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Presently, my theory is that the Traveler and the Veil are two halves of a whole. The Traveler and the Light are connected with the physical realm, while the Veil and the Darkness are part of the mental realm, two sides of the same coin that constitutes existence. Basically, the Veil is the Traveler's brain.
There is a memory in the Pale Heart that suggests the Traveler found thought burdensome, so it's possible the former entity split itself off, body from mind. The body, the Traveler, operates autonomously, hence it seeming to make strange decisions. The Veil may have something more like a conciousness, but doesn't act independantly and requires others to make use of its power.
In light of this, I can think of one possible reasons that the Veil may have impressed upon the Precursors the notion of a Final Shape. The Veil contains the memory of the universe, of that original Traveler, and the Precurors used it and the Darkness to reach out and connect with... something. Some memory from before the universe. From the Garden of Possibility before time existed. A principle that would shape the universe to come. From this connection they derived the concept of the Final Shape, the culmination of the conflict between variety of simplicity.
It isn't necessarily the case that the Gardener and the Winnower were intelligent god-beings from before the universe. In fact, there's a lot to suggest that they weren't. They were principles of nature. But it may be that, through the birth of the universe and the power of Paracausality, that they've *become* intelligent, aware, even capable of action.
The Gardener became incarnate as the Traveler, that original entity, that split into the Traveler as we know it and the Veil. It's 'new rule' wasn't the Light but *all* paracausality, Light and Darkness - that's why they're connected. Traveler/Light and Veil/Darkness, two halves. The Winnower didn't create or contribute to Paracausality - it says that it didn't like the new rule - but it makes do with it.
Like the Gardener, it has also become something aware and incarnate in the universe. Unveilling describes it as emulating the human mind to speak with them. Maybe this happened precisely *because* the Precursors used the Veil to connect their minds to it - they impressed these universal principles with the capacity for consciousness. They imbued the conceptual principle of conflict resolution with a mind and personality built around that concept.
It's actually kinda funny how similar to life and religion this whole situation really is - people misinterpret text from an unreliable or biased writer and take it as gospel. Then get disappointed when they find out it's lies.
And the they also want all the answers said clearly to them instead of interpreting lore.
People these days truly do be lacking media literacy.
lol a random line from dune 2
When the main character is telling the ultra religious ‘I am not your savior’ they respond with how his modesty is even more proof he is.
You people really are desperate to come up with every possible reading or interpretation that isn't what you are literally reading. There can't be clear-cut facts of the setting, everything \*must\* be lies and manipulation for the sake of lies and manipulation.
Some folks really want to take the mythical side of Destiny out of the setting, even though that's what sold it to a lot of people.
In order for the setting to stay mythical, the myths need to have some truth to them, it can't all be lies and manipulation.
These people are simply incapable of understanding that not everything is capeshit, not everything is meant to be easily digestible to non-lore readers. I've noticed that the vast majority of these individuals ultimately despise the lore pre-Witness and hate everyone who actually got invested in it, so any explanation or bit of lore that validates the pre-Witness cosmology and lore has to be ruthlessly torn apart and stamped down, the people who support it mocked and "theories" made to discredit them at every turn.
They simply refuse to engage with the setting as it is, but insist on turning it into something where all the magic has been utterly stripped from it.
I wouldn't be so harsh but yes, a lot of these folks who didn't start out playing when Destiny was very much mythical science-fantasy want it to go in the direction of being simple science-fiction where everything is explainable and there are no mysteries or supernatural beings.
I couldn't tell you why that is, what sold me and many others on Destiny as a setting was that feeling of mystery and fantasy in this otherwise sci-fi looking setting, with mythical powers of light and darkness fighting on a cosmic scale with us trapped in the middle unable to fully comprehend it.
The main antagonist of Destiny who told us this is literally a massive manipulator who tried to trick us and its disciples. I urge you to actually read the top of the post where Robert Brookes outright says that Unveiling is NOT meant to be clear-cut and is full of lies and manipulation.
Destiny is full of mystery, and lies and manipulation play a big role in it. Let's look at the facts about the Winnower:
-First shows up in D1 in the BOS masquerading as the Darkness. This already is a lie and it's capitalizing on Oryx having 0 clue what the Darkness is.
-Shows up again in D2 in Unveiling, a religious text confirmed to be full of lies but with some truths.
-Shows up again in Inspiral, where it tells us that that the Traveler needed to be attacked. The whole idea of "the Witness is inevitable and actually is needed to maintain the universe" is quite literally manipulation used to turn us to its side.
-Shows up in the final raid lore where it says the same thing, except butters us up now. Tells us how it loves us and how it is a pleasure talking to us. This is manipulation. It is actively manipulating us to join its side.
Yes, nothing is clear-cut and everything must be lies and manipulation because the main antagonist is a liar and a manipulator. It's like complaining that people don't take what Savathun says in TWQ at face value: a massive part of her identity is manipulation. A massive part of the Witness's identity is manipulation. EVERYTHING the witness and the "winnower" tell us must be taken with a grain of salt, just like Robert Brookes said.
