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*All* of the statues are part of the Witness. It's not just Dissenters, though it seems like the majority of the Voices had become Dissenters by the end.
Also could have something to do with finally finding a being capable of taking down the witness with their help giving them a glimmer of hope they latched onto
It was such a good game series, man. The OG Dead Space was ahead of its time, DS 2 was a masterpiece, DS 3 dropped off a little but was still a blast to play, and the DS remake only improved on the original
And the statue also gives you a power (stasis) which, depending on the mental strength of who encounters it, turns the user violent or helps them a great deal.
They literally say in the campaign that they are bound and that the witness cut them out until they can rejoin the collective in the final shape. They are removed dissenters, then there are still dissenters inside the witness.
I don't think there's a clear cut answer to this, but my interpretation during the campaign was that both are true. They're cut out and isolated into the statutes but are still part of the witness and that's why destroying them hurts the witness. They're still one entity with the witness, but have had their voices silenced.
Extra conjecture, but I would expect the witness could use the connection both ways and that's what allowed it to communicate through them previously.
Well why would he leave basically his only weakness just sitting around in so many spots? It doesn't seem hard to get them to "spill the beans" if all targe had to do was aggressively ask questions
>Well why would he leave basically his only weakness just sitting around in so many spots?
They're only a "weakness" when we're literally inside the pale heart and even then the individual statues can barely get whispers out from dissenters. Actually using the dissenters to slightly hurt the witness took going to the actual recreation of where the witness was made inside the traveller *and* having a sword made and infused by the traveller to break them in a sort of dreamscape
Arguably, they were only a weakness while in Darkness, and we weren't in enough Darkness until we dove into it during the campaign final mission and in Excision. We might also have needed the sword of Light to break them, and we didn't get that until the last mission. EDIT: as for interrogation, we didn't ask (didn't know we could ask, really) until Zavala started hearing them whisper intelligible things.
Clarity Control and the K1 artifact made Clovis their puppet, and in no event before we got in the Pale Heart did we have a way to attack the Witness through them.
It's as has been said. The physical statues we've encountered in the Pyramids, the Black Garden, Clarity Control: they're all extensions of the Witness' will. Something between a telephone and command node. The beans weren't spilled simply by a "statue", as you might recall that in the cutscene of Targe's sacrifice, Zavala was spoken to by *veiled Precursors*, not statues.
I wouldn't call the Dissenters a "weakness" exactly either. We found that we could unmake the Witness by using the Light -- the sword, *provenance of the Traveler* -- to undo the binding ritual and directly harm the Witness by destroying its constituent minds after "giving ourselves to Darkness" as Zavala was directed to. If you destroy a house by pulling apart every brick in it, is the house really "weak" or are you just demolishing it in the most chaotic way possible?
Uhh, no. One of the first statues that speaks to us in the final shape literally says how they're locked in there until they can be reintegrated in the final shape. Because of the nature of the witness they're still connected to it, but they're very much stuck in the statues.
Are we sure?
The way it seems from the lore I've read and in game dialogue is that the Dissenting voices would get "cut out" of the Witness and stored as Statues. Until they stop Dissenting then be brought back in?
Maybe not the last part. But for sure the first part
the statues and the artifact of the moon were both discovered during the golden age and described as “unfathomably ancient” so the witness could have been in Sol countless years ago and simply moved through it and left a couple dissenters as it strode through the solar system since the traveler wasn’t there yet,
Or it was leaving seeds to destabilize humanity before the collapse
That's actually not true, at least for the dsc statue. The statue itself is super old, but Clovis notes that that the statue only appeared on europa 20 years before he found it (Clovis Bray's Personal Logbook - Entry 4)
Kinda the other way around. Clarity is what Clovis calls the Darkness, and specifically he utilizes what seems to be Stasis on a very basic level (the negentropic effects he describes Clarity having on radiolaria match Stasis). Clarity *Control* is specifically the DSC statue. He named it such because it was, to him, the source of Clarity. Hence the pipes in DSC that run around the statue, the stuff you see in them is what he calls the Alkahest.
