#lore vibing

"Book of the Alchemist" is an interesting thing to say. It immediately got me interested because "The Alchemist" is one of the announced future expansions. And it's quite a bizarre title so nobody really knows what it might be about. The fact that they dropped this here and coming from Bael solidifies it as an expansion for sure, but doesn't help us figure out what it might be about, other than he could very well be involved? And since we know he's so tightly linked to VI, it might be something tied to VI which, again, doesn't tell us much, but it's such a mysterious title.

Onto Lodi, this was one of the dialogues he had in orbit where he was having a bad time.

I didn't understand what he was talking about at the time I heard it. Honestly, I thought it was just the usual Nine shenanigans of him being affected by something that may as well be random on a daily basis, but knowing what I mentioned in the previous post, this is actually very specific. He's talking about sensing something underneath Chicago and he thinks it's talking to him, and wants him to come there and Lodi is convinced that this is something we have to do in order to bind the first Nine to a person, which he thinks is the solution to the prophecy.

He repeats this about something trying to talk to him as the post-campaign mission starts as well:

That mission then continues to have Lodi and Bael talk and Lodi figuring out what he has to do, or at least what his gut is telling him he has to do; aka the solution to the prophecy and what "bind the Nine" means which I screenshot in this post.

At the end of the mission, Lodi also says:

Once again, he talks about being in Chicago, underground, and in a body that isn't his. Like, clearly something is happening down there, and a lot of these little tidbits were hard to connect on the first read because, well, it's Lodi, and he has weird Nine-induced dreams and obviously Chicago features. But it's repeated so many times that this is 100% something that's going to happen.

The talk in the exotic mission (you get new dialogues as you progress the quest and get new catalysts), which is largely Aunor and Eris, had Zavala join them. He was just "checking in" but kept talking about the situation in the City and on Earth (and how people are reacting to knowing about the prophecy and all that). He then mentions the situation developing on Earth in regards to the effects of III's death and how the Earth is kinda falling apart. No real new information about those effects, except... Where it's most localised:

Oh, the Great Lakes. Near Chicago. And Lodi says there's something underneath it, something trying to talk to him, and that we have to go there, because that's where we will be able to finally start binding the Nine... to people, apparently.

Furthermore, Zavala says something else:

Eris' thing aside so I don't burst into tears... Zavala? If I can cook something insane for a moment...

Zavala feels like he's been acting too afraid, that he's been in the Tower too long and that he needs to remember about the universe around him. He's clearly very affected by what's happening on Earth. He also talked, in the campaign, about how nostalgic he is about the missions and strikes he used to lead, especially on Mars. I know this is primarily a reference to D1, but still. Interesting.

Lodi thinks that we need people to bind the Nine to. So, if you see where I'm going, is Zavala planning on volunteering?

The moment Lodi said that about binding the Nine to people, my first thought was Zavala and Mars (IV) because he seems to be connected to it and is nostalgic about it. But I feel like IV wouldn't be so coy to send weird signals to Lodi from under Chicago. As a matter of fact, IV shows up to yell at VI in one of the orbit dialogues, no problem. If IV wanted to be bound, it would just show up and get it done.

This is also why IV and Zavala kinda feel like a match. To be even more insane, there's something that VI told IV that is killing me right now; VI called IV:

"Childless father." Like Zavala. (Btw, this refers to IV because Mars frequently laments how it never had life in the same way Earth did, and how it briefly had life when humans colonised Mars, and also how it lost both III and a never-born neighbouring sibling (Asteroid belt)).

Am I insane here? Someone do a sanity check. Are these real connections or am I lost in the sauce. Like, I feel like these are such niche hints, but then again they do work so I have no idea. But the moment Lodi said he wants to bind the Nine to people, the connection of Zavala - IV popped up.

I just don't think that IV is connected to whatever is calling Lodi from under Chicago. I'm not sure who is, but also Lodi is frequently described in this new lore as having dreams of being a part of Earth. And sometimes the wider universe, but Earth seems to be the bigger connection. And it makes sense, because he was deeply linked to III, saw its death and let it speak through him in such an important moment, to the point where he felt like he also died when III died (which is incidentally the reason why I started theorising Lodi may be bound to III and that we have to bind other Nine to other people a day after EoF dropped).

Specifically in the Shrewd Survivor chest piece, Lodi is having intense connections to Earth's creatures and existence. This whole lore tab is honestly something I can't even cut in any meaningful way. He's trying to sleep but keeps having dreams. At one point, he turns into an animal in the dream and then:

He panics and bolts into the dark on all fours, all sixes, his many clawed paws ignoring the pull of gravity. Language is gone. It is molten lava—it is a stretch of sandstone and the screech of apes and the hiss of natural gas. He opens both sets of jaws and cries whale song in search of meaning. He is alive, but he is wrong—he is Canidae Equidae Mantodea Acroporidae, the heaving shadow of every living creature. He's supposed to be somewhere else.

He's clearly going through Earth geology and biology. Like he's part of Earth. He's molten lava and sandstone and various animal families. "He's supposed to be somewhere else" echoes what he kept telling us in the mission, including the exact same quote I screenshot above, that something is speaking to him from somewhere else and that he feels confused. He even said that when that thing talked to him, it reminded him of channeling III.

And then in the lore tab it says:

home i need to go home

This is the way III speaks, like the formatting of all lower caps. And again, it echoes what Lodi tells us at the end when he talks to us in the holoprojector: "Guardian, I don't want to go home." Why did he say that? It's almost like a reply to this. In the lore tab he also says, immediately after:

Lodi startles awake. He feels for each of his limbs, the planes of his own face, and gasps for air. A monster is trying to talk to him.

A monster? Does that refer to whatever is under Chicago? But why would something like that try to talk to him and also why would something like that essentially be helping us in the first place? Obviously, there's A LOT that's deliberately hidden and mysterious about this whole plot, but I'm still trying to see if it can be figured out at least somewhat.

I don't know how else to process this, other than this being a setup for what we have to do to prevent extinction and it involves going under Chicago, obviously, where there's... something that is capable of calling out to Lodi and it's in some way related to III. Possibly even a remnant of III? Or something left behind by III? Maybe "the first Nine we bind" to someone could be III; maybe even though it's dead, its remains (?) or something tied to it can be bound, possibly to Lodi.

And then everything with Zavala could be even further hints that IV is the next one in line, to be bound to Zavala. This would also possibly lead into Zavala eventually stepping down as Commander and Ikora taking over; something discussed in the lore in Renegades:

"This isn't right, Ikora. We can't hide the truth." He shakes his head. "Commander Zavala is making the wrong call." She still hears Zavala's insistence. "I know." They share a moment of mutual acknowledgment. Both are fundamentally incapable of disobeying a superior. "Have you told him…" About her future title. "Not yet." Ikora isn't sure how. "I'm not ambassador of… anything… yet either," he says with a dry shrug. "Guess we have yet to earn our promotions."

Ikora and Lodi are referring to what III told them; at the end of EoF, III called Ikora "Commander." This obviously isn't true right now, but it might be in the future. And why would she take over? Well. Either something happens to Zavala, he steps down voluntarily or he takes another role.

Chat. Am I losing it.

Granted, I don't think all of these speculations are going to nail it perfectly, but I do think there's something going on with everything I listed. Obviously something with Chicago is guaranteed beyond a shadow of a doubt, as well as something with binding the Nine to people. I'm a lot more reluctant to fully go into the stuff with Zavala, although I am beyond intrigued and will be looking out for more information.

A LOT of various strange and seemingly disconnected hints have happened in the campaign and there's no way these are just random. Not only is Zavala talking like this, but it's likely that he may have to step down as Commander in the future, and he's also been talking about how the way the Vanguard leads the City and humanity may actually be something they will have to change. Some sort of Zavala plot will surely be happening in the future, and I'm so interested to see if we just got possible connections between him and IV, especially if our first binding in Chicago goes well, and if someone, like Zavala, would volunteer for the next.

And I'm so interested to see what's under Chicago, what does it have to do with binding the Nine, which Nine will be the first to be bound, to who and how. Also what's with all the connections between Lodi and III; is III still in some way around? Can we salvage some of it by binding it, maybe to Lodi, thus stopping the Earth from deteriorating? Or is some remnant of III maybe reaching out to Lodi to guide him in how to do all this, and there's something completely different under Chicago, and the first Nine to be bound will be another?

Text with + is VII (Uranus) speaking and text in brackets are what we assume to be visions delivered directly to the recipient of the information. It's how it was in all of the other lore tabs where the Nine speak to us. The only other lore tab where VII was directly talking to us alone before Renegades was from Epochs&Orbits.

Right away, it talks about something relating to the Eclipse energy. I'm unsure what it's trying to say with the first sentence; my assumption is that it's about the Nine in general and how their nature, coming from the power of being a higher dimensional being, is to both nurture and negate. Does this explain or confirm that Eclipse energy is from the Nine? And that's why it can negate all paracausal powers?

Obviously the Nine are somehow involved with Eclipse energy, or at least VI is, but the question is how this thing is and can be utilised by them and for what purpose. Is this something they just have naturally? But if they do, that brings a lot of questions about their relationship to us and paracausality, especially if they can just shut it down. Maybe they can't do anything with it directly like that without being in our dimension, aka without being bound. Or maybe Eclipse energy is some sort of misappropriation of some innate power of the Nine that can then be focused into a weapon (or into something to nurture).

The first vision seems to be showing us how Eclipse energy got here, perhaps. It was a gift to "a compliant tool." My initial reading is that this is about Bael, who is a tool for VI, who bends the knee for VI and "kisses his rings," in a sort of a double metaphor, because Saturn's rings. Also Bael was given Eclipse energy to use against Guardians. VII has previously already referred to VI as a "brother in rings," and this also seems to repeat again in the next sentence where it calls VI an arrogant, beringed brother.

The situation changes here though. There's a new memory which I don't understand. "A higher place" being referred to as a home... Does that refer to the "home" of the Nine? But what would that be? Where "rays and shadows" are extinguished by the weight of being is also strange to me. No idea what this means. The only idea I have is that "rays and shadows" might refer to Light and Darkness, aka paracausality. Since this is going on about Eclipse energy which does have the power to extinguish paracausality, and it seems to be coming from the Nine. But what would this "home" be is completely strange to me. A time before the Nine existed? Or simply this higher dimension where they "are," technically?

The next sentence is about IV, Mars, who is a "brother in red" and then it sends a vision about what it was like before the Traveler and after the Traveler (terraformed and inhabited by humans). VII once again mentions the Nine nurturing, even though Light is now here. I'm not sure what it's trying to say.

The next one is very interesting because it's the first actual insight into what I've wondered about before many times: what did the Nine think about the planets being stolen by the Witness.

a witness + veils siblings + in the heavens [Dust and auroras become a vacuum. Only orbits remain. Suffering! As liquid souls and armored morphs are dissolved by a reality of nothing.]

It's unfortunately not very understandable, other than clearly being unpleasant. The next and final bit is even more intriguing but also even more confusing:

death of a witness + queen of lies + eclipse + red brother returns [Red sands reform, dark matter in its bones. Its soul reflects: Paracausality, while beyond reach, must obey elemental laws. And those laws are the soul's very foundation - always within reach. The ontology of the vanishing has been rejected, and thus, the red valleys re-instantiate. The soul of Mars speaks to the Inner Orbits.]

First of all, "death of a witness" being listed first is peculiar. Mars returned years before we killed the Witness; I wonder if this is some shenanigans of how the Nine view time, or if it's something else entirely. But even more mysterious is mentioning Savathun here alongside "eclipse" which I assume is the same meaning as in the rest of the lore tab so it would refer to Eclipse energy. Obviously, Mars returned when Savathun showed up as a Lightbearer; they're really tightly linked. Savathun even had several riddles about how Mars truly returned, claiming multiple different scenarios between saying that she took it back or that the Witness simply returned it when it no longer needed the planet. And uh, yeah. She also mentioned the Nine. This connection obviously wasn't consciously planned 3 years ago, but it does bring questions now, as this old stuff could've been used to make new threads.

And not only that, but the mention of "eclipse" and the rest of the vision makes me wonder if the Nine truly had a hand in this. Maybe in their usual way of manipulating various pawns and pieces to make it happen, but there is no reason to mention Eclipse here otherwise. Furthermore, it also mentions that Mars was somehow reformed to feature dark matter in its bones, which is something I also noticed being written in-game on dark matter ingots:

The rest of it further implies that the Nine had some involvement, maybe not direct, but that the nature of their connection to the planets is important somehow. It's almost like it shows a rejection of the paracausal power exerted on the planet to take it away. The Nine, by being in a higher dimension and having access to more power (especially if that power is capable of negating paracausality), were able to... do something to make the planet re-appear. I'm genuinely unsure if I'm reading this correctly, but phrases like "the ontology of the vanishing has been rejected" and "red valleys re-instantiate" are kinda leading me to believe that the Nine at the very least put some sort of direct effort into returning the planet.

Perhaps this is how Eclipse energy was used at the time; maybe it's how the Nine can use it in their higher dimension. And what does Savathun have to do with it? Was she used as a pawn in the scheme to return Mars? Did she even actively participate?

What does it all mean? Remember, the Nine knew what would happen to the planets and moons. They told us in the Prophecy dungeon, back in Arrivals. They knew what would happen. Was it all part of the plan? Are they the ones that put Mars and Titan back, when we needed them? (Could they even affect Titan, since it's not a planet?) Why not the other two? Is it not the right time yet? Does that even matter? Does this tell us more about Eclipse and how this energy has been around for longer than we knew about it?