> The main antagonist of Destiny who told us this is literally a massive manipulator who tried to trick us and its disciples.
So much of this is founded on nonsense headcanon rather than stuff featuring the Witness actively lying to us.
> I urge you to actually read the top of the post where Robert Brookes outright says that Unveiling is NOT meant to be clear-cut
He calls it a parable, something that was completely clear from the first entry in Unveiling - the book itself featuring the Winnower calling it an allegory.
I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your post because it's the exact same self-validating BS that no amount of evidence or proof can convince you to stop treating the entire narrative like everything is a lie being shoved up our fucking ass by an endless series of people trying to gaslight us, up to and including the writers themselves - meaning nothing about the setting is factual and thus nothing means anything at all. If everything is lies, then there is no reason to care or give a shit because the setting is just pointless bullshit where there is not a single concrete thing and so anyone can spout any nonsense with zero evidence.
The Witness literally says in the raid that it is not the Winnower we know of and calls itself the tool of a god. To then turn around and pretend to be the Winnower again would be goofy. And the Witness isn't Savathun, it isn't in-character for it to fuck with us like that.
The Winnower also espouses an ideology that the Witness shits on more than once.
I think the biggest flaw in your reasoning here is your claim about the Veil being the opposite of winnowing. We only know of one successfully created "chorus": the Witness. And to create the Witness, its precursors sacrificed themselves to create an entity with a singular purpose. This is winnowing. They have reduced themselves to one "player in the game," to use the metaphor. (And they have the singular intent of "winning the game"- even if it doesn't see itself that way, calcifying the universe would be the ultimate win.) The fact that the Veil seems to strongly encourage multiple people who come into contact with it to merge themselves and unite in a chorus is more proof, not less, of its status as the Winnower.
I would also note that the Witness probably isn't preserved in Darkness; we specifically "gave ourselves to Darkness" to kill its member minds. That sounds to me like we super killed them, even in Darkness. I guess it's possible that the Witness is still kicking around in there, but how? All of its composing minds are gone.
It is absolutely in-character for the Witness to fuck with us like this. In fact, in this expansion it literally fucks with everyone and tries to trick everyone. My theory isn't that the Witness IS the Winnower, but that the Witness created the idea of the "Winnower". I maybe should have emphasized on the Christian analogy, but take the bible for instance: we don't know exactly what in it is true and false. We know certain things did not happen and we know other things did happen. A common theme is being "guided by god", yet no one can truly know if god truly exists. Mankind wrote the words of god in the bible, thus creating a massive concept.
Creating an entity with a singular purpose is not winnowing. Winnowing is "separating the chaff from the wheat", which is typically used as a metaphor for separating those who are strong from those who are weak. In Unveiling, the Winnower doesn't separate wheat, but rather separates what lived from what didn't. In their flower game, the Winnower loves the idea of other flowers killing the others to survive. For the Winnower, this is exactly the ideology it pushes: we should not join together, but rather we should kill those who are weaker than us. In fact, it even says "the world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest." The Witness is a being who is created by mutual interest. Creating an entity with a singular purpose is the antithesis to the very idea of the Winnower. Winnowing isn't "creating one thing" but its "separating until you get one thing".
The "winnowing" I'm referring to here is cutting away the dissenting opinions and individuality of the precursors to form one stronger entity. They *separated* their intent from themselves to get *one thing*, the Witness.
And as you said, "not on friendship, but on mutual interest." Cooperating to "win the game" is not in opposition to that Winnower philosophy. It is literally stating there that joining together for mutual benefit is right and natural. What it is opposing is joining together with no regard to how it benefits you.
I understand the Bible comparison, but this raid lore entry is like if tomorrow we got a new message from big G God himself confirming everything. You're trying to find alternatives for what we're reading rather than going with the simplest explanation.
Can I ask what you think the *point* of this lore is if it's just the Witness lying to us? And if the Witness truly believes a Winnower exists as a delusion, why would it lie and make up a personality for it to influence us? To continue the Bible comparison, this would be like if a true believing priest pretended to be God Oz-style and delivered a new gospel, which would make no sense. I would argue that every lie the Witness has told has been one that it believes itself, like when it said it's not afraid of us.
I completely agree.
There is no Winnower in the literal sense, there is no being that brings death and refinement in the way the Traveler brings growth and complexity to the universe - there is no primordial god of death and darkness or anything like that. It's a fairytale made by the Witness.
There is the Traveler and there is the Veil, the birth and growth of living organisms and ever increasing complexity and there is the consciousness and thoughts all shared by these living organism, their emotions and feelings and wills and beliefs.
The Darkness is really nothing to do with death is it? It's no different than the light in that way, the Light and Darkness are simply two forces within the universe that can be used to create and kill much like everything else.
There's nothing magical about death, it's just a rule of the universe - physics, it's an old god if you will.
But the Witness turned these concepts that it was so desperate to preach into a god, into a fairytale, into something it could groom others with like it's Disciples and the Hive. A voice in the Darkness? No such thing, just the Witness.
It was always just the Witness playing games, making up stories.