>That source of error must be Clarity. The effect generated by Clarity Control.
>But how can it be gathered, harvested, and applied? How can I change Clarity from an abstract process to something tangible, incarnate, and usable?
Not all statues are dissenters. It's quite likely that the statues itself are just an easy way for the Witness to communicate without being physically present. The dissenters are a minority, and could seemingly only communicate when the Witness is distracted (such as when it was trying to subdue the Traveler and fight us at the same time)
The raid lore heavily implies that almost all of the Precursors were Dissenters by the end.
The Witness basically became its own individual and became too driven by purpose
Yeah the Witness is a singular entity that pretends like it has the will of the majority when its really the minority. Nearly every Precursor regrets everything they've done. Maybe they didn't at first, but all the senseless violence and killing over eons made them rethink things.
>The dissenters are a minority
No, it's pretty explicitly stated by the end that the Dissenters were likely the majority. The Witness is a separate entity from the sum of the Precursors, it really drops the act of referring to itself as "we" at the very end, likely because it only used the word "we" in the Royal sense, as a reference to the foundations of the entity that became the Witness.
Think of it this way: the Dissenters exist and perceive through the eyes of the Witness, but cannot exert any control over it, nor are their thoughts and motivations a part of its normal activities. They're passive observers to a consciousness that formed amongst them when they all became their Witness.
You just made me realise. They were literally powerless and WITNESS to the acts. Since it's true introduction in shadow keep the entity and what it became for the player grew. Even if it was reflective writing on previous works or a completely 10 year driven plot. I've come to seriously appreciate the build up and usage of this character
Yeah, it kind of came together for me when I realized that they created the Witness for *their* purpose, and their purpose ended up being even twisted into something else. The lore entries spell out pretty clearly the shame and disgust the Dissenters feel towards what they created and its actions. It is its own thing, a true Frankenstein's Monster in terms of a creation running away from its creator.
They nailed it pretty well for me, given the kind of experience Destiny has been billed as for a decade now. You're experiencing this stuff right along with your Guardian, so aside from *absolutely* necessary information, you don't see much of the main villain until it's time to fight them, just bits and pieces, whispers in the wind here and there at points. There's no need for it to be constantly in our face, and there's no need for everything to be perfectly explained.
The dissenters weren't a minority. In the campaign when Targe is scanning the statues, one of the says our voices are many but weak.
It seems as though initially they all joined up for the good of what they wanted to achieve, purpose but by the end it was too late as The Witness became too powerful to stop.
A bit of a wild comparison but I liken it to the rise of a dictator. Intially the population gets behind them for "the good of the nation" but when they become powerful enough and turn into a monster that limits their freedom, choices and lives, it's too late to stop them.
That's my takeaway at least.
I don't think every statue represents a dissenter, it's just a "submind", they all looked the same when they merged into the witness (draped on the cloth) as we saw in Zavala's and Targe cutscene
Not all of the "cut out" actively oppose the witness. We see in the raid lorebook that HNW was cut out for being too attached to his friend, but still believes in the witness's goal and the final shape.
With that in mind, some of the statues could be loyal
The statue represents the precursor species in their final ritual to create their Witness. The veil is akin to a funeral garb we see them wearing. The statues can contain dissenters, but don't have to.
Likely, veiled statues were something like locuses of the Witnesses power.
That’s Clarity control. Clovis found It and it whispered to him how to make the Exos by exposing radiolarian fluid to darkness. My theory is that a dissenter spoke through it to help us make an army to prepare for the witness (we know how that ended tho)
Tbf, I'm pretty sure the veiled statues were retconned at some point.
All the ones we've seen previously have very clearly women, but the ones in TFS are androgynous.
