Hey Gang! Quick note on Egregore. This was worthy of a separate video topic all on its own. Expect a part 2 in a few days. What I would say is that there's a great bit of content talking about the Veil/Egregore theory that you can find here: ua-cam.com/video/KWn3z7xDjjM/v-deo.html Until I get my own video out, this one explains things in that theory very well.
Eh, nah I dont feel it. The Veil doesnt look like a mushroom, and it isnt physically connected to anything, and the Avalon Mission showed us that its fully-grown Tendrils resemble a Tree of Silver Wings, much more so than Egregore. Plus, the Veil Tendrils we see in the Final Mission dont resemble Egregore either, they glow purple, and slightly phase in and out of existence. Egregore just sits there and rots. Consistently, when the Veils Tendrils are extended, it forms a circular shape, like Eye-Nerves. Fungus networks spread everywhere, connect to other Fungi, but the Veil never does that, it grows and retracts its tendrils in a circular formation, like its trying to build something, but is never able to finish it.
This is a bit unrelated but yesterday whilst doing patrols on Neomuna Jisu came and said that an un-partnered ghost has been sighted wandering the city. At first maybe I thought the OG cloud striders may return from their cores if they are able to be brought back or I think that Ghost might be Immaru which might be interesting if it is. Just bringing this up not sure if you had gotten the voice line or not but I though it was interesting enough to comment and see if you had any thoughts. P.S. Great Vid, loved the theory board on this!
@@markricheard1870 look up a type of mushroom called "the veiled lady" and look at vids of it's cycle. The name alone suggests some things but it's behaviour is similar to that of the veil.
@@markricheard1870 un partnered in the since she's dead right now bud. I know he's her ghost. But at the moment he is unpartnered and it was a sighting with no one else besides the ghost. So it's either a real unpartnered ghost or Immature who's partner is dead and currently under lock and key by the vanguard.
I love that it’s cannon in the lore that guardians never use the gravity elevator on Nessus and we always just jump off like the immortal godslayers we are
@@jeltehoekstra2952 according to jade rabbit lore tab, a drug was made to help guardians when they first resurrect. The side affects of the drug are random bursts of dancing, salty behaviour and acts of heroism
If the Veil is an object of both light and dark that is able to make wormhole, that is an interesting piece of lore that is consistent. Light and Darkness were required to create the portal to the Distributary as well as the Dreaming City via a Kugelblitz. Doesn't explain what the Veil is but it explains why it was needed.
I'm old enough that I remember the Books of Sorrow days where Byf was basically certain that the worm gods were Ahamkara. I'll be continuing to believe the safest theory... that the Veil is really the friends we made along the way.
@@markricheard1870 that was hibted at though and even in the raid itself we got an explanation for that and where the idea came from, savathun killed nezarec and basically lied to the witness and attempted to deceive it, saying that nezarec hid the veil and betrayed the witness, now whether the witness believe this or not I have no idea
@@markricheard1870 There was also that time with Week 1 Invitation To The Nine video where Byf was taking way too abstract guesses that "the blade" and "the hourglass" were Taox and Quria and some other way off things. Anybody who was really digging through lore could see how Eris was being hinted pretty hard in the background and even a Mara visit had an explicit Exo Stranger nod. Also "a forgotten blade sharpened anew" fits Eris being a Hunter and her tragic survival story, just like Exo's time traveler story and burdens fit "an hourglass counting down with infinite patience". TL DR: Occam's Razor in a game with not a super deep bench of characters cuts down on overthinking.
The concept artist referring to the veil as “a window into the mind and memory of the universe” is what ties this all together. I genuinely think the Witness is going back to the beginning of all things, where the flower game began, to prevent it from happening it all or to put things into the winnower’s favor so the universe can be retroactively turned into the final shape
Agreed Not sure why the Witness' power of time is limited in this way, since previously they timeshifted sections of Mars, but I think they're going to correct (in their mind) the results of this massive Game of Life that's playing out, either by interfering at the very beginning or very end
This is the exact thing I was coming to comment. IF all these theories are correct, then it stands to reason that the Witness is time-traveling to cheat the game. There’s even a chance that they’re attempting to install themselves as the Final Shape, though I lean more towards simply destroying the Game or manipulating the outcome.
Id like to mention that the concept of “The Veil” is wildly similar to the concept of the map of our universes timeline starting from the “Big Bang” but except the “bang” is just where the root system and the darker part meet. Which is also similar to a sprout.
@@MostlyGold weren't they only able to essentially look back into the history of mars with Deepsight, but not actually make any changes that would retroactively affect the present?
I think the veil is the link between the phenomenal, causal world, and the noumenal, paracausal world. Neomuna is an anagram of noumena, a concept used in transcendental idealism for the thing-in-itself, reality that isn't conditioned by space and time. The philosopher Schopenhauer borrows the term 'Veil of Maya' from Indian philosophy to describe the illusory, phenomenal world. And on Neomuna there is a location called the Maya's Retreat.
Though it is more likely that Maya's Retreat comes from Maya Sundaresh the Ishtar Scientist, her name seems to be of Indian origin. Also there's a thing about a Veil in the Mesopotamian myths related to Ishtar... So that's even more connections.
what do you mean by causal world and paracausal world? are you saying that the paracausal forces are originating from a space outside of anything we can perceive from our causal space? or are you saying that there are 2 realms or whatever word you want to use that exist?
This is amazing co sidering strand is only able to be seen and weidled by those with paracausal power Strand would then be an energy from this paracausal world and the veil is said to be linked to strand
In psychedelia "seeing past the veil"is a metaphor for seeing the underlying nature of reality, also referred to as"breaking the fourth wall" in storytelling (where a character realises they're a character in a story/are being watched by the audience)
I pretty sure they are fully aware of what the Veil is, we just don’t fully know what it is as it is not fully communicated to us, which I believe is either on purpose or not.
It's also important to note that when the Witness first attacked Nezarec had the Vail until he was killed and was taken away by Savathun. So where was/is it's origins in the universe and how did the Witness first find it?
True and the Witness probably had this waiting for the Black Heart to complete and was planning on using it. When It realized the Black Heart wouldn't work and saw us, The Witness began grooming us to possibly be a Veil of some sort or at least a key. It seems The Witness really really wanted us to be of the Light and Darkness. I can only speculate that It wanted this to use us for this purpose, or maybe as a backup plan, knowing that us/our ghost could be used in a pinch.
I truly believe that it's a connection between the physical and conscience realms. The first part of the released Veil design looks like an all seeing eye, connected to an optic nerve or like in our case, what connects the physical light waves to the portion of us that interprets that into our mind. The witness looks like an combination of shifting static physical form and the upper mental portions of his body seem to be in constant flux, and have interwoven faces perhaps showing a melding of his entire people's pain/power/purpose.
So something that I keep thinking about is the notes from Elsie about her time jumping, specifically the thoughts that the major difference for our timeline is our guardian’s involvement in the destruction of the black heart. With the Black heart coming back into the lore spotlight, and the fact that we haven’t talked about Elsie’s time hoping, maybe we’ll see that come into play soon. After all, unless I’m wrong, we never figured out what sent her into the time loop…
The Traveler is what locked Elsie in a time loop. At the end of each recursive cycle, she's hit with a blast of light, then wakes up at the parade where Cayde's celebrating killing Taniks.
I could see some Ghosts in it. Were people possibly worshipping a ghost or a guardian with a ghost? I played the mission 2 days ago and cant remember it all exactly so I may be wrong
@@Prando34 mostly right, I just played this mission. The guardians are off to the sides at the bottom with their ghosts, and half of each guardian is a skeleton (most likely referencing the fact that we are rezed”
The Brass Gardeners lore page is a lot better interpreted as code and in the context of what happens within the code when certain operations are used. It reads very similarly to Java code, and it seems to me that Anomaly One (leaf / Invasive) could easily represent the traveler reaching into the garden and planting a seed. The growth, however, is described as less as a gift to the garden and more as an attack/attempt at claiming territory by the Traveler. The growth was overwhelming and then Anomaly Zero (witness) shows up in the garden to quell the growth of the light. It attempts to capture / merge with the seed, I think. This merger was the heart itself. At the end, it seems Anomaly Zero calls a function called winnow, which ends the game and flattens the earth of the garden, to either destroy the land or bring it to a starting state for the game to begin again. Edit: In the context of code, this function call at the end seems like it could be akin to "destroying" a piece of software rather than locating the source of the bug and fixing it there.
Yeah, it's basically just C code Funny that the Vex are essentially just talkative C, but I guess that's one of the building blocks/pillars Bungie used to define the world of Destiny: yin & yang, Game of Life, and C lmao
Well it makes sense. The witness was probably just chilling in its own realm happy with its life. Then the traveler came around and breathed life into where its not wanted. The witness being understandably angry tried to stop it but couldn't so they used the darkness, the only force equal to the light, to fight them and then out of anger decided to eradicate them.