Girl help.

Also strange that this was given to VII to say, the Nine and planet we know the least about. It is also the Nine that gave visions to the Drifter (or to us?), and also VII seems to be more inclined towards IV and repeatedly notes that it doesn't like VI, despite VI and VII being part of the Outer Orbits together.

Speaking of this lore tab about the Drifter, something I noticed in hindsight is this:

The king lives in hate. Of himself, of his crown, the power it bestows, and the ochre god who gave it to him. That god, now bound to a compliant tool, is thus allowed to step into the paracausal sky, free.

The king in this vision is the Drifter, if he were to accept leading the Barant Imperium and decimating the Lightbearers. The vision is about how he rules the City. The strange thing I just noticed is that it describes the entity that gave him this position as an "ochre god." Ochre is to me intrinsically linked to red (although there's other colours of ochre like yellow or brown) so this would imply a "red god" which in this case I can't say it would be anyone other than IV. Mars that is. Who is also described as "bound to a compliant tool." VII describes, what I assume is, Bael also as a compliant tool. So I'm not sure if this is also referring to Bael and VI or to someone else and IV (Mars) after it's been bound. I originally assumed it was talking about Bael and VI, but VII constantly describes VI as "ringed" so I don't know. It could still be talking about VI, Saturn could be described as yellow. I'm starting to overthink things, but VII is such a mysterious Nine and also a complete unknown as a planet so I have no clue why it's speaking in multiple lore tabs here.

I even went to check the old stuff from Rite of the Nine where they originally gave us identities for each of the speech patterns for every Nine, but VII only had a social media post. Which, to be fair, is interesting to read now:

seven mighty souls + seven mighty hosts they exist outside + architects of the game tighten the binding + free the bound

What does it all mean. The only thing I can get from this is that VII seems to be referring to the fellow Nine as "souls" so seven souls would be the Nine and seven hosts would be the people we bind them to. Why just seven? We can debate the rest for all time tbh, like, what does it all mean.

As a complete aside, because I remembered it when I went to look for this information, but the social media post for IV (Mars) from back during Rite of the Nine was:

FOUR SLAIN GUARDIANS UNDER AN ECLIPSED SUN, INVADED FROM WITHIN, LIKE PREY

And the writer said "Sounds like a prophecy." I'm so mad like. Yeah. Yeah that sure is a prophecy about the Eclipse energy killing Guardians on Mars in Renegades. What the hell.

Naturally, this made me start overthinking the other Rite of the Nine posts they did and we'll be here until the end of the world if I continue overthinking them, but they're all listed in the link I put above so feel free.

III

I'll start with what little we know already. As I mentioned in the previous posts about this a couple of days ago, I do think that we have some information about something still going on with III (Earth) and it being in some way tied to Lodi. I'm not sure to which extent this is and how it works, as III is supposed to be dead, but there appears to be something relevant to III under Chicago. I've noted this in the addition to this post with the dialogue from one of the tapes in which IV is directing Lodi to "bring III" to Chicago.

Immediately after Edge of Fate, I had a theory that "binding the Nine" was about binding them to people, because of how Lodi was behaving during that final cutscene, especially with him referring to III in first person ("I am dead") before correcting himself. And he's been further greatly affected by III as he has constant thoughts and dreams of being a part of the Earth's life and geology which I detailed in this post. Obviously we can't tell if this is because he's the Emissary, or because he had such a close brush with III and its vision, or because maybe III left some part of itself for him deliberately, or if there's something completely different going on, including the theory that one of the ancient consciousnesses that made III (and the Moon) - Theia - might still be around as some sort of a remnant hiding within Earth.

Genuinely impossible to parse all of this and all possible theories, but I do think that Lodi and III are in some way connected and Lodi is either the vessel for this one specifically, or he is capable of transferring it to someone else. In that case, I have no idea who else might be a vessel for III, other than someone yet unknown. We also know that Lodi is repeatedly having visions of being "in someone else's body" under Chicago, which may be the actual vessel for III who is a character we're not aware of yet.

We know of only one specific character tied to Chicago - Shayura, but she is not Lightless (that we know of yet...) so I'm not sure if that affects anything, given that one of the criteria seems to be that the vessels have to be Lightless. Either way, Shayura has been to Chicago, and survived, and has had a very bad time since, and the last we've heard of her was someone (?) telling her about it again, potentially implying that she should go back.

[[Skimming. I see some interesting details. Häkke's Golden-Age predecessor had a terrestrial office in what was once the city of Chicago. They were involved in the development of gravity-based weapons. No BrayTech connections yet.]] Shayura freezes. "Chicago?" The tombs below Old Chicago haunt her periphery. Every ambient noise in the derelict foundry becomes a threat. She pushes past the fear, past the panic. That isn't now. "What does Chicago have to do with anything?" [[I'm not sure…]] her handler on the other end of the comms says. [[But whatever it is goes back a long, long time.]]

We have no idea who the "handler" is or if this is relevant at all; it's on Ice Breaker, an exotic from Vesper's Host, which may just be a little hint for all the Edge of Fate stuff, since there was a lot of other Edge of Fate hints in that dungeon, especially with the final message in the quest about Lodi's transmission. We also learned in Heliostat that it was Astraea, the Vesper Station AI, who boosted Lodi's message to be able to reach us. So all of this may not be entirely important going forward, but I had to bring it up because if there's any character prior to Lodi who has such a big tie to Chicago, it's Shayura. So whenever we go there finally, to the "Labyrinth" and "The Well" where we have to bring III... Who knows! Maybe she will be relevant. Maybe she's the person Lodi is seeing visions through. Maybe she has nothing to do with the current plot at all. I do think it's interesting that she's also a Praxic Warlock.

Given how broad the concept of "who is connected to Earth enough to be a vessel for III" I have no other specific candidates in mind, especially if we include Lightbearers. There's just no way to know. Not to mention that it's unclear what it would even mean to be a vessel for III given that it is dead. Even if there some remnant of it under Chicago that is somehow linked to it, what would being a vessel for III truly entail here? Maybe this is why it's Lodi, because it doesn't really change anything for his status as an Emissary, since III is gone, but he can serve as a sort of a link to whatever remains of it without impacting his greater role.

IV

I'll go to IV (Mars) next because it's what I also already noted in the same post I made a couple of days ago. It seems to me that they're hinting at the vessel for IV being Zavala. Not only did he have a whole set of dialogues going on about how much he misses running missions and strikes on Mars and how connected he is to that past of his, he also explicitly talked about how he wants to go back out there and do things rather than just sit in the Tower.

I also noted the way VI mocked IV in a voice line, calling it "childless father" which curiously enough also applies to Zavala. I do think that IV and Zavala have a lot in common, based on vibes and ideals. On top of that, Zavala is freshly Lightless. I do think that he is absolutely the best candidate for this from all we know, and that this is being hinted at already extensively.

Mars has other characters that I think people would think of first, like for example Ana Bray, but again, she is not Lightless and I do think that this is one of the stronger criteria we have for figuring this out right now. So unless something changes about that, I think she's excluded on that base alone. I'm not sure how in-depth we might go here for finding someone else; I did think of people connected to Ana like either Camrin (her girlfriend, who is Lightless and was helping Ana with finding the Bray facility on Mars and also has a sick Rasputin-themed prosthetic arm) or maybe even Elsie, but it's all very tenuous. Basically, you can make a link with anyone in some way if you want to. There's also the option of a new character. As a side note, If Rasputin were alive, I'd totally be up for the sickest fusion of all time between IV and him. They would be the loudest duo in the world.

But for me, Zavala makes the most sense and I do believe that the stuff we got in Renegades about him was a direct hint.

IX

I'm putting IX here right away because well... IX, the Sun, is just something I have really no ideas for. It could be literally anyone. My initial thought was obviously Lodi because of how much IX likes him, but if he's occupied with III.... I don't know. Can Lodi, as the Emissary, be a vessel for multiple? But I somehow doubt that would be accepted by any of the Nine, because the point is that they kinda want to be free. So I just don't think they would all want to share a body. Especially IX, who I don't think would like sharing with anyone.

Genuinely this could be anyone. I have absolutely zero specific characters in mind that I could point to and give some logical reasons for. Basically anyone I could point to would just be without any real explanation. We have no hints about it so far or anything. A brand new character is highly possible, or it's something that hasn't been set up yet at all.

Another issue, in a way, is that IX is a whole ass star, and I have no idea how that would affect the binding. Obviously the first thing we'll be dealing with will, apparently, be III. And we'll be dealing with that, if we understand the hints correctly, on Earth, under Chicago. Is this a place where we'll be able to deal with all of them or is it simply a suitable spot because it's on Earth and something connected to Earth and III is there? Because if it's the latter, then how are we going to do anything with the Sun? Or the outer orbits (since they're all gas giants)?

Hell, we sort of know from Bael that being on the planet is not necessary at all and that there's nothing special needed for the Nine to be bound to a vessel. At least from what we know. I don't think Bael travelled to Saturn or needed a special ritual for this to happen. That we know of. But it's also possible that the reason he as a vessel is falling apart is because this was not done "properly."

Something to think about, since we have to talk about Mercury next.

I

Time to derail the whole answer by going on about this thing. I considered putting this last, but I don't want to mess up the order even more than I already did by starting with III and IV and then jumping to IX.

Okay, so. I, Mercury, is a problem for so many reasons that I don't even know how to properly explain but the main one, I suppose, is that the planet is still missing. We have no information about how this affects I. There is a possibility that it literally does not affect it at all because of the nature of the anomalies left in the place of planets and moons that were stolen. Namely, when the planets and moons were stolen, their gravities remained completely unaffected. Not to be the guy still quoting Immolant in the year 2025 but:

The orbital readings of Sol's bodies are intact, gravity unaltered. But the system is gutted, four globes plucked from the skies.

Probably best imagined with the anomaly that was left in place of Mars (which has since returned):

Phobos and Deimos orbit the grave of Mars where a roiling depth festers, hungry and reaching out to the little moons caught within its influence.

The planet was entirely gone, but its moons were not taken and they just continued to orbit the anomaly as if nothing happened. The fact that gravity was not affected means that the Nine were very likely not affected either. But we have no information about it and Mars has since come back and IV made no comment about anything during the time it was gone (that I can recall). But also that was a long time ago now so maybe it simply doesn't mean much to IV anymore. Io and Titan are moons so they're not tied to the Nine in the same way.

But Mercury is still gone. And I so far has not made any comment about it, or how it feels about it, or what's going on, or if it means anything to it. My assumption is that I is simply not bothered because it doesn't have an effect on it at all, due to the gravity being intact. However. The thing is, that the Nine are very tied to their planets and are aware of what's happening on their planets and are very deeply affected by those events. III was aware of all life on Earth, IV was deeply saddened when it lost what little life it had, II speaks in a robotic tone because of how the Vex settled on it, VI was tremendously affected by Oryx and the Dreadnaught and the general Hive and Taken mess. Every single one of the Nine knows what's going on with their actual planetary body, and I is not an exception as it specifically talks about what the Vex did to Mercury in its Epochs&Orbits chapter.

This entire lore tab is bizarre, but it does highlight that I is more than aware about what the Vex did to Mercury. What I'm interested in is what does it think about it. Because out of all planets, Mercury has been by far the most messed up; first just naturally, then completely terraformed by the Traveler, then converted into a literal machine and hollowed out by the Vex, then half-eaten by the Almighty, then invaded by a Pyramid and then taken... somewhere, and not returned. There's no way that I is just chilling about all of this, but so far it does appear to be just chilling. Which is interesting. And I do believe that the planet being gone must have some effect on it, even though the gravity is fine so I is clearly not in any 4-dimensional equivalent of pain and suffering over it.

I've been wondering also if the Nine may have had some say in the planets being gone at all. Obviously the Witness did this for its own purposes, but the Nine have a view of everything that happens and will happen, so did they know about this (EDIT: Forgot this when editing, but they clearly knew about the planets about to be stolen because of the Arrivals dungeon, Prophecy, in which they literally told us it would happen)? Were they okay with it? Was this even in some way beneficial for them? Why? Or why not? The only ones affected would've been I and IV, both inners; did outer orbits have some say in this? Did they let it happen? The questions are many. Mentally I am still solving the Arrivals plotlines, especially the last remaining Arrivals plotline that we know nothing about.

And I feel like Mercury still not being back is a plot that is either going to bite us in the ass or it literally doesn't matter and there's no in between, but now that we're actually dealing with the Nine and the consciousnesses of the planets and we have to literally bind them to people, I feel like this is almost the last real moment where it would make sense to solve this, especially when we get to binding I. A couple of things from the Epochs&Orbits Mercury chapter are interesting in this regard because it's I giving us a vision (of the Corridors of Time no less) and talking about... something for sure.

I am the first I. I of IX. Only a speck against a magnitude, but given form in the contrast. A short missive in mind: quantum infinities twist in the solar wind, but retained always, always since the Forest. Here there is a future uncovered, waiting in pressed digital vinyl. Trapped in three-body problem, between where Sol meets the Deep and timeless simulation. A moment in orbit always here and never to return.

The last sentence has to be referring to Mercury itself. I don't know what else it would be about, as the rest is talking about the planet and specifically about the Infinite Forest and how there's still "a future uncovered" waiting in the simulation engine (and like thanks for telling us, but we kinda can't get in there).

But also, the rest of the visions are about us picking paths in the Corridors of time. And every time I speaks, it's some bizarre shit:

You will find your path, because you have found your path. Through many iterations, and great effort. It will draw us back.