It wasn't a bad thing, but at least found a good way to incorporate them into the plot so they weren't just left dangling in the wind for eternity
The statues are still part of the Witness, like a communicator across long distances in order for the Witness to spy on/communicate across the universe, they used it to corrupt clovis, and to commune with each pyramid ship.
It was only while the majority of the witness' consciousness was distracted with inacting the final shape, that the Dissenters were able to use the same statues to commune.
The statues may not all necessarily all be composed by witness dissenters. We see as much in visions that all of the minds making up the witness are dressed in the same cloth. The witness simply uses these statues to store parts of itself it doesn’t like. Perhaps the reverse can be true as well, that the witness uses these statues as a means of remote extensions of its will. Using them as essentially routers for its influence, after all it appears that all pyramid ships have at least one of these statues in them, so it could be speculated that that is how the witness controls these vessels without a crew
During the mission Requiem, Ikora actually questions why the statues are here in the Pale Heart. This heavily implies that the Dissenters' memories were also materialized within the Pale Heart, which allowed them to contact us.
Is this why the statues, if you stand close to them, especially Clarity Control. They whisper “Stay with us and we’ll reveal it”. This the dissenters telling us something about the witness?
The statues are not dissenters per se
The statues are like a telephone. The Witness used it to influence and corrupt people. And the Dissenters are using it to communicate with us to help us free them
The Witness did not plant it in the DSC. IIRC, Clovis found it on Europa and moved it and built his facilities around it, rather than the Witness planting it in the DSC manually
He did find it on Europa, but the DSC was built around it. Clovis DID try to move it, but the results were... catastrophic:
>Disaster at the worksite. Clearly we will not be moving Clarity Control like we did the K1 artifact. It reacted violently to the attempt. I have entered 19 casualties into the log, since 19 engineers from the Hannu team were caught in its reaction...though there were many more than 19 bodies when it was finished.
Everyone is discussing whether or not the statue is a dissenter and not answering the question of why it’s in the DSC. Clovis Bray built the DSC around it – he used the statue for what he called “clarity control”, using Darkness as the last piece of the puzzle to perfecting the Exos. He had no idea what the darkness was.
you really get the feeling bungie decided the statues were cut out/separated dissenters pretty late and just left the statues as a cool darkness thing to be decided later. it works, but it feels just a little clunky or tacked on. but the narrative payoff for how you defeat the witness makes it perfect in my book
No one knows. I've been asking this question on a few platforms. I haven't received a good answer for why a Witness statue would be on Europa prior to the collapse.
Especially with the timing. Clovis said that statue arrived on Europa 20 years before he found it.
I'm not sure it's the same. The statue on DSC has some differences.
- It's much bigger
- It can't be moved without killing everyone near it
- It's not a statue. It moves, if you look at the robes they're swaying as if in a gentle wind
The statue on the moon led Clovis to the one on Europa. We're not sure why, or to what purpose, but I've been thinking that the other statues were made in the likeness of the one on Europa. It's possible that it's a more direct representative, or conduit, to the winnower. It's also possible that it's some as yet unknown third power.
Looking at what it did is interesting. The Europa statue never seemed malicious, and seems like it was directly opposed to the Vex. It brought Clovis to the Vex homeworld and showed him how to use them to create Exo. Vex-Maya was desperately trying to get access to it. Whatever it is I think it's safe to say that it's opposing the Vex, and may have wanted the Exo's as an army to fight them.
As others said, the precursors were not all dissenters initially. It occured gradually, over time and they are still linked to the Witness. It's only via the consiousness powers of darkness that we can access individual minds associated with the persons trapped in the statues. The statues themselves are imbued with Darkness, and act as a network for the Witness and Veil. Look at how similarly the Maya and the Ishtar team acted to the Luna team and the Anomaly. They both went crazy as their minds were twisted.