Idea- we have learned that light and dark are neutral forces in the past, and the traveler and witness use them . If I remember correctly, in the opening cutscene for light fall, Zavala says that the witness wields the darkness, which (spin foil hat time) may mean that the witness doesn’t actually create the darkness energy itself, but instead is a being with the most control over the darkness, similar to an elemental being in fantasy games and books. This may also be the case with the traveler with the light too. Continuing with your theory that the veil is an object of both light and dark, which makes sense given strand is detected near by it, the veil may actually be a “generator” of sorts, creating the light and dark energies in the universe, as ghost says there is a magnetic field-like area of energy around the veil, which may extend across all of space. We know that both the witness and traveler gave us power in the form of the OG 3 subclasses and stasis, but perhaps they are just granting us access to the network, rather than giving us power from themselves, similar to how a network admin allows a new person to join the network and utilize it to a certain capacity- the admin is not in themselves the network, but instead is a person (or persons!) that have the most control over it. If we continue with the network analogy, if these two admins have two halves of the network under their control, and both want the whole thing, each admin would have to find a way to either have permissions given to them by the other, or take over the other account, by linking one account to the other. Perhaps for the final shape to come to fruition, the witness must take control over all the paracausal power in the ‘verse, so that the traveler no longer is able to stop it, which linking it to the veil may have done. We also hear from tower vendors after lightfall’s campaign that the traveler is gone, and ghost even says that it is dead at one point. Since we haven’t lost our light, it makes me think that the witness may now be in full control of the light as well as the darkness, as was prophesied in Vow of the Disciple, where the witness communes wither the traveler and drinks and consumes the light.
Another idea came to mind as well. If this field around the veil is similar to a magnetic field, that must mean there is something similar to a positive pole and a negative pole on it. Perhaps (big spin foil hat time) this means that both the light and darkness are, in fact, the SAME force, where the light emanates from one end of the veil, then once it’s energy is spent doing…something, slowly turns to darkness, and flows back into the other end of the veil to create a loop of energy that starts and ends with the veil. I imagine it would look very similar to pictures you can see of earth’s magnetic field shown with lines and arrows.
I wouldn't say that the Witness gave us stasis so much as led us to it. We got it from a Veiled Darkness Statue on a Pyramid ship. The equivalent to this is us getting the Light from our Ghosts that came from the Traveler. We also know from the Red War campaign that if the Traveler is cut off from most Ghosts that they'll no longer have access to the Light, but that there are still other sources of the Light that exist(All of which originated with the Traveler excepting the Veil now). As for the Vow Prophecy wall, most if not all of it has come true now. The Witness did Commune with the Traveler to find out where the Veil was, but then it used that Connection to open a Paracausal Worm-Hole in the Traveler with I'm assuming Light Energy to power it and keep it open, which could mean the Traveler isn't dead, but IS dying. This means that the last part of the Prophecy wasn't literally that the Witness would drink of the Traveler's Light, but would simply use it as fuel for the portal instead. If this is the case then that puts a definitive timeline on how long we may have left to either follow the Witness through or shut down the portal so that it doesn't kill the Traveler completely. This naturally all speculation on my part and I'm probably way off, but I do think it's interesting.
i thought it was already established that the witness wasn't the darkness. in WQ, it legit says that the witness isn't the darkness, but "wears it like a cloak"
I think the Veil is like an Eye, able to transition physical objects into the paracausal dimensions, and vice-versa. It resembles an Eye way more when its Tendrils are extended. And remember how the Witness needed to connect to the Veil to interact with the Traveler, which is how eyes work, they translate information of physical objects into conscious thought, translating the material to the immaterial. Not only that, but I think that the Veil is the ultimate way to break the barriers between Light and Dark. Multiple characters have said that "The line between Light and Dark is so very thin" and the Veil is an object that weilds both Light and Dark, and can transform each types of energy, into eachother? We know that the Veil produces Strand, which is a Darkness Power, but also contains powerful "primordeal Light" so i think its possible that the Veil breaks the barriers between these 2 forces, allowing someone to weild both, and transform one into the other. Remember what the Prophecy Wall said "The Witness will Commune with the Traveler, and Drink the Light." I think its only the Veil that could allow to do that. With only Darkness, the Witness could not harm the Traveler, but with Light from the Veil, it could use both to enter the Traveler!
Exactly. Notice how the Traveler's beam didn't affect the Witness at all. These two can not interact with each other. Much like spirits cannot directly interact with the physical realm, the inverse is true, unless there is an implement to do so.
@ShakenMike go look at the hall of heroes and by the side that has orasis stuffs, there containers with each subclasses that is described by him. Also in one of the cutscenes of lightfall where he talk to nimbus about light and darkness kind of hit as well.
Osiris states in the campaign/his statements on the elements that the light ones deal primarily with the physical, while the darkness is more closely related to the mind and control in a more mental sense
Don't forget about Elsie. I think if the veil does involve time travel, then that could be the reason why Elsie is stuck in a time loop. In my opinion, the traveler may use the veil to send Elsie back in time to find a timeline where the darkness doesn't win. Elsie forgets what she needs to do when she goes back, and forgetting is a big part of the light. Just some thoughts
The first thing that came to my mind when we saw the Veil in the mission, was that it looked like a lot of the magic/tech we see in the Dreaming City and with the Awoken in general. And that makes a lot of sense because they're born of the Light and Darkness, and the Veil seems to be of both as well. So I wonder if the Veil has anything to do with their magics?
I doubt it, the Veil existed since before the Collapse, unlike the Awoken. But yeah as you said, they are definitely similar, at least visually, since it's both light and dark.
I really feel like the veil is symbolic of the meeting point of dark and light. I think, it being of both light and dark, it could be the starting point of the Gardner and the Winnower. Kinda like the birthplace of the light and dark origins. I can't wait for the mission that explains the veil more!
The witness needing a being who could possess both Light and Dark makes why they were so willing to teach us stasis back in Beyond light makes so much sense. That is if We (The Guardian) are the final key to the final shape.
The Witness didn't grant us Stasis. It just led us to it. A Veiled Darkness Statue granted it to us. The rest of your point still stands, but I think our Ghosts may be beings of both Light and Dark to begin with which is why The Witness in its supreme mastery of the Darkness(I don't believe the Witness IS the Darkness) could so easily take over our Ghost. I don't think it actually had anything to do with us wielding Stasis or Darkness and I say this because the first time the Witness did this to our Ghost was in Shadowkeep before we ever had Stasis. Myelin actually has a really good lore video going over the Ghost being of both Light and Dark as well. It's actually possible.
My running theory since Lightfall first came out is that the Veil is the thinnest point between the Light and The Dark. So thin that any entity subsumed in either could use it to manipulate their counterpart on a paracausal level. This would explain why the Witness needed it for his plan, since he is a being of pure darkness and thus without it could do little more than freeze the Traveler in place.
The Veil is like soap. Soap molecules can dissolve oil in water because they have have one end that can connect to hydrophobic molecules like oil and the other end has an affinity for water. The Veil is soap for darkness and light. Also there's a lot of "flowing" analogies around strand too :)
I really love how the vex lore books have a programming perspective to understand it to a better extent. It’s one of my favorite things to see in destiny. You can genuinely read this as code.
It's kinda weird how the vex even lost with their level of computing, idk much about destiny, stopped playing after destiny 1, love that game, could someone explain how they lost?
@@ragibmahfuz5241 I think it has to do with how the vex can’t simulate paracausal forces/beings. Guardians’ light is the biggest paracausal wrench in their calculations. At least that’s what I understand about it. If I get a better answer for you I’ll let you know.
@jamisoncooke1457 that's pretty stupid ngl, the traveler is just a machine that figured out how to use energy, the way it uses it looks like light. They don't need to know how it made it, but rather the effects, using that they could figure out counter measures, hell, instead of just making plans, why not try to make their own traveler?
@@ragibmahfuz5241 they did try to replicate something similar from the latest dlc called “the veil”. The black heart was a failed copy of it. That’s all the info I currently got that I can properly explain Srry.
@@EnvisionedBlindness that's just the tip of the iceberg of my theories get this The Final Shape is a Lunchbox. The Hive are bugs The Witness found and thought were cool and The Pyramids are little Action figures.
Great video. I love that nearly 10 years after finishing the D1 campaign, we're still unravelling mysteries about the black heart. Beginning to actually believe Elsie when she said she didn't have time :D
yes this i am very intrigued by them because it looks like the history of neomuna. i definitely see guardians in the mural, and we know that the neomuni made contact in the dark ages before the records were scrubbed.
If I can find some clear pictures of them, absolutely! Been looking for weeks and I fear I may be stuck with trying to get my hands dirty in the mission and pray that that’s good enough.
My theory is the veil is possibly a primordial creation of light and dark. The white part has form and shaped similar to the tree of silver wings while the dark half is formless and almost cell like, to me it's both light and dark intertwined.
i think you should look into the fact that the light part of the veil sort of grows during the boss fight, as if it maybe reacts to calus’ use of the darkness or our light? that could have implications into the veil being a sort of hourglass, where it shows the balance between the light and dark
Maybe you implied it, but in that vex lore entry it sounded to me like the black heart showed up and later on the witness came looking for it but it wasn't there. Maybe the witness went looking after we destroyed it.
Something I'd like to add, pretty sure it was the lore on the seasonal artifact from arrivals, that the tree on Io was also directly connected to the heart in the Black Garden.