"It will draw us back" ? Does that refer to the planet? Who is "us" otherwise? I could probably make a full separate post analysing every single sentence of this one lore tab, I just don't understand what it's trying to say, but whatever it is, it's clearly I talking about the planet and what's on it. Except we can't reach it so why does it matter? Unless I is telling us about bringing it back.

And why is it showing us a vision of a "trowel of pale make"? I am in severe distress.

What was the question here? Oh yeah who are we binding I to. Well, the obvious choice is clearly Osiris. Deeply tied to Mercury, and also Lightless ( :( ). I know the instinct is to also say that Saint is possible as well, but he isn't Lightless so. I have no doubts that Osiris would immediately volunteer, but also unless we find out what being bound to the Nine means for the vessel, it would be incredibly risky to do that. Like Saint wouldn't let him unless we know for a fact that it was safe. Not only that, but Osiris' experience with Savathun might make him and everyone else very wary of connecting him to higher alien beings.

Clearly there's one more candidate - Brother Vance, but that depends entirely on if Mercury is coming back and if he's even alive. Like we genuinely don't know what's his status, but given that he stayed on Mercury (well... inside the Forest), and depending on how I feels about what happened to its planet, and if the planet is ever coming back, and also if the Forest can be unsealed, this could be an option that would give us a substantial amount of plots to solve.

Very peculiar situation, made specifically to torment me. For real I think that if we get to binding I and nothing is mentioned about the planet and it never returns and we just never solve anything about it, I will probably turn into the joker. Ha ha joking. Unless.... But for real. If they never get into this and explain what the hell is going on with Mercury and that freak that stayed on it, I will seriously be on the news. Especially since after all this time, now is the perfect moment. We have to deal with the Mercury Nine and we need a person, and possibly the planet itself, to make the binding. I, what the hell do you think about everything your planet went through and is still going through. You have to have opinions. Call me on the phone.

We're moving on before I go insane.

II

So II, Venus, is yet another unknown to me. The main reason is that we've not had any real proper plots with Venus in D2 so the only thing that remains is really looking back to D1 and history of Venus which leads us to either Elsie (because of D1 campaign - very tenuous to me personally) and the Ishtar Collective.

Interestingly enough, the Ishtar Collective is now actually in the game in the form of the Conductor, and simulated Maya and Chioma who are chilling with us in the raid and the Vex Network. I'm not sure if the Conductor is viable simply because she's not on our side so the question is would II go behind our backs to bind with the Conductor? Because I doubt we'll be asking the Conductor nicely to do this for us. Especially since we don't know what the hell that would even mean for either II or the Conductor. Namely, what happens to the Nine if the vessel is killed? Or what happens to the Conductor if she gets the power of being bound to one of the Nine?

Simulated Maya and Chioma are also an enigma because they're not exactly physically present. Can the Nine bind with them in that state? The Vex did have many shenanigans recently with the Nine in the Nine space and trying to digitize it, so I have no clue if any of that is possible.

I do have to mention a Praedyth, still stuck in the Vault of Glass, and still alive. Last we've heard of him, he was calling out from it about still being stuck there (and specifically calling out to Elsie!) in Echoes. I also have to mention a possibility of a new character but like... A Vex character. II is very tied to the Vex, and even sounds a little robotic, and now there's an option that a friendly Vex could become a character that become suitable for this. Just throwing it out there.

I don't have any other specific ideas for II, but a couple of these are at least some sort of a connection, as opposed to IX.

V

Ah, the gas giants. Outer orbits. What do we do with those. We do have some precedent from VI that the vessel doesn't have to be in any way connected to anything about the planet, but also there's a chance that not being connected is the reason why Bael is going through a lot of pain; because he's not actually really suitable. So while we could just give up and say that anyone can be a vessel, maybe a candidate that does have some connection is better? I genuinely don't know. And I have no idea how to approach the outer orbits in regards to this.

I suppose for V, Jupiter, we could go to its moons, especially since we've visited two of Jupiter's: Europa and Io. And they both have a lot going on. For real, this is probably the most candidates we have. Elsie immediately stands out for me here. And what if... Clovis as well? Or what if Variks? Hell, even Mithrax, who spent time rescuing Eliksni from Europa (I would honestly exclude Mithrax from all Nine binding because I think he's had enough of being connected to some strange godly entities)? Are aliens even suitable? The Nine are specifically tied to our system, so can we even bind them to non-native life? Also, a similar question to simulated Maya and Chioma, is Asher a possibility? Given that he is very much in the Vex Net and not physical.

As usual, a new character is entirely an option. Maybe something similar to Bael? V and VI were the only Nine who voted both against Lodi as the Emissary and against us as a weapon.

Another good question is what happens if any of the Nine does not want to be bound? Can we force it? What happens to the vessel then? Can we bind them to something like an enemy, against the Nine's will (ironic), and then kill them? What would be the consequences of that?

V might not want to be bound at all, and it's definitely something to consider when trying to figure out the vessels. Maybe some of them will simply not have a vessel. Maybe we can still prevent extinction by binding a certain number of the Nine, but not all of them. If we bind something like 5 or 6 of them, the remaining 4 or 3 might not be able to act on their plans as well. It's a possibility.

VI

I don't know... That's scary... But for real, I don't know. VI is currently bound to Bael. We don't know if that's permanent or not; I'm assuming not, because Bael is kinda falling apart. I'm also assuming that we may at one point have to deal with Bael as in kill him, and we have no idea what happens then. Does VI die too? Or does he just move on to find another vessel? And do we want VI to have another vessel?

VI is highly tied to the Taken, the Dreadnaught, and everything that happened ever since Oryx arrived to the system. One of the tapes has Eris coercing VI to speak to her and they have a conversation, god to god, about the Hive and tithes:

Make of this what you will, but I do think that if anyone could wrangle with VI in some way, it's Eris. I don't think she would accept being a vessel, other than for the purpose of getting rid of him somehow, but either way she could do something with VI that would remove him or at least bind him in some way that wouldn't harm anyone. Maybe she can even save Bael by doing something with VI to unbind them and then use her powers to beat VI similarly to how she did Xivu.

Speaking of Xivu, and of the question if aliens are suitable vessels, could VI look for someone more powerful than Bael after Bael is disposed of? Or if we unbind them? Is Xivu a possible vessel? She would for sure be interested in getting close to the Nine who was so deeply affected by Oryx.

Other than VI currently being bound to Bael for an undetermined amount of time, possible Eris shenanigans, and maybe Xivu, I don't know of anyone else who might be a vessel for it, if any other than Bael are even in question. There's the connection of Titan and Sloane of course, but she is not Lightless so. She is Taken however, and VI is very into that, so maybe that could circumvent Sloane being a Lightbearer, but also I don't think we want anyone bound to VI generally speaking. Unless if we bind him to someone who will keep him in check, and I would trust Sloane with my life so. Many things to think about.

There's also Xur who apparently VI used to speak to the most, but also it appears that this did not affect him well AT ALL, so I don't think we should do that to him.

VII

Actually properly have no idea. VII, Uranus, has literally not been in any way used in the lore outside of one single example from the Legacy weblore where we learned that Braytech had an orbital station around the planet. This station has since been crashed into the planet by Ana.

VII does not seem to be actively hostile to us, despite being a part of the outer orbits. Its chapter in Epochs&Orbits is interesting and also completely bizarre to me.

Interestingly enough, VII seems to be the one who was giving some visions to the Drifter, at least in this lore tab, informing him about what happens depending on what he chooses to do. VII ends with:

brother in rings + gambits for himself + but still there is hope + for all + of us

"Brother in rings" is VI, and VII seems to not be into whatever the hell VI is doing. It also reached out to the Drifter for whatever reason. I'm not sure if that means anything, but these are kinda the only mentions of anything in regards to VII and Uranus as a planet. Drifter currently isn't a suitable vessel on the account of not being Lightless (I know I keep saying it, but I do want to emphasise that the criteria about vessels having to be Lightless isn't entirely confirmed, just implied, and it makes it easier to speculate because it removes a chunk of characters).

VIII

Finally, an outer planet where there's something actually on it. VIII, Neptune, is fairly easy to speculate, though in a way maybe that makes it too obvious.

My immediate first thought was Nimbus. It makes actually so much sense because of one very big problem with Nimbus and that's their lifespan. We don't know exactly how much time Nimbus has left, but we can make some assumptions given that they were a rookie for a bit so it's possible they've been around for at least 2-3 years. That was nearly 3 years ago now so Nimbus could be in the middle of their remaining lifespan. This is an issue in-setting obviously, but also out of the setting since Nimbus is a vendor. I don't think we'll ever be in a situation where we have to deal with Nimbus like... having to die of old age, but it's also something that's a reasonable concern. Not only that, but Nimbus should technically at this point already be training their own rookie Cloudstrider.

Either way, Nimbus, a sole protector of Neomuna with no successor as of yet could be a very good candidate for binding with VIII; what better way to protect Neomuna than to merge with the consciousness of the planet itself. That would very likely remove the danger of their lifespan, and possibly forever remove the need for more Cloudstriders. Obviously this depends on how being a vessel works under normal circumstances (because I doubt anything with Bael is normal). If it's in any way possible for this to be actually beneficial to the vessel, binding with VIII could actually save Nimbus.

We know they're planning some story with Neomuna going forward, as specified in Heliostat and also recently in Renegades again with the news messages. There's two more I got about Neomuna, Soteria and Astraea since:

We have no clue when this storyline might be taking place and if it will be related to binding or not, but I guess technically these AIs could also be candidates? Like, we have zero information about how this might go and what level of "person" or "body" is suitable to be a vessel, or even desirable as a vessel to the particular Nine, and how any of this works so I have to also include Astraea and Soteria as options. Unless maybe their story is something else and we can simply focus on Nimbus being the one.

Or, you know, brand new character. But this is the only outer orbit that actually has something on the planet itself and not just its moons and Nimbus is really good option that could solve a couple of other problems - namely Nimbus's lifespan and the need for more Cloudstriders to be introduced soon.

I've been at this for like 5 hours and I could go into at least 5 different tangents. Pretty much everything here can have additional options, on top of just stuff that might not have been introduced yet + we've not actually even seen what this "binding" looks like or how it works. We don't even truly understand the criteria for vessels. My assumption for the Lightless might be entirely wrong and then that adds a whole new set of possible characters.

One of the main issues is honestly what being bound to the Nine does to a vessel. Xur didn't fare well, and neither does Bael, but they're both tied to VI who is... not very good! So it might be that all of VI's vessels suffer in some way, regardless of how the binding happens. Is that true for the other Nine? Could some of them be more beneficial to their vessels? Does it depend on how the individual Nine feels about the person and how connected they are to the planet? Do we even need to bind all of the Nine for this to work? Can we even force all of them to be bound?

What is the Infinite Forest?

The best, and arguably only, source for this is unfortunately a vaulted campaign, Curse of Osiris. Here's a link to the campaign from Destiny Lore Vault, but there are also playthroughs around from the time it launched. It's not needed to watch the whole thing, although it is fairly short, but this is where most of the information about it comes from.

There's also the Osiris comics that accompanied the DLC; first two are available on Bungie's site. The third is only in the physical book, helpfully scanned here.

Probably the most concise explanations are from the campaign:

Reflection of Osiris: Behold — the Infinite Forest! A planet sized prediction engine, simulating trillions of realities in parallel, all geared towards a single Vex purpose. Keep going, and you'll see. Sagira: The Vex are simulating reality in here. Brute forcing the future. And before you ask: everything in here IS real enough to kill you.

And this entire lore tab:

Physically, I am beneath the surface of Mercury. That is what Sagira's sensors say. The Vex hollowed out the planet, replaced its molten heart with cold right angles. But that is not what I see. I see infinity. An infinity of possible worlds, so perfectly simulated as to be indistinguishable from the experiences I once called "reality." I can touch them, taste them, pass lifetimes in them! They grow within this machine like fruit upon a tree—no, a forest of trees, its fractal expansion nigh unmeasurable.

Essentially, the Infinite Forest is a simulation engine that the Vex use to make predictions and find possibilities that suit their goals. It's physically located inside of Mercury; the Vex dug into the planet and replaced its insides with the engine. So far it has only been accessible from Mercury, from a single gate. Putting my 7 year old screenshots here like grabbing pictures of loved ones from a photo album:

Ikora noted that Osiris spent a long time studying that gate back in the day, believing it's the entrance. And he was correct.

There is a Vex gateway near your location. Osiris spent years studying it. He was convinced it was the door to the infinite Forest. If it is still possible to find Osiris, we need to open that door.

Osiris, or rather, his reflection, also said:

First, I will show you where it all began. Mercury, untold centuries ago, before the Vex arrived. Here, the Vex planted the seed that became the Infinite Forest, and its Mind, Panoptes. Panoptes has a single purpose — reshape reality for the Vex.

To keep things simple, the campaign revolved around us stopping Panoptes from achieving the Vex' goals by using the Infinite Forest. We ended up killing it, of course. We did so by hopping around through the Forest, going to simulated pasts and futures.

But the Forest largely consists of a really weird constantly shifting space that looks like this:

Thank you past me for this really helpful screenshot. It looks like it's an open sky, but it's not; the ceiling is a solid flat surface. That is the surface of Mercury, seen from the inside of the planet. On the edges of the picture, there's two tall structures; one looks worn down and destroyed, the other looks newly built. These are the gates leading to the actual simulations. The left one leads to a simulated future and the right to a simulated past.