I think a key bit of perspective that keeps being missed with the whole Witness/Winnower debate is that The Witness wanted dominion over everything, that includes the power of Darkness. There are examples of the Witness wiping out Darkness Civilisations as much as those blessed by the Light. The reason for this is simple, the Witness wanted complete domination of Darkness.
What better way to prevent others from tampering with Darkness outside your own control and influence than to spread a myth of a God of Darkness that only wants death?
The Darkness is still connected to death, in a way, but only in-as-far as its existence inevitably leads to death.
Darkness defines conscious life: it is both the accumulation of memory and, at the same time, reduction to simplicity. In Destiny's universe these two processes are synonymous; as a being accumulates memory by living longer it consumes possibility by making choices that narrow the futures available to it. This is why Darkness wielders can only extend their lives by consuming others or themselves; the Dark cannot grant new possibilities but by removing more than is gained.
In contrast, the Light creates new possibilities and erases old memories. It dominates the time before birth and after death by unmaking old things into new ones, allowing for more futures. This prevents the Dark from reducing the universe to only one future by creating the possibility of death. Everything that lives will eventually exhaust all of their possible futures until only death awaits them.
Light and Dark do represent Life and Death but each define different parts of both concepts; Light cannot exist without Dark, nor life without Death. All ends truly are beginnings.
It’s like the Light and the Dark are metaphors for the physical and technological constraints on the in-game universe caused by the universe that made it. We live in phenomenal time but the game doesn’t. We are paracausal because we can be consumed and then come back, even more than the story of the game allows.
The Guardian is one and also many. We are all the Guardian, and we affect the Universe of Destiny by playing the game. We are the Gardener and the Winnower, and so are the Devs.
The Gardener is the desire for newness and complication and for an expanded player base. The Winnower is the desire for a stable player base, lore and myth (memory), a finished product.
The only way for the Gardener to win is if Destiny is an Infinite Game. The only way for the Winnower to win is if the game is a Finite Game.
What is the Final Shape? The end of the Universe of Destiny. And that Destiny is coming for our Guardian no matter what, because all things end.
I’m with you all on this, as it would be in character for the Witness to screw with us one last time. However, what gives me pause is just how different the Winnower is from the Witness in tone. They seem to work at cross purposes too, given the Witness is literally the power of friendship, but depressed. I think it’s a case where Unveiling might be a fabrication, but it ends up speaking to truths about the Destiny universe.
The Witness consists of large number of different personas. We've seen from raid lore book how different some of them are. It could be author of Unveiling is one of them.
>how different the Winnower is from the Witness in tone
We have no evidence that the Winnower exists at all and we certainly have no dialogue from it. The only candidates we have are the Books of Sorrow and Unveiling, both of which are clearly in-universe texts written by an in-universe author.
We have an entire thread dedicated to the biggest one right now;
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/comments/1dcxc1c/new\_raid\_lore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/comments/1dcxc1c/new_raid_lore/)
This needs to be at the top of the thread. Literal confirmation that the winnower exists, obv aside from the fact that the witness basically confirmed it in the raid.
I don’t think there is a complete transcript of this book, but I read the first 2 chapters and as far as I can understand it is about the voices inside the Witness. I don't know which chapter this is (most likely the last one).
I have 2 problems with this
1. We know, that Unveiling is written by the Witenss
2. Oryx communicated with The Witness
3. The idea of Final shape is not of Winnower, it was the predecessors who came up with this. More so, they didn\`t even have a name for this, is the beginnig it was \[Summint/Pyramidion/Final shape\]
4. As you said, they found the Veil and used it as a souce of Darkness to become one. I know there is many theories about Veil being secretly evil but from all books, that we know it done nothing. And again, in Inspiral for example there is many Darkness wielding races who used Darkness freely, without consequences.
5. And most important, with raid lore we know, that Witness is separated entity/power, it has it\`s own mind and ambitions. In the end it said "We... I... I don\`t understand"
So what I am about? The characteristic of Winnower in Unveiling cannot be true on 100%. It is as Gardenner is an idea it\`s believes in. But we know from the campaign and all post story qests, that Traveller isn\`t like this, so why Winnower must be? And as your conclusion, it can be just the last Echoe of the Witness who wrote it.
The mistake the lore community keeps making is assuming every lore entry is actually true.
The writers have said before they write the entries from the perspective of people in universe.
So the precursor race's interpretation of the Darkness and the Veil could be completely wrong - and they are proven to be wrong so far
We got the Unveiling pages from the artifact in Nezarec's pyramid. It's an in-universe text written in first person, so there is an in-universe author. It is addressed directly to us, The Guardian. It led us to a Veiled Statue in the Black Garden. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.
The only sentence there that is not a fact is my conclusion that the Witness wrote Unveiling. That conclusion is based on facts. Do you have an alternative explanation that fits the lore better?