"Pale Heart" seems to be referring to our ghost. It was used to create the link and Jisu says the link was created with the pale heart. Our ghost is also made of light and is technically our heart, it keeps us alive. You can technically live with everything but your heart.
depends on the way the word "with" is being used. If they mean it as "using" i.e. the link was created (using) the pale heart, then yes, it's probably our ghost. If they mean with as in what the ghost's link connected it to, i.e. the link created (to) the pale heart within the traveller, then probably not.
@@sherko9341 weren't the ghosts all released from the heart of the traveler when it was damaged? Idk seems fairly logical that the ghosts could be described as the traveler's pale heart, especially when it seems the ghost was what enabled the link between the Witness, the Veil, and what remains of the traveler - thus being the key
A lot of this makes me feel more confident in my little theory that the veil is like the womb of the universe, or something akin to that effect of being a "source" or at least conduit to the universe's origins and/or history
Interesting thought: when speaking on the damage, and the appearance of the witness and a winnower. The timelines seem to match relatively well to when we were approached by said witness in the garden. Perhaps we're fighting for the wrong side. Perhaps the traveler, while bringing life, is in fact the Winnower, as this theory would mean that the "winnower anomaly" would be our guardian.
Speaking of the Tree of Silver Wings, kinda weird how we've seen two of those recently, huh? (a seed on Calus' ship during the Deterministic Chaos mission, and the giant one now growing in the Witness's ship)
Veil= the key, “traveler”= the lock, “pale heart”= the “traveler” itself, wormhole+paracausality, look back to the first tests ashermere did on the pyramid of io, launching an antenna thing at it, and it being held in a different universe, right outside the pyramid. Like there is a force field the teleports anything into a pocket dimension. Take this and add it to the triangle portal that was the “paracausal wormhole”. The veil, a combination of light and dark, physical and psychological, the key to the pocket dimension of the winnower. The traveler is the winnower(theory). For all we know, when the witness entered the wormhole, whatever was inside could’ve erased it. That’s my take on it lol
Comment for the algorithm…. Thanks for making the world of Destiny more fascinating than it ever could be without you helping to put a lot of it together for us!
The word "trample" in that lore book makes me think of the part in Unveiling where the Gardener and the Winnower fight in the garden before time. I wonder if this was some sort of recreation of that fight?
I believe that the Mysterious Stranger/ Elsie holds the key, as she has traveled dimensions and timelimes to get us to this point in the storyline. I think she will have an impact on us accessing the Vail in the future. She did mention that she was not of light like us and has been to the final shape at least once before. Plus, she has been quite so far.
Thank God for this channel. I stopped playing right as Shadowkeep came out and I am regretting that decision. So much awesome lore stuff that I have missed
My theory: The veil is like an eye, both in its shape and function. It takes in something physical, light, and transforms it into something comprehensible. The light focuses on matter and reality while the darkness focuses on the emotions, comprehensible, and intangible. The veil helps the Witness by allowing it to commune with the traveler to work with it. IMO, the Witness, like Savathun may be our enemy, but is not evil. It’s white and black mix and spherical head makes me think that it’s sole mission is to establish a link between the two, achieving balance. When the traveler separated from the darkness long, long before any destiny lore, it allowed both life blessed by light and darkness based life. This eventually led to conflict. The Witness aims to simplify the world by removing light-darkness conflict caused by the separation of the two.
Right as I was watching this video, I thought to myself what our "pale heart" is and I came up with the conclusion that it's our ghost. Our ghost flew into the veil at the end of the LF campaign as a key to linking the veil, and what it meant by pale was because we die so much and get rezzed, we lost the color in our heart; or it can also mean when the traveler sent out the ghosts in its final moments before it died (or went dormant).
I've been thinking about what the veil is and why the Witness went inside the Traveler, and it got me thinking that maybe "the Final Shape" is being unbound from space and time. And that is when the expansion comes out, it's going to be super meta (I mostly think this because it will be around Destiny's 10 year anniversary). So we might be fighting the Witness and its forces throughout space and time from our past
I think the veil is a seed or bulb that grows into a new traveller in the event that the current one dies, the current one would send out one last wave of light, similar to the one that awakened the pyramids, and would be the catalyst for the bulb to begin its growth
All I know is that the witness had to wait for the shield genera… veil to be taken down before he could commence his attack on the death sta…. I mean traveler
I feel like the traveler and the veil will come together and form a new “final shape” I think the traveler will be in the roots of the veil and it’ll look like an infinity symbol ♾
I will say, while it being fan made, Aksula 1 made a rewrite of the Lightfall story and made the Veil make so much sense. Whether it is true or not, I think his idea is very plausible.
Question. There was a video you put out 6 years ago describing the Malok Lore. And at 4 minutes and 35 seconds of that video it says... "When we are taken, we are supposedly shown our perfect final shape." do you think some taken entities will rise from the depths and try to take back the throne in later content? Just curious. Have a nice night.
Maybe this will lead to taken subclasses in Final Shape. Maybe the witness wants to take us, the strongest being of light, and we are the key to the Final Shape.
I reckon the pale heart is traveler, and the witness at the end of the wq campaign is instead referring to whoever or whatever is inside the traveler if there is any at all.
There still so many questions the more I get into the discussion of the veil. How was ghost made? Also did you noticed the eye ball in the veil (center of the veil on top), looks very similar to the ghost's eyeball? Are we soon going to get an episode of how the traveller was made? Would we be roaming in the inside of the traveller's remain so we can fully understand the structure of the traveller? Could we understand how the "traveller" chosen people with a ghost to be guardians, and how is it that we been chosen as well? Every ghost sounds different as well, so I am assuming that certain folks that could of died could end up being a ghost instead. Why is it that Fynch sound similar to Cayde-6? The more you look at the traveller's shape, and the more you look at the other end of the veil, is the traveller a byproduct of a different veil? Where did the traveller first originated? Soooooooo many questions.
I think you’re spot on with the interpretation of the Veil being a repository for the “memories of the universe”. The design of the Veil looks a good deal like a medical diagram of an eye - veins connecting back from a larger sphere with some types of lenses in the front. It’s a physical manifestation that is used to “see” everything physical then turn that into memory - Light to Dark. Could be why the Veil seems so balanced between the two forces.
Haven’t watched the full video yet, but could the veil have anything to do with the veiled figure statues that are found around darkness related areas? Like the one at the end of Shadowkeep, at the end of GoS, after security in DSC, and that we got the enigma glaive from in WQ? Building on this idea: the veiled statue at the end of GoS has a tangle of roots surrounding it, forming the shape of a sphere just like half of the veil. Might be connected somehow
Maybe the Veiled statues are just a symbolic representation of the Veil? Like, it’s literally a Veil. And it’s clear that, whatever it represents its important to the Witness. It doesn’t have to be an entity with that shape specifically. In Rhulk pyramids we see an Horse with 20 legs but I don’t think it’s an actual entity out there lol
The traveler is the connection to the Gardner and the Winnower for everything. The witness is one of two Witness'; one utilizing light, the other utilizing dark (we have not seen the witness that uses the light yet). The Gardner gives civilizations the ability to revive through ghosts through the traveler. The winnower takes it through the traveler. The witness currently in game is trying to become that which has the power to give and take by eliminating the Gardner and the Winnower. Vex are trying to replicate the power that the Gardner and Winnower have.
My three biggest unanswered questions still: 1. How did we know INSTANTLY that the Traveller was dead. Zavala and Ikora were both like “rip traveller” as soon as we got back but did anybody, oh I don’t know, check it’s pulse, or equivalent? Also Jisu Calerondo’s line about “the portal the Witness made out of the REMAINS of the Traveller confused me, cause isn’t the act of creating that portal what killed it? 2. If the traveller is dead, why can we still use the light? Why didn’t our Ghost’s drop dead on the spot? Ghaul caged the traveller and Ghost was practically bedridden until we touched the shard, you’d think if the traveller DIED ghost would at least be comatose. 3. Ikora told us we can’t follow the Witness through the portal. WHY THE HELL NOT? Who tried, who tested that? I ain’t see anybody launch any probes in. The traveller pointed the big spear in the raid right at the portal so clearly it wanted us to follow, but why would it do that if it weren’t possible?
I like how Osiris tries to warn us about our ghost on the last mission, but never mentions how he knew or ever brings up the fact that the Witness can control our ghost being important at all.
"how he knew" He knew because the Witness controlled Ghost earlier in the campaign. At the end of the cutscene where that happens, Ghost snaps back to himself and our Guardian straight up says, "We have to tell Osiris about this." It's not crazy to assume that our Guardian mean both the conversation betyween Calus and the Witness, but also the fact that the Witness took over our Ghost. "or ever brings up the fact that the Witness can control our ghost being important at all" This is more or less spot on, but explainable maybe, because just before that last cutscene in the Calus fight room, the Ghost starts reporting feeling weird again. Maybe Osiris hears this and realizes, "Oh shit, we just fucking put the Witness right next to the Veil via the ghost. We gotta get out of there." Even if he didn't know what the Veil is or what the Witness was going to do, he knows enough to be like, "Witness touching veil through Ghost = BAD." Honestly, re: The Veil, all I needed in this capaign was our Ghost or Guardian being like, "Ok, so what is the Veil," and Niumbue going, "We don't really know, but it's been powering Neomuna since its inception, and if it's taken or destroyed, that means millions dead and that's enough for me, right now" or Osiris saying, "Hard to say, Guardian. We don't truly know. It will take weeks of research and analysis to deciphjer its mysteries. For now, Calus and the Witness seek it to further their war against the Traveler. Which must, above all else, be stopped. When the smoke clears, we'll then seek our answers." You know? Just say that you don't know. But we didn't get that.