These structures are called "trees" and are the reason why this place is called the Infinite Forest. Each of these "trees" generates a simulation and leads there, but you have to go through this shifting reality with ever-changing platforms to reach them. This is the physical space needed to essentially "run" the Forest.

You can still see this on pvp maps Fragment and Convergence:

A lot of the stuff about how the Vex actually made this was not entirely confirmed at the time; the stuff about Mercury being converted back during the Collapse was something that's been in the lore since literally D1, but not much was known about how true any of that was or how it started and how it was done. This was somewhat cleared up later, in the first page of Trials and Tribulations (from Worthy). I say "somewhat" because like. Reading this page is an exercise for sanity:

Chrome-hooked appendages |breached sky, counted in triplets| stretched for miles through sun-soaked atmosphere. They bored |with deepest intentions| into the marigold sands. From the great temporal chasms |wailing mouths of creation| flowed an ocean |a second conception| of radiolarian fluid. Across the horizon |of definitive sprawl| the scene was |super-imposed design| resonant and |uniquely| multiplicative. Each injection site |form mirrored in the hundreds of thousands| fostered a new lineage in stone and steel and fluid. |They would live| the new age in sub-routine |sleep| and observation. They would foster the |metallic| seeds of a generation in |twilight| time. From the sites bubbled pools |progeny| of |endless possibility| that murmured chaotic, |lullabies of change| and wrung the Traveler's Light from Mercury. The Light coalesced |imbibed| within the pools. The planet transformed |reborn| into a |sleepless dream| machine of prediction.

Yeah. What this whole thing seems to be implying is a confirmation of Mercury being converted by the Vex during the Collapse. The Vex flooded the planet with radiolaria and drilled into it, changing its terraformed environment into a Vex world. Some of this is shown in Curse when we first visit the simulated past. The Vex appeared and started raising the spires and transforming the surface of Mercury into what we know it as. Its core was eventually fully replaced by the Infinite Forest.

After we killed Panoptes, Osiris essentially claimed the Forest for himself and returned there sort of indefinitely. He would leave years later, when he contacted us in Season of Dawn, though we know that he was periodically leaving anyway, since he was building the Sundial. It's not really been used for anything else, outside of various adventures and the quest for saving Saint which I went into in this post.

How does it all work and why?

It's always been kinda weird that the Forest was not a bigger deal, though it makes sense if we consider the out-of-game factors and the fans' general dislike of Mercury as a whole (which I personally think is a skill issue). The Forest was also difficult to work with so it was difficult to make new content for it which is probably why it was never really done, even though realistically, setting-wise, it should've.

It's mentioned in lore here and there, and Osiris spent his time there a lot up until Dawn. The Infinite Forest also alerted him that our actions drastically changed the Vex predictions which was serious and important enough for him to finally leave. So for all intents and purposes, the Forest was always a big deal, just difficult to implement into gameplay. This is quite unfortunate because it should've reasonably been something to use more, including explaining its danger a bit more in-depth over time. While Osiris did have a major influence over it post-Panoptes, the place was still largely Vex-controlled and they still had access to it.

So why is that dangerous in the first place? After all, it's just a simulation engine. That's true, but the danger is in how the Vex were using those simulations. By having access to a place that generates trillions of situations and possibilities, it allowed them to explore options that would normally be almost impossible to explore in-person, physically. Even the Vex, who can exist outside of time, would need to spend... well... time and resources to explore these options by simply time travelling. With the Forest, they could just generate them all at once, instantly, with no time passing outside of the Forest.

They could use this to simulate anything and then explore what would happen if they followed that possibility, which allowed them to predict more accurately. It allowed them to essentially run a certain scenario through every single possible iteration and see the outcome of all of them, then pick the option that suits them best and act accordingly. It could also let them study their enemies; by simulating many situations and observing how the enemies react in those situations, they could learn about the strategies their enemies use.

This is incredibly powerful and dangerous. But are there limitations to their simulations? Sort of... As we know, the Vex can't simulate Light or any other paracausality, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't try. This is where things get complicated because we lack a lot of the details about how this all works.

From what we can tell, the Forest can include simulations that feature paracausality and Guardians; it's seen in the intro cutscene for Curse where Osiris casually wanders into the Guardians raiding the Vault of Glass. It was also briefly mentioned in Lightfall's CE (page 28), where Elsie explores different timelines. In one of them, she finds Osiris wielding Stasis who tells her that he saw her wielding it:

"I saw glimpses of you wielding this power during my time in the Infinite Forest."

This is where things get complicated because we don't truly know if there are meaningful differences between normal simulations and simulations produced by a planet-size machine. The Vex, for all intents and purposes, can't really simulate Light and Guardians, but could they create simulations based on what they've personally experienced? After all, the Vex from the Vault of Glass experienced the Guardians raiding them; can they load up their memories and simply replay it? Would that even count as a simulation or is that simply just a recording that you can access within the Forest?

Is it accessible in other Vex spaces or is the Infinite Forest unique in some way? After all, there is also the Vex network as well as corridors of time. There's also some sort of overlap between them, according to Osiris:

...Vex security measures where the network intersects with the corridors of time.

There's even the implication that a simulation from the Forest could potentially escape the engine and enter the real world.

Sagira: Hey, team! Copies of the Cabal invasion are trapped inside the Infinite Forest. On the, uh, off chance one of them escapes, possibly armed with world-breaking Vex tech… Ghost: Wouldn’t be the first time. We’ll handle this.

There is also the whole question about timelines and realities and how that works in the Forest. Can you use the Forest to look into real timelines and realities, those that might be happening somewhere, or are they just projections and simulations of possibilities? Could you interact with them, and affect other timelines? This is an interesting question now that Echoes is going on with all the stuff about the Conductor and what's happening to Saint, but we currently don't know the answers.

What I think is the most likely is that the Infinite Forest is somehow unique and can offer a lot more than the normal Vex network; its simulation options are so well-developed and so powerful that it can genuinely simulate a lot more than the Vex usually would be able to, including showing glimpses of paracausality, especially glimpses that the Vex have themselves recorded in their interactions with Guardians. Then, they can use the Forest to try and build on that, essentially train the engine by feeding it trillions of data points to attempt to make accurate simulations that lead to good predictions.

And these seem to be the key words: accurate and prediction. The point of simulations is not just to look at things, it's to use them to be able to predict things, giving the Vex an advantage. This is directly referenced and discussed in the lore:

There's just one thing: if Osiris used the Infinite Forest to develop his prophecies, and the Infinite Forest cannot accurately simulate Light, how did Osiris predict the Traveler would wake? The Forest's very inability to predict this very thing is what prevented Panoptes from breaking ground with its apocalyptic calculations.

So what exactly is the Forest capable of? It can definitely show the past even if it involves paracausality. It can also show the future, though the accuracy of any future predictions may be in question, depending on the amount of paracausality involved. It's very much implied that it can also show other timelines and/or realities. And of course, it can simulate future possibilities, as well as show simulations of anything from the past; events or places alike. For example, Osiris simulated the Fundament, apparently:

Ghost: The Forest can generate so many Hive - it might as well be their homeworld. Sagira: We've thought about that. Ghost: Have you simulated the Hive homeworld? Sagira: Didn't go well.

If there are specific limitations, we're not sure what they may be. There probably are, but they're most likely deliberately not spelled out to prevent any kind of conflict with stuff they might want to add to the Forest later; like for example now, with Echoes. Because there's a lot of questions right now about the Forest now that Ikora has so casually told us we're going to be going back in there. So...

What happened to it?

As has been established, the Forest is physically located on Mercury. Or rather, in Mercury. Its one and only entrance is on Mercury as well. And Mercury has been eaten by the Witness over 4 years ago. So that's it then? Well no. Not only is the Forest on an inaccessible planet, it has actually been sealed, from the inside, before the planet was taken.

He struggled with his pack as a tempest beat on his eardrums. He withdrew his Infinite Simulacrum, impossibly small in this immense space, and with trembling fingers synchronized it to the frequency of the crack in the Forest. It ticked like a metronome and then… Silence. The Forest was sealed.

Instead of evacuating, Brother Vance decided to stay on Mercury, go into the Forest, and seal it. I go about it for a long time in this post, but basically he believed that it would be really bad if the Pyramids gained access to the Forest. He also believed that the Sundial did something to the timelines and that the Pyramids could exploit that, as well as the Infinite Forest being somehow "the key to all of this."

He also wanted to use the Forest to... spread hope. Through the timelines?

"I will walk into the Infinite Forest and spread hope, Guardian."

He essentially wanted to do something and prove that even Lightless people can still help. He appeared to be willing to die for this, which is quite strange mostly because this whole idea and endeavour wasn't in the name of Osiris. Hell, in a way, it was about doing something to fix the unknown consequences of Osiris' meddling with the timelines.

You notice Vance's hands are balled tightly at his sides. "The Pyramids draw close. Through this system and beyond, the Lightless are filled with fear. I am no Osiris, true, but in my small way, I will bring light to their darkness." There is clarity in his voice. "I will tell them they must believe."

Since I've gone into it in the other post in a lot more details, I won't go into it here again, although I could. But the point that I want to get across is that the sealing of the Infinite Forest was quite a significant part of Arrivals and the whole plot of the evacuation of Mercury (or rather the non-evacuation of Mercury; the sole reason for Vance staying was to seal the Forest).

In another post (you'll have to scroll through the back-and-forth insanity) I also mentioned how much of Vance's story in Arrivals seemed to be connected to him losing his mind about the effects of the Sundial on the timelines. It also directly links to the Perfect Paradox. All of these things have been quite prominently connected to this episode, especially the stuff with the Sundial and what Osiris has done with it and how it may or may not have affected the timelines and, most of all, Saint and the whole ordeal of saving him.

It's fairly unclear how many characters know what happened to the Forest though. The YW knows obviously because Vance told us directly. I do believe that Zavala would also know as we reported back to him, which also most likely extends to Ikora as well. Another issue is that we don't really have any specific proof that the sealing was successful or permanent. It seems like it was, but a lot of stuff could've happened in the past 4 years of Mercury being in an anomaly.

As I've mentioned many times before, Mercury is the last unsolved plot from Arrivals; as in, we genuinely don't know anything about it. Mars has returned in WQ and Ana's side of the story was concluded in Seraph. While Io is still gone, Asher's story was concluded in Defiance through Avalon. Titan returned in Deep, which solved the story of the planet and also Sloane. We know why these planets were taken (with the exception of Io, though it's fair to assume it had something to do with the Pyramidion because of Asher's story being tied to it), and we know what happened to all of the vendors. Except Mercury and Vance; two things inherently connected to the Infinite Forest.

We don't truly know why Mercury was yoinked, though it's once again fair to assume it was most likely for the Forest. But you know. It got sealed so the Witness couldn't do anything with it and we have no idea what it was doing with Mercury all this time. We also don't know what the hell was Vance on about when he talked about the "anchored timelines" and how the Forest is incredibly important to everything. Due to how unreliable he is, it could just be his usual cringefail. After all, Osiris himself did not have any plans for the Forest himself; he was upset that he'd lose it, but he didn't think anything more about it, even if during Dawn he insisted that the Forest cannot be sealed or destroyed yet.

But also I think dismissing it all is an easy mistake to make, and possibly a deliberate one. Everything with Vance is written to be as easy to dismiss as possible, but he did know certain things that were absolutely correct and real. Not to go on about the tones again, but. Yeah. And given the current situation...

Echoes

Failsafe has come up with a plan for which she needs data from the Vex. She specifically needs data that can be compared to the altered Vex on Nessus, so we need large amounts of information that hasn't been changed or messed with. She concluded that the best source of that data would be Saint's dead body. It exists in a specific space (and time) and would have this information; information that has not been altered or influenced by anything else because that Saint is dead and preserved as is.

Failsafe explained this to Ikora and Ikora agreed that this is the best source, she's just worried about how this will affect Osiris and Saint. She doesn't want us to tell them. So next reset, we're going to the Infinite Forest to find Saint's tomb again. Yay!

But like. How?

They presented this so casually, with Ikora even saying that the best "accessible" source of this data is the Forest and Saint's tomb. And I know that they know that we know that Mercury is gone and that the Forest was sealed. But they've already showed us the gate to the Forest on Nessus, twice: in the mini showcase and then in the intro to the season in-game:

The first picture is showing the gate when it's open. And yes, this specific portal effect has only ever been used for the Forest. The second image shows the gate when it's closed with that impenetrable barrier. The structure itself is different from the original; it's worn down, coloured differently and doesn't have the same tip - instead there's the weird orb and the statue. It looks far more Nessus-like, and closer to present-day Vex, or maybe future Vex. But it's guarded by Precursors, so I don't know. It definitely doesn't look like the original however.

We clearly aren't going to Mercury. And even if we were, how would we enter? Neither Failsafe nor Ikora have mentioned this little problem and it seems as if they already know that the gate is on Nessus; I assume they'll discuss the details of this in the Act 2 finale next week. But the problem is that without all of this context, how do they even explain the issue with the Forest? They can always shorten this to some reasonable quick explanation, but they still have to explain how are we entering the Forest. There's a few key problems.

Obviously, number 1 is that the Forest is on Mercury and as of now Mercury is still in the anomaly.

The Forest itself is sealed from the inside.

So far it has not been possible (or at least not known to us) to enter the Forest from any other location. As we've seen, Osiris spent years looking for the entrance and back in Arrivals he was quite upset about losing the Forest. If he simply had the ability to enter it without being physically on Mercury, then why bother or lament Mercury's loss?

