Now I'm sure that alongside most of you in this neck of the forums, it's a given that we're all interested in the lore of Destiny; some moreso than others, with a small handful being borderline fanatics who'd sell their left kidney to see even the slightest bit of a nudge towards their Drifter x Eris fan fictions. Now, what does this have to do with the subject of this post? Nothing at all. This is just to say that although I'd consider myself somewhere between a medium to hardcore fan of the lore, I'm starting to question whether or not I've unknowingly become said type of fanatic.
Now don't misinterpret what I said there, the topic of this post has nothing to do with Drifter and Eris.
Instead, I am writing this due to a dream I had recently that's been stuck in my head for the past few days, and I thought it'd make for an interesting discussion on what we might be facing after The Final Shape expansion. Now, I don't recall anything else in this dream save for a particular scene, of which I will describe here as followed:
{Atop an open-air pavilion-esque structure overlooking a forested landscape with a blue sky stretching overhead, Emperor Calus(Post-Lightfall Appearance) is to The Witness' left as Rhulk(With a dark purplish hue to his appearance which resonates with Lightfall's theme) hovers to it's right, the three all looking up towards a jumpship-sized vessel stationary overhead (the vessel's appearance being similar in structure to the customary three-pronged Awoken ship, albeit it is made from a pink and purple flesh-like substance with green eyes lining it's rim, alongside other details I can't particularly recall well), and The Witness stares at the ground dejectedly as it brings itself forth; then, upon The Witness looking up once it is directly beneath the vessel, The Witness is then killed by a translucent purple beam which subsequently shoots down from it.}
Now I'm certainly no prophet when it comes to predictions, so if you believe this to be some kind of spiritual foretelling of what the end of Destiny's light & dark saga is going to look like, I highly suggest that you curb your expectations right now and get off Tumblr for a while. But even still, I think this raises an interesting possibility as to what exactly The Final Shape (The Witness' ideology, not the expansion) entails. I know that the general conception is that The Witness seeks to essentially bring all of existence to an end as to it's "Enough death, enough life." line, but do bear in mind that such a thing was never explicitly stated withinin the lore (to my understanding, at least), and was even rebuked in the Unveiling lorebook (whose narrator I assume to be Nezarec given it's use of "I" instead of "We" pronouns, as well as the "my man Oryx" line which relates to the Books of Sorrow and also falls in line with Nezarec's pyramid being on the Moon); and said line in Unveiling to which I refer is as followed:
[i]"Beings who deserve no thought:
Those who peddle the tired gotcha that all life hastens entropy. They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one. They bore me."[/i] [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-cambrian-explosion#book-unveiling]-Unveiling Lorebook: The Cambrian Explosion[/url]
In addition to this, within Calus' repressed memories in Duality, he states the following as well:
[i]"The Light and the Dark are threads on a loom, woven into the tapestry of the universe by those who wield it. The Witness would see things differently. The gaps between those threads. Freedom from the greater design. Freedom... for all."[/i] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJoI_ntSkpw&t=816s]-12 Repressed Memories: 13:36 Timestamp.[/url]
All-in-all, the point I'm trying to make here is that The Witness is seeking to achieve [i]something[/i], not [i]nothing[/i]; possibly the absolute erasure of both light and dark altogether: [b]"Enough death, enough life."[/b]. So given this, could it be possible that The Witness is looking to bring about The Final Shape in order to "protect"(for lack of a better term) the universe from an even greater threat on the horizon? Could it be possible that Calus' line in the Lightfall reveal trailer "When they see this glorious end, [b]they[/b] will come for us." isn't referencing the guardians? Although, The Witness' latter dialogue in the trailer seems to prove this theory wrong, but even still, the idea of a threat greater than The Witness isn't that far-fetched if you think about it; Bungie's gotta have something lined up following The Final Shape expansion.
In one last addendum to this as well regarding Rhulk, while it is true that the darkness branches which came out of both The Caretaker and Rhulk upon their deaths were collected by us yet nuked following a sparrow accident, could there still be a possibility that Rhulk is resurrected in the coming two expansions and/or their seasons? Personally, I'd love for that to happen; Vow of The Disciple lore is some of the best we've ever gotten! But of course, we'll see in due time.
So! Other than the given notion that I desperately need to go out and touch some grass, what are some of the thoughts ya'll have on this? I'd love to hear em'!