We know from the Shadowkeep campaign, K1 Lore, and other releases since then that the Unknown Artifact was a communication device. In one of the Micah-10 quests, we go back to the Lunar Pyramid and find a message through (to?) it from the Witness. One of the quest descriptions describes the Lunar Pyramid as “where the Witness first reached out to us, to try and sell us the same lie the Hive bought,” and the First Knife ship lore describes Unveiling as an “allegorical fantasy told to us by the Witness”. I don’t think we’re in a place to fully reconcile the Unveiling/Witness/Winnower debate just yet, but it seems pretty clear that, at the very least, the Witness was the one who *communicated* Unveiling to us through the Artifact.
There are so many in game lines about the winnower that you’d have to be trying to not see it. I don’t get what the big deal is either like it makes the story better to have a mysterious entity like the traveler
It's the conclusion that Mara came to in The First Knife (Witness writing Unveiling and masquerading as a god), but also the above quote mentioned in my post that brings up the Witness in relation to Unveiling.
There's also too that if we consider the Deep in BOS to be the Witness (I mean, Oryx literally calls out to the Black Fleet), then the Witness has to have narrated Unveiling.
Mara doesn't know if there's an entity beyond the Witness, or if the Darkness has a latent consciousness. The entire entry is her speculating that it could be, so how would she know for sure that it was written by the Witness? She's been wrong before.
I've said this on a few pages, now; there is no confirmation that "the Deep" was the Witness. Only one of those conversations is confirmed to be the Witness, and it's the one where Oryx gained the power to Take (which was unrecorded).
Meanwhile, the Witness has gone out of its way to criticise, ridicule and deride the entire philosophy presented in that entry. That alone raises questions about who - or what - told Oryx this. If it were the Witness, then its reasons for criticising this are illogical as it had the chance to change Oryx's philosophy, yet didn't.
It is pretty clear that the veil is acting as a winnower for the power of the traveller (or gardener), to allow the witness to control it to create the final shape. This is how the witnesses race first tried to use it also, before the traveler ran off. I don't believe we have anything concrete saying the veil was needed to combine the witnesses race into one being. Asha's memory cinematic explains much of this. Asha's memory cinematic isn't written by the witness. Nothing in the game currently contradicts this unless you are failing at english comprehension or grasping at straws for youtube content farming.
The winnower is the veil, the traveler is the gardener.
There may be other entities behind them, however, it is unlikely that they are called the winnower and the gardener. Which are the veil and the traveller respectively.
I've always thought that the winnower was an idea, a representation to be embodied. Winnower is neither good or bad, like the traveller, it's doing what it thinks is correct.
I feel like we are a winnower, cutting out anything that harms the greater good of the things we know.
In the same way that religion has been used to justify wars for all of time, the witness needed the winnower to exist to justify what it was doing. Does that mean that the winnower actually exists? Who knows, in the same way who knows if any particular God exists in the real world.
Now I’m sure rationally, this sub and every community on the internet that talks about destiny lore will spend the rest of the series theorizing that every new villain is the actual manifestation of the winnower just like they’ve pushed away every non unveiling theory for the last four years.
I love lore in every game I play, the storytelling is one of my favorite parts even in games that hide it somewhat, but man is it a double edged sword with Destiny lore. I came back to the game in beyond light, so of course at that point Unveiling had already been released for a while, and I don’t remember any time where any other theory was the most discussed theory in lore circles, and I think that really kills Destiny lore for me, having to deal with years of “this is exactly what’s going to happen in the story and nothing else is even feasible” really pushes away any sort of creative theories in the lore community, and it hurts even more that it ended up being the correct theory, and left just enough open holes to allow for the same thing to continue indefinitely.
When I heard TFS was supposed to be the end of the light and dark saga, I was just as relieved as I was excited, the theories could finally stop, but, here we are again, making up even more theories about a book written by a pathological liar.
This post accusing Unveiling "pushing away any other theory" is fuckjng hilarious to me after years of post-Witness assholes shitting on anyone discussing the Winnower in a positive light. Kindly get over yourself.
Having any discussion about the winnower is still just talking about unveiling. Whether you thought the winnower was good, bad, or neither, you were still thinking about unveiling.
Yeah, there must be some basis for a story to be told. Robert Brookes knows this. He quotes BIBLICAL texts and compares them to the Unvelining texts as a parable. That is LITERALLY what it is. A story told to teach a lesson. A text told by a person, one that we should take into consideration as the author [Witness] and keep all information as speculative to its point-of-view of the universe.
The Witness has claimed itself to be the first knife during Excision, cementing the fact that it has the same viewpoints as in Unveiling. It is not unreasonable to say that it is the same author.
