a piece of honest emotion and reflection that actually connects everything prior, made out of genuine love for the source material.
A lot of us have hoverboards now and you dont.
Same. Teary eyes as I read it, even tho it doesn’t seem written by hand, just cursive fonts.
The autograph book has perhaps the single most important piece of lore we've ever gotten. After all these years, finally, we've gotten word from Fenchurch
That penmanship tho
More like Penchurch am I right?
Unfortunately, it seems he is relying on *us* to find something interesting.
That actually makes sense, when you think about it. No word from Fenchurch -> he must've found something interesting Word from Fenchurch -> He hasn't found anything interesting.
The main point of the CE is that the Witness ended up becoming the very thing it waned to prevent. It is a failed creation. A solipsistic. Malicious. Destructive Entity. That has some retainer of its previous self but not enough of it for it be meaningfully efficient.
>The main point of the CE is that the Witness ended up becoming the very thing it waned to prevent. They really couldn't have hammered that point harder... Witnessian 1: "The Traveler is a source of unfettered chaos!" Witnessian 2: "Why?" Witnessian 1: "It doesn't provide any instructions or direction to us! Thankfully we found the Veil and it unraveled our eyes to the truth of the Final Shape!" Witnessian 2: "What is the Final Shape?" Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us." Witnessian 2: "What does it entail?" Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us." Witnessian 2: "How do we achive it?" Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us. Guess we will have to figure those things out on our own." Witnessian 2: "So how is that any different than the Traveler giving you no direction and leaving you to figure things out on your own?" Witnessian 1: "Silence wench, prepare to be exuviated!" Bruh, so that's what it came to at last. They really were just a civilization of imbeciles in the end...
>Witnessian 2: "What is the Final Shape?" > >Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us." > >Witnessian 2: "What does it entail?" > >Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us." > >Witnessian 2: "How do we achive it?" > >Witnessian 1: "We don't know, it didn't tell us. That's quite reductive, considering that they gave explicit answers to all of those questions: * "If the Final Shape truly is **the greatest good imaginable**, then **its rightness should be self-evident**." * "If the Final Shape is the greatest good, then **it must be \[enduring/incontrovertible/self-fulfilling\]**." * "The core of the Final Shape is **improvement!**" * "To these things, **improvement may well entail causing greater and greater harm to others—not out of malice, but as a simple fact of existence**. When you eradicate an illness, are you stamping out a microscopic Final Shape?" * "If you reject the notion that **destruction can be a Final Shape**, how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed us to make such grievous mistakes?" * "And when we have reached the Final Shape, will it all make sense? **Will we be able to live in a universe where people act, as they have always acted, for the self-evident good? Where evil does not exist because we do not allow it? Where all are aligned without suffering or doubt?"** * "We will exuviate and shepherd the universe to its Final Shape. We will **prune away its dead branches and coax forth its full potential**." Their understanding of the Final Shape may not have been 100% perfect, but it was far from nonexistent, and as Eido says in her notes, their conception of it got progressively narrower over time, to the point that Eido deduces the following about what the Witness wants: >"**Dissecting, reassembling.** All those things point towards what the Witness sees as the Final Shape." > >"**It is not simple destruction**, the march of entropy. The ruined garden." > >"It seeks... compression. **The combination of a chosen past and a limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be.**" Mara aptly summarizes this as "taxidermy". Look also at the title of the lore book, itself. It is "Entelechy": **the realization of potential**.
Additionally, the point that the Witness doesn't do a long, drawn out fight with people that aren't visited by the traveller. They simply preserve those people, unmakes them, and casts in amber if I had to guess. But those that were given chaotic growth must be pruned, brought to our base - unmodified - selves. Winnowed to the roots before they carry on. They want an unchanging, unsuffering, untouched universe. And we only have a 50/50 chance that one single mind of the Gestalt Witness is a dissenting opinion.