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You know, there've been a few things I've brainstormed particularly over the course of Witch Queen which I feel would be noteworthy to jot down here; so seeing as to the nature of this thread, I figure I might as well do just that! So first of all, in regards to the veiled statues supposedly at the heart of every pyramid, a thought has always crossed my mind whenever I happen to look across one. In the Unveiling lorebook, the way in which the flower game is allegorically played is with the opening and closing of flowers; the opened ones representative of the Gardener's pieces, and the closed ones representative of the Winnower's pieces (to my own perspective, at least). So knowing of this general concept, that an "open" flower can be "closed", what if we were to apply this same logic to The Traveler's sphere and The Witness' tetrahedrons (pyramids)? In addition to this as well, note that The Traveler is typically implied as female in the lore...see where I'm going with this? What if most of all the pyramids we see were once Travelers, with the veiled statue at it's heart being the remains of the "Gardener" who controlled said former sphere, subsumed by The Witness? Although, this would imply that alongside there being multiple "Traveler" entities, there would be multiple "Witness" entities as well...but remember how The Witness always refers to itself: [b]"we"[/b]. The Witness always refers to itself in plural, thereby implying it is a sort of "collective conscience", with Savathûn even referencing The Witness as having "many selves" within the Vow of The Disciple Warlock bond lore. So given this, if The Witness did indeed subsume these supposed "Gardener" entities and thereby "closed" the flowers, that would explain why these statues seem to be the core conduits in which The Witness controls the pyramids from afar; or more specifically, those who don't have a Disciple already piloting them. But bear in mind, even though there is a statue within Nezarec's pyramid, we never have come across the statue within Rhulk's, which now leads me to my next theory- Consider just how large Rhulk's pyramid is compared to all the others we've seen, and bear in mind as you do, that portion we see sticking up out of the swamp? That's only HALF the pyramid structure. The other half is buried into the swamp, evident by the large drop down when you're first entering the sunken pyramid. So knowing this, what might be the cause of size differences between pyramids? I think that even though the sword logic doesn't quite fall in line with The Witness' ideology, it's Disciples still must prove that they are worthy to assist in serving The Final Shape through their strength; so what if The Witness' Disciples had battled against each other at certain points in order to gain The Witness' favor, particularly against Rhulk, who as far as we're aware is(was) The Witness' most devout, strongest Disciple? And when Rhulk inevitably defeated these Disciples who challenged him, perhaps their pyramids were then added to Rhulk's? It wouldn't be that far-fetched to assume, knowing how much those pyramids can shift themselves around into any given form (just take a look a Calus' new "palace" in Lightfall); but if this were in fact the case, whatever became of all the veiled statues? Maybe Rhulk has a collection of them somewhere in his pyramid? Now, last but not least for my ramblings tonight, while admittedly this is a kind of half-theory half-suggestion to the Bungie team, what if the developers are using Ketchcrash as a "proof of concept" for something in the near future, particularly regarding the Black Fleet's full arrival to Sol? I think it'd be a good idea to have a Ketchcrash-esque activity where you're going into pyramid after pyramid and destroying their statues as to render them immobile, and upon doing so, you then fight a reflection of The Witness which is controlling said pyramid and/or a Disciple as well? I feel this could be used to further add onto the urgency of "even though we're immobilizing all these pyramids, more and more keep coming, slowly closing in on The Traveler in spite of our best efforts". So! To go full circle now, I forgot to mention this when talking about the flower game at the beginning here; but before I do so, note the rules listed in Unveiling, which go as followed: [i]"These are the rules of a game. Let it be played upon an infinite two-dimensional grid of flowers. Rule One. A living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off. It dies. Rule Two. A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected. It lives. Rule Three. A living flower with more than three living neighbors is starved and overcrowded. It dies. Rule Four. A dead flower with exactly three living neighbors is reborn. It springs back to life. The only play permitted in the game is the arrangement of the initial flowers."[/i] [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-flower-game#book-unveiling]-Unveiling Lorebook: The Flower Game[/url] If there were multiple Travelers at the beginning of the flower game which has taken place in our universe, then if our Traveler is the only "living flower" left, then how come it hasn't died? Maybe just as the Gardener flipped the rules, so too did The Traveler, which then gave The Witness the incentive to do the same as well in some manner? Or maybe the "neighbors" spoken about here don't solely apply to the spheres and tetrahedrons in our universe, which would then makes rule four particularly interesting as a result; but I'll let you all think on it yourselves now. There are plenty of strings at play, and we'll be seeing how they pan out in due time!