It is, to our knowledge, one of a kind. It took quite a tremendous effort to build it and it requires a lot of power to run; a whole planet.

Possible solutions:

Mercury is back and Ikora hasn't told anyone yet because she doesn't want anyone to go there yet; perhaps it's in quarantine. I don't think this is very likely, but it's possible.

Opening a gate to the Forest from another location IS possible and we just didn't know about it.

Opening a gate to the Forest from another location is possible only because of the situation with the Echo; a powerful source of paracausal power can maybe help us do this remotely. So this simply wasn't an option before the Echo's existence.

The Vex and the Conductor have built or are still building a new Forest inside of Nessus this time. The Vex lost access to the original, either simply because of the anomaly or because it was sealed or both, so now with the Echo they're just doing it again, and better. So the Forest we're going into is not the original, but a new one; the assumption being that the data from the old Forest is accessible to the Vex so the new Forest can essentially run the same code as the old one, allowing us access to Saint's tomb.

The Vex and the Conductor only have to build a new gate that can lead us to the old Forest, despite it being in an anomaly and despite it being sealed. It essentially just brute forced another door.

And the possibilities in regards to it being sealed:

As I mentioned before, maybe the sealing wasn't as successful as we (or Vance) thought.

Vance is somehow still alive and he will open it for us from the inside, essentially concluding his role from Arrivals.

Maybe the sealing wasn't permanent; either the Vex could eventually counteract this, or Vance couldn't hold it closed for very long. He's a Lightless man and it's quite dubious how long he could survive inside. Maybe the seal automatically broke when (if?) he died.

If we're going with the option that this is a new gate to the old Forest, then as I said before, this may simply be able to counteract the seal.

If we're dealing with a completely new Forest, the seal may simply not even be in effect. The old Forest is sealed, but we're not going to the old one so it doesn't matter.

What I'm assuming is that Osiris could open the gate if he saw one again, so if the gate is simply now on Nessus (either to a new Forest or connecting to the old one), Osiris can just use his cubes as he did before and open it again, counteracting the seal. Vance's device used to seal it was made from Osiris' notes anyway, so I'm assuming it's something similar to the cubes. In that case it can just be opened with the same thing.

Ikora will just blast it open like she did back in Curse. Seal or no seal, new or old Forest, she doesn't give a shit,

There's an option for all of these that's basically just they don't mention it all. I don't think this is very likely, but hey. It's possible!

I've been running these scenarios in my head for days. Actually, I've been running them ever since the showcase for Echoes showed us the gate to the Forest, but this significantly increased when this week confirmed that we are indeed heading in there. And it was delivered so matter-of-factly as if there aren't any of these problems and scenarios I listed above. This is baffling me. I know there will be some explanations offered, but the setup completely blindsided me with how it was delivered. Ikora with the simple "Oh yeah the best place to grab data from is the Infinite Forest. Pack it up boys." And I'm standing there with a 8 hours long presentation asking her to explain how. She blocks my number on vannet.

Perhaps the situation is far simpler than I'm making it out to be. It would be really easy to just write the old Forest and Mercury away as being permanently lost. That way you don't have to explain or deal with any of the stuff with the anomaly or the yoinkening or Vance's shenanigans. I will obviously remain forever unhinged about it if that's the case because I simply need to know what happened, but it's the easiest way to deal with this. The Echo allowed the Vex to make a new Forest, they're using massive amounts of radiolaria and the core of Nessus to just recreate it all, then they copied all the data from the old one into it, booted it up and that's it.

But what if the seal is in effect? Or what if we're dealing with the old Forest on Mercury that's still in the anomaly? How do they plan to deal with that in a single mission? Well... We have no clue.

Bungie article lore time, but back last year in the State of the Game article, they said this about the pvp map Multiplex:

Although many of us had been thinking about a lo-fi Vex map for the Crucible, the challenge of this palette was the possible lack of player orientation in the play space. We thought bringing the Mars palette into the Vex Network realm would be a great way to mitigate this while adding an evocative look. Narratively, the space is in the middle of compiling the Infinite Forest, so this is what you’ll see in action.

Yes, while everyone was losing their mind about this article, I was looking for lore about the Infinite Forest. But yeah. It seems like they have information about it in the network and they were using it to compile that information; perhaps preparing to make a new one? Or simply using it for data.

So essentially, the Vex could have enough information about the Forest to recreate it, and better now with the Echo, which would allow us to simply bypass the anomaly and the Forest being locked, while allowing us to enter and still find Saint's tomb. This is by far the easiest solution.

But I want a conclusion on Mercury and Vance. I feel like this episode is the only time to really do that and they've been giving us so many Mercury things already, clearly showing that it was a big inspiration for it all. The music, the assets, the enemies. This includes the stuff about Saint and his grave, as well as the whole thing with the Perfect Paradox. There's still Act 3 of course and some still unknown exotic mission, but I feel like the quest that has us literally going into the Infinite Forest to revisit a place not even from Dawn, but from Curse, is the best spot to also deal with this.

I just have no idea how that's going to happen and I wanted to list out the stuff that would have to be somehow addressed and solved, even if the solution ends up being the simplest one. I also wanted to try and list some information about the Forest itself since this thing has not been in the game for years. I hope this was useful and that it explains things well.

Anyway, I've spent the whole week pacing around my room like a wild animal. Help.

In conclusion:

Intro

I'm not sure how familiar people are with the full scope of Saint-14, but he's been a character since the beginning. We didn't know much about him at all; the first mention was in vanilla D1 in this grimoire about the Darkness, listing what various characters think about it. Saint's thoughts:

Saint-14's Position argues that the Darkness was an invading armada, an alien force of incredible - but tangible - power. Some adherents believe that this armada sprang from species rejected or discarded by the Traveler for their sins.

All things considered, he wasn't that far off! Really cool detail, but this lore was referenced in TFS, in the lore book Chirality, and especially Saint's bit:

* Saint-14's Position is the most eminently practical of the bunch, no matter how the man himself protests that such an obvious facet of the truth doesn't require a formal philosophical stance to be named for him.

There's 10 years separating these lore pieces! But they're still being referenced because there are some incredible nerds writing this.

This doesn't tell us much about Saint, besides that he's thinking in very practical terms. He views the Darkness as something that can be fought back. Note that at the start we don't know anything else about him, not even if he's a Guardian. In House of Wolves, we get this lore where the author (the Speaker) is going off about Osiris. We get a little piece about Saint; Saint-14 suggested that Osiris should become Vanguard Commander and also vouched for Osiris. This was the first piece of info that these two are familiar with each other. How far we've come since!

After that, we get his helmet as an exotic in The Taken King (though it has no lore other than the flavour text) and a little bit of insight into him with the first proper lore tab that actually features him as a character. It shows his iconic headbutt and ends with him deciding to follow Osiris to Mercury. A few little details are mentioned in flavour text on the following items, mostly quotes about or from Saint: 1, 2, 3, 4. Number 3 is interesting:

"Stand with your back to the Wall, and not even the Darkness itself will move you." —Saint-14

Remember that!

There's a few more in Rise of Iron, again, just flavour text. He's really funny here, and being his usual heroic self here. That's it for his stuff in D1. Saint-14 was some sort of historic figure, he was a Titan, he fought in historic battles, he fought against the Eliksni and he had some sort of connection with the Speaker and Osiris. He was a practical man, a warrior and a protector.

He wasn't really a full character or anything and only had a few quotes and one lore tab where he actually does something. But the stage was set! He was clearly a character they wanted to explore and they did, in Curse of Osiris.

Curse of Osiris quest

Curse of Osiris returned his helmet as an exotic item and immediately gave us hints about the expansion of Saint-14's character and where they're leading him. The lore tab on the exotic is a conversation between Cayde-6 and Lord Shaxx where Cayde-6 insists that Saint is not dead, while Shaxx is just kind of resigned to it. Cayde also notes that Saint was a "weirdo:"

C6: No one ever put down a Kell faster than he could. But man, he was a real weirdo. SX: Eccentricity was his strength. C6: Talking about the Speaker like you're related to him is eccentric. Claiming he's seen the future, that he fought Six Fronts fueled on the idea that some Guardian savior is coming? That's insane.

Wait a minute. Saint-14 claimed he's seen the future and that he believed in "some Guardian savior"? What's that about? Wink wink. Nudge nudge. To make things even more obvious, the remaining conversation is... about the Young Wolf:

SX: Belief is a hell of a thing. C6: Sure, yeah. One Guardian's going to fix everything. Kick Crota off the Moon. Make it look like us Vanguard know our head from our hindquarters. Hey, where are you going? SX: One of the new recruits from Old Russia I've had my eye on—entering the Crucible for the first time. C6: Hey, maybe they're the one. We'll call 'em Crota's End.

Maybe Cayde should've started making prophecies too! But yeah. This was the first proper hint about what they cooked up for Saint's story. Saint has apparently seen the future and believed in a "Guardian savior" and he fought for the City fuelled by this belief. Very interesting! To make things weirder, there's Saint-14's Gray Pigeon which also features some strange lore at the end where Saint addresses an unknown person:

To my inspiration. Your final gift to me I now send back to you. It will be good to see you again.

This was wild to read at the time because it clearly references something that we don't know about, but that's incredibly important to Saint. The theory was that he might be talking to us, the Young Wolf, but how?

That's where the quest comes in. Curse famously didn't have a lot of content, but it did have the post-campaign quest with Lost Prophecies. They were a set of quests where we essentially had to collect items to transform "prophecy tablets" into weapons in the Infinite Forge which was a sort of interactable area in the Lighthouse on Mercury:

There were a total of 11 of these, with the final one being to acquire the Perfect Paradox. Each weapon came with a prophecy in the flavour text and a lore tab. The final one however, Perfect Paradox, triggered a whole separate quest in two parts. In part one, we discover an old Vanguard comm signal coming from the Forest which we follow and analyse to discover that the signal is from Saint-14.

Detecting traces of familiar Light up here. Wait… Saint-14? He's been missing for decades. Saint was one of the greatest Titans who ever lived. Hero of Six Fronts. All that power and he just… vanished. The City's still looking for him.

This quest also features this conversation from Osiris and Sagira:

Osiris: If Saint-14 is lost in the Infinite Forest, it's because he came here to find us. Sagira: You can't blame yourself for every missing Guardian, Osiris. Osiris: For him I can.

If you're lucky (or unlucky, depending on how many emotions this gives you), you can hear this line from Sagira in Presage. This is where it comes from!

The quest is kinda set up in a way to make you think we'll actually be saving Saint here. We finally found his comm signal and it's leading us into the Forest. He's clearly affected the Vex and the Forest with his Light and he's fighting back. Osiris gets involved and urges us to find him. The whole thing feels like we're doing what we usually do; find a problem and fix it.

Part two of the quest continues in a similar vein. The quest is called "Not even the Darkness," btw. Remember that quote from Saint from The Taken King? Yeah. Anyway, we go back to following the trace leading us to Saint, into the Infinite Forest, this time into a simulated future. There, the Vex get alerted and summon a big Minotaur; Hagios, Reverent Mind (whose name means "sacred" in Greek, so essentially... Saint). We kill the Minotaur and then the area behind it opens; it appears to have been guarding it.

When it opens, we're treated to a bittersweet sight:

The area is beautiful, but it's a tomb. Saint-14's body is laid out like this in a pillar of light, surrounded by piles and piles of dead Vex. The Vex fought him for an unknown amount of time and they ended up respecting him; enough to create a tomb and seal his body and set a whole Vex mind to guard it, and apparently, revere it. Despite how hopeful we've been about saving him, he is dead.

As we approach his body, we take the remains of his personal weapon. Back at the Lighthouse, we use these remains and the prophecy to craft the weapon as it was; Perfect Paradox shotgun. The prophecy attached to it:

A tale that's different from the rest: the thread unfurls against the clocks. The one the Speaker loved the best must have a perfect paradox.

The prophecy is from Osiris, of course, which means that at some point when he was making them, he already knew about the strange fate of Saint-14. Not that he is dead; Osiris hoped to find him in the Forest. But his prophecy talks about time travel and a paradox. In the lore tab itself, Saint attached a letter to the gun in which he once again addresses a mysterious person. This person is now definitively identified as us:

All I have left is this weapon. The Cryptarchs say you crafted it yourself, built it out of scraps and Light and sheer will, inside the Infinite Forge. I'll make sure it finds its way back to you.

Well that's correct. We crafted the weapon in the Infinite Forge. But we only did so after recovering its remains from Saint's body, so how could he have had the gun in the first place? Almost like... there's some sort of a time travel paradox involved. This was naturally bizarre at the time; we had nothing else on Saint or any of this during this quest, just these vague baffling hints that there's more to the story. Especially since it involves our character; Saint repeatedly talks as if he had already met us. He says so in the letter as well:

I mourn that I will never reach the heights you have. To me, you represent everything a Guardian can become. Yours is a thriving City. So different from mine. My whole fourteenth life I fought to make my City yours. I never finished.

He knows that our City is thriving and that we are "everything a Guardian can become." But we've never seen him before. This was really confusing and there was also not even a promise that it would be resolved. But it felt like something that they cared about deeply.

It would take 3 years until we got the resolution.

Season of Dawn

This is a big one in general because they really wanted to be as attentive to all details as possible. Even before the season started, they released several weblore pieces to remind us of Saint and bring up some important information.

