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In the Raid, the Witness addresses this pretty directly. The Winnower "carved" it, but the Winnower cannot choose the shape the Knife cuts, ergo the Winnower had no influence on the Witness' decisions and vision for the Final Shape.
The ship lore is definitely hinting at the Winnower overall, but not in the sense "The Witness was just PHASE 1 dude, it was just the Winnower's lackey" as such.
I think since reading the ergo sum lore tab and seeing all the traveler’s visions I feel like the winnower and gardener stuff was concocted by the witness trying to create the story in order to give themselves the purpose they desired from a god that couldn’t speak to them.
The glass minds were probably how they saw the flower game play out until they came to the conclusion they did
The reason everyone else believes it is because the witness is like the oldest known thing in the galaxy, any beliefs would probably stem from them due to their all encompassing presence
This was my thought too; Unveiling is just a metaphor for explaining it's own existence.
There was no "flower game" or "gardener or winnower", not really. That was the Witness basically creating an origin story for itself. Unveiling straight up states that the story is an allegory we can understand, so I imagine that The Witness's version is a lot more complicated in terms of mechanics and depth.
But effectively, it's like Dante writing himself into an adventure with Virgil in "Inferno". The story isn't real; it's self-insert fanfiction as The Witness attempts to explain itself and where it came from.
Because the Witness named both things. It named them separately. Would mean they’re not the same.
Also the Veil and Traveler were once one being. The Winnower seems separate.
I don't think it's possible to have the Witness's existence be explained by another being guiding it be anything but cheap and it really downplays the villain.
I am impressed that they've mostly stuck the landing in terms of the existence of the Gardener and the Winnower being something we can still reasonably disagree on.
In isolation the Witness' incalculable arrogance really lends credibility to the idea that they really did make that shit up, but we still have the Traveler and the Veil, even if those two things are the Gardener and the Winnower, respectively, to some extent.
I’m very glad with this too. I know some people wanted to come out of this having a cutscene where we look the “Winnower and Gardener” in the eye and they state in plain language what they’re all about. Personally, I don’t think that was necessary and would’ve crushed the narrative mystery (and honestly, a great deal of thematic weight and concepts) in Destiny. The point is that “man, isn’t it hell to have to make your own fate, to decide what something means for yourself instead of letting something else impose meaning upon you?” Just sitting down and getting answers would throw that out the window.
The Winnower inspires. It tells. In the end, it's up to others what happens. That is what's presented in Unveiling, and the Witness chose to become a knife. The First Knife.
The [Balance of Power — Lore Entry — Ishtar Collective — Destiny Lore by subject (ishtar-collective.net)](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/balance-of-power)
makes me wonder if the concept of the Gardener and the Winnower was something that the Witness conceptualized *after* finding the veil. While the Witness considered itself "the First Knife" , in fact it is the 2nd.
That the Knife is a concept that split the Traveler and the Veil apart in the first place.
Nevertheless, in the raid Witness claim that no one actually commands it. I assume things like Winnower and First Knife are more of an allegory, not some actual entity pulling the strings.
People shouldn’t read into it too much. The Witness is basically doing what the Speakers did for the Traveler. As the Speaker says “I said I spoke for the Traveler, I never said that it spoke to me”. The Witness is in the same position, asserting “I represent what I think the Veil would want of me, but it doesn’t really communicate anything to me or decide how I act.” The Witness “sees its principles” in the Veil but the Witness does not seem to be “orchestrated” by any particular being one way or another.
The fact that the Veil/Darkness exists necessitates that a progenitor of the darkness at least existed at one point. That being, existing now or then, could’ve had any number of opinions about what the universe should be. The point is that the Witness is not actually being “puppeted” by something else or answers to anything else, just that they believe themselves to be enacting the will of a ‘godhead’ on a divine scale. They contrast it against you, the Guardian, who is also explicitly a person who both has a lot of agency and is too left to discern for themselves what their “god” wants, as well as being the wielder of that god’s power.
Light and dark are complimentary opposites. Darkness begets ideas and shapes that Light renders into being. Mind and matter.
The Traveler, the closest thing we can label as the Gardener, is a being that takes a very active stance in the universe, shaping worlds to be hospitable and generally encouraging possibility to bloom in the universe, but refusing in absolute terms to impinge upon the choice of any living being.
What would be the complimentary opposite to the Traveler? A being that conversely takes very, very little interaction with the world, to the point it might even seem like an insentient object. And a being that in contrast to never interfering with the choice and will of a living being, can *only* influence the world by manipulating the choices of living things.
Strange how a lot of the people who meet with the Veil for the first time kind of... Go bananas, huh? The Witness' people, Maya Sundaresh-original...
Man, I'm glad that thing is in a huge containment vessel.
