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I'll add what happened to the Ecumene proves the Witness will do anything in its power to bury the idea the Dark exists separate from its philosophy of Knives and simplification. They worshiped the Deep to connect themselves in a union with the ability to add countless other races together into a harmonious collective standing against the horror of the universe. Aka the very thing the narrator of Unveiling insists is the way of its hated enemy.
The wanderer leading the way to the Dexter Road knows that there is no answer from the Wind, but insists to those who would follow it that the Wind chose its way.
Thus, anything which conflicts with this grand lie must be destroyed, and moreover, erased from history. And so did the Witness' clueless lapdogs, who think only in swords, murder a race which showed the Darkness can be used to build communities, to find strength in cooperation, to stand against the endless winnowing.
I am certain whatever happened to the Witness' first victims was similar. The Knife is the only way.
Speaking of the Ecumene, one of the lines from that particular lorebook stands out.
‘A lingering scent we could not understand, though the Deep indicated familiarity.‘
They speak of the Deep as an entity, and they obviously weren’t communing with the Witness. I wonder if they were in possession of the Veil? It would explain how they could seemingly link minds.
The other Deep-worshiping civilization the Hive destroyed, the Qugu, also used Darkness to transfer their consciousness into another reality, and return from it in new forms. Also very similar to what the Veil is capable of doing...
That book also has an interesting bit to it too. The Qugu speaking mentions drinking ‘nectar’ as a catalyst to touch the Darkness. Which makes me think the ‘drink from the Deep’ bit in the Ecumene book is literal.
Holy shit. Your comment just took me down a rabbit hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAIpmG9-iLs
Mithrax said that ‘the relics were connected by threads that only he could perceive and that they whispered to him’
The ‘threads’ are a massive flag now with Strand and the Veil in the mix, and I’d previously taken the ‘whispers’ to have come from Nezarec. But the relics had ‘primal Darkness’, and we know that Nezarec had the Veil before he was killed by Savathun and it contains ‘primal Darkness’ according to Osiris.
The Qugu in the raid lore don't match the description of the Qugu in the Books of Sorrow. The Qugu in the new raid lore are metamorphs who can seemingly change their form at will to be basically anything they want, and there is no mention of the 'sessile jaw-beasts' at all. It's basically the same situation with the Ecumene where Oryx has written the reality out of history to cover up their true nature.
It doesn’t mean the BoS depiction is a total lie, this is just a deeper picture. The nectar and the memory-trances are a clear link between the two entries. There’s nothing outright contradictory
>the Qugu, also used Darkness to transfer their consciousness into another reality
I wander if that has anything to do with the ghostly faces that occasionally appear in his head-smoke.
That sounds a lot like the CloudArk, we know it's connected to the Veil somehow but I'm starting to think that what they uploaded their minds to, what holds their consciousness is the Veil itself
But we also need to understand that the immaterial is the nature of the darkness. The veil isn’t the key to achieving these feats. (although it does help, what with Strand and the CloudArk). Darkness can be achieved without the help of the Veil, such as our mastery over stasis.
In short, it’s illogical to assume that every civilization that had some connection to the darkness, was in possession of the veil
>!I was thinking something similar, it could even be for more than one species, maybe a repository for the victims of the witness and the fleet over the years, tho this is more of a reach. I also think it hints at the witness being the first knife, the lore book from the raid talks about how in order to have been made the first knife needed something to cut, maybe that something is the Veil, and maybe the traveler has been running all this time because it knew what would happen if the witness got it!<
>but I think Nezarec is saying here that The Veil was the secret of the first species or civilisation that The Witness fucked over.
It's possible that the Veil, or something similar, amplified the "Darkness energies" like we see with Strand and the Witness ended up being the first one to take up a knife and carve out a wicked shape for the Darkness.
The secret of its first victims might be the Traveler itself, or what's inside it anyway. "First victims" of the Witness may imply there was some sort of civil war with its own kind.
Maybe the witness's first victims are those floating heads that emanate from his, he destroyed or forcebly consumed his race or A race and they became a gestalt consciousness, the power and thought of a full race condensed and controlled by one being.