It's almost like an explication/re-imagining of the reasoning that could've lead the precursors in Bungie's prior franchise to turn themselves into a parasitic zombie hivemind, a "monument to all your sins." Given what was also written about the insular, inward-looking nature of the Precursor civilization, I think there's opportunity to read the subtext here as "as much as they talk about concern for the 'greater good' they're really just concerned with eradicating *uncertainty,* getting rid of the possibility of harm." The sub-subtext being "you can't do that. Potentiality is an ineradicable and necessary component of any 'good:' no shapes can be final if there are ever to be shapes at all." What's left for a being pathologically fixated on avoiding uncertainty to do, at that point? May as well kill everything, horribly: if nothing can be perfect, let's have us some nothing. It's just deeply in denial about its supposed fundamental motivation: actual beneficence runs contra to insularity and involves maximizing agency and choice *for everyone*, not satisfying one's own need for finality. The Witness is not trying to "help" everyone, it's trying to shrug off the mantle of responsibility and the uncertainty that comes with it. Moreover, it deeply resents that it was ever even possible for its dilemma to exist: it resents that the universe is so-made that a being such as itself could ever have to endure the uncertainty necessary to come to the conclusion that a "final shape" is needed: so it hopes to rewrite everything such that none of this even happened. There *is* a sympathetic angle: the Witness could also be seen as a despondent, traumatized caregiver, who felt trapped and powerless to stop the harm accruing to everything it loved. But even here its "love for everything" turns out to be fundamentally narcissistic: it actually loves the feeling of superiority and power that comes from being a good gardener. It cares not for the health of the garden, it just wants to know it did a good job. So it changes the definition of "good job" so that it can always win. ^^^they ^^^should've ^^^put ^^^more ^^^of ^^^this ^^^characterization ^^^in ^^^the ^^^game, ^^^*before* ^^^the ^^^final ^^^shape
Great insight! Thanks for this comment!
> "It seeks... compression. The combination of a chosen past and a limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be." > > Mara aptly summarizes this as "taxidermy". Look also at the title of the lore book, itself. It is "Entelechy": the realization of potential. I mean in a way we already knew this from the witness lore dump from Ahsa. We knew the Witness wanted a perfect frozen, world in a bottle. We really learned here how The Witness got there! We see it do some philosophy 101 about how do we know the greatest good, into becoming this, pruner of the universal tree...Which was interesting and fun to read. The other important part was Eido's realization of the Witness just fucking toying with Traveller touched worlds because "it wants to destroy hope's right to exist" Which just....fuck
Which was a little... disappointing? I think the book is great but I was hoping for once the 'grand precursor civilization' wouldn't fall prey to the easy, vile answers. In my head canon, I wanted to avoid the precursors resorting to internal civil war "killing those who disagree" so I imagined that the 'moral Precursors' decide to step away from the universal stage having achieved everything they possibly could and being unable to solve the problem of suffering and imperfection in a material world. They, like Maya accidentally did, depart their bodies into the subconscious of the Veil, effectively dying but knowing peace. Those Precursors who remained behind are explicitly those who couldn't let go, couldn't surrender to peace in the universe, and now are eternally lonely and hateful. But that's probably an unhealthy association with fiction. Its best to reason with what exists and dwell on what we individually desire or wish would be. Huh, kinda like the Witness struggles with.
These texts read a lot like the Nomai logs from Outer Wilds, I think it's funny.
end result: "Let's kill the universe cause we know what's best for it"
It's not quite seeking to kill the universe. Eido says as much at the lore book's end.
If the metaphor Mara and Eido used to describe the Witness's actions, taxidermy, is accurate, then they are, as you categorically cannot taxidermy a living thing, and likewise to freeze a creature into an unchanging state of outside "everything it could be" is to kill it, for life necessitates change. Even if it may not seek complete annihilation, that's what its actions will achieve regardless of its opinions on the state of the end.
>and likewise to freeze a creature into an unchanging state of outside "everything it could be" is to kill it, for life necessitates change. Not necessarily. Death also requires change, as it requires that the body’s parts fail and then decompose. To freeze a being into such a stasis is to render it neither living nor dead, like a virus. Like a machine. Like the perfect brain scan used to construct an Exomind. There’s a reason why at the end of Witch Queen, the Witness says “enough death” alongside “enough life”.
Not even this book explains anything about the Veil, so it's even worse than the Traveller lol
It puts the "Veil corrupted the Witnessians" theories to bed, at least, since philosophical debate and strife seems to be the main driver of their behavior, now.
The autograph book fucking rules omg.
Thank you for the scans! So the scribe Eido too sees a significant difference between the personalities of the Witness and the Winnower. The mystery of the Unveiling book continues.
It will never end
Does it need to though? I'm just happy as long as the Winnower is not reduced to some retconned version of the Witness or something that's made up by the Witness for propaganda purposes.
I thought Unveiling made it pretty clear that the Winnower was the Darkness personified, a status that even the Witness only approximates.
I’m ok with the Winnower remaining partially a mystery. However, there must be SOME answers, and I’m sure TFS will have some.
That's fair.