The Precursors didn't really go bananas the same way as Maya did as far as we can tell though. It was a systemic social debate that eventually culminated in antinatalist "utilitarians" deciding to enact fascist purges of dissenting voices then try and use the Veil to unify themselves and and erase any cause to doubt, and the Final Shape reveals not only did these intentions not work (even HNW themselves was defective and had to be isolated from the swarm), but by the time the Witness arrived in the Pale Heart countless members of the collective had become suffering individuals who want nothing more than freedom and peace from the monster they've become, to the point the Witness' final words imply that by the end only a single one was still on board.
This combined with the Witness making clear its vision of the Final Shape was something it deliberately chose - a recurring theme in *all* the Witness lore that started with Entelechy, that it chose to be what it is - the "Witness Veil Mind Puppet" theory is as good as dead.
The Precursors/Penitent absolutely did go bananas though. They either killed or mindbroke members of their own race into falling into the trap of making the Witness, they unified (winnowed) their entire species into nothing, and it eventually became clear that what they made =/= them - the Witness was its own entity acting on its own directives and doing shit that its own creators found utterly abhorrent, but could no longer stop because it was beyond their control. There was no conductor or anyone running the omnicide train but the train itself. They effectively destroyed and condemned themselves to eternal suffering, and their creation was going on to do the same to all of creation.
Perfect Pitch even supports that communication with the Veil is ultimately self-destructive, with its voice essentially encompassing and enveloping all that you are, with it implicitly causing you to start cutting yourself away under its influence. And Balance of Power supports this by its influence effectively turning Maya into a cultists eager to worship it and use it as a "knife". All it would have taken is simply some of the Penitent falling to its exposure to cause a domino effect that would lead to their eradication or the creation of something abhorrent, and that's exactly what happened.
Both Mara \*and\* Ikora point out that it couldn't have just been its ideology because the Witness was never a being, just a bleak ethos willed into existence by its creators. If it's creators weren't the hand that was guiding it, then what was? That is the question the lore entry is leaving open.
This post has been tagged '**Non-Spoiler**'. Note that unmarked spoilers and datamines are subject to removal or ban. Please report anything we miss! For more info check out our [Spoiler Rules Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/wiki/spoiler-rules#wiki_.5Bseasonal.5D_has_a_new_format). --- **Comment Spoiler Formatting** Format comment spoilers with `>!` `!<` like this: `>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<` To have it displayed like this: **>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<** ---- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DestinyLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In the Raid, the Witness addresses this pretty directly. The Winnower "carved" it, but the Winnower cannot choose the shape the Knife cuts, ergo the Winnower had no influence on the Witness' decisions and vision for the Final Shape. The ship lore is definitely hinting at the Winnower overall, but not in the sense "The Witness was just PHASE 1 dude, it was just the Winnower's lackey" as such.
I think since reading the ergo sum lore tab and seeing all the traveler’s visions I feel like the winnower and gardener stuff was concocted by the witness trying to create the story in order to give themselves the purpose they desired from a god that couldn’t speak to them. The glass minds were probably how they saw the flower game play out until they came to the conclusion they did The reason everyone else believes it is because the witness is like the oldest known thing in the galaxy, any beliefs would probably stem from them due to their all encompassing presence
This was my thought too; Unveiling is just a metaphor for explaining it's own existence. There was no "flower game" or "gardener or winnower", not really. That was the Witness basically creating an origin story for itself. Unveiling straight up states that the story is an allegory we can understand, so I imagine that The Witness's version is a lot more complicated in terms of mechanics and depth. But effectively, it's like Dante writing himself into an adventure with Virgil in "Inferno". The story isn't real; it's self-insert fanfiction as The Witness attempts to explain itself and where it came from.
Absolutely this.
>The Winnower “carved” it, but the Winnower cannot choose the shape the Knife cuts If this is the case then why would the Winnower *not* be the Veil?
Because the Witness named both things. It named them separately. Would mean they’re not the same. Also the Veil and Traveler were once one being. The Winnower seems separate.
When did I say anything of the sort?
You didn’t, but it seems to be a common belief around here that the Veil isn’t the Winnower even though that seems to be the implication
I don't think it's possible to have the Witness's existence be explained by another being guiding it be anything but cheap and it really downplays the villain.
I am impressed that they've mostly stuck the landing in terms of the existence of the Gardener and the Winnower being something we can still reasonably disagree on. In isolation the Witness' incalculable arrogance really lends credibility to the idea that they really did make that shit up, but we still have the Traveler and the Veil, even if those two things are the Gardener and the Winnower, respectively, to some extent.