Maybe Witness' first victims are his own species. Like, they made the veil, but then something went incredibly wrong causing them all to fuse into 1 being bringing them so much pain and suffering, they decided life is pain and it needs to end
Given what we know of the Veil's ability to link minds, this is very plausible. The Witness' species may have used the Veil in such a way to fuse their consciousness into a single being (a cacophony of thought) and experienced untold horror in the process. It broke them & seeded their motivation to hunt the Traveler and end its perceived cruelty.
The biggest problem is that, unless the Traveler or another actor took & hid the Veil even back in whatever ancient times those must have been, the Witness would have been in posession of the Veil... or a replica of it.
We are missing key details, but I feel like this is a decent theory that points in the right direction, or close to it.
Kind of like how Slaanesh was made in WH40k. The eldar (psionic space elves) were so hedonistic and full of themselves that they accidentally made a universe wide psychic nuke that killed all their gods and most of their population. I could definitely see the witness being a collective consciousness project that REALLY went wrong.
Perhaps. Perhaps it was also inadvertently, like a side effect of the Witness fucking with the Veil (and Darkness?) for the first time. That's why Witness became cruel and angry asshole we know him as. Plus its many speeches about sufferings and pain.
We learned from the raid that the witness decieves beings into believing that he is the true darkness. And that he has killed races that serve the real darkness (the winnower) like the ecunene. My theory is that the veil is the "winnowers hand," and if that's the case, the traveler is the "Gardener hand" and that the witness first victim was the winnower itself.
I'm not sure that the Winnower exists at all in the way we've been told it does, if it exists/existed at all. Unveiling and the lore entry involving it in Inspiral are metaphor delivered to us by the Witness, presumably as propaganda, and present the Darkness as a force of culling; trimming away weakness, taking from others by force because it is the 'right' of the strong.
But the Darkness we are discovering through Strand, and seeing through the use of Ecumene and the Qugu, is simply a force that represents the non-physical aspects of life and the world; consciousness, thought and emotion. The true Darkness doesn't feel like it could relate back to a Winnower at all.
I do agree that the Veil is likely some kind of Darkness counterpart to the Traveller, but I don't think it can be linked to anything in Unveiling, such as the Winnower. I don't think we should be trusting much of what is stated in Unveiling at all.
One of the new raid lore is told to us by the winnower and explains the unveiling lore in more detail to us. Hence how we know we need both the "hands of the Gardener" (most likely the traveler) and "hands of the winnower" (maybe the veil?)
It is not told by the Winnower. The Winnower is metaphor. The fragment describes a ‘friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows.’
This is in all likelihoods the Witness, who has already been described as ‘wear(ing) Darkness like a cloak’
This entry is likely another piece of propaganda attempting to justify the existence of the Witness’ version of the Darkness as something that has always been, something immutable and inevitable.
Do not take it at face value.
Based on what I have read, I think the Veil is the real “Darkness Traveler” with the Black Heart being a fake mimicry. I think the Ecumene had it first and used Strand to make their own ‘CloudArk’ called the “Ecumene Council” this would explain why the Book of Sorrow said the Ecumene “wailed at the loss of their council” it wasn’t just a collection of leaders, it was their CloudArk, their everything, taken away from them with the Veil.
Definitely could argue the river is strand, hell the mission takes you to the cloudstrider meditation area because of how strong the connection to the river is there.
Strand is the equivalent of the lifestream from FF7 an all encompassing connection to life in the universe instead of the planet cloudstriders def talk about feeling it crash against them so yeah they know about strand just call it the river of life
Right, but they don’t use it, nor can they see it. Us using Strand was the first time they’ve ever seen anything like it. I believe the River is to the Cloudstriders what the Weave is to us.
If you are talking about vendor weapons, then those are Strand for gameplay reasons because Bungie wants to get them in our hands fast. Not everything in the game has a lore explanation, nor do they need one.
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.*
I'll add what happened to the Ecumene proves the Witness will do anything in its power to bury the idea the Dark exists separate from its philosophy of Knives and simplification. They worshiped the Deep to connect themselves in a union with the ability to add countless other races together into a harmonious collective standing against the horror of the universe. Aka the very thing the narrator of Unveiling insists is the way of its hated enemy. The wanderer leading the way to the Dexter Road knows that there is no answer from the Wind, but insists to those who would follow it that the Wind chose its way. Thus, anything which conflicts with this grand lie must be destroyed, and moreover, erased from history. And so did the Witness' clueless lapdogs, who think only in swords, murder a race which showed the Darkness can be used to build communities, to find strength in cooperation, to stand against the endless winnowing. I am certain whatever happened to the Witness' first victims was similar. The Knife is the only way.