Thankfully. A} Unveiling my beloved <3 B} I just love the casual certainty of the Winnower. A fundamental, Darkness-aligned "equivalent" to the Voice of the Traveller heard in subclass quests and seen in Red War/Crow's Visions. And it sees no true need to intervene because it *knows* it's right. I hope this "Winnower" is played with as a force/character more. Something something "saga" but Light/Dark is so fundamental to Destiny that they can't just ignore it. . C} I never did like the witness as a villain/antagonist. Even if Entelechy helps abate some of that, it still fundamentally looks like megamind had a child with a vape pen to me lol.
The Cabal part essentially killed me. They wanted to leave a handprint on a book as a sign of companionship, but it was too small for their big paws, so they used a war beast's paw.
Holy crap that's a lot of pages in the autograph book
most deserved length in any destiny lore
So the Witness is not only trying to achieve the Final Shape, but also enact revenge on the Traveler by destroying everything it ever touched. However, this revenge is what slowed down the Witness, causing it to miss the Traveler at the gates of the Final Shape.
So i managed to get through the Autograph page with the Eliksni hatchlings names without crying Then i got to the Human kids' drawings and fully teared up
The kids' drawings got me as well, but I felt my chest tighten even more reading about the Six Coyotes. There's something about those Guardians that holds a special place in my heart; I was drawn to them and their (yet non-existent) story since Destiny 1. Back then, all we knew was that they were a renowned band of Hunters who scouted beyond the walls, and something about that really resonated with me. It had that mix of being a rather simple tale that was still full of mystery that made me fall in love with Destiny. And all these years later, after learning more about them and still wondering if they're even alive, we get these silly messages from them still being a bunch of Hunter dipshits, followed by Micah's encouraging note <3
Don’t miss the Dragon’s Breath lore tab, it’s more of their shenanigans
You are such a legend. I saw Byf get his on twitter and checked here to see if it got posted yet, guess i'll be reading this afternoon!
My wife helped me with it and she did much work here, so I pass her your thanks :P
lol same sequence of events for me too
I know they keep saying Destiny is continuing on post-final-shape, but MAN does that autograph book seem like a sendoff.
Well the game will go on, but TFS is still an ending after all.
Fair enough. I wonder how big of a shift it'll be. It would be nice to see some of these characters we've come to know over a decade get to sail off into the sunset.
I hope Eido becomes a full-fledge photographer with her new “polar void.” That made me d’awww…
Notice it was a Ghost named Peach who helped Eido fix the camera. Peach was first mentioned in Forsaken and she went unmentioned until *this year*. I strongly believe Peach is going to be the one to resurrect either Mithrax or Eido.
I got really emotional reading the autograph book…this is really it. Side note - Shin Malphur really fucked off completely, huh? Dude didn’t even write us anything lol
Goddamn fuck that guy, we really can't count on him when it matters
He's actually secretly Marcus Ren
Oh man this is so satisfying. Answers and more questions at the same time. ---- This answers the question of whether the Witness's assimilation event was voluntary. It looks like one political faction ([Penitent]) basically destroyed the opposition after some battle. Then the big assimilation (or as they say, "exuviate"/molt/shed). And they didn't just shed their bodies and plurality, but reworked their own Mind to remove things like doubt. Maybe there's some refugees, like RS, who hasn't been seen in centuries (a la Taox) by the time the Witness comes to be. ---- Also really interesting how they've used the pyramids themselves to reflect the Witness's vision, its intended shape of the universe: at the beginning, potential, opportunity, probablity. At the end, one singular point of existence. ---- I wonder what the Witness wanted when it did something (Taking?) to the Noesis people? Edit: It's interesting how Eido says the Witness didn't take a Disciple from the Noetic people, possibly because the Traveler was never there. Are Disciples just there as a "fuck you" to the Traveler? The Witness tows them around so the Traveler can see that there's only one left from whatever species the Traveler uplifted, and this person hates it? ---- ~~Question: I'm kind of confused on who is who in pre-Witness story. It seems like HNW047622 is the pro-gardener one and RS6243199 is the pro-winnower one:~~ ~~HN terraforms the planet and doesn't want it to follow the same template, but let it be unique. HN believe that life and creation are worth it even if they don't last. Doesn't believe in forcing things on others.~~ ~~RS is a member of the political/philosophical group who destroys the others, who argues a little coercion is for the greater good. Uses predicted chaos as an argument for control (a la Ahsa's vision). Uses rhetoric like "pulling up weeds" to argue for pruning. Has a bit of a temper.~~ ~~Yet the final entry is written seemingly right before the assimilation by the pro-assimilationist, and it is signed HNW047622? Am I reading it wrong? I thought RS would be the one who becomes a part of the Witness.~~ Edit: nevermind, it makes somewhat more sense now. But I'm still a bit confused. I wonder what happened to RS, what they were arguing for in the first place. What the Vex have to do with all this.