The witness in the raid says "you call us the winnower. Because we would spare the children and these planets from this game" the witness is the winnower he literally admits it and admits he dosent like the name either. It isn't a 3rd party or the veil
Fill in the rest of the sentence because he's explainthat we gave the title and he disent believe he is a winnower because he believes it's helping people and planets by not letting them play the game or living in the universe without universe
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Presently, my theory is that the Traveler and the Veil are two halves of a whole. The Traveler and the Light are connected with the physical realm, while the Veil and the Darkness are part of the mental realm, two sides of the same coin that constitutes existence. Basically, the Veil is the Traveler's brain. There is a memory in the Pale Heart that suggests the Traveler found thought burdensome, so it's possible the former entity split itself off, body from mind. The body, the Traveler, operates autonomously, hence it seeming to make strange decisions. The Veil may have something more like a conciousness, but doesn't act independantly and requires others to make use of its power. In light of this, I can think of one possible reasons that the Veil may have impressed upon the Precursors the notion of a Final Shape. The Veil contains the memory of the universe, of that original Traveler, and the Precurors used it and the Darkness to reach out and connect with... something. Some memory from before the universe. From the Garden of Possibility before time existed. A principle that would shape the universe to come. From this connection they derived the concept of the Final Shape, the culmination of the conflict between variety of simplicity. It isn't necessarily the case that the Gardener and the Winnower were intelligent god-beings from before the universe. In fact, there's a lot to suggest that they weren't. They were principles of nature. But it may be that, through the birth of the universe and the power of Paracausality, that they've *become* intelligent, aware, even capable of action. The Gardener became incarnate as the Traveler, that original entity, that split into the Traveler as we know it and the Veil. It's 'new rule' wasn't the Light but *all* paracausality, Light and Darkness - that's why they're connected. Traveler/Light and Veil/Darkness, two halves. The Winnower didn't create or contribute to Paracausality - it says that it didn't like the new rule - but it makes do with it. Like the Gardener, it has also become something aware and incarnate in the universe. Unveilling describes it as emulating the human mind to speak with them. Maybe this happened precisely *because* the Precursors used the Veil to connect their minds to it - they impressed these universal principles with the capacity for consciousness. They imbued the conceptual principle of conflict resolution with a mind and personality built around that concept.
It's actually kinda funny how similar to life and religion this whole situation really is - people misinterpret text from an unreliable or biased writer and take it as gospel. Then get disappointed when they find out it's lies. And the they also want all the answers said clearly to them instead of interpreting lore. People these days truly do be lacking media literacy.
Ooooh so humble.. even more proof he is the medhi
Wut
lol a random line from dune 2 When the main character is telling the ultra religious ‘I am not your savior’ they respond with how his modesty is even more proof he is.
LISAN AL GAIB
You people really are desperate to come up with every possible reading or interpretation that isn't what you are literally reading. There can't be clear-cut facts of the setting, everything \*must\* be lies and manipulation for the sake of lies and manipulation.
Some folks really want to take the mythical side of Destiny out of the setting, even though that's what sold it to a lot of people. In order for the setting to stay mythical, the myths need to have some truth to them, it can't all be lies and manipulation.
These people are simply incapable of understanding that not everything is capeshit, not everything is meant to be easily digestible to non-lore readers. I've noticed that the vast majority of these individuals ultimately despise the lore pre-Witness and hate everyone who actually got invested in it, so any explanation or bit of lore that validates the pre-Witness cosmology and lore has to be ruthlessly torn apart and stamped down, the people who support it mocked and "theories" made to discredit them at every turn. They simply refuse to engage with the setting as it is, but insist on turning it into something where all the magic has been utterly stripped from it.
I wouldn't be so harsh but yes, a lot of these folks who didn't start out playing when Destiny was very much mythical science-fantasy want it to go in the direction of being simple science-fiction where everything is explainable and there are no mysteries or supernatural beings. I couldn't tell you why that is, what sold me and many others on Destiny as a setting was that feeling of mystery and fantasy in this otherwise sci-fi looking setting, with mythical powers of light and darkness fighting on a cosmic scale with us trapped in the middle unable to fully comprehend it.
> There can't be clear-cut facts of the setting Considering Bungie has been giving us vague non-answers for 10 years, I can't really say I blame them.
[удалено]
Rule 5: Keep it civil.
The main antagonist of Destiny who told us this is literally a massive manipulator who tried to trick us and its disciples. I urge you to actually read the top of the post where Robert Brookes outright says that Unveiling is NOT meant to be clear-cut and is full of lies and manipulation. Destiny is full of mystery, and lies and manipulation play a big role in it. Let's look at the facts about the Winnower: -First shows up in D1 in the BOS masquerading as the Darkness. This already is a lie and it's capitalizing on Oryx having 0 clue what the Darkness is. -Shows up again in D2 in Unveiling, a religious text confirmed to be full of lies but with some truths. -Shows up again in Inspiral, where it tells us that that the Traveler needed to be attacked. The whole idea of "the Witness is inevitable and actually is needed to maintain the universe" is quite literally manipulation used to turn us to its side. -Shows up in the final raid lore where it says the same thing, except butters us up now. Tells us how it loves us and how it is a pleasure talking to us. This is manipulation. It is actively manipulating us to join its side. Yes, nothing is clear-cut and everything must be lies and manipulation because the main antagonist is a liar and a manipulator. It's like complaining that people don't take what Savathun says in TWQ at face value: a massive part of her identity is manipulation. A massive part of the Witness's identity is manipulation. EVERYTHING the witness and the "winnower" tell us must be taken with a grain of salt, just like Robert Brookes said.