The first one was The Accolade, about Saint's past and heroic deeds revolving around saving people. The weblore focuses on explaining what his "accolades" are; aka his purple ribbons on his armour and ship. They're gifts from people he saved; tokens of appreciation that turned into a type of a ritual with Saint. If you're saved by Saint, you have to give him something purple and he will wear it with him and remember your name. It ends with Osiris shortly after we found Saint's grave. Osiris went to see it for himself, to check, to make sure. He also laments that he never asked about the ribbons.

The next one is a glimpse into the past, a conversation between Osiris and Saint as Saint hands him the Vanguard Commander title. It's a good look into how that all happened, as well as the differences in approach and beliefs between Osiris and Saint.

And then they released The Sundial weblore (TW for suicide if you're reading the full weblore. One of his Echoes does not have a good time). Osiris is found on Mercury with a machine he built, putting finishing touches on it. It's called the Sundial. Osiris built it in response to Saint being dead, the implication very much being that he intends to use some form of time travel or some other time shenanigans to change the outcome and save him. Osiris never recovered from learning that he's dead and from seeing his dead body in the tomb. The design is Sagira's, and he's also helped by Drifter, who shows up to check the math. I'll go more into the Sundial later.

Osiris wraps up his work on it and turns it on. He splits into his Echoes and enters the machine to start searching through Saint's timeline on Mercury with the intent to find the right moment with the right Saint to save him; he is specifically looking for the moment when they drain his Light.

Osiris’s Echoes scour Saint-14’s timeline on Mercury. But the corridors of time refuse to give way to the moment they need: Saint and the Martyr Mind in the depths of the Infinite Forest. The Echoes work tirelessly for weeks, then months in the space between moments. In desperation, he splits the dozen copies into many thousands more as the work continues fruitlessly.

Osiris experiences what the kids these days call "epic fail."

None of the Echoes ever approaches a Saint. They never find the right one.

Despite all the work put into this machine and all of his knowledge and skill, Osiris doesn't manage to use the Sundial successfully. He never finds the right moment and he never saves him. It's worth noting that when Osiris used thousands of his Echoes, he experienced the time and life of every single one. But for Osiris outside the Sundial, it's only been a few moments. In those few moments, he essentially lived thousands of lifetimes. And died thousands of times. I need people to understand the amount of effort he put into this and what kind of an emotional toll it had.

Completely defeated, he gives up and hides the Sundial. He moves on with his life, doing what he always does, until stuff suddenly changes, which is explored in the next weblore: Actions of Mutual Friends. Us killing the Undying Mind in the season before Dawn changed everything, for the Vex and everyone else. We essentially created a point of divergence. The Vex suddenly had to change their projections of the future; Osiris noticed this and got very concerned.

While he wasn't looking, his Sundial was found, by Psion sisters. They figure out the potential of the Sundial and work to reactivate it, which they succeed in. The Red Legion descends on Mercury, looking to use the Sundial to essentially rewrite the course of the Red War and win.

Osiris finds out and goes to Ikora, to the City, to ask for help. This is the topic of the next weblore: Desperate Times. Osiris defends his choice to make the Sundial to save Saint, despite everybody else basically trying to explain to him that the universe might implode because of it.

This is a lot of setup, but it's necessary. It all leads into what happens in the season and what the season revolves around; saving Saint. It wasn't even a secret, as they very clearly showed it right away in the trailer (best trailer they've ever done). The seasonal gameplay revolved around us using the Sundial to defeat the Red Legion and stop them from trying to figure out how to essentially change the course of history. We had to fight three different Psion bosses, one of each of the sisters, until the end, when the three of them joined together into a single Psion entity for us to defeat.

As we were using the Sundial for this, Osiris also told us about what he made it for originally. He explains a little bit about it and about his failure to succeed, then warns us against using it for ourselves, but doesn't stop us.

I told you before - I tried to save Saint-14. I bent the rules of time using a prototype of the Sundial. It allowed me to walk the corridors of time here on Mercury. But I failed. I never found Saint's final moment against the Vex. I encountered younger versions from his first mission to Mercury, among others. But none were the right Saint. The prototype Sundial still exists, accessible off the main deck. And it can still travel through Saint's personal timeline on this planet. But venture there at your own peril. He cannot be saved. I have walked every permutation of those corridors with a hundred thousand of my Echoes and found nothing. Saint-14 is lost.

Despite this, we make the attempt and then the first part of the quest starts. When we use it, the Sundial reacts. It reacts specifically to the Perfect Paradox:

The Shotgun you crafted in the Infinite Forge is reacting to the Sundial! An onboard transponder is broadcasting coordinates: a path through the Sundial, crossing two time periods. The prophecy blueprint you used to create the Perfect Paradox must have included this broadcast. If you can open up the initial chamber, I can align us to the first time period the broadcast is referencing.

The two time periods are two points in time where it's relevant that we meed with Saint. The first one is in the Dark Age, when he came to Mercury with civilians in an attempt to reclaim the planet and help the struggling population of Earth with resources and possibly old Golden Age technologies. We connect to Saint via comms. He is devastated and demoralised. He failed to protect his people and he's also under siege by the Eliksni and is more or less resigned to dying. Lucky for him, we get there in time to help him out of this situation.

After the battle, we talk to him. Our Ghost hesitates a little but then decides to do it anyway; he shows Saint the projection of the Last City from the future, to prove to him that the everything will be fine if he continues to fight and stays hopeful. We also give him the Perfect Paradox, to help him fight. The loop is set! This gun was crafted in the future and was brought to the past. In time, Saint will die with it and we will pick up its remains from his body, allowing us to craft it in the first place.

Saint-14: What is this? Ghost: The Perfect Paradox. Built by my Guardian out of spare parts and Light and sheer will to aid you.

More importantly, this is the moment that Saint spoke of to other people that made him seem crazy. As we've seen in lore from years before, Saint kept saying that he saw a thriving City and that there's some sort of Guardian savior coming and that he's seen this future. He also wrote in that letter how we gave him the shotgun and how we saved him. This part of the quest is constructed around this lore. This moment is what Saint remembered and talked about. We saved him and invigorated his will to keep going. This is why he is the way he is.

We part ways and leave the Sundial. Ghost immediately goes to check if we messed anything up and to let us know that there's one more point in time to go to:

Okay, let's check the Tower databases to make sure we didn't just wreck the entire timeline. Queuing "Saint-14"… Records state he was a former Commander of the Tower. He vanished on a final mission to Mercury in search of the exiled Warlock Osiris. Well, those are the big beats. Timeline intact. Good job, Saint. But our trip's not over. That broadcast I picked off the Perfect Paradox marked one more set of coordinates within the Sundial.

The second part of the quest started a bit later, but it doesn't waste any time once it does. We're immediately linked up to the other point in time that Perfect Paradox reacted to and we're back in simulated future, in the same area where back in Curse we fought Hagios who guarded the entry to Saint's tomb. Except now, we find Saint who has just had his Light drained from him by another Vex mind; Agioktis, Martyr Mind (note that the name is more or less in the same vein as "hagios," aka "sacred," dedicated to Saint). This is the moment Osiris was looking for, but couldn't find it, because he didn't have the Perfect Paradox.

This is the Vex mind they built to destroy Saint and we find him as his Light has already been taken. But Saint is still eager to fight and greets us happily. Unfortunately Saint is then restrained, the Vex doing everything in their power to kill him. However, this time he's not alone. We're there and we fight in his stead. We manage to piss off the Martyr Mind enough for it to now move to restrain us, which frees Saint, returning his Light to him as well. Saint then delivers the final blow to the Martyr Mind which frees us!

Saint-14: It's been a long time, my friends. I've chased your memory for centuries. You should go now. Those who could kill me are dead. You've made sure of that. Ghost: And what if the Vex take your Light again? Saint-14: Impossible. It cost them everything to build the Martyr Mind. When you crushed it, they were doomed. Ghost: You want us to leave you? You'll be stuck here for years. Saint-14: You've both done plenty. Just open the Infinite Forest gate for me. I'll meet you the long way around, at the entrance. Saint-14: What's a few more years of fighting Vex?

Saint decides to stay in the Forest and wait until we open it from the outside for him, in the future. This is how he leaves in the right time, instead of too early for his timeline, so nothing else is really affected. He waits it out and then exits the Forest at the time of Season of Dawn. This gives us one of the shortest but also the best cutscenes ever. As a note, in the cutscene, when Saint leaves, the Forest gate looks new, like from Mercury's past. This is because of the Sundial's effects on the surface of Mercury at the time, splitting the surface through time, so the Forest gate looked like it's from the past, but it's not. It's present day Mercury.

When we report this to Osiris, to say that he's amazed would be an understatement. I often quoted this from him, especially when people were being weird about Osiris and claiming he doesn't like us or whatever:

In his youth, he talked often about the Guardian who inspired him. I should have guessed it would be you.

We've done the impossible. Literally. The quest is called "Impossible Task." Osiris did everything and he couldn't do it and he lost hope that it would be done. But we did it, because we created the time loop; a connection with Saint that allowed us to use the Sundial in a way Osiris could not.

Saint has been saved! After this, he settled in the Tower. He had a series of minor quests and errands, the best one being the quest for the Devil's Ruin exotic which featured a really long and funny conversation between Saint and Shaxx. Another one is obviously the Corridors of Time quest which is genuinely cannot be compared to anything else as it was a community puzzle of epic proportions. An article that showcases just a little bit of how bonkers it was.

The important part of it is that the culmination of the quest featured us finding our own grave and Saint narrating a eulogy for us. This is important to us now for two reasons: 1) on our grave was a sword, a sword we received as an actual item in TFS, directly from the Traveler to fight the Witness 2) it's possibly a different timeline. The second one is unclear because we simply can't know when we die, but the eulogy specifies that the sword was shattered in the final confrontation where we died. Our current sword is chipped, and it wasn't when we originally got it in the campaign. So either this is a different timeline where it didn't shatter or this isn't that confrontation when we die and it will shatter at some other point in the future.

In this post I also noted how the music that plays in our grave scene and the music that played in TFS when we get the sword is the same. A very clear and deliberate choice. This is a very cool link to Season of Dawn that they brought back over 4 years later.

With the Corridors of Time puzzle ending and the Corridors closing, that concluded the Saint stuff. He was finally saved and he could rest in the Tower! And we know everything that has happened since.

Okay. So...

What's up with the Sundial?

We don't know! But I want to get into it because it's one of those things that they made sure to hint about, without fully explaining it so obviously every weird nerd online (me) wants to figure it out.

Back in The Sundial weblore, there are some peculiar and never explained details about the Sundial that have been kinda concerning and just intriguing to think about. There are a few lines essentially saying that whatever is at its core, it's not good. First is Sagira's:

“That work was theoretical! If the Vanguard find out what you did to build it—“

What did he do to build it? No clue. The infamous core is described only as:

He turned to look at the fluctuating glow of the exposed chronometric core.

When the Drifter shows up, he immediately reacts to this, fairly negatively which makes things more ominous since Drifter tangles with a lot of weird and bad stuff himself. So if he's disturbed about this...:

Drifter walked to the central spire and put his ear up against it. “This core…” he said, leaning close. His eyes darted back to Osiris. “It’s whispering.” Osiris’s expression didn’t change; his arms didn’t uncross. “We’ll seal the core away. I understand the ramifications.” “Good luck keeping that contained. Not something I would bargain with, hotshot.”

The core "whispers." Osiris understands the ramifications. They're both so frustratingly vague so the only thing we're left with is this ominous vibe of something bad being at the center of the Sundial.

This whispering, alongside a few other concerning descriptions and implications of the Sundial is mentioned in yet another weblore that I only briefly mentioned earlier because it wasn't relevant to Saint stuff; Sisters. It's about the Psions finding the machine.

The Psions could somehow feel the Sundial. Or perhaps just the effects it had on time on Mercury, even while it was powered down and hidden.

“Small disturbances,” said oldest Ozletc, the wisest. “Little currents in this timeline. Can you see them, sister?” “I can taste them,” said second-born Tazaroc, the hungriest of her sisters. “I can feel the edges.” Third-born Niruul, the quietest among them, reached her hand out to test the air. “As can I,” said she. “And something else. The source is disguised. The technology is Human, but refined. Surprisingly so.”

They also note the whispering, as well as its potential:

A strange device shimmered into existence around them. They looked up the length of an enormous, golden spire. “It whispers,” said Tazaroc. “Then block your ears,” said Ozletc. “Do you see the potential in this?” “Chaos,” said Niruul. “No,” said Ozletc. “Opportunity. See how it tugs at the fabric of our time? Can you see the seams?”

They also make the strange comparison to the OXA:

“It is so clear,” said Niruul, reverent. “An unobstructed glimpse into what was and what will be.” “Not the troubled ramblings of a mad thing, like the OXA,” said Tazaroc.

The Sundial offered something more and better than the OXA ever could, implying, perhaps, that these machines have something in common; possibly something beyond simply Vex technology. My insanity about this has been going on for a long time and also helped with the TFS CE lore. A bit of a tangent, but also possibly related, depending on what the core is.

Furthermore, Osiris refused to tell Saint about details of the Sundial, including remaining vague about its core in this weblore:

[u.2:13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core. [u.1:14] One day you’ll have to tell me exactly what you and the Guardian did to bring me back. [u.2:14] We did what we had to. Trust me.