@@StatusMusicDesign It is bad writing. It is Bungie reverting to their D1 levels of story telling. This expansion screams of being a stop gap measure because they desperately needed on more expansion for D2. Just look at the opening cutscene. It is an opening cutscene literally paused with Neomuna expansion shoved in the middle of it. Am I meant to believe the Vanguard and The Witness just sat there patiently while the Neomuna campaign was going on? "We don't know what the veil is or we can't reveal it yet and need to drag it out, so we are just going to have no one ask the most basic obvious questions anyone would ask." I agree with you but you are really bending over backwards to explain Osiris and the Ghost, but yes I agree. If Bungie doesn't want to reveal anything about the Veil yet, they could have done it in a much better way than just having all the characters not ask basic questions about what is going on.
@@jigawatt1.215 Oh, I'm 100% with you that the whole thing is disjointed as hell. I don't think I'm reaching too much on that explanation, but I agree I'm doing a little more work than I should be to make it make sense. Heck, in that last mission, Nimbus says something like, "Legend has it that Veil is WAY down, deep under the surface." And I was like, "Wait...LEGEND? You've been talking like you know what the Veil is and now you're basically saying no one's been in this facility in your lifetime...and no one's gonna say anything about that?" I think they did a ton of things RIGHT in this expansion, but the writing needed another pass.
@@StatusMusicDesign Honestly, id like to throw in my incredibly bad 2 cents here and say. I always kinda ssumed that the reason we specifically werent told about the veil by anyone. is because the traveller told the rest to not tell us. I kinda jsut assumed that due to us using stasis, the traveller Had alot less trust in us since even if we did not turn to the darkness it did look like it for a bit. its a massive stretch but honestly that was always how i saw it when everyone BUT us knew anythign about the veil. sure it doesnt explain the neomuna people not telling us but for me it was enough to suspend my belief.
I like to think of The Veil as a paracausal curtain. It seems it can connect 2 points in space (perhaps time as well), hence how it showed us the conversation between The Witness and Calus, as we watched through a sort of "veil". I think The Witness can use a similar power to some extent, and the seed (the black heart) that the Vex mentioned being planted in the garden on Venus was done so by the Witness. I think the black heart was essentially The Witnesses "ring camera" to monitor events happening in Sol, as well as to suppress The Traveler. This link made it similar to The Veil, but because it was of the darkness, and not darkness and light, he couldn't do what he could otherwise do with the power of The Veil. I think his connection with The Veil, allowed him to see through the curtain to the world within the Traveler, which allowed him to enter. IDK, I'm just rambling.
If the Black Heart was a copy of the Veil, I'm betting the Pale Heart looks exactly like a Light version of the Veil. Both parts together would look like an hourglass - one side white, one side black - with roots growing around each opposite side. That means the Traveler was originally a being of both Light and Darkness, but the Darkness part of the "heart" was extracted by Savathun (perhaps by ripping off the EDZ Shard from the bottom), and that's why Guardians only know it as a being of Light; we've never actually seen the Traveler fully intact.
This also explains why the Eliksni weren't given powers of Light, while humans were: If it was some sort of inhibitor, then it couldn't give out its powers freely or make ghosts until the Darkness element was extracted from it. Guardians actually throw off the Light/Darkness balance of the universe: We're canonically OP.
One thing that came to mind to me, watching the complete Veil, is the Garden of Salvation's statue. The fact that the vines around it were circling a "globe" of no Light. What if the emerging, purple part is in fact darkness surrounding an area of absence of darkness, while the hidden, white roots were surrounding an area of absence of light? This would maybe explain the caleidoscopic properties of the purple lights, and it would also explain why the portal the Witness opens into the Traveler has the same properties: it opens into an area of pure light.
Even though I'm still not happy about how the campaign handled Strand and the Veil, it's been really fun having this massive mystery where it isn't just outright explained to us and we need to dig through every piece of lore to figure it out. I feel like if the Veil wasn't revealed by Rasputin and we just learned about it during the campaign, there would be a lot less discussion around why it wasn't revealed and more on what it is, like this video. We went into the campaign with the expectation of looking for the Veil so not knowing much about it by the end is the main issue. Excellent video as usual
Does anyone else think the veil/portal looks very awoken in design? Would make sense with the light/dark balance and the interesting time distortion within the distributary
Byf sounds like he’s got a smoke and a glass of whiskey in one hand and the other hand running through his disheveled hair as he stares at this lore cork board. Thank you for doing the lords work
I like the time travel angle. would also explain Elsie's time loop shenanegins. I saw your comment about egregore, but I'll also add that during the season of the haunted when we'd wield a scythe sometimes eris would say it was a "manifestation of light and darkness" which makes me think the two can be used in conjunction. stasis being the power given to us from the witness. a power designed to stop, stall, or freeze. a friend told me it was stopping time but never cited any sources to me so I just shrugged. but it being the witness idea of stoping things where as the travelers use our use is strand the web of fate not stopping it but guiding it. really builds on the witness being hard shapes and traveler being organic shapes.
The Jisu Calerondo dialogue about the Einstein-Rosen bridge got me thinking. The Witness said "your pale heart holds the key" at the end of WQ. Jisu said the Witness used the Veil *and* the pale heart to create the portal in the Traveler. We see hide nor hair of this heart in the final cutscene of LF where the link is made. Byf, you even theorize that the Witness needed both Light and Dark to create the link to the Traveler. Since the Black Heart was a failed copy of the Veil, it being entirely Darkness, no link could be made. My theory is: Is our Ghost/all ghosts, the pale heart of the Traveler, or say a piece of it? The Witness used Ghost to create the link between the Veil and the Traveler. The Witness - a being of the Darkness, and Ghost - a being of Light, combined together making contact with the Veil - an artifact that is said to embody both and was seemingly necessary for the Witness' plan to happen. We know the Traveler made the ghosts after the collapse, is it impossible to shut out the idea that the Traveler split its heart into the ghosts to attempt avoiding the events of Lightfall?
btw, in the Brass Gardeners lorebook you read "anomaly ++" just as "anomaly," which in programming, the use of "++" is basically "add one" or "increment positively by 1." Same with a double minus, except minus one/increment negatively by 1. Not sure how you'd choose to read that out, but in case you didn't know, I figured I'd give you the information.
Looking down into the veil really reminds me of the oracle engine in the dreaming city. Makes me wonder if that's where the veil was originally kept. Would love to see a video on your thoughts of loose ends that need addressed and tied up, like the nine, savathuun and her ghost, or the ahamkara egg in the queens chambers.
Yoooo. I think you got most of this right but I think the first incursion into the garden was Savathun, who took the Veil from the garden, hid it on Neptune, and put in its place the black heart. Then the Witness comes in the second time looking for the veil and finds the black heart. His leaving without it tips the Sol Divisive off to the Black Heart not being clean or pure or whatever, so they need to “winnow” it
"The mind and memory of the universe." Given the Veil's shape and design it reminds me a lot of a similar concept from another bit of media, namely the 'artifact' from Eureka back in the day, basically the 'black box' for the universe.
Now that we're talking about the Veil sharing similarities with mushrooms, it reminds me of the Grave Mind from Halo which was also an universal consciousness and just like funghi, it preys on the dead. Kind of how the W'rkncacnter from Marathon turned out being the Traveler.
Great video Byf, thanks for all the hard work. At minimum if Bungie hasn’t finalized what the veil is yet, hopefully they take everything here to make a cohesive story about the veil and it all lines up
It's been finalized already, they've basically said as much. We were never supposed to know what it was after lightfall. We were only supposed to follow the breadcrumbs and learn over the coming seasons. Unfortunately destiny players are whiny and impatient
Short answer: The Veil's the rushed mcguffin for Lightfall Long theory: The Veil could be a channel or connect cord for consciousness as it radiates Strand the consciousness based subclass and supports the Cloud Ark, the device that transfers human consciousness into a digital network. Also the Witness, a being of supposedly collective consciousness needs the Veil to enter into a realm with one end Dark and the other Light and the Traveler is not dead nor poisoned (yet) just catatonic, the body and power persist while the mind is suspended.
I like how the hunter lore involving strand actually has the fact we ignore the lift and jump off. I would know since I do that all the time on my hunter
while watching this video I was reminded several times of things we learned in the Unveiling lore book and here is the theory i have come up with. The Witness wasn't trying to travel through time and space it was trying to travel to a point outside of it. The witness is a powerfull enough entity that traveling through time is likely not that hard. It would have no need to boost its power to simply create a portal on the traveler. But to travel to a point outside of time and creation would likely require two types of paracausal power (light and darkness). If the Veil is in fact a battery or generator of both light and darkness energy (which is what it seems to be from my interpertation of what we know so far) that would probably be enough to allow the witness to do it.