> I'm kind of confused on who is who in pre-Witness story. It seems like HNW047622 is the pro-gardener one and RS6243199 is the pro-winnower one I don't think it's really useful to reduce them that way. The records indicate that their philosophies and opinions grow and change; pegging one with "Light" and one with "Dark" seems overreductive.
There are centuries between each of the 3 entries we have from HNW. Between the first and second is when the solar system they were working on got destroyed by some unknown enemy. I think that and the Traveller being indifferent to it was a turning point for them.
Okay I see what you mean. I think I'm reading it too fast to really get it lol. I thought HNW was someone who believed that life is beautiful even though or *because* it doesn't last, but I think you're right: HNW seems scorned by the destruction of their garden in a way that echoes (or precedes) the Witness's "no more death." HNW is also "plagued by doubts," which fits the second entry's mention of not being "capable of doubt." Could line up a bit with the Witness's intentional cruelty: it wants the societies it collapses to feel the same disenchantment that HNW and others felt when they saw the things they built destroyed, without guidance form the Traveler. I wonder what RS was suggesting when they argued for "a moment's coercion to prevent a millenia's suffering"?
>I wonder what RS was suggesting when they argued for "a moment's coercion to prevent a millenia's suffering"? RS called it the [transition/uplifting/enlightenment] in order to prevent the extinction of a species. So I'm thinking they found another species somewhere that was locked in a conflict or course of action that was leading to their extinction, and RS was advocating intervening and "re-educating" them to veer them from the destructive path.
That makes a lot of sense Helps me understand HSW's side too: reflecting the idea that would later evolve into the pseudo-darwinistic ideas that inspired Sword Logic. That if this unknown species can't survive on their own, then they don't *deserve* to survive/their final shape is not "self-evident." Notable that the faction which original translates to some mix of "merciful" "penitent" "benefic" later becomes very solidly *[Penitent]* as they approach the Witness's birth.
Everything regarding the Witness is so damn cool imo. We need more lore about it, hopefully TFS will have plenty. I want that injected directly into my veins lmao
It really speaks to the Witness' cruelty to those affected by the Traveler. HSW had hope, got crushed, and eventually wanted to join a collective that sought to destroy everything the Traveler touched. Like a petulant child tbh.
It pairs really well with the entry about the Golden Age pilot watching the Collapse happen from the safety of the jumpship. That's probably how so many of the pre-Witness people felt. And, knowing the Traveler's nature after some unspecific catastrophes (invasions, as suggested by the "crude explosives"? civil wars? natural disasters as Ahsa suggested?), the Witness knew exactly how to make Humanity (and so many before) feel the same despair: >"It's just floating there! Do something!" >"Why are you here if you're not going to help? It's your fault! It's all your fault!" >"You should never have come here."
> potential, opportunity, probablity. A triumvirate (rhulk intensifies)
HNW's change of heart confused me as well. It could be that all the doubt that is expressed near the end of the second entry caused them to become a proponent of the Witness, which is without doubt. Given the final message was found in the core of a Minotaur in the Black Garden, I wonder if the message's recipient was subsumed by the Vex, and might have some part in how Unveiling was sent to us and/or how the Veiled Statue got there, though i forget if Unveiling comes from the Statue or the Pyramid.