So what is it? Well, we know:

It whispers (very obvious and easily detected, both by Drifter and the Psions)

It's something bad (Drifter's reaction to it is uncharacteristic for a man who tangles with the Taken for a living and deals with strange dangerous artifacts all the time)

Osiris' Echoes are better suited for the Sundial because of its core, and Echoes are something "reserved for Taken Kings." Bizarre way of saying it to avoid explaining it

Similar to the OXA, and possibly any other time/prediction machines based on Vex tech (because the OXA itself is confirmed to be more or less the same as the FWC Device, for example)

To recharge it, we needed to feed it Light. This is particularly concerning with what Osiris says about it: "The Sundial is my greatest creation and my greatest regret. What I had to do to forge it I can never take back. As a result, it has components that consume Light. And if you're serious about operating it again, you'll need to feed it. Nothing is free. Ever."

What this points to, to me at least, is Darkness. The core is a Darkness artifact of some sort, merged with Vex tech. This only gained more proof to me with all the new lore about the Darkness and how it governs the mind and memory, especially when the Vex are involved. To the Vex, the future is memory. Merging Darkness artifacts with the Vex might be able to create dangerous time travel machines or machines that displace consciousness through time and timelines, like the OXA and the Device, allowing the user to "predict."

To make things even more convoluted (and me more insane), there's an almost perfect explanation for what this artifact might be. So perfect that I feel like it's too good to be true, tbh. It's a Nezarec relic. I will now list everything that connects this:

It would explain the Darkness artifact. Nezarec's relics were full of Darkness and were being used by utilising that Darkness

Drifter's involvement and experience with it. Hell, the Drifter may have even provided this relic to Osiris, since he had one and did not particularly enjoy having it, which was detailed in Lightfall when they showed us how he got it. Plunder was also rich on this, showing us that the Drifter immediately recognised the relics and understood what they were.

Whispering. Darkness in general has a whispering thing; the Veiled statues, the Witness, the old stories about Dredgen Yor, there's a lot of whispering going on here. But it's really super connected to Nezarec. His relics were whispering to us in the H.E.L.M.. The glaive? Nezarec's Whisper. Another disciple also called him a "whispering Nightmare." All of Root of Nightmares armour lore has it as well, with Nezarec tormenting his victims with whispers; for example here, and here, and maybe even here. I could go on. He's the whisper guy. Literally, Nimbus called him Mr. Whispers.

Psions. The Psion sisters found and reactivated the Sundial... Somehow. They especially were able to almost instinctively locate it despite Osiris hiding it well enough. The Psions also needed quite a lot of time to activate it again and admired the complexity of the encryption, despite it being human, so we can't really say that they found it easily because Osiris' did a poor job of hiding it. Were they drawn to it? Were they drawn to it because of its core? Psions are inherently linked to Nezarec. It's been confirmed back in Lightfall, but also curiously mentioned again in TFS with the Lost Ghosts quest (timestamped here). I'm definitely hoping for some Psion content in the future but this is fairly interesting in this context. Season of Dawn was really the only proper Psion-focused storyline.

Osiris' coma. His coma appears to have been somehow paracausal. At least strange! The scans were showing that he has "no residual activity" in his brain, despite us having lore from his POV showing us that he had a very vivid and visceral activity. He was able to feel some external stimuli, but was mostly drifting through strange visions, seemingly hopping between his... Reflections. Or possibly Echoes. His final thoughts here are also of the Sundial; as if his mind was somehow stuck in there, or lost, trying to find his way out of it. This could just be a consequence of his memories constructing something for him to experience so obviously it's just cycling through what he knows, but...

Waking Osiris up from his coma happens with the use of Nezarec's relics. An important point to note here is that this wasn't so much about it being Nezarec's relics; it had more to do with the inherent Darkness they consist of and Darkness can help the mind and consciousness move or awaken. However, given all of this and given his POV from the coma and the possibility that his mind might have been stuck somewhere with his Echoes in the Sundial, if the Sundial's core is a Nezarec relic, then a Nezarec relic had more chance to bring him back. It's such a perfect connection that I feel insane thinking about it and it feels like I'm constructing a fanfic, but also. I think it's worth considering. Cutscene of him waking up + article from Bungie that details on the whole idea of waking him up with Darkness and why that's important for understanding Darkness.

I have to mention the other theory, especially in comparison with all the above to try and illustrate why it never made sense to me and that is the popular theory that the core of the Sundial is an Ahamkara bone and that the Sundial worked on wish magic.

I'm not quite sure why this was even a theory to be honest. Even back in the day of Dawn, this never really resonated with me because it seems that the only reason this was a theory was Drifter saying "not something I would bargain with" and... Possibly whispers? Obviously a lot of things can whisper, and Ahamkara have been also mentioned doing so, but I don't find this significant to Ahamkara enough for identification just through that. I also don't think that one mention of the word "bargain" is enough either. Many have bargained with Darkness too. There's simply an overlap between Darkness and Ahamkara here, but there are also other pieces that are more closely linked to Darkness like eating Light. We could go even further, if we're considering Ahamkara; we could also consider Worm Gods, for example. The point is that several things can fit here, but I feel like there's overall more things pointing at Darkness.

What gets me the most is that they alluded to this in Season of the Wish, in what seems fairly obvious as disproving this theory to me. Riven and Osiris talk:

Riven: Isn’t it unfortunate your City hunted down all of my kind, Osiris? You might have wished for Saint-14’s return from the Forest. Osiris: And have him trade the Vex’s torment for yours? Riven: Perhaps you simply didn’t want him back badly enough to pay the price. Osiris: Save the bait for someone naïve enough to take it.

I talked about this earlier, but there's several layers of why the moment I heard this, it sounded like it's here to disprove Osiris using an Ahamkara. First, Ahamkara wish magic would be felt by Riven. If Osiris put an Ahamkara into the Sundial, then he did use wish magic and she would know about it. In that case she would not have said this; perhaps she would've teased him about using her powers to save Saint, but that would be a completely different sentence.

Second, Osiris is well aware and wary of wish magic. He knows that had he done so, he would've probably put some form of torment (wish magic backfire) on Saint. This, to me, indicates that not only did he not do this, he didn't even consider it as an option.

Third, if Osiris had an Ahamkara bone and was considering to use it, he could've just done so without building the Sundial. Why bother with the machine if you can just instantly make a wish and the wish doing exactly as you want? Obviously with a caveat, but still. It would've worked right away. Perhaps the Sundial was an attempt to contain the backfire, mixing wish magic with Vex tech to try and prevent the whole thing from going backwards, but even then; Osiris knew there are possible consquences.

And fourth, even if he did all that, it just didn't work, which would be quite uncharacteristic for wish magic. It's paracausal; it should override any Vex tech in the Sundial. If he made a wish, he should ask for a refund! The Sundial worked only because of the paracausal loop we created with the Perfect Paradox and it had nothing to do with anyone's wishes; definitely not ours.

One interesting thing for this theory is the way they said how similar wishing and simulations are. It happened in Wish and now again in Echoes. Here's a freebie for the Ahamkara theory enthusiasts.

Personally though, I simply feel like there's much more connecting and sensible explanation with it being a Darkness relic, rather than Ahamkara.

HOWEVER. The truth is that we simply don't know. I am personally more into it being Darkness (and Nezzy specifically), but I could be wrong and the Ahamkara theory could be proven correct somehow. Hell, it could be something completely different. It could also be nothing; as in, we will never know because they won't tell us because it doesn't matter.

And technically, it doesn't! Nothing really changes if this doesn't get answered. I want that to be clear. This isn't some sort of lore breaking detail. But you know. The nerds would love to know. I really wanted to get into this now that we've had a resurgence in interest about Saint and how we saved him.

Echoes

Okay, so why this monster of an essay? Well, because Echoes revolves around Saint and the Conductor trying to convince him that he's the wrong Saint. That Osiris acted out of grief and pulled a random Saint from the timelines, that he's simply satisfied with what he got because he couldn't get his original Saint because that Saint died.

Saint is convinced in this; that he's some sort of an aberration in the timeline, a simulation or a copy or just the wrong Saint from the wrong timeline. Even an error that must be corrected.

And I simply think that people are too quick to jump to the conclusion that this is the story being told, especially because of the radio message this week where we're shown that Saint and Osiris suddenly have different memories. But I feel like people have already forgotten the other radio message, from week 1. You know, the one where Saint and Osiris talk about their memories and the memories match perfectly:

Saint-14: Osiris. Do you remember when we knew? Osiris: Knew what? Saint-14: That we were meant to be together. There was one moment... though, it took us time to get to it. Oh, but our Hunter Vanguard, so smart, Tallulah... she knew before we did. All our little squabbles and bickering. She saw it first. Osiris: it, uh — ah, well, I was — obtuse. Stubborn. I couldn't recognize my own emotions. Then, Tallulah told me to.. "Be serious". Saint-14: Haha! I remember. So yes, she told me later. Was good laugh. Osiris: Well, I'm glad you found it so amusing. Saint-14: Who could not look back and smile? And I remember your smile, then. So knowing, and so full of our future together. Osiris: What brought these memories on? Saint-14: Hmm. I think about others who will have those same moments now that they know they will a future free from the Black Fleet. Now they have a chance to find love and be happy, like us. We can look behind, but also forward. We cannot see what is coming, but we know it is good. Osiris: You're certain? Saint-14: About us? Yes. Since the beginning. Now, and always.

We have this memory as a lore tab as well. I think this was given to us deliberately, to show us that Saint and Osiris have identical memories and that Saint's memories were never in question and that their history is perfectly aligned... Until he got yoked. Something changed when he got yoked, not when he was saved. This is a new development, which tells me that the Conductor did something to him, rather than Osiris saving the wrong Saint. Because until now, this was never a problem. Saint never had discrepancies in his memories before, with anyone he ever interacted with.

If we take a look at the whole story of how he was returned, it's beyond clear that Osiris was very fixated on saving his Saint, not a random one, and that we went to great lengths to do just that. We only ever interacted with one Saint, the same one, and we linked each other with the Perfect Paradox. It cannot be any other Saint, even with the existence of other timelines. This Saint and this Perfect Paradox are ours, from our timeline, the originals.

However, other timelines do exist. And some entities can access them. The Vex are obviously first on the list. Characters like Elsie and Osiris have also seen them. And clearly, the Conductor should be capable of this as well. It's beyond clear now that the Conductor is Maya Sundaresh. Maya, who was simulated 227 times by the Vex and had those 227 copies of her wandering the Vex network and different timelines.

If the Conductor knows where to look and how, she could see these timelines, including these other Saints, and she could've fed Saint false information while he was yoked. Implanting memories of other Saints perhaps, or something similar.

I know a lot of people weren't there for Dawn, let alone Curse. There's a lot of information about Saint here and a lot of really interesting clues from the past about what's happening now. It's also really interesting how many little details have been transferred through the story over time, showing that this is a plotline they care about very much and want to make sure doesn't get messed up.

There's probably a lot more stuff we could get into for speculation and explanations because there's still more stuff that plays a role in this. The Infinite Forest is a big one, and I suspect the Perfect Paradox is as well, as we're likely to get it next week or the week after as part of the story. Because it should be relevant to the story! It's an inherent part of Saint's story and why he's with us now in the first place.

So what's really going on? We're not entirely sure yet, but assuming that the Conductor is correct and that her messing with Saint is revealing something about Saint's legitimacy is I believe wrong. I think she's using him as an experiment and that she's messing with him, and by extension, with us as well. There's no way that we've had a "wrong" Saint this whole time and that nobody ever had any issues with him. That nobody had any discrepancies between memories with him. Not Osiris, not Ikora, not Shaxx, not Saladin, not Zavala or anyone else Saint interacted with since he's been back. As I mentioned, literally the first radio message shows us Saint and Osiris with matching memories.

It only started after he was yoked. Which means that the yoke and the Conductor did something to him, possibly shown him some other timelines or fed him false information.

Can't wait to see where this is going. I'm not sure how much this Act will cover and if we'll get a resolution to this right now or if it will stretch to Act 3, though if it doesn't get stretched, then I wonder what will the draw of Act 3 even be. Possibly just dealing with the Conductor? I'm very excited. This episode being so focused on Saint and Osiris and the whole throwbacks to Dawn and other past content has been really good. I'm enjoying it very much, this is my entire jam. I had high hopes for Echoes and so far it's been going great.

Many people, upon hearing this, have jumped to the conclusion that the "Winnower" is now confirmed as a real thing; including Byf who made a video about it and now everyone and their grandma believes this fully and is already constructing fanfics about the next big bad.

And it could be true! But to claim that this line specifically confirms the Winnower makes me question people's media literacy. This line is spoken by the Witness. The Witness has both the reason to lie to us, but also the reason to believe in the Winnower. This is unreliable narration 101: the Witness could believe that it serves something else, that the reason it destroyed its own and many other civilisations is because it is following something greater. Obviously the Witness would believe that it's "the first knife" of some godly entity. It's religion. The word of a religious person who believes in a deity is not the proof that the deity exists.

This does not mean that the Winnower is NOT real. We don't know if it is. This only means that we can't use this specific source as proof.

But this line is very interesting to me because of how it's phrased. Initially, I believed that the Witness spoke to us, the Guardians, because that's what it does throughout the raid. But after a few reads, this feels like it's at least partially aimed at the Traveler as well. The third line in particular is interesting: "Each child we save from the game, you again force to play." This feels like it's talking about the Traveler's growing/resurrecting powers, especially about how it resurrected Guardians. We were dead, but then we were forced to play again. It's also speaking about it like the "game" which can be a sort of 4th wall-breaking, but also it could clearly be referring to Unveiling which also calls it playing a game.