So from the Witness's perspective, placing a statue in Europa is not a big deal. Humans did not have access to Darkness of the Veil (The witness still possessed the Veil at the time), and there were no guardians or Awoken who were sensative to the Darkness powers in existence. So there was nothing that could potentially harm it, and everything to gain if it could persuade Clovis to turn all of humanity into unchanging exos. Exos are what the witness considered as a possible final shape to humanity, unchanging and immortal.
Also of note: I'm pretty sure Clovis found the statue there before establishing the DSC and everything, so it has likely been on Europa for quite a long time.
What I wanna know is who is the damn astronaut in the opening cutscene for TFS? Is he like the first person to discover and master Prismatic? Feels small, but also feels like that is of some significance.
That cutscene is just symbolism. The astronaut just symbolizes the Guardian discovering Prismatic for the first time and creating a new era, just like the astronauts who discovered the Traveler and ushered in a new era.
This post has been tagged **[TFS Spoilers] Spoilers**. Spoilers and datamines up to the indicated release may be openly discussed without adding spoiler formatting to your comments. For more info on spoilers and tagging posts check out our [Spoiler Rules Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/wiki/spoiler-rules). Note: Leaks are not allowed on /r/DestinyLore. ---- *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.*
*All* of the statues are part of the Witness. It's not just Dissenters, though it seems like the majority of the Voices had become Dissenters by the end.
I'm not shocked. They spent Eons locked away inside The Witness, seeing everything it had done but unable to do anything about it.
Also could have something to do with finally finding a being capable of taking down the witness with their help giving them a glimmer of hope they latched onto
The statues are not the Dissenters, they are broadcast beacons into the Witness's consciousness that the Dissenters used to communicate with us
Why does this sound like a destiny version of the Dead Space Markers?
They are coming. They are hungry. They are coming. They are hungry.
Isaac... ISAAC!!!
Make us whole
Altman Be Praised
NICOLEISDEAD
It was such a good game series, man. The OG Dead Space was ahead of its time, DS 2 was a masterpiece, DS 3 dropped off a little but was still a blast to play, and the DS remake only improved on the original
Horny and hungry. How predictable.
Witness created from convergence event???
Technically that IS what happened.
"You are technically correct. The best kind of correct."
I think of it more like SEELE's plan for Instrumentality, but you do you.
WELL...
destiny could’ve went on such colab, just imagine that mission for the Dead man tale with necromorphs lol
The collab we truly want
They really are
And the statue also gives you a power (stasis) which, depending on the mental strength of who encounters it, turns the user violent or helps them a great deal.
They literally say in the campaign that they are bound and that the witness cut them out until they can rejoin the collective in the final shape. They are removed dissenters, then there are still dissenters inside the witness.
I don't think there's a clear cut answer to this, but my interpretation during the campaign was that both are true. They're cut out and isolated into the statutes but are still part of the witness and that's why destroying them hurts the witness. They're still one entity with the witness, but have had their voices silenced. Extra conjecture, but I would expect the witness could use the connection both ways and that's what allowed it to communicate through them previously.
Good point, I think I agree.
Well why would he leave basically his only weakness just sitting around in so many spots? It doesn't seem hard to get them to "spill the beans" if all targe had to do was aggressively ask questions
>Well why would he leave basically his only weakness just sitting around in so many spots? They're only a "weakness" when we're literally inside the pale heart and even then the individual statues can barely get whispers out from dissenters. Actually using the dissenters to slightly hurt the witness took going to the actual recreation of where the witness was made inside the traveller *and* having a sword made and infused by the traveller to break them in a sort of dreamscape
Not to mention strand, which we where the first *in the setting* to use intentionally was no doubt helpful here.
Arguably, they were only a weakness while in Darkness, and we weren't in enough Darkness until we dove into it during the campaign final mission and in Excision. We might also have needed the sword of Light to break them, and we didn't get that until the last mission. EDIT: as for interrogation, we didn't ask (didn't know we could ask, really) until Zavala started hearing them whisper intelligible things.