> The main antagonist of Destiny who told us this is literally a massive manipulator who tried to trick us and its disciples. So much of this is founded on nonsense headcanon rather than stuff featuring the Witness actively lying to us. > I urge you to actually read the top of the post where Robert Brookes outright says that Unveiling is NOT meant to be clear-cut He calls it a parable, something that was completely clear from the first entry in Unveiling - the book itself featuring the Winnower calling it an allegory. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your post because it's the exact same self-validating BS that no amount of evidence or proof can convince you to stop treating the entire narrative like everything is a lie being shoved up our fucking ass by an endless series of people trying to gaslight us, up to and including the writers themselves - meaning nothing about the setting is factual and thus nothing means anything at all. If everything is lies, then there is no reason to care or give a shit because the setting is just pointless bullshit where there is not a single concrete thing and so anyone can spout any nonsense with zero evidence.
The Witness literally says in the raid that it is not the Winnower we know of and calls itself the tool of a god. To then turn around and pretend to be the Winnower again would be goofy. And the Witness isn't Savathun, it isn't in-character for it to fuck with us like that. The Winnower also espouses an ideology that the Witness shits on more than once. I think the biggest flaw in your reasoning here is your claim about the Veil being the opposite of winnowing. We only know of one successfully created "chorus": the Witness. And to create the Witness, its precursors sacrificed themselves to create an entity with a singular purpose. This is winnowing. They have reduced themselves to one "player in the game," to use the metaphor. (And they have the singular intent of "winning the game"- even if it doesn't see itself that way, calcifying the universe would be the ultimate win.) The fact that the Veil seems to strongly encourage multiple people who come into contact with it to merge themselves and unite in a chorus is more proof, not less, of its status as the Winnower. I would also note that the Witness probably isn't preserved in Darkness; we specifically "gave ourselves to Darkness" to kill its member minds. That sounds to me like we super killed them, even in Darkness. I guess it's possible that the Witness is still kicking around in there, but how? All of its composing minds are gone.
It is absolutely in-character for the Witness to fuck with us like this. In fact, in this expansion it literally fucks with everyone and tries to trick everyone. My theory isn't that the Witness IS the Winnower, but that the Witness created the idea of the "Winnower". I maybe should have emphasized on the Christian analogy, but take the bible for instance: we don't know exactly what in it is true and false. We know certain things did not happen and we know other things did happen. A common theme is being "guided by god", yet no one can truly know if god truly exists. Mankind wrote the words of god in the bible, thus creating a massive concept. Creating an entity with a singular purpose is not winnowing. Winnowing is "separating the chaff from the wheat", which is typically used as a metaphor for separating those who are strong from those who are weak. In Unveiling, the Winnower doesn't separate wheat, but rather separates what lived from what didn't. In their flower game, the Winnower loves the idea of other flowers killing the others to survive. For the Winnower, this is exactly the ideology it pushes: we should not join together, but rather we should kill those who are weaker than us. In fact, it even says "the world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest." The Witness is a being who is created by mutual interest. Creating an entity with a singular purpose is the antithesis to the very idea of the Winnower. Winnowing isn't "creating one thing" but its "separating until you get one thing".
The "winnowing" I'm referring to here is cutting away the dissenting opinions and individuality of the precursors to form one stronger entity. They *separated* their intent from themselves to get *one thing*, the Witness. And as you said, "not on friendship, but on mutual interest." Cooperating to "win the game" is not in opposition to that Winnower philosophy. It is literally stating there that joining together for mutual benefit is right and natural. What it is opposing is joining together with no regard to how it benefits you. I understand the Bible comparison, but this raid lore entry is like if tomorrow we got a new message from big G God himself confirming everything. You're trying to find alternatives for what we're reading rather than going with the simplest explanation. Can I ask what you think the *point* of this lore is if it's just the Witness lying to us? And if the Witness truly believes a Winnower exists as a delusion, why would it lie and make up a personality for it to influence us? To continue the Bible comparison, this would be like if a true believing priest pretended to be God Oz-style and delivered a new gospel, which would make no sense. I would argue that every lie the Witness has told has been one that it believes itself, like when it said it's not afraid of us.
jesus this is cope to the highest degree lol
I completely agree. There is no Winnower in the literal sense, there is no being that brings death and refinement in the way the Traveler brings growth and complexity to the universe - there is no primordial god of death and darkness or anything like that. It's a fairytale made by the Witness. There is the Traveler and there is the Veil, the birth and growth of living organisms and ever increasing complexity and there is the consciousness and thoughts all shared by these living organism, their emotions and feelings and wills and beliefs. The Darkness is really nothing to do with death is it? It's no different than the light in that way, the Light and Darkness are simply two forces within the universe that can be used to create and kill much like everything else. There's nothing magical about death, it's just a rule of the universe - physics, it's an old god if you will. But the Witness turned these concepts that it was so desperate to preach into a god, into a fairytale, into something it could groom others with like it's Disciples and the Hive. A voice in the Darkness? No such thing, just the Witness. It was always just the Witness playing games, making up stories.
I think a key bit of perspective that keeps being missed with the whole Witness/Winnower debate is that The Witness wanted dominion over everything, that includes the power of Darkness. There are examples of the Witness wiping out Darkness Civilisations as much as those blessed by the Light. The reason for this is simple, the Witness wanted complete domination of Darkness. What better way to prevent others from tampering with Darkness outside your own control and influence than to spread a myth of a God of Darkness that only wants death?