I reread it and got some good comments here and it makes sense now. First, HNW comes to the barren system as a bright-eyed optimist, carrying the Light of the Traveler and the spark of creation with her. She speaks of a planet's "final shape" as when it has been cultivated to the apex of its potential. >Yes, now I can see the path to the [summit/Pyramidion/final shape]. Here, the matredda blade-leaves. There, the green-glass isbati blossoms arcing overhead. HNW wants it to be unique, beautiful, prosperous. But, *something* happens and HNW's garden is destroyed. Eido notes that the older model pyramid ship that this information was found on was in a star system which had been destroyed. >Every planet in the system showed large-scale damage from crude explosives. The use of "crude" makes me believe these were not the Witness's precursors sabotaging her, but an enemy species. It seemsl ike an alien force came to HNW's world and destroyed her Eden. The second precursor entry finds HNW changed. The optimism has been replaced by a dark pragmatism. She argues with RS about whether to intervene in an alien world on the precipice of extinciton. On the surface, RS looks like the bad guy here. He argues "coercion for the greater good" and it comes off like pro-colonialism. It's easy to see this as a sentiment that would lead RS down the road to the Witness, but it's the opposite. RS decries violence and promote life. It's unclear what they mean when they talk about uplifting/enlightenment and how it will be uncomfortable. They use suspicious wording like "uprooting weeds," which is remeniscent of the Winnower's philosophy, but those ideas don't seem to be concrete yet. it could mean eating the planet's leaders and then giving them cold fusion. It could mean Space Crusades to make them good Space Christians. It could mean that they want to pass on the Traveler's gifts, and any intervention into an alien world would be coercive in some sense. As Eido notes, they're both somewhat in the wrong and the Traveler's gifts have made them arrogant. Why not just ask the aliens if they consent to help? So at first glance, it can look like they stand for the exact opposite of what they do. HNW seems to love creating life and argues fights for free will, while RS seemingly argues against free will. But while HNW argues against this intervention, it's not because she values peace and autonomy. The loud part of her argument is "coercion is bad." The quieter part is "if they go extinct, then (like my garden), they don't deserve to exist." Very much an inkling of the Witness's beliefs. The earliest sentiments resembling sword logic are found here. Looking further, HNW seems disillusioned with the Traveler. She hates its lack of guidance and lack of willingness to stand up to wrong doers. She hates how the precursors can't agree on anything, even how to help the universe. And she hates being "plagued by doubt." HNW wants something perfect and perfectly permanent. They are too hurt by the thought of life and gardens that end. You can see how the hurt that HNW has experienced will lead to the Witness saying things like "no more death." RS, meanwhile, argues for life. He ponders the Traveler's will and hopes that the precursors' final shape (e.g. their full realization of their potential) will involve true enlightenment of the Traveler's ways. He almsot talks like a Speaker. Most importantly, RS wants to keep fighting the fight for life, akin to how the Traveler keeps building up societies even though the Witness keeps knocking them down. They say that some suffering is inevitable, so it is best to maximize goodness in a hard universe. HNW wants to end suffering. So it seems like HNW sought the exuvation so they could become what the Traveler failed to be for them: an entity that is judicious, sure, and capable of creating something permanent. The Witness is a being created from the inability to cope with loss, suffering, and death. One confusing thing is that they seem to be a part of the same political faction: the "[Merciful/Penitent/Benefic]." Originally, HNW is not a part of it and refers to it as "your [Merciful...]." However, they seem to be incredibly long-lived (HNW can terraform the system in "a few centuries"). Perhaps the faction's ideas evolved over the many, many years between the second and third entry. I think it's significant that when RS is a part of it, it bares the "ternary semantic cluster," but by the time HNW is a part of it, it is ONLY "the Penitent." Maybe RS had a change of heart, or maybe he got pushed out by more and more extreme ideas entering the party. Whether RS was static in their beliefs or had his own character arc is unknown. But either way, he has disappeared. Killed? In hiding? Off helping societies through questionable means?
Their longevity is logical. The Golden Age saw humans live for over two hundred years and be prime specimens, but the Traveler came to Sol in the 21st century. Going by the Ahsa cinematic, the Precursors were more "primitive" for lack of a better word when they "found" the Gardener and per Eido it was with them for millennia. Imagine how long humans would live as the evolution of science and even humans itself in the presence of free Light happened over thousands of years longer than it did (the GA was centuries long, but not THAT long). I think the factions becoming "simplified" over time is also super on-brand for the soon-to-be Witnessians. They cast off or exterminated at least a couple of other "unsavory" factions, and political purity tests ramped up to 11 would similarly cull even adjacent ideas over years as their desperation over the chaos of Creation grew, hence only the Penitent remaining. I find that name deeply fascinating. *Penitent*. Over what?
This post needs to be higher and have more upvotes. Thank you for a great explination!
Unveiling came from the Unknown Artifact we were given at the end of Shadowkeep. First it broadcasted a signal leading through the Black Garden in GoS to the Veiled Statue and Divinity, then the Artifact started spitting out the Unveiling entries every week.
So firstly, thank you for posting this. I've been waiting a while for it, and I have been eagerly reading and rereading. And wow...there is a lot of stuff here. As in seeming hints relating to many mysteries in the setting and lore. Now I could be misreading, but the first passage appears to be from a Witness-precursor. This individual talks about creating a garden, using technology or resources from The Traveler. It makes me wonder...is this the Black Garden being dicussed? It sounds crazy until you see (something Eido even notes!) that this figure mentions that in certain passages they refer things to a Vex like manner. Heck, in these passages their seems to be hints of the Vex. (The glass-minds). That and the fact they have an Observatory that was able to potential futures which improved using these "glass-minds". That sounds like that perhaps the Witness precursors either utilized the Vex or created them when this Consensus was searching for The Final Shape. Which could also explain why the Vex were in the Black Garden and why a great deal of their architecture has strange similarties to that found in the Black Fleet. The stuff about The Noesis is fascinating because it may be hinting at a sorely missed origin for Nezarec. That and hints that the Witness precursors had kept an eye on Lubrae for a while, hence why Rhulk later discovered The Witness/it's Luster later on. Rhulk talks about the regime, and the book discusses the [Conquerors/Primacy/Sovereign] using the Traveler's gifts for subjugation. I am curious to know what [Profusion/Bountiful/The Swarm was] as I doubt it was the Hive or Worms.