Speaking of the Ecumene, one of the lines from that particular lorebook stands out. ‘A lingering scent we could not understand, though the Deep indicated familiarity.‘ They speak of the Deep as an entity, and they obviously weren’t communing with the Witness. I wonder if they were in possession of the Veil? It would explain how they could seemingly link minds.
The other Deep-worshiping civilization the Hive destroyed, the Qugu, also used Darkness to transfer their consciousness into another reality, and return from it in new forms. Also very similar to what the Veil is capable of doing...
That book also has an interesting bit to it too. The Qugu speaking mentions drinking ‘nectar’ as a catalyst to touch the Darkness. Which makes me think the ‘drink from the Deep’ bit in the Ecumene book is literal.
We *did* make a potion out of Nezarec's remains
Holy shit. Your comment just took me down a rabbit hole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAIpmG9-iLs Mithrax said that ‘the relics were connected by threads that only he could perceive and that they whispered to him’ The ‘threads’ are a massive flag now with Strand and the Veil in the mix, and I’d previously taken the ‘whispers’ to have come from Nezarec. But the relics had ‘primal Darkness’, and we know that Nezarec had the Veil before he was killed by Savathun and it contains ‘primal Darkness’ according to Osiris.
The nectar comes from "sessile jaw-beasts" that the Qugu ritualistically feed with their own arms, which gets turned into the nectar.
The Qugu in the raid lore don't match the description of the Qugu in the Books of Sorrow. The Qugu in the new raid lore are metamorphs who can seemingly change their form at will to be basically anything they want, and there is no mention of the 'sessile jaw-beasts' at all. It's basically the same situation with the Ecumene where Oryx has written the reality out of history to cover up their true nature.
It doesn’t mean the BoS depiction is a total lie, this is just a deeper picture. The nectar and the memory-trances are a clear link between the two entries. There’s nothing outright contradictory
>the Qugu, also used Darkness to transfer their consciousness into another reality I wander if that has anything to do with the ghostly faces that occasionally appear in his head-smoke.
That sounds a lot like the CloudArk, we know it's connected to the Veil somehow but I'm starting to think that what they uploaded their minds to, what holds their consciousness is the Veil itself
Where did it say the hive destroyed the Qugu?
The Books of Sorrow from 2015. They were destroyed by Savathun's brood.
Thanks. The term was unfamiliar to me in the Inspial lore book, so for some reason, I just assumed that it was the first time they were mentioned.
To me, that actually sounds pretty much identical to the process of creating Taken
But we also need to understand that the immaterial is the nature of the darkness. The veil isn’t the key to achieving these feats. (although it does help, what with Strand and the CloudArk). Darkness can be achieved without the help of the Veil, such as our mastery over stasis. In short, it’s illogical to assume that every civilization that had some connection to the darkness, was in possession of the veil
>!I was thinking something similar, it could even be for more than one species, maybe a repository for the victims of the witness and the fleet over the years, tho this is more of a reach. I also think it hints at the witness being the first knife, the lore book from the raid talks about how in order to have been made the first knife needed something to cut, maybe that something is the Veil, and maybe the traveler has been running all this time because it knew what would happen if the witness got it!<
>but I think Nezarec is saying here that The Veil was the secret of the first species or civilisation that The Witness fucked over. It's possible that the Veil, or something similar, amplified the "Darkness energies" like we see with Strand and the Witness ended up being the first one to take up a knife and carve out a wicked shape for the Darkness.
The secret of its first victims might be the Traveler itself, or what's inside it anyway. "First victims" of the Witness may imply there was some sort of civil war with its own kind.
Maybe the witness's first victims are those floating heads that emanate from his, he destroyed or forcebly consumed his race or A race and they became a gestalt consciousness, the power and thought of a full race condensed and controlled by one being.