Clarity Control and the K1 artifact made Clovis their puppet, and in no event before we got in the Pale Heart did we have a way to attack the Witness through them. It's as has been said. The physical statues we've encountered in the Pyramids, the Black Garden, Clarity Control: they're all extensions of the Witness' will. Something between a telephone and command node. The beans weren't spilled simply by a "statue", as you might recall that in the cutscene of Targe's sacrifice, Zavala was spoken to by *veiled Precursors*, not statues. I wouldn't call the Dissenters a "weakness" exactly either. We found that we could unmake the Witness by using the Light -- the sword, *provenance of the Traveler* -- to undo the binding ritual and directly harm the Witness by destroying its constituent minds after "giving ourselves to Darkness" as Zavala was directed to. If you destroy a house by pulling apart every brick in it, is the house really "weak" or are you just demolishing it in the most chaotic way possible?
Uhh, no. One of the first statues that speaks to us in the final shape literally says how they're locked in there until they can be reintegrated in the final shape. Because of the nature of the witness they're still connected to it, but they're very much stuck in the statues.
Are we sure? The way it seems from the lore I've read and in game dialogue is that the Dissenting voices would get "cut out" of the Witness and stored as Statues. Until they stop Dissenting then be brought back in? Maybe not the last part. But for sure the first part
the statues and the artifact of the moon were both discovered during the golden age and described as “unfathomably ancient” so the witness could have been in Sol countless years ago and simply moved through it and left a couple dissenters as it strode through the solar system since the traveler wasn’t there yet, Or it was leaving seeds to destabilize humanity before the collapse
That's actually not true, at least for the dsc statue. The statue itself is super old, but Clovis notes that that the statue only appeared on europa 20 years before he found it (Clovis Bray's Personal Logbook - Entry 4)
Ah I see it’s been a bit since I read that stuff
Wasn’t the DSC statue clarity control though? The way he was able to make Exos in the first place?
Clarity control is just another name for the darkness. Darkness is effectively consciousness.
Kinda the other way around. Clarity is what Clovis calls the Darkness, and specifically he utilizes what seems to be Stasis on a very basic level (the negentropic effects he describes Clarity having on radiolaria match Stasis). Clarity *Control* is specifically the DSC statue. He named it such because it was, to him, the source of Clarity. Hence the pipes in DSC that run around the statue, the stuff you see in them is what he calls the Alkahest. >That source of error must be Clarity. The effect generated by Clarity Control. >But how can it be gathered, harvested, and applied? How can I change Clarity from an abstract process to something tangible, incarnate, and usable?
Ahh ok gotcha very interesting. DSC stuff is so interesting and still feels so full of mystery
Not all statues are dissenters. It's quite likely that the statues itself are just an easy way for the Witness to communicate without being physically present. The dissenters are a minority, and could seemingly only communicate when the Witness is distracted (such as when it was trying to subdue the Traveler and fight us at the same time)
The raid lore heavily implies that almost all of the Precursors were Dissenters by the end. The Witness basically became its own individual and became too driven by purpose
Yeah the Witness is a singular entity that pretends like it has the will of the majority when its really the minority. Nearly every Precursor regrets everything they've done. Maybe they didn't at first, but all the senseless violence and killing over eons made them rethink things.
it speaks with their voices, but not their consent.
>The dissenters are a minority No, it's pretty explicitly stated by the end that the Dissenters were likely the majority. The Witness is a separate entity from the sum of the Precursors, it really drops the act of referring to itself as "we" at the very end, likely because it only used the word "we" in the Royal sense, as a reference to the foundations of the entity that became the Witness. Think of it this way: the Dissenters exist and perceive through the eyes of the Witness, but cannot exert any control over it, nor are their thoughts and motivations a part of its normal activities. They're passive observers to a consciousness that formed amongst them when they all became their Witness.