My theory is that we lose at the end of the Story of Destiny 2. Because The Final Shape is the last Expansion. It Would be something unexpected but also the introduction to maybe Destiny 3. Maybe the Veil has time travel powers and the Witness used it, his powers of darkness and the powers of Light from the Traveler to create a Portal to the past. He then travels to the Beginning of it all and erases both the Light and the Darkness. The Light and Dark Saga ends like Bungie said followed by a New Saga about New powers. For example it could be about the Vex because they do not actually use these paracausal powers. However this is all just a theory right now.
Unless I missed something important elsewhere, I feel like one of the biggest disservice this expansion was simply hiding the Traveller apparently actually dying in a report from Jisu Collerando. I know the folks in the tower lamented the traveller being "gone", but up until that point all we knew is that it was just up above Earth, rather than specifically above the Last City. Just listening to Jisu's report I'm like "wait, 'remains of the Traveller'? So it's actually dead?"
An interesting note about the Veil and timetravel: if the witness wants to enact a final shape. A theoretical ending to all things in a specific manner. He would have to change the outcome of "the game" mentioned to us from the gardener and winnower. The game mentioned in that lorebook is something akin to the game of life. A game where the only play the player can make is before the game begins. Maybe the witness is trying to go back to before the "game" is "started" to change something
I think it's important for the brass gardeners tab to be deciphered through a computer science lens. I think a bout a few things: In CS: Root, Branch, and Leaf are terms that describe nodes in a "Tree" (which can be visualize like a triangle). A tree in CS is a bunch of nodes connected like a family tree. The "root" is visualize at the very top node of the tree and has 2 or more branches (child nodes) that lead to more nodes with more branches, until you get to the bottom of the tree where a "leaf" (a node with no children) resides. Trees in CS are used to store a lot of data and recover that data is a short amount of time but it also kind of describes the vex. A hydra mind may have a few minotaur subminds that have hobgoblin subminds that have golblins. I saw that the lore reads "anomaly++" which in code means the variable (possibly tracking the number of anomalies) is increased by 1 It's also worth noting that in CS numbers start at 0, so it's odd that the first anomaly is anomaly One (described as an invasive leaf) and the next one referenced is anomaly Zero (described as the witness). To maybe the witness was the first anomaly and we see only a portion of the timeline, or we are reading it backwards.
From what I read, that Root of Nightmares lore tab was a recounting by the Vex of the events of Destiny 1, in which The Guardian (Anomaly 1) destroyed the Black Heart (Anomaly 0). The reference to the Witness could simply be indicating that the Witness was indeed aware of this event, possibly through the link the Black Heart created to the Darkness for the Vex. It stands to reason that the Vex involved in this instance were serving as Gardeners, only for The Guardian's actions to necessitate a switch, from "Gardener" to "Winnower," and attempting to excise the invader.
It’s odd given the fact the Ishtar collective, must have documents, notes, and lore they built the first CloudArk prototype when studying the Artifact how did they get involved?
That lore book on the Black Garden is interesting. I can’t help but think of possible connections with the gardener and the Winnower. At the start of the entry the Vex frames are referred to as gardeners, makes sense they are in the Black Garden. The first anomaly is labeled as an invasive leaf and gardeners are sent to attend to it. The second anomaly is labeled as infinite/witness and also brings up the seed being planted which is stated as the black heart. This feels a lot like what we learned happened to the Hive. The traveler tried to make contact but the witness did something to thwart the traveler and corrupted. If the first anomaly is related to the traveler then it would imply that both the Hive and the Vex essentially stolen away from the traveler and corrupted by the Witness’s influence for its own devices.
I view the veil as a sort of super computer in which everything exists within. I really like this theory btw. It’s an interesting idea that the witness wanted to find a timeline in which it would be able to create the final shape. It would also explain why the witness did not care if any of its allies died. Its only focus was making the connection in a losing timeline. We’ll have to see where this goes
I had a very similar theory that the Veil might be used to combine all the dark futures into one future where we might even fight versions of characters that fell to darkness in the timelines that Elsie talks about. Being able to see all the futures where the darkness won and all the futures where light prevailed. If we are able to see these same things when we inevitably traverse the portal, both sides would be fighting blind so to speak, where we know The Witness's every move they will make and vice versa, they know ours, which would only lead us to a future that truly hasn't happened yet.
Hey Gang!
Quick note on Egregore. This was worthy of a separate video topic all on its own. Expect a part 2 in a few days. What I would say is that there's a great bit of content talking about the Veil/Egregore theory that you can find here: ua-cam.com/video/KWn3z7xDjjM/v-deo.html Until I get my own video out, this one explains things in that theory very well.
Eh, nah I dont feel it. The Veil doesnt look like a mushroom, and it isnt physically connected to anything, and the Avalon Mission showed us that its fully-grown Tendrils resemble a Tree of Silver Wings, much more so than Egregore. Plus, the Veil Tendrils we see in the Final Mission dont resemble Egregore either, they glow purple, and slightly phase in and out of existence. Egregore just sits there and rots.
Consistently, when the Veils Tendrils are extended, it forms a circular shape, like Eye-Nerves. Fungus networks spread everywhere, connect to other Fungi, but the Veil never does that, it grows and retracts its tendrils in a circular formation, like its trying to build something, but is never able to finish it.
This is a bit unrelated but yesterday whilst doing patrols on Neomuna Jisu came and said that an un-partnered ghost has been sighted wandering the city. At first maybe I thought the OG cloud striders may return from their cores if they are able to be brought back or I think that Ghost might be Immaru which might be interesting if it is. Just bringing this up not sure if you had gotten the voice line or not but I though it was interesting enough to comment and see if you had any thoughts.
P.S.
Great Vid, loved the theory board on this!
@@markricheard1870 look up a type of mushroom called "the veiled lady" and look at vids of it's cycle. The name alone suggests some things but it's behaviour is similar to that of the veil.
@@zerrith1145 ....but Immaru is a partnered Ghost. Immaru is partnered to Savathun, Unpartnered Ghosts havent resurrected anyone, eevr.
@@markricheard1870 un partnered in the since she's dead right now bud. I know he's her ghost. But at the moment he is unpartnered and it was a sighting with no one else besides the ghost. So it's either a real unpartnered ghost or Immature who's partner is dead and currently under lock and key by the vanguard.
I love that it’s cannon in the lore that guardians never use the gravity elevator on Nessus and we always just jump off like the immortal godslayers we are
It’s also lore that our guardians are on drugs
What's the point of immortality if you don't use it to save 10s on descent?
the elevator is there to be ignored
@@alphaslayer9309 wait what? I’ve heard it was cannon they jump off the tower. But drugs? Care to explain?
@@jeltehoekstra2952 according to jade rabbit lore tab, a drug was made to help guardians when they first resurrect. The side affects of the drug are random bursts of dancing, salty behaviour and acts of heroism
If the Veil is an object of both light and dark that is able to make wormhole, that is an interesting piece of lore that is consistent. Light and Darkness were required to create the portal to the Distributary as well as the Dreaming City via a Kugelblitz. Doesn't explain what the Veil is but it explains why it was needed.
I'm old enough that I remember the Books of Sorrow days where Byf was basically certain that the worm gods were Ahamkara. I'll be continuing to believe the safest theory... that the Veil is really the friends we made along the way.
Also, remember how a few weeks ago, Byf was certain that Nezarec betrayed the Witness?
Tbh I’m still thinking they’re pretty much the same thing
Aha, so what you're saying is that The Veil is an Ahamkara!
@@markricheard1870 that was hibted at though and even in the raid itself we got an explanation for that and where the idea came from, savathun killed nezarec and basically lied to the witness and attempted to deceive it, saying that nezarec hid the veil and betrayed the witness, now whether the witness believe this or not I have no idea
@@markricheard1870 There was also that time with Week 1 Invitation To The Nine video where Byf was taking way too abstract guesses that "the blade" and "the hourglass" were Taox and Quria and some other way off things.
Anybody who was really digging through lore could see how Eris was being hinted pretty hard in the background and even a Mara visit had an explicit Exo Stranger nod. Also "a forgotten blade sharpened anew" fits Eris being a Hunter and her tragic survival story, just like Exo's time traveler story and burdens fit "an hourglass counting down with infinite patience".
TL DR: Occam's Razor in a game with not a super deep bench of characters cuts down on overthinking.
The concept artist referring to the veil as “a window into the mind and memory of the universe” is what ties this all together. I genuinely think the Witness is going back to the beginning of all things, where the flower game began, to prevent it from happening it all or to put things into the winnower’s favor so the universe can be retroactively turned into the final shape
Agreed
Not sure why the Witness' power of time is limited in this way, since previously they timeshifted sections of Mars, but I think they're going to correct (in their mind) the results of this massive Game of Life that's playing out, either by interfering at the very beginning or very end
This is the exact thing I was coming to comment. IF all these theories are correct, then it stands to reason that the Witness is time-traveling to cheat the game. There’s even a chance that they’re attempting to install themselves as the Final Shape, though I lean more towards simply destroying the Game or manipulating the outcome.
Id like to mention that the concept of “The Veil” is wildly similar to the concept of the map of our universes timeline starting from the “Big Bang” but except the “bang” is just where the root system and the darker part meet. Which is also similar to a sprout.