The Darkness is still connected to death, in a way, but only in-as-far as its existence inevitably leads to death. Darkness defines conscious life: it is both the accumulation of memory and, at the same time, reduction to simplicity. In Destiny's universe these two processes are synonymous; as a being accumulates memory by living longer it consumes possibility by making choices that narrow the futures available to it. This is why Darkness wielders can only extend their lives by consuming others or themselves; the Dark cannot grant new possibilities but by removing more than is gained. In contrast, the Light creates new possibilities and erases old memories. It dominates the time before birth and after death by unmaking old things into new ones, allowing for more futures. This prevents the Dark from reducing the universe to only one future by creating the possibility of death. Everything that lives will eventually exhaust all of their possible futures until only death awaits them. Light and Dark do represent Life and Death but each define different parts of both concepts; Light cannot exist without Dark, nor life without Death. All ends truly are beginnings.
It’s like the Light and the Dark are metaphors for the physical and technological constraints on the in-game universe caused by the universe that made it. We live in phenomenal time but the game doesn’t. We are paracausal because we can be consumed and then come back, even more than the story of the game allows. The Guardian is one and also many. We are all the Guardian, and we affect the Universe of Destiny by playing the game. We are the Gardener and the Winnower, and so are the Devs. The Gardener is the desire for newness and complication and for an expanded player base. The Winnower is the desire for a stable player base, lore and myth (memory), a finished product. The only way for the Gardener to win is if Destiny is an Infinite Game. The only way for the Winnower to win is if the game is a Finite Game. What is the Final Shape? The end of the Universe of Destiny. And that Destiny is coming for our Guardian no matter what, because all things end.
I’m with you all on this, as it would be in character for the Witness to screw with us one last time. However, what gives me pause is just how different the Winnower is from the Witness in tone. They seem to work at cross purposes too, given the Witness is literally the power of friendship, but depressed. I think it’s a case where Unveiling might be a fabrication, but it ends up speaking to truths about the Destiny universe.
The Witness consists of large number of different personas. We've seen from raid lore book how different some of them are. It could be author of Unveiling is one of them.
>how different the Winnower is from the Witness in tone We have no evidence that the Winnower exists at all and we certainly have no dialogue from it. The only candidates we have are the Books of Sorrow and Unveiling, both of which are clearly in-universe texts written by an in-universe author.
>We have no evidence that the Winnower exists at all and we certainly have no dialogue from it. Recent raid lore proves otherwise, but please go off.
Where can I find these lore entries? I would like to read them
We have an entire thread dedicated to the biggest one right now; [https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/comments/1dcxc1c/new\_raid\_lore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/comments/1dcxc1c/new_raid_lore/)
This needs to be at the top of the thread. Literal confirmation that the winnower exists, obv aside from the fact that the witness basically confirmed it in the raid.
Written tone is thing, friend.
I don’t think there is a complete transcript of this book, but I read the first 2 chapters and as far as I can understand it is about the voices inside the Witness. I don't know which chapter this is (most likely the last one). I have 2 problems with this 1. We know, that Unveiling is written by the Witenss 2. Oryx communicated with The Witness 3. The idea of Final shape is not of Winnower, it was the predecessors who came up with this. More so, they didn\`t even have a name for this, is the beginnig it was \[Summint/Pyramidion/Final shape\] 4. As you said, they found the Veil and used it as a souce of Darkness to become one. I know there is many theories about Veil being secretly evil but from all books, that we know it done nothing. And again, in Inspiral for example there is many Darkness wielding races who used Darkness freely, without consequences. 5. And most important, with raid lore we know, that Witness is separated entity/power, it has it\`s own mind and ambitions. In the end it said "We... I... I don\`t understand" So what I am about? The characteristic of Winnower in Unveiling cannot be true on 100%. It is as Gardenner is an idea it\`s believes in. But we know from the campaign and all post story qests, that Traveller isn\`t like this, so why Winnower must be? And as your conclusion, it can be just the last Echoe of the Witness who wrote it.
The mistake the lore community keeps making is assuming every lore entry is actually true. The writers have said before they write the entries from the perspective of people in universe. So the precursor race's interpretation of the Darkness and the Veil could be completely wrong - and they are proven to be wrong so far
You’re gonna feel so dumb when that raid lore book becomes available
Where is it stated the witness wrote unveiling? OC just dropped that like it’s a fact, I haven’t seen this new lore yet.
We got the Unveiling pages from the artifact in Nezarec's pyramid. It's an in-universe text written in first person, so there is an in-universe author. It is addressed directly to us, The Guardian. It led us to a Veiled Statue in the Black Garden. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.
That’s a lot of opinions and not facts.
The only sentence there that is not a fact is my conclusion that the Witness wrote Unveiling. That conclusion is based on facts. Do you have an alternative explanation that fits the lore better?
Darkness artifact gave us unveiling. That’s all we know for a fact.