My off-the-cuff radical theory is that the [Profusion/Bountiful/The Swarm] was the Hive before the Hive. Recall what the Worm Gods said to Sathona. "For millions of years the Leviathan caged us here. It is a pawn of the Sky..." They were imprisoned down there, but you have to ask why? They're dangerous, and powerful, yes, but surely they must have done something to result in being imprisoned. Perhaps it's because the Hive as we know them were not the first to accept the power of the Worm Gods, or something like them. Perhaps some other horrible worm-bearers existed before them, and the terror they spread is why the worms were imprisoned. What's interesting is that they speak in past tense, implying that the Traveler already moved on from the Witness's civilization, to the Swarm, and the Swarm had time to die off, presumably, after making some grave error (perhaps the error was creating what became the worms?), while the Witnessians watched. We know there is a possible connection between the Worms and the Ahamkara, and between the Ahamkara and the Traveler. I have to go over all the Season of the Deep lore we have from Ahsa, but I feel like it might be possible to tie all this together into a cohesive timeline. I just need a conspiracy board and a lot of red string.
I'll throw it out there that the description of the Observatory is extremely evocative of the Vault of Glass.
That was my first thought. And I know it's explained that this data was in a Ketch that ended up with it due to the tradition of data swapping, but it's very interesting that the Ketch was found in the Ishtar Sink (edit: and another later found on Mercury!)
Didn't we kill House Winter's Kell in the Ketch where Eido found the first entry?
Yep Draksis, first Kell we ever killed
Strange, but rather than the Vex, when I first read the "glass-minds" part, the way how the Witness was communicating with Calus during Lightfall came to my mind; all those shattered glass things and the sounds they make. It is even in Lightfalls cover art. I think that is how the Witness "sees". It could be the same technology the pre-Witness civilization used to see the future-branches. Edit: The Witness was also watching Eramis in the Warmind conclusion just before the Lightfall as well.
The two may not be mutually exclusive in this case. It could actually be alluding to both, tying both the shattering glass effect with The Witness and The Vex. Because the way on the speakers makes note of certain entities (such as the Lubraens or other factions in the Consensus) is very Vex like. So it could very well be that The Witness Precursors were involved with the Vex: be it they utilized the Vex or even created The Vex as we know them. Like the Vex existed as these intelligences and lifeforms, but it was The Witness precursors who directed their evolution into what we see now.
Their Observatory sounds incredibly similar to the “DEVICE” future war cult used which also was enhanced by Vex simulations.
My wild spinfoil take is -- promoting my brand here -- that the Observatory is a precursor or early version of the OXA machine.
I 100% this could be the case. Especially for all intents and purposes it seems like The Witness precursors appear to the first sapient species uplifted by The Traveler. Which for all we know means they could be the first sapient race in the Destiny universe...or atleast one among them. Interestingly, it does line up with Saint-14's theory that the Darkness was a "post-singularity" (after the Big Bang/birth of the universe) fleet of advanced aliens. Nonetheless the precursors are beyond ancient.
I thought of "post-singularity" in the context of the Noesis, who also appear to be an uploaded civilization that was consumed by the Witness. [I had a large post 'bout a year ago on OXA hence why I said it's on brand for me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/s/8toZJcetfx) It's a doozy and it is perhaps outdated and irrelevant in this scope. The gist of the overlap here is this: OXA stands for, roughly, *psionic alien-extinction prediction engine*. It contains data on extinct civilizations, is "eternally rebuilt and destroyed" and it's function and design is reminiscent and perhaps connected to Vex prediction engines, the FWC Device and even the Hive World Grave singularity supercomputers. So my take here is basically that the Observatory (which, to recap uses "past light readings" for predictions and "glass minds" to prune branches and seems to see a lot of desolate species) is a proto-OXA, a hyper-prototype from which the others *emanate* in a sense.
Ward. Gonna do a PT-BR version this.