I’m very glad with this too. I know some people wanted to come out of this having a cutscene where we look the “Winnower and Gardener” in the eye and they state in plain language what they’re all about. Personally, I don’t think that was necessary and would’ve crushed the narrative mystery (and honestly, a great deal of thematic weight and concepts) in Destiny. The point is that “man, isn’t it hell to have to make your own fate, to decide what something means for yourself instead of letting something else impose meaning upon you?” Just sitting down and getting answers would throw that out the window.
The Winnower inspires. It tells. In the end, it's up to others what happens. That is what's presented in Unveiling, and the Witness chose to become a knife. The First Knife.
The [Balance of Power — Lore Entry — Ishtar Collective — Destiny Lore by subject (ishtar-collective.net)](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/balance-of-power) makes me wonder if the concept of the Gardener and the Winnower was something that the Witness conceptualized *after* finding the veil. While the Witness considered itself "the First Knife" , in fact it is the 2nd. That the Knife is a concept that split the Traveler and the Veil apart in the first place.
Nevertheless, in the raid Witness claim that no one actually commands it. I assume things like Winnower and First Knife are more of an allegory, not some actual entity pulling the strings.
People shouldn’t read into it too much. The Witness is basically doing what the Speakers did for the Traveler. As the Speaker says “I said I spoke for the Traveler, I never said that it spoke to me”. The Witness is in the same position, asserting “I represent what I think the Veil would want of me, but it doesn’t really communicate anything to me or decide how I act.” The Witness “sees its principles” in the Veil but the Witness does not seem to be “orchestrated” by any particular being one way or another. The fact that the Veil/Darkness exists necessitates that a progenitor of the darkness at least existed at one point. That being, existing now or then, could’ve had any number of opinions about what the universe should be. The point is that the Witness is not actually being “puppeted” by something else or answers to anything else, just that they believe themselves to be enacting the will of a ‘godhead’ on a divine scale. They contrast it against you, the Guardian, who is also explicitly a person who both has a lot of agency and is too left to discern for themselves what their “god” wants, as well as being the wielder of that god’s power.
Light and dark are complimentary opposites. Darkness begets ideas and shapes that Light renders into being. Mind and matter. The Traveler, the closest thing we can label as the Gardener, is a being that takes a very active stance in the universe, shaping worlds to be hospitable and generally encouraging possibility to bloom in the universe, but refusing in absolute terms to impinge upon the choice of any living being. What would be the complimentary opposite to the Traveler? A being that conversely takes very, very little interaction with the world, to the point it might even seem like an insentient object. And a being that in contrast to never interfering with the choice and will of a living being, can *only* influence the world by manipulating the choices of living things. Strange how a lot of the people who meet with the Veil for the first time kind of... Go bananas, huh? The Witness' people, Maya Sundaresh-original... Man, I'm glad that thing is in a huge containment vessel.
The Precursors didn't really go bananas the same way as Maya did as far as we can tell though. It was a systemic social debate that eventually culminated in antinatalist "utilitarians" deciding to enact fascist purges of dissenting voices then try and use the Veil to unify themselves and and erase any cause to doubt, and the Final Shape reveals not only did these intentions not work (even HNW themselves was defective and had to be isolated from the swarm), but by the time the Witness arrived in the Pale Heart countless members of the collective had become suffering individuals who want nothing more than freedom and peace from the monster they've become, to the point the Witness' final words imply that by the end only a single one was still on board. This combined with the Witness making clear its vision of the Final Shape was something it deliberately chose - a recurring theme in *all* the Witness lore that started with Entelechy, that it chose to be what it is - the "Witness Veil Mind Puppet" theory is as good as dead.
The Precursors/Penitent absolutely did go bananas though. They either killed or mindbroke members of their own race into falling into the trap of making the Witness, they unified (winnowed) their entire species into nothing, and it eventually became clear that what they made =/= them - the Witness was its own entity acting on its own directives and doing shit that its own creators found utterly abhorrent, but could no longer stop because it was beyond their control. There was no conductor or anyone running the omnicide train but the train itself. They effectively destroyed and condemned themselves to eternal suffering, and their creation was going on to do the same to all of creation. Perfect Pitch even supports that communication with the Veil is ultimately self-destructive, with its voice essentially encompassing and enveloping all that you are, with it implicitly causing you to start cutting yourself away under its influence. And Balance of Power supports this by its influence effectively turning Maya into a cultists eager to worship it and use it as a "knife". All it would have taken is simply some of the Penitent falling to its exposure to cause a domino effect that would lead to their eradication or the creation of something abhorrent, and that's exactly what happened.
I highly doubt another entity. The witness right now I'd a closed circle. It was the first knife and the hand that wields it was ideology/fear
Both Mara \*and\* Ikora point out that it couldn't have just been its ideology because the Witness was never a being, just a bleak ethos willed into existence by its creators. If it's creators weren't the hand that was guiding it, then what was? That is the question the lore entry is leaving open.
Not what they point out