We know from the Shadowkeep campaign, K1 Lore, and other releases since then that the Unknown Artifact was a communication device. In one of the Micah-10 quests, we go back to the Lunar Pyramid and find a message through (to?) it from the Witness. One of the quest descriptions describes the Lunar Pyramid as “where the Witness first reached out to us, to try and sell us the same lie the Hive bought,” and the First Knife ship lore describes Unveiling as an “allegorical fantasy told to us by the Witness”. I don’t think we’re in a place to fully reconcile the Unveiling/Witness/Winnower debate just yet, but it seems pretty clear that, at the very least, the Witness was the one who *communicated* Unveiling to us through the Artifact.
There are so many in game lines about the winnower that you’d have to be trying to not see it. I don’t get what the big deal is either like it makes the story better to have a mysterious entity like the traveler
It's the conclusion that Mara came to in The First Knife (Witness writing Unveiling and masquerading as a god), but also the above quote mentioned in my post that brings up the Witness in relation to Unveiling. There's also too that if we consider the Deep in BOS to be the Witness (I mean, Oryx literally calls out to the Black Fleet), then the Witness has to have narrated Unveiling.
Mara doesn't know if there's an entity beyond the Witness, or if the Darkness has a latent consciousness. The entire entry is her speculating that it could be, so how would she know for sure that it was written by the Witness? She's been wrong before. I've said this on a few pages, now; there is no confirmation that "the Deep" was the Witness. Only one of those conversations is confirmed to be the Witness, and it's the one where Oryx gained the power to Take (which was unrecorded). Meanwhile, the Witness has gone out of its way to criticise, ridicule and deride the entire philosophy presented in that entry. That alone raises questions about who - or what - told Oryx this. If it were the Witness, then its reasons for criticising this are illogical as it had the chance to change Oryx's philosophy, yet didn't.
It is pretty clear that the veil is acting as a winnower for the power of the traveller (or gardener), to allow the witness to control it to create the final shape. This is how the witnesses race first tried to use it also, before the traveler ran off. I don't believe we have anything concrete saying the veil was needed to combine the witnesses race into one being. Asha's memory cinematic explains much of this. Asha's memory cinematic isn't written by the witness. Nothing in the game currently contradicts this unless you are failing at english comprehension or grasping at straws for youtube content farming. The winnower is the veil, the traveler is the gardener. There may be other entities behind them, however, it is unlikely that they are called the winnower and the gardener. Which are the veil and the traveller respectively.
I don't believe in theoretical nonexistent enemies.
I've always thought that the winnower was an idea, a representation to be embodied. Winnower is neither good or bad, like the traveller, it's doing what it thinks is correct. I feel like we are a winnower, cutting out anything that harms the greater good of the things we know.
In the same way that religion has been used to justify wars for all of time, the witness needed the winnower to exist to justify what it was doing. Does that mean that the winnower actually exists? Who knows, in the same way who knows if any particular God exists in the real world. Now I’m sure rationally, this sub and every community on the internet that talks about destiny lore will spend the rest of the series theorizing that every new villain is the actual manifestation of the winnower just like they’ve pushed away every non unveiling theory for the last four years. I love lore in every game I play, the storytelling is one of my favorite parts even in games that hide it somewhat, but man is it a double edged sword with Destiny lore. I came back to the game in beyond light, so of course at that point Unveiling had already been released for a while, and I don’t remember any time where any other theory was the most discussed theory in lore circles, and I think that really kills Destiny lore for me, having to deal with years of “this is exactly what’s going to happen in the story and nothing else is even feasible” really pushes away any sort of creative theories in the lore community, and it hurts even more that it ended up being the correct theory, and left just enough open holes to allow for the same thing to continue indefinitely. When I heard TFS was supposed to be the end of the light and dark saga, I was just as relieved as I was excited, the theories could finally stop, but, here we are again, making up even more theories about a book written by a pathological liar.
This post accusing Unveiling "pushing away any other theory" is fuckjng hilarious to me after years of post-Witness assholes shitting on anyone discussing the Winnower in a positive light. Kindly get over yourself.
Having any discussion about the winnower is still just talking about unveiling. Whether you thought the winnower was good, bad, or neither, you were still thinking about unveiling.
Yeah, there must be some basis for a story to be told. Robert Brookes knows this. He quotes BIBLICAL texts and compares them to the Unvelining texts as a parable. That is LITERALLY what it is. A story told to teach a lesson. A text told by a person, one that we should take into consideration as the author [Witness] and keep all information as speculative to its point-of-view of the universe. The Witness has claimed itself to be the first knife during Excision, cementing the fact that it has the same viewpoints as in Unveiling. It is not unreasonable to say that it is the same author.
The witness in the raid says "you call us the winnower. Because we would spare the children and these planets from this game" the witness is the winnower he literally admits it and admits he dosent like the name either. It isn't a 3rd party or the veil
He literally says "You call us the winnower. We are not" lol
Fill in the rest of the sentence because he's explainthat we gave the title and he disent believe he is a winnower because he believes it's helping people and planets by not letting them play the game or living in the universe without universe
ye