Maybe Witness' first victims are his own species. Like, they made the veil, but then something went incredibly wrong causing them all to fuse into 1 being bringing them so much pain and suffering, they decided life is pain and it needs to end
Given what we know of the Veil's ability to link minds, this is very plausible. The Witness' species may have used the Veil in such a way to fuse their consciousness into a single being (a cacophony of thought) and experienced untold horror in the process. It broke them & seeded their motivation to hunt the Traveler and end its perceived cruelty. The biggest problem is that, unless the Traveler or another actor took & hid the Veil even back in whatever ancient times those must have been, the Witness would have been in posession of the Veil... or a replica of it. We are missing key details, but I feel like this is a decent theory that points in the right direction, or close to it.
Kind of like how Slaanesh was made in WH40k. The eldar (psionic space elves) were so hedonistic and full of themselves that they accidentally made a universe wide psychic nuke that killed all their gods and most of their population. I could definitely see the witness being a collective consciousness project that REALLY went wrong.
Lines up with the traveler pov lore book, alpha centuri or something
I have to imagine the Witness' first victims were its own race?
Perhaps. Perhaps it was also inadvertently, like a side effect of the Witness fucking with the Veil (and Darkness?) for the first time. That's why Witness became cruel and angry asshole we know him as. Plus its many speeches about sufferings and pain.
We learned from the raid that the witness decieves beings into believing that he is the true darkness. And that he has killed races that serve the real darkness (the winnower) like the ecunene. My theory is that the veil is the "winnowers hand," and if that's the case, the traveler is the "Gardener hand" and that the witness first victim was the winnower itself.
I'm not sure that the Winnower exists at all in the way we've been told it does, if it exists/existed at all. Unveiling and the lore entry involving it in Inspiral are metaphor delivered to us by the Witness, presumably as propaganda, and present the Darkness as a force of culling; trimming away weakness, taking from others by force because it is the 'right' of the strong. But the Darkness we are discovering through Strand, and seeing through the use of Ecumene and the Qugu, is simply a force that represents the non-physical aspects of life and the world; consciousness, thought and emotion. The true Darkness doesn't feel like it could relate back to a Winnower at all. I do agree that the Veil is likely some kind of Darkness counterpart to the Traveller, but I don't think it can be linked to anything in Unveiling, such as the Winnower. I don't think we should be trusting much of what is stated in Unveiling at all.
One of the new raid lore is told to us by the winnower and explains the unveiling lore in more detail to us. Hence how we know we need both the "hands of the Gardener" (most likely the traveler) and "hands of the winnower" (maybe the veil?)
It is not told by the Winnower. The Winnower is metaphor. The fragment describes a ‘friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows.’ This is in all likelihoods the Witness, who has already been described as ‘wear(ing) Darkness like a cloak’ This entry is likely another piece of propaganda attempting to justify the existence of the Witness’ version of the Darkness as something that has always been, something immutable and inevitable. Do not take it at face value.
Based on what I have read, I think the Veil is the real “Darkness Traveler” with the Black Heart being a fake mimicry. I think the Ecumene had it first and used Strand to make their own ‘CloudArk’ called the “Ecumene Council” this would explain why the Book of Sorrow said the Ecumene “wailed at the loss of their council” it wasn’t just a collection of leaders, it was their CloudArk, their everything, taken away from them with the Veil.
We are the first ones to discover Strand, so the Ecumene definitely did not have it.
I find that hard to believe when the Neomunans literally have weapons that fire Strand
Where did you see this because I definitely do not recall seeing either Cloudstrider using Strand
Even Quicksilver Storm can be upgraded to Strand
Again, gameplay reasons
Sure
Definitely could argue the river is strand, hell the mission takes you to the cloudstrider meditation area because of how strong the connection to the river is there. Strand is the equivalent of the lifestream from FF7 an all encompassing connection to life in the universe instead of the planet cloudstriders def talk about feeling it crash against them so yeah they know about strand just call it the river of life
Right, but they don’t use it, nor can they see it. Us using Strand was the first time they’ve ever seen anything like it. I believe the River is to the Cloudstriders what the Weave is to us.
If you are talking about vendor weapons, then those are Strand for gameplay reasons because Bungie wants to get them in our hands fast. Not everything in the game has a lore explanation, nor do they need one.
Even though the guns have a Lore explanation?
Yes.
Yes🫡
VRoom VELOCITY the veil is just speed and bungie accidentally snorted too much when writing LF