@@MostlyGold weren't they only able to essentially look back into the history of mars with Deepsight, but not actually make any changes that would retroactively affect the present?
Yup this is what I've been telling people I think it is as well. It would make a lot of sense
I think the veil is the link between the phenomenal, causal world, and the noumenal, paracausal world. Neomuna is an anagram of noumena, a concept used in transcendental idealism for the thing-in-itself, reality that isn't conditioned by space and time. The philosopher Schopenhauer borrows the term 'Veil of Maya' from Indian philosophy to describe the illusory, phenomenal world. And on Neomuna there is a location called the Maya's Retreat.
Though it is more likely that Maya's Retreat comes from Maya Sundaresh the Ishtar Scientist, her name seems to be of Indian origin. Also there's a thing about a Veil in the Mesopotamian myths related to Ishtar... So that's even more connections.
jesus christ this blew my mind
Byf needs to see this comment
what do you mean by causal world and paracausal world? are you saying that the paracausal forces are originating from a space outside of anything we can perceive from our causal space? or are you saying that there are 2 realms or whatever word you want to use that exist?
This is amazing co sidering strand is only able to be seen and weidled by those with paracausal power
Strand would then be an energy from this paracausal world and the veil is said to be linked to strand
In psychedelia "seeing past the veil"is a metaphor for seeing the underlying nature of reality, also referred to as"breaking the fourth wall" in storytelling (where a character realises they're a character in a story/are being watched by the audience)
Kind of like in the trials of the nine cutscenes when they say we can leave this game
What if the witness is came to our universe to force bungee to fix the servers?
Even Bungie is going to see this video
Who the hell is Even Bungie?
HAHAHAHAHA LOVE THIS 🤣
@@Cracken99it wasn’t that funny
@@IIzanagii let people have their fun, no need to try and shut others down
I pretty sure they are fully aware of what the Veil is, we just don’t fully know what it is as it is not fully communicated to us, which I believe is either on purpose or not.
It's also important to note that when the Witness first attacked Nezarec had the Vail until he was killed and was taken away by Savathun. So where was/is it's origins in the universe and how did the Witness first find it?
True and the Witness probably had this waiting for the Black Heart to complete and was planning on using it. When It realized the Black Heart wouldn't work and saw us, The Witness began grooming us to possibly be a Veil of some sort or at least a key. It seems The Witness really really wanted us to be of the Light and Darkness. I can only speculate that It wanted this to use us for this purpose, or maybe as a backup plan, knowing that us/our ghost could be used in a pinch.
I truly believe that it's a connection between the physical and conscience realms. The first part of the released Veil design looks like an all seeing eye, connected to an optic nerve or like in our case, what connects the physical light waves to the portion of us that interprets that into our mind.
The witness looks like an combination of shifting static physical form and the upper mental portions of his body seem to be in constant flux, and have interwoven faces perhaps showing a melding of his entire people's pain/power/purpose.
I'd never noticed the optical nerve similarity. I still think they're roots, but I would be shocked if they were some sort of magic nerve thing
I've been saying it looks like some form of an eyeball, everything I've seen about its design has so far reinforced my belief.
I mean. Witness. The un-veiled. :|
Considering how open they are about the connections between the Veil and the Cloud Ark I don’t see how this isn’t all but confirmed.
What if the veil is a just a paracausal mushroom. Like a liberty cap from space. That would explain your theory perfectly.
So something that I keep thinking about is the notes from Elsie about her time jumping, specifically the thoughts that the major difference for our timeline is our guardian’s involvement in the destruction of the black heart. With the Black heart coming back into the lore spotlight, and the fact that we haven’t talked about Elsie’s time hoping, maybe we’ll see that come into play soon. After all, unless I’m wrong, we never figured out what sent her into the time loop…
The Traveler is what locked Elsie in a time loop. At the end of each recursive cycle, she's hit with a blast of light, then wakes up at the parade where Cayde's celebrating killing Taniks.
Has anyone looked at the mural that is behind Rohan when he sacrifices himself? There is some interesting things on it
Yea I've seen that, looks like the runes from gow or something lol
Yeah it’s a lot going on there
I could see some Ghosts in it. Were people possibly worshipping a ghost or a guardian with a ghost?
I played the mission 2 days ago and cant remember it all exactly so I may be wrong
@@Prando34 mostly right, I just played this mission. The guardians are off to the sides at the bottom with their ghosts, and half of each guardian is a skeleton (most likely referencing the fact that we are rezed”
The Brass Gardeners lore page is a lot better interpreted as code and in the context of what happens within the code when certain operations are used. It reads very similarly to Java code, and it seems to me that Anomaly One (leaf / Invasive) could easily represent the traveler reaching into the garden and planting a seed. The growth, however, is described as less as a gift to the garden and more as an attack/attempt at claiming territory by the Traveler. The growth was overwhelming and then Anomaly Zero (witness) shows up in the garden to quell the growth of the light. It attempts to capture / merge with the seed, I think. This merger was the heart itself. At the end, it seems Anomaly Zero calls a function called winnow, which ends the game and flattens the earth of the garden, to either destroy the land or bring it to a starting state for the game to begin again. Edit: In the context of code, this function call at the end seems like it could be akin to "destroying" a piece of software rather than locating the source of the bug and fixing it there.
Yeah, it's basically just C code
Funny that the Vex are essentially just talkative C, but I guess that's one of the building blocks/pillars Bungie used to define the world of Destiny: yin & yang, Game of Life, and C lmao
Well it makes sense. The witness was probably just chilling in its own realm happy with its life. Then the traveler came around and breathed life into where its not wanted. The witness being understandably angry tried to stop it but couldn't so they used the darkness, the only force equal to the light, to fight them and then out of anger decided to eradicate them.
Idea- we have learned that light and dark are neutral forces in the past, and the traveler and witness use them . If I remember correctly, in the opening cutscene for light fall, Zavala says that the witness wields the darkness, which (spin foil hat time) may mean that the witness doesn’t actually create the darkness energy itself, but instead is a being with the most control over the darkness, similar to an elemental being in fantasy games and books. This may also be the case with the traveler with the light too. Continuing with your theory that the veil is an object of both light and dark, which makes sense given strand is detected near by it, the veil may actually be a “generator” of sorts, creating the light and dark energies in the universe, as ghost says there is a magnetic field-like area of energy around the veil, which may extend across all of space. We know that both the witness and traveler gave us power in the form of the OG 3 subclasses and stasis, but perhaps they are just granting us access to the network, rather than giving us power from themselves, similar to how a network admin allows a new person to join the network and utilize it to a certain capacity- the admin is not in themselves the network, but instead is a person (or persons!) that have the most control over it. If we continue with the network analogy, if these two admins have two halves of the network under their control, and both want the whole thing, each admin would have to find a way to either have permissions given to them by the other, or take over the other account, by linking one account to the other. Perhaps for the final shape to come to fruition, the witness must take control over all the paracausal power in the ‘verse, so that the traveler no longer is able to stop it, which linking it to the veil may have done. We also hear from tower vendors after lightfall’s campaign that the traveler is gone, and ghost even says that it is dead at one point. Since we haven’t lost our light, it makes me think that the witness may now be in full control of the light as well as the darkness, as was prophesied in Vow of the Disciple, where the witness communes wither the traveler and drinks and consumes the light.
Another idea came to mind as well. If this field around the veil is similar to a magnetic field, that must mean there is something similar to a positive pole and a negative pole on it. Perhaps (big spin foil hat time) this means that both the light and darkness are, in fact, the SAME force, where the light emanates from one end of the veil, then once it’s energy is spent doing…something, slowly turns to darkness, and flows back into the other end of the veil to create a loop of energy that starts and ends with the veil. I imagine it would look very similar to pictures you can see of earth’s magnetic field shown with lines and arrows.
I wouldn't say that the Witness gave us stasis so much as led us to it. We got it from a Veiled Darkness Statue on a Pyramid ship. The equivalent to this is us getting the Light from our Ghosts that came from the Traveler. We also know from the Red War campaign that if the Traveler is cut off from most Ghosts that they'll no longer have access to the Light, but that there are still other sources of the Light that exist(All of which originated with the Traveler excepting the Veil now).
As for the Vow Prophecy wall, most if not all of it has come true now. The Witness did Commune with the Traveler to find out where the Veil was, but then it used that Connection to open a Paracausal Worm-Hole in the Traveler with I'm assuming Light Energy to power it and keep it open, which could mean the Traveler isn't dead, but IS dying. This means that the last part of the Prophecy wasn't literally that the Witness would drink of the Traveler's Light, but would simply use it as fuel for the portal instead. If this is the case then that puts a definitive timeline on how long we may have left to either follow the Witness through or shut down the portal so that it doesn't kill the Traveler completely. This naturally all speculation on my part and I'm probably way off, but I do think it's interesting.
Most of what you said has already been figured out.
i thought it was already established that the witness wasn't the darkness. in WQ, it legit says that the witness isn't the darkness, but "wears it like a cloak"
@@DeathsPit00 damn, so that means our death we saw at the end of corridors of time going to happen
Something to note that every enemy directly touched by the witness's darkness explodes out in a root like state holding the body there
I think the Veil is like an Eye, able to transition physical objects into the paracausal dimensions, and vice-versa. It resembles an Eye way more when its Tendrils are extended. And remember how the Witness needed to connect to the Veil to interact with the Traveler, which is how eyes work, they translate information of physical objects into conscious thought, translating the material to the immaterial.