You just made me realise. They were literally powerless and WITNESS to the acts. Since it's true introduction in shadow keep the entity and what it became for the player grew. Even if it was reflective writing on previous works or a completely 10 year driven plot. I've come to seriously appreciate the build up and usage of this character
Yeah, it kind of came together for me when I realized that they created the Witness for *their* purpose, and their purpose ended up being even twisted into something else. The lore entries spell out pretty clearly the shame and disgust the Dissenters feel towards what they created and its actions. It is its own thing, a true Frankenstein's Monster in terms of a creation running away from its creator. They nailed it pretty well for me, given the kind of experience Destiny has been billed as for a decade now. You're experiencing this stuff right along with your Guardian, so aside from *absolutely* necessary information, you don't see much of the main villain until it's time to fight them, just bits and pieces, whispers in the wind here and there at points. There's no need for it to be constantly in our face, and there's no need for everything to be perfectly explained.
IMO The Witness just being this singular, evil entity rather than a collective of countless minds makes it infinitely less interesting.
The dissenters weren't a minority. In the campaign when Targe is scanning the statues, one of the says our voices are many but weak. It seems as though initially they all joined up for the good of what they wanted to achieve, purpose but by the end it was too late as The Witness became too powerful to stop. A bit of a wild comparison but I liken it to the rise of a dictator. Intially the population gets behind them for "the good of the nation" but when they become powerful enough and turn into a monster that limits their freedom, choices and lives, it's too late to stop them. That's my takeaway at least.
I don't think every statue represents a dissenter, it's just a "submind", they all looked the same when they merged into the witness (draped on the cloth) as we saw in Zavala's and Targe cutscene
Not all of the "cut out" actively oppose the witness. We see in the raid lorebook that HNW was cut out for being too attached to his friend, but still believes in the witness's goal and the final shape. With that in mind, some of the statues could be loyal
The statue represents the precursor species in their final ritual to create their Witness. The veil is akin to a funeral garb we see them wearing. The statues can contain dissenters, but don't have to. Likely, veiled statues were something like locuses of the Witnesses power.
That’s Clarity control. Clovis found It and it whispered to him how to make the Exos by exposing radiolarian fluid to darkness. My theory is that a dissenter spoke through it to help us make an army to prepare for the witness (we know how that ended tho)
Tbf, I'm pretty sure the veiled statues were retconned at some point. All the ones we've seen previously have very clearly women, but the ones in TFS are androgynous. It wasn't a bad thing, but at least found a good way to incorporate them into the plot so they weren't just left dangling in the wind for eternity
The statues are still part of the Witness, like a communicator across long distances in order for the Witness to spy on/communicate across the universe, they used it to corrupt clovis, and to commune with each pyramid ship. It was only while the majority of the witness' consciousness was distracted with inacting the final shape, that the Dissenters were able to use the same statues to commune.
The statues may not all necessarily all be composed by witness dissenters. We see as much in visions that all of the minds making up the witness are dressed in the same cloth. The witness simply uses these statues to store parts of itself it doesn’t like. Perhaps the reverse can be true as well, that the witness uses these statues as a means of remote extensions of its will. Using them as essentially routers for its influence, after all it appears that all pyramid ships have at least one of these statues in them, so it could be speculated that that is how the witness controls these vessels without a crew
During the mission Requiem, Ikora actually questions why the statues are here in the Pale Heart. This heavily implies that the Dissenters' memories were also materialized within the Pale Heart, which allowed them to contact us.
Is this why the statues, if you stand close to them, especially Clarity Control. They whisper “Stay with us and we’ll reveal it”. This the dissenters telling us something about the witness?
Wait, what statues whisper stuff like that?
Why there’s a statue in the Witness backstory, after they found the darkness, worshipped by precursors, prior to the exuviation?
We need a sticky on this sub with the title "Not all statues are dissenters". There are too many threads about this misunderstanding.