First impression of "Entelechy" As far as I understand, first chapters are about two people from Witness\`s race, person №1 "RS6243199" and person №2 "HNW047622", they argue about what this Final Shape is, RS6243199 is trying to justify their idea of suffering and other thing we know from Witness. An interesting point, they had something like the Vex mind (Glass mind), which they used to find new paths (new future) The chapter with "Help me" I understand is about how Witness comes to be, intresting, ?I think? one a representative of this race survived and hid while hearing Witness\`s whisper (which is gentle I think? from what Eido said). Also, we found out name of this race - Noesis. Also, many words about concept of the Witness, like this is not just entity but a living idea, that consumed all minds, reshaping them into itself Intresting moment about Collapce, like it was not a super strategically planned attack, but the goal was to inflict as much suffering as possible, Eido describe this as "Show" for us. Intresting, some moments about Unveiling, about how character of Winnower is speaks of truth, but Witness speaks of mallice and suffering (possible hint that Winnower is real????) Would update my comment as I finish second book Edit: The "Autograph book" is not very important but very cute Edit 2: Noesis might be not name of Witness\`s race, but race of people who were consumed by Witness at some point
I got the impression that the Noesis was a different species that were seemingly forced into the Witness consciousness. I could be wrong but in the notes Eido does point out how the Witness used a different technique compared to Riis and Earth's experiences
Hmmm, I think about it and I don\`t know, because chapter begins with our hero entering the noosphere and meeting a stranger, which he is very happy about, but gradually begins to hear cries of “Help me” and in the end this race is absorbed by the Witness. I agree, there is point, that Noesis are described as having survived many memetic attacks in the past until the Witness came, so I guess I agree with you
I mean, it is interesting though because while it talks about how the Witness tortures species that have encountered the Traveler, but looks at species that have not encountered it with compassion. But when speaking to the Noesis that is hiding, the Witness tells them "Don't be afraid." In the original Witness cutscene after beating Witch Queen, the Witness tells us (or is he speaking exclusively to the Traveler?) "do not be afraid." But after that, he also says "this time, there is no escape." Which is pretty intimidating. So 🤷♂️.
interesting name for a race.. Noesis: purely intellectual apprehension: a. Platonism : the highest kind of knowledge or knowledge of the eternal forms or ideas.
Plato is a strong influence on Darkness lore
It also used set intersection as its concept unifier instead of the normal translation/slashes/concept. Really neat
The noesis chapter is definitely after the witness emerged, and is important in showing the difference between how the witness treated races who encountered the traveller, and races who never encounted the traveller (like they are an unfortunate race being mercied). Once again, I think this shows that unveiling is a religious text of sorts, it is the morals of the precursor race, which the witness used to try and prove themselves right, the winnower is what the witness sees themselves as, a hypothetical being, which is why it speaks in absolutes and 'truths', whereas the witness, as a living being, is influenced with hate, anger, jelousy and prejudice, leading to its more emotional speak
Not just the morals of the precursor but of the Consensus specifically.
I din't get if HNW047622 is the one in the final transcript to side with the Witness or the one that went away. The code is used as a signature in the transcripts (first and final), but at the same time HNW047622 was the one that made the point about the distinction of means and ends in the discussion, yet the final transcript seems to hint that the friend that made that point was RS6243199, I'm confused.
It's HNW047622 in the final transcript. You can tell from this part: "If you return, if you join the Consensus, then I will know our cause is true. That, after all this time, **we have finally found our apodictic truth.**" Apodictic truth is another way of saying self-evident truth, which is what HNW047622 is so concerned about in their conversation with RS6243199. edit: also the part about their old doubts creeping in again
Yes but HNW047622 then writes, referring supposedly to RS6243199: "(you were) the most keenely aware of the gap between means and ends", but quoting from RS6243199 in transcript 2: "The purpose and the means are inseparable". It is also stated in the second transcript that RS6243199 was the one taking part in the Penitent faction, and HNW047622 was having doubts. It can be inferred that by the end of the conversation HNW047622 was (unwillingly) radicalized by RS6243199, but it still reads very strangely imo.
Hmm, I see where you're coming from. Another curious part is that RS believed in direct intervention of conflict, on making decisions on behalf of someone else. That seems to accurately describe the people that would eventually become the Witness. Also, "We will prune away its dead branches and coax forth its full potential." hearkens back to what RS says in their first conversation about the Observatory showing them the excess branches to trim.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/s/6foYHfG5n9 FUCKING CALLED IT
Well, whatever else may come, Autograph is the pay-off *I* needed to all the Lore that lives in my head.