Not only that, but I think that the Veil is the ultimate way to break the barriers between Light and Dark. Multiple characters have said that "The line between Light and Dark is so very thin" and the Veil is an object that weilds both Light and Dark, and can transform each types of energy, into eachother?
We know that the Veil produces Strand, which is a Darkness Power, but also contains powerful "primordeal Light" so i think its possible that the Veil breaks the barriers between these 2 forces, allowing someone to weild both, and transform one into the other. Remember what the Prophecy Wall said "The Witness will Commune with the Traveler, and Drink the Light." I think its only the Veil that could allow to do that.
With only Darkness, the Witness could not harm the Traveler, but with Light from the Veil, it could use both to enter the Traveler!
This just clicks. I'm believing this till it is proven otherwise.
Exactly. Notice how the Traveler's beam didn't affect the Witness at all. These two can not interact with each other. Much like spirits cannot directly interact with the physical realm, the inverse is true, unless there is an implement to do so.
I love how everyone was caught out by having to destroy that door🤣 7:00
Theory: Light = life matter
Darkness = Mind matter
Veil may be a go between these two or it is chaos.
Still unsure how the actual elements relate to either life or mind but yeah that seems to be the association
@ShakenMike go look at the hall of heroes and by the side that has orasis stuffs, there containers with each subclasses that is described by him. Also in one of the cutscenes of lightfall where he talk to nimbus about light and darkness kind of hit as well.
I also think the veil could have been the key for exo that clovis was missing to work.
More like Light is physical and dark is the abstract ideas like psychic powers and the sort.
Osiris states in the campaign/his statements on the elements that the light ones deal primarily with the physical, while the darkness is more closely related to the mind and control in a more mental sense
Don't forget about Elsie. I think if the veil does involve time travel, then that could be the reason why Elsie is stuck in a time loop. In my opinion, the traveler may use the veil to send Elsie back in time to find a timeline where the darkness doesn't win. Elsie forgets what she needs to do when she goes back, and forgetting is a big part of the light. Just some thoughts
The first thing that came to my mind when we saw the Veil in the mission, was that it looked like a lot of the magic/tech we see in the Dreaming City and with the Awoken in general.
And that makes a lot of sense because they're born of the Light and Darkness, and the Veil seems to be of both as well. So I wonder if the Veil has anything to do with their magics?
I doubt it, the Veil existed since before the Collapse, unlike the Awoken.
But yeah as you said, they are definitely similar, at least visually, since it's both light and dark.
Naw ur right awoken are made from light and dark and the Veil is Light & Dark
I just noticed that in the tower there’s paintings of the traveler with the portal the Witness made in front of it. These have always been there.
I realized too and wondered the same lol
I really feel like the veil is symbolic of the meeting point of dark and light. I think, it being of both light and dark, it could be the starting point of the Gardner and the Winnower. Kinda like the birthplace of the light and dark origins. I can't wait for the mission that explains the veil more!
In that case, we've would have already seen the Final Shape, the multicolor circular portion of The Veil.
@mastermenthe maybe we have though...especially when the portal the Witness opened, looks like it would lead there for sure!
I'm pretty sure that the veil is just the dark. Its' just that the dark and the light are more alike than people think.
@@tsunertoo9149 the veil is the force of paracausality itself, the throne world of normal causality.
I've started putting on Byf videos when going to sleep and it's given me the best sleep in years!
To be clear; this is intended to be a compliment lol
The witness needing a being who could possess both Light and Dark makes why they were so willing to teach us stasis back in Beyond light makes so much sense. That is if We (The Guardian) are the final key to the final shape.
The Witness didn't grant us Stasis. It just led us to it. A Veiled Darkness Statue granted it to us. The rest of your point still stands, but I think our Ghosts may be beings of both Light and Dark to begin with which is why The Witness in its supreme mastery of the Darkness(I don't believe the Witness IS the Darkness) could so easily take over our Ghost. I don't think it actually had anything to do with us wielding Stasis or Darkness and I say this because the first time the Witness did this to our Ghost was in Shadowkeep before we ever had Stasis. Myelin actually has a really good lore video going over the Ghost being of both Light and Dark as well. It's actually possible.
@@DeathsPit00that's fair
@@DeathsPit00 The Witness most definitely gave us Stasis idk why you think us getting it from a statue changes that tbh
I love how at the beginning you said 11 pages and it usually takes over 40 mins and the vids 42 mins 💯💯
My running theory since Lightfall first came out is that the Veil is the thinnest point between the Light and The Dark. So thin that any entity subsumed in either could use it to manipulate their counterpart on a paracausal level. This would explain why the Witness needed it for his plan, since he is a being of pure darkness and thus without it could do little more than freeze the Traveler in place.
binge-listening to byf videos at work and he uploads a 40 minute video 40 minutes before i leave. legendary timing, loremaster
The Veil is like soap. Soap molecules can dissolve oil in water because they have have one end that can connect to hydrophobic molecules like oil and the other end has an affinity for water. The Veil is soap for darkness and light. Also there's a lot of "flowing" analogies around strand too :)
Love this so much. See you on the frontier Guardian
I really love how the vex lore books have a programming perspective to understand it to a better extent. It’s one of my favorite things to see in destiny. You can genuinely read this as code.
It's kinda weird how the vex even lost with their level of computing, idk much about destiny, stopped playing after destiny 1, love that game, could someone explain how they lost?
@@ragibmahfuz5241 I think it has to do with how the vex can’t simulate paracausal forces/beings. Guardians’ light is the biggest paracausal wrench in their calculations. At least that’s what I understand about it. If I get a better answer for you I’ll let you know.
@jamisoncooke1457 that's pretty stupid ngl, the traveler is just a machine that figured out how to use energy, the way it uses it looks like light. They don't need to know how it made it, but rather the effects, using that they could figure out counter measures, hell, instead of just making plans, why not try to make their own traveler?
@@ragibmahfuz5241 they did try to replicate something similar from the latest dlc called “the veil”. The black heart was a failed copy of it. That’s all the info I currently got that I can properly explain Srry.
My personal theory The Veil is half a giant Kiwi The Traveler didn't finish eating due to The Witness and them fighting over it at the lunch table.
Most compelling theory I've seen so far. I second this
@@EnvisionedBlindness that's just the tip of the iceberg of my theories get this The Final Shape is a Lunchbox. The Hive are bugs The Witness found and thought were cool and The Pyramids are little Action figures.
i work at bungie its true
The real reason the gardener and winnower wrestled in the garden.
AHAHAHAHAHAH
Great video. I love that nearly 10 years after finishing the D1 campaign, we're still unravelling mysteries about the black heart. Beginning to actually believe Elsie when she said she didn't have time :D
Byf, could we get a video about the murals above the Veil location?
yes this i am very intrigued by them because it looks like the history of neomuna. i definitely see guardians in the mural, and we know that the neomuni made contact in the dark ages before the records were scrubbed.
If I can find some clear pictures of them, absolutely! Been looking for weeks and I fear I may be stuck with trying to get my hands dirty in the mission and pray that that’s good enough.
@@MynameisByf the artist posted them on artstation
I love that part with the punch door in the campaign, like they knew we'd hit it eventually and didn't need to tell us
My theory is the veil is possibly a primordial creation of light and dark. The white part has form and shaped similar to the tree of silver wings while the dark half is formless and almost cell like, to me it's both light and dark intertwined.
i think you should look into the fact that the light part of the veil sort of grows during the boss fight, as if it maybe reacts to calus’ use of the darkness or our light? that could have implications into the veil being a sort of hourglass, where it shows the balance between the light and dark
Maybe you implied it, but in that vex lore entry it sounded to me like the black heart showed up and later on the witness came looking for it but it wasn't there. Maybe the witness went looking after we destroyed it.
Something I'd like to add, pretty sure it was the lore on the seasonal artifact from arrivals, that the tree on Io was also directly connected to the heart in the Black Garden.
"Pale Heart" seems to be referring to our ghost. It was used to create the link and Jisu says the link was created with the pale heart. Our ghost is also made of light and is technically our heart, it keeps us alive. You can technically live with everything but your heart.
No? Brain death has been the definition of death since the late 1960s.
depends on the way the word "with" is being used. If they mean it as "using" i.e. the link was created (using) the pale heart, then yes, it's probably our ghost. If they mean with as in what the ghost's link connected it to, i.e. the link created (to) the pale heart within the traveller, then probably not.
Isn't he saying pale heart. Talking to the traveler. ? Lmao
@@sherko9341 weren't the ghosts all released from the heart of the traveler when it was damaged? Idk seems fairly logical that the ghosts could be described as the traveler's pale heart, especially when it seems the ghost was what enabled the link between the Witness, the Veil, and what remains of the traveler - thus being the key
Detective Byf going hard connecting dots with only but a shred of actual lore. Insane this man is. Brilliant video!
A lot of this makes me feel more confident in my little theory that the veil is like the womb of the universe, or something akin to that effect of being a "source" or at least conduit to the universe's origins and/or history
Huh, the top(?) part of the veil does take the same basic shape of a diagram of the big bang. You might be on to something there.