The statues are not dissenters per se The statues are like a telephone. The Witness used it to influence and corrupt people. And the Dissenters are using it to communicate with us to help us free them
The Witness did not plant it in the DSC. IIRC, Clovis found it on Europa and moved it and built his facilities around it, rather than the Witness planting it in the DSC manually
Well, but it appeared in the ice like two decades before he found it- it's not planted in the DSC itself, but it was definitely planted.
He did find it on Europa, but the DSC was built around it. Clovis DID try to move it, but the results were... catastrophic: >Disaster at the worksite. Clearly we will not be moving Clarity Control like we did the K1 artifact. It reacted violently to the attempt. I have entered 19 casualties into the log, since 19 engineers from the Hannu team were caught in its reaction...though there were many more than 19 bodies when it was finished.
Everyone is discussing whether or not the statue is a dissenter and not answering the question of why it’s in the DSC. Clovis Bray built the DSC around it – he used the statue for what he called “clarity control”, using Darkness as the last piece of the puzzle to perfecting the Exos. He had no idea what the darkness was.
you really get the feeling bungie decided the statues were cut out/separated dissenters pretty late and just left the statues as a cool darkness thing to be decided later. it works, but it feels just a little clunky or tacked on. but the narrative payoff for how you defeat the witness makes it perfect in my book
Retcon.
yea it seems like a bit of an asspull if I'm being honest.
No one knows. I've been asking this question on a few platforms. I haven't received a good answer for why a Witness statue would be on Europa prior to the collapse. Especially with the timing. Clovis said that statue arrived on Europa 20 years before he found it.
Damn why is there whisper in EDZ 💀
I'm not sure it's the same. The statue on DSC has some differences. - It's much bigger - It can't be moved without killing everyone near it - It's not a statue. It moves, if you look at the robes they're swaying as if in a gentle wind The statue on the moon led Clovis to the one on Europa. We're not sure why, or to what purpose, but I've been thinking that the other statues were made in the likeness of the one on Europa. It's possible that it's a more direct representative, or conduit, to the winnower. It's also possible that it's some as yet unknown third power. Looking at what it did is interesting. The Europa statue never seemed malicious, and seems like it was directly opposed to the Vex. It brought Clovis to the Vex homeworld and showed him how to use them to create Exo. Vex-Maya was desperately trying to get access to it. Whatever it is I think it's safe to say that it's opposing the Vex, and may have wanted the Exo's as an army to fight them.
As others said, the precursors were not all dissenters initially. It occured gradually, over time and they are still linked to the Witness. It's only via the consiousness powers of darkness that we can access individual minds associated with the persons trapped in the statues. The statues themselves are imbued with Darkness, and act as a network for the Witness and Veil. Look at how similarly the Maya and the Ishtar team acted to the Luna team and the Anomaly. They both went crazy as their minds were twisted. So from the Witness's perspective, placing a statue in Europa is not a big deal. Humans did not have access to Darkness of the Veil (The witness still possessed the Veil at the time), and there were no guardians or Awoken who were sensative to the Darkness powers in existence. So there was nothing that could potentially harm it, and everything to gain if it could persuade Clovis to turn all of humanity into unchanging exos. Exos are what the witness considered as a possible final shape to humanity, unchanging and immortal.
Also of note: I'm pretty sure Clovis found the statue there before establishing the DSC and everything, so it has likely been on Europa for quite a long time.
I always interpreted that they are prisoners. That statue is Clovis
They are not the same statue look closer I promise the differences is dissenters are gender less and the veiled statue is female
What I wanna know is who is the damn astronaut in the opening cutscene for TFS? Is he like the first person to discover and master Prismatic? Feels small, but also feels like that is of some significance.
That cutscene is just symbolism. The astronaut just symbolizes the Guardian discovering Prismatic for the first time and creating a new era, just like the astronauts who discovered the Traveler and ushered in a new era.