The last line is also interesting in this context: "Gods forged us both." Who is "us"? Obviously the Witness considers itself here, but which "gods" forged what else? Does the Witness consider the Traveler to be a god, forging the Guardians? The next line is also weird in this context, telling us that despite gods forging us, "they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve." Either the Witness still doesn't understand the Traveler or the Traveler is not considered as the god because that's the Traveler's whole philosophy: it creates things, but it doesn't tell those things what to do. It would never tell us what shape to carve. So if this is not referring to the Traveler forging Guardians, it might be referring to something else forging the Traveler. Possibly! I am very intrigued by these lines and the line of thinking the Witness uses here.

But let's go back to the Winnower. As I already said, this doesn't prove anything, it only proves that the Witness believes in it. We also know that the Witness believes in this because in the final mission it also told us that it is "the first knife, the edge that carved purpose into being." Later, after its defeat, Mara and Ikora discussed this phrase, which I covered in this post. This discussion also entertained the possibility that there's something else beyond the Witness, something that wielded it as a "knife." Mara and Ikora don't make any conclusions; they discuss the possibility, but they end it with "we don't know."

They discuss it in the context of Unveiling; this lore book is canonically available to read to characters in the game, which is neat! It's been discussed several times now in the lore, and it's discussed here as well. Mara and Ikora have read Unveiling, it's where they've read about "the first knife" concept and are wondering what it all means and if there's a way to figure out the truth in the allegories. Again, they don't know the answer. And neither do we!

However, we as players have more information than the characters. I'm pretty sure the delay on the lore for Nacre was on purpose, because it would've been confusing to read that before defeating the Witness. The lore tab itself has no clear author; the only way to tell is to speculate based on the style and phrases used. The style will immediately be reminiscent of Unveiling (and the one page in Books of Sorrow when something speaks to Oryx). It's casual and friendly, but persuasive.

Let's read it piece by piece:

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books. Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you. Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved. Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once. Are you surprised to hear of it? Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me. That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

A few points right away. It's telling us that we should chat and that it hopes we didn't think we'd never hear from it again. If this is truthful and can be trusted, then it would be alluding to it speaking to us before, in Unveiling. But we've gone over the debate about Unveiling and who wrote it; most recent information was that it has to have been the Witness and the characters in-game believe so as well. So what's the truth now? I don't know! That's a full sentence. We simply don't know. There are far too many variables, allegories, metaphors and unreliable (and completely unknown) narrators.

Both options could also be true at the same time; if the Witness somehow managed to get a glimpse of the Winnower (in whatever form this entity exists), perhaps the Witness was given a speech of this nature which it could've adopted on purpose to further spread propaganda to others and to convince itself (and others) that it is a part of something greater. Again, we simply don't know.

The author continues telling us that it wants to show us its "beloved." It then goes into a bizarre description of something as "sedimentary necrolite, fossilised in time." I am not sure what this refers to, but it could be referring to the Witness? Because we've "seen that." A "necrolite" is an old term for a type of stinky minerals that form rocks which might be referring to the Witness' obsession to calcify and preserve things as they are; therefore, "fossilised in time." It could also mean something else. Really strange!

Either way, the author does not refer to that, whatever it is, it refers to the universe as a whole. The universe is its beloved. Then it continues and draws back from Unveiling directly. It tells us that it "never much cared for the change of the rules," the rules being the rules of the flower game and the change being the one the Gardener put in the game. It even jokes with "no use in crying over spilled radiolaria," a reference to the fact that previously, the winners of the game were always the Vex.

The interesting bit here is that, if the author was indeed talking about its disregard for the Witness, then the Witness claiming to be "the first knife" the Winnower wielded is not true. If this author is the Winnower, it does not really care about the Witness or its view of the final shape. Hell, the line about Winnower discovering the first knife in Unveiling would then not refer to the Witness at all, but despite that, the Witness believed itself to be that knife. This is why we can't use the Witness' words as any sort of proof, but also we can't use this narrator's words either.

To go back to the change in the rules, another intriguing thing is, in Unveiling, the Winnower appeared to be angry about the change. It's what made it "discover the first knife" and begin the fight with the Gardener. But here, it claims it didn't care about it after all.

I believe this is important to understand that what we're dealing here is not a clear cut truthful chat with a friend. The author of this text, and the author of Unveiling, does not have to tell us the truth and we simply have no clue which one of these statements is truth, if any. Or, it simply changed its mind; perhaps it was angry back then, but now it no longer is, because it realised that the change in rules gave it the ability to speak to us, something it appears to value greatly. And "us" does not just refer to us as Guardians or even humanity, it appears to be referring to all living creatures in the universe. It continues:

I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish. You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.

This also seems to be a continuation of its philosophy in Unveiling. About taking and breaking and destroying and whether or not someone is worthy of existence.

Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.

And this as well, continues with its claims that it is, essentially, neutral. It is not a villain, it's merely stating the truth that sometimes destructive forces can be good. This can also have a second meaning, telling us that it will not be our villain in the game. As in, we will not be fighting against this entity because it's not something that can be fought in the first place, nor does it care to fight. The final paragraph adds:

This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice. Be seeing you.

Some more references to Unveiling with "same old lovely pattern" and stuff about flowers. And then it ends with telling us that Darkness and Light don't really matter because either way "someone is always making my choice." We can assume this means the choice to violence. And that's true; Darkness and Light, as we've learned, are not moral forces. Many atrocities were committed by Lightbearers, and Darkness users have, throughout the universe, been benevolent.

The author concludes telling us that it will be seeing us.

What does it all mean? We don't know!

I think a lot of people will take this literally; this is the proof of the Winnower, this is the proof that it is preparing to be the next big bad, that we will see it eventually, etc.

I'm personally not sure if the literal reading makes sense, primarily because we have no way to verify anything it said or who sent it and how. But also, if we accept that it is written in the style of Unveiling (which seems fairly obvious), then we also have to accept that it's not entirely reliable or fully truthful. As in, there's a lot of metaphors and philosophy here, rather than facts. Some of it could be facts, but we can't tell which those are.

I also think a lot of people will immediately conclude that this proves the Winnower as a real entity that exists somewhere that will be relevant going forward. Personally, I don't know. I'm not inclined to believe either option just yet. If we knew more about the source of this (and I'm not taking into account the Witness' beliefs), then it would be easier to discuss it, but for me this is just something that remains a mystery for now, in the same way a religion would be. This is what makes it interesting to me.

A reading I'm partial to is that this is a really neat conclusion on that chapter of the story without telling us too many details and facts about a text that, genuinely, reads better if it remains unexplained. There's... something... out there. We can call it the Winnower for simplicity. But this entity is not some sort of big bad physical being that's scheming behind the scenes and directing its pieces around; it does not care. It did not care about the Witness and its final shape, despite the Witness believing, potentialy, that it is enacting exactly what the Winnower wanted, calling itself its "first knife."

This entity is not the way the Witness imagined it or believed in it. This entity does not need to involve itself or even be physical; its adherents are everywhere in the universe, all the time, because "someone is always making my choice." No matter where we go in the universe and how much we explore it, we will eventually find those that choose this. It cannot be removed or defeated. We defeated the Witness, yes, but someone else can always rise up to do something similar. The fight is never done and it's not tied to simply Light and Dark. Our choice is not over because we won here; we could always choose differently in the future.

It honestly feels like a setup for us going forward, but not for us meeting the Winnower or fighting it; instead, to tell us that if we plan on exploring more of the "beloved" universe, we will always find those we disagree with, those to fight, those who made the other choice. And if we're not careful, we may end up making that choice too. Whatever that entity is, the universe is making its argument for it and it will never truly be defeated. It can't be!

The Witness wanted to end the game. This entity states that the game has to play itself out.

Or it could mean something completely different. I'm not going to claim anything one way or the other and I think it's genuinely really baffling that anyone would try to do so. We all have our preferences for the story, but I don't think any of them are sufficiently backed up and I'm not going to hype myself up for a scenario that will probably never happen. Or we'll be hearing about "bad writing" and "retcons" in a few years time when the Winnower never shows up (or if it does).

The point is that this is a very intriguing piece of lore that fits perfectly with the mystery and religiosity of Unveiling. It's not some huge epic reveal, though it could always be something more in the future. However, we would have to get a lot more information to be able to make that conclusion. Something spoke to us in this lore tab, but we have no way of knowing who or how or why exactly now. We have no way to verify it either; is the author legitimate or is this a scheme from someone else pretending to be it? And even if the author is legitimately some other entity, is it truthful? Can we trust it? Should we? Does it even matter? Is this information important for us to understand our enemies or is this just insight into the philosophy and metaphysics of the setting?

Is the Winnower real? We don't know.

Is Unveiling still an allegorical mystery with some truths that we can't really tell apart from the metaphors? Pretty much yeah.

Is there going to be a lot to discuss about this going forward? Absolutely. It's why I wanted to write about it immediately because it's fascinating and I can't wait to see all the ways people will interpret it. I highly recommend that everyone reads it themselves and compare to Unveiling (and the last two pages of Inspiral).

These aren't random words! They're all related to language and rhetoric, which makes sense with the Ahamkara theme as Ahamkara are very dependent on the way language is used around them.

Polysemy is when words or symbols are capable of having multiple meanings. Apophasis is when you speak about something by denying it or mentioning it by saying it's not required to be mentioned (def check examples on wikipedia if this is confusing). Synchysis is also a way of speaking in a way that deliberately messes up the order of words to confuse or surprise the person you're speaking to. Enthymeme is a type of an argument where you construct a sentence which tells some sort of a fact by omitting the way you came to that conclusion because the fact should be obvious on its own (again, check wiki for examples, it will be easier to understand). And tautology has a meaning in both language and logic; in language, a tautology is a statement that repeats something, adding redundant information and in logic, a tautology is a logical formula in which a sentence is constructed in a way that every interpretation of the sentence is true.

I doubt these words were chosen randomly and there might be more or perhaps more will cycle in during weeks to come. But even with just this, there's a pattern. I'm not sure which meaning of tautology is being used here; possibly the language one because it fits the rest, but the logic interpretation could also be possible.

The first week's mission was also specifically Polysemy:

I assume next weeks we'll probably do other specific ones in some order, which would also mean there should be at least 2 more. I'm wondering if there's some sort of a reason why these specific words were chosen. Obviously they all relate to forms of speaking and language which is the primary way that Ahamkara use to affect reality; speaking in specific terminology and using particular phrases and language forms is important to them and when speaking to them.

But given the involvement of the Vex, it also reminded me of the lore book Aspect in which every chapter is named after grammatical, linguistic and logic terms. Aspect is also specifically related to the Black Garden and Sol Divisive. Not only that, but Aspect deals with, among other things, the fate of the Ishtar scientists and their copies in the Vex Network, and primarily uses Chioma as their main viewpoint, and the whole situation with Neomuna and Veil Logs has returned my interest in this lore book.

I feel like it isn't a coincidence that we've spent essentially the entire year reacquainting ourselves with Chioma and Maya and Ishtar as a whole only to bring back Sol Divisive and the Black Garden back in the final season in this way. As the Veil Logs told us, one of Maya's copies interfered with one of the logs, sending signals, and Chioma, at the end of her life, contacted the Vex presumably to be consumed by the network so she could possibly reunite with one of the copies of Maya in there.

This brought me also to the mysterious signal from Scatter Signal lore tab in which Osiris tracks down some sort of a signal that seems to be talking about the Vex, but spoken in a strange way. So I began thinking that this signal might be coming from Chioma, consumed by the Vex, from the Vex Network, reaching out to the man who's been studying her, living in Neomuna and researching the Veil for months. Specifically, the final Veil Log mentioned a few similar words and phrases being repeated. Specifically, when Osiris mentions that Chioma was researching "the entaglement of Light and Dark" and when Nimbus and Osiris discuss "parallel connections and parallel energy fields;" then in the Scatter Signal message there's mention of how, presumably, the Vex are trying to "move from parallel to entanglement." The Veil Log also talks about how the Witness can communicate through our Ghosts and how that connection might be going both ways; Scatter Signal also mentions "bridging communion with a Voice."

Copies of Chioma and the other scientists (with the help of Praedyth) once tried to use the Black Garden to send a message out of the Vex Network, detailed in Aspect. We don't know if they succeeded (at least in our current timeline). The Black Garden has been a big focus in Lightfall almost out of nowhere in such an immensely world-changing way (with the explanation of the Black Heart), and it will still be important this season with the exotic mission. It's a very pleasing loop of the story; everything started with the Black Garden in D1 and everything just before TFS might end with it. I'm also incredibly intrigued by the fact that the returning weapons from Undying (a season about the Sol Divisive and the Black Garden) have returned with a new perk called nano-munitions: very Neomuna-sounding name. Perhaps certain Ishtar scientists are influencing the Vex or extending a helping hand to us.

The questions that remain: how does this tie back to the Ahamkara? Why are the Vex interested in the Ahamkara? What do the Ahamkara have to do with the Black Garden? What's with all the strange language terminology that deals with double meanings and ways to confuse? Is it just regular Ahamkara shenanigans to trick us? To trick the Vex? Maybe both?

The point is, I don't think this is as simple as Riven just being sad that all the Ahamkara are dead and wanting to secure her clutch. Nothing is ever simple with the Ahamkara and nothing is ever simple with the Vex; and now we're dealing with both. And somewhere in all of this, there is also a concerning involvement of the Black Garden that connects to both of these elements. At the end of it all, there's us, who rely on this specific combination of elements to get through the portal, pursue the Witness and save the universe.