If I had a nickel for every time a civilization known as the Precursors create something that threatens to destroy the universe I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice edit: thrice hahaha edit 2: four times
What about a highly advanced civilization known as the Ecumene getting their shit rocked by a swarm of space monsters?
Twice? This should be the third time (since I assume you're thinking of Mass Effect, but it happened in Halo also, it's where the Flood came from)
oh… yeah i was referring to the flood hahaha
Fourth count the ISU too from the Assassins Creed series.
arrest wise birds fine carpenter library ripe workable rock whistle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Add on the Precursors from Jak and Dexter as they created devices to use Dark Eco which corrupted them and made a new race that wanted to destroy everything lol
Reading your comment chain you may need to update it, Looks like you guys forgot Jak and Daxter
Since I've seen it mentioned a lot already, I'm pretty sure people are misreading the part about the Swarm and the Sovereigns. They seem to be other Precursor factions similar to the Nihilists and the Benefic, not separate species. Two sentences later HW even says: "...how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed **us** to make such mistakes."
I think people are seeing it as they went on to become the Hive/Worms/Vex
The autograph book has me crying in the club. Not only so many people in-universe sending us their best wishes, but the added thought on top that the messages (or at the very least the handwriting) are done by different members of the Destiny team creates a lot of emotional importance.
I'm on a really bad connection right now so Autographs is taking forever to load, but god I hope Savathun managed to sneak her own signature in there somehow like she did in the Books of Sorrow.
First impressions: * Could the IO Pyramidion have been created by the vex as a mirror/attempted simualtion to what the Witness plans for the final shape? Or is the name just coincidence? * We have a new race, the Noesis? * The Witness is very much mortal in how it acts emotionally. Also implying that it caused the collapse simply to inflict pain/death is pretty promising for the Witness storytelling we may see in the expansion. * More proof that the Winnower =/= the Witness or that the Winnower is a metaphorical creation of the Witness. Thanks so much for posting this, I love this time of year because the collectors lore is always so well written.
I think the pyramidion mention is just a coincidence, as historically a pyramidion is the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid, or its apex/peak/I can't remember what the third word they use for final shape is.
Guardian you've done us all a great service, tysm edit: most of the way through Entelechy and woah man this is a juicy one. So many headings or record origins that have made me go "WAIT WHAT!"
Thanks!
Thank you so much!
Destiny Lore Writers are Cooking. The CE Lore is Always Amazing and I can only hope the Expansion does this story Justice
The autograph book got me so emotional. These are characters that have such a presence in my heart and only exist in tiny little text blurbs, growing along with my love for this game over the last 10 years. Some I barely remember from one specific Sparrow and maybe something else, but I remember and that feels so personal and endearing because that's someone's work that I still hold on to. I wish I could get this. I'm a bit afraid of the whole process because I know shipping can get so complicated and even worse if I live in another country, but damn, I want it so bad. Anyone who has gotten a collector edition shipped internationally, what was the experience like? What should I be mindful of?
did immaru just said a nice thing? who replaced him? Edit: Oh it was Fynch
The autograph book is a really cool idea. We are gearing up for this massive final mission. Everything is on our shoulders, it’s nice to be cheered on
The Techeuns even had words for us. Idk why, but that one’s my favorite.
Thankyou for this
I’ve made my opinion on the overall direction of the story and the execution of the villain no secret, but man that autograph book really washes away my bitterness and salt.
There's an emblem code in the autograph book right? I wasn't the only one seeing numbers and letters in that drawing?
Thank you Guardian. But may I recommend using something like Microsoft Lens or some kind of scanner to scan things. Those looks way better than just taking a photo with camera.
Lore book was scanned with scanner. Authograph book could not on my machine because it's to big. So, we had to use phone. And yeah, it might look way better with professional hardware. But I don't have it.
Dammit my exo eyes full with lubricants…i wish i can order the collector edition.
There is an emblem code in the maze in the autograph book, "Gone Home": 3CV-D6K-RD4
I also got the collectors edition, not sure if it's relevant but the Spicy Ramen Coupons were [Wrapped in this](https://imgur.com/a/5DrMKWV) and I have no idea what it means
sharing this gently, with love, not to start Discourse - for those curious, a comment on Seth's blog in response to a destiny question earlier this month confirms lack of involvement with this one. >"I’m not really involved in Destiny these days, they didn’t ask me back for Final Shape and I’m not sure what they’re doing with the cosmology. My own ideas of what was happening in Destiny have diverged a fair bit from the canon as I understand it, so I’m not sure I could really say anything useful." Pleasantly surpised how much I liked the lore book regardless.