Interesting thought: when speaking on the damage, and the appearance of the witness and a winnower. The timelines seem to match relatively well to when we were approached by said witness in the garden.
Perhaps we're fighting for the wrong side. Perhaps the traveler, while bringing life, is in fact the Winnower, as this theory would mean that the "winnower anomaly" would be our guardian.
Speaking of the Tree of Silver Wings, kinda weird how we've seen two of those recently, huh? (a seed on Calus' ship during the Deterministic Chaos mission, and the giant one now growing in the Witness's ship)
Veil= the key, “traveler”= the lock, “pale heart”= the “traveler” itself, wormhole+paracausality, look back to the first tests ashermere did on the pyramid of io, launching an antenna thing at it, and it being held in a different universe, right outside the pyramid. Like there is a force field the teleports anything into a pocket dimension. Take this and add it to the triangle portal that was the “paracausal wormhole”. The veil, a combination of light and dark, physical and psychological, the key to the pocket dimension of the winnower. The traveler is the winnower(theory). For all we know, when the witness entered the wormhole, whatever was inside could’ve erased it. That’s my take on it lol
Comment for the algorithm…. Thanks for making the world of Destiny more fascinating than it ever could be without you helping to put a lot of it together for us!
The word "trample" in that lore book makes me think of the part in Unveiling where the Gardener and the Winnower fight in the garden before time. I wonder if this was some sort of recreation of that fight?
Perhaps a fruitless attempt at recreating the “reverberations in the existence before time and space”? I bet you’re right
I believe that the Mysterious Stranger/ Elsie holds the key, as she has traveled dimensions and timelimes to get us to this point in the storyline. I think she will have an impact on us accessing the Vail in the future. She did mention that she was not of light like us and has been to the final shape at least once before. Plus, she has been quite so far.
I personally believe the roots that are on the one side of The Veil are meant to encase The Traveler, creating a connection.
Thank God for this channel. I stopped playing right as Shadowkeep came out and I am regretting that decision. So much awesome lore stuff that I have missed
My theory: The veil is like an eye, both in its shape and function. It takes in something physical, light, and transforms it into something comprehensible. The light focuses on matter and reality while the darkness focuses on the emotions, comprehensible, and intangible. The veil helps the Witness by allowing it to commune with the traveler to work with it. IMO, the Witness, like Savathun may be our enemy, but is not evil. It’s white and black mix and spherical head makes me think that it’s sole mission is to establish a link between the two, achieving balance. When the traveler separated from the darkness long, long before any destiny lore, it allowed both life blessed by light and darkness based life. This eventually led to conflict. The Witness aims to simplify the world by removing light-darkness conflict caused by the separation of the two.
I absolutely love this theory. Good on you 💯
Right as I was watching this video, I thought to myself what our "pale heart" is and I came up with the conclusion that it's our ghost. Our ghost flew into the veil at the end of the LF campaign as a key to linking the veil, and what it meant by pale was because we die so much and get rezzed, we lost the color in our heart; or it can also mean when the traveler sent out the ghosts in its final moments before it died (or went dormant).
I've been thinking about what the veil is and why the Witness went inside the Traveler, and it got me thinking that maybe "the Final Shape" is being unbound from space and time. And that is when the expansion comes out, it's going to be super meta (I mostly think this because it will be around Destiny's 10 year anniversary). So we might be fighting the Witness and its forces throughout space and time from our past
Its nor confirmed that the witness went inside the traveler. We dont know where the portal goes
That can't be possible because In the lore for voidwalkers all guardians that use the void are already unbound by space and time
I think the veil is a seed or bulb that grows into a new traveller in the event that the current one dies, the current one would send out one last wave of light, similar to the one that awakened the pyramids, and would be the catalyst for the bulb to begin its growth
All I know is that the witness had to wait for the shield genera… veil to be taken down before he could commence his attack on the death sta…. I mean traveler
as always, incredible. We have to be thankful that we have a historian in our community because I read lore but you put the points where they go
I feel like the traveler and the veil will come together and form a new “final shape” I think the traveler will be in the roots of the veil and it’ll look like an infinity symbol ♾
I will say, while it being fan made, Aksula 1 made a rewrite of the Lightfall story and made the Veil make so much sense. Whether it is true or not, I think his idea is very plausible.
Question. There was a video you put out 6 years ago describing the Malok Lore. And at 4 minutes and 35 seconds of that video it says... "When we are taken, we are supposedly shown our perfect final shape." do you think some taken entities will rise from the depths and try to take back the throne in later content? Just curious. Have a nice night.
Maybe this will lead to taken subclasses in Final Shape. Maybe the witness wants to take us, the strongest being of light, and we are the key to the Final Shape.
I reckon the pale heart is traveler, and the witness at the end of the wq campaign is instead referring to whoever or whatever is inside the traveler if there is any at all.
There still so many questions the more I get into the discussion of the veil.
How was ghost made? Also did you noticed the eye ball in the veil (center of the veil on top), looks very similar to the ghost's eyeball?
Are we soon going to get an episode of how the traveller was made? Would we be roaming in the inside of the traveller's remain so we can fully understand the structure of the traveller? Could we understand how the "traveller" chosen people with a ghost to be guardians, and how is it that we been chosen as well? Every ghost sounds different as well, so I am assuming that certain folks that could of died could end up being a ghost instead. Why is it that Fynch sound similar to Cayde-6? The more you look at the traveller's shape, and the more you look at the other end of the veil, is the traveller a byproduct of a different veil? Where did the traveller first originated?
Soooooooo many questions.
If fynch is Cayde that would be an interesting twist for sure
Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, sacrifice leads to becoming worthy to be rezzed by a ghost.
I think you’re spot on with the interpretation of the Veil being a repository for the “memories of the universe”. The design of the Veil looks a good deal like a medical diagram of an eye - veins connecting back from a larger sphere with some types of lenses in the front.
It’s a physical manifestation that is used to “see” everything physical then turn that into memory - Light to Dark. Could be why the Veil seems so balanced between the two forces.
Akashic records
Haven’t watched the full video yet, but could the veil have anything to do with the veiled figure statues that are found around darkness related areas? Like the one at the end of Shadowkeep, at the end of GoS, after security in DSC, and that we got the enigma glaive from in WQ?
Building on this idea: the veiled statue at the end of GoS has a tangle of roots surrounding it, forming the shape of a sphere just like half of the veil. Might be connected somehow
Maybe the Veiled statues are just a symbolic representation of the Veil? Like, it’s literally a Veil. And it’s clear that, whatever it represents its important to the Witness.
It doesn’t have to be an entity with that shape specifically. In Rhulk pyramids we see an Horse with 20 legs but I don’t think it’s an actual entity out there lol
The traveler is the connection to the Gardner and the Winnower for everything. The witness is one of two Witness'; one utilizing light, the other utilizing dark (we have not seen the witness that uses the light yet). The Gardner gives civilizations the ability to revive through ghosts through the traveler. The winnower takes it through the traveler. The witness currently in game is trying to become that which has the power to give and take by eliminating the Gardner and the Winnower. Vex are trying to replicate the power that the Gardner and Winnower have.
I bet the veil is some sort of a paracausal key. A key to the traveler.
My three biggest unanswered questions still:
1. How did we know INSTANTLY that the Traveller was dead. Zavala and Ikora were both like “rip traveller” as soon as we got back but did anybody, oh I don’t know, check it’s pulse, or equivalent? Also Jisu Calerondo’s line about “the portal the Witness made out of the REMAINS of the Traveller confused me, cause isn’t the act of creating that portal what killed it?
2. If the traveller is dead, why can we still use the light? Why didn’t our Ghost’s drop dead on the spot? Ghaul caged the traveller and Ghost was practically bedridden until we touched the shard, you’d think if the traveller DIED ghost would at least be comatose.
3. Ikora told us we can’t follow the Witness through the portal. WHY THE HELL NOT? Who tried, who tested that? I ain’t see anybody launch any probes in. The traveller pointed the big spear in the raid right at the portal so clearly it wanted us to follow, but why would it do that if it weren’t possible?
I like how Osiris tries to warn us about our ghost on the last mission, but never mentions how he knew or ever brings up the fact that the Witness can control our ghost being important at all.
"how he knew"
He knew because the Witness controlled Ghost earlier in the campaign. At the end of the cutscene where that happens, Ghost snaps back to himself and our Guardian straight up says, "We have to tell Osiris about this." It's not crazy to assume that our Guardian mean both the conversation betyween Calus and the Witness, but also the fact that the Witness took over our Ghost.
"or ever brings up the fact that the Witness can control our ghost being important at all"
This is more or less spot on, but explainable maybe, because just before that last cutscene in the Calus fight room, the Ghost starts reporting feeling weird again. Maybe Osiris hears this and realizes, "Oh shit, we just fucking put the Witness right next to the Veil via the ghost. We gotta get out of there." Even if he didn't know what the Veil is or what the Witness was going to do, he knows enough to be like, "Witness touching veil through Ghost = BAD."
Honestly, re: The Veil, all I needed in this capaign was our Ghost or Guardian being like, "Ok, so what is the Veil," and Niumbue going, "We don't really know, but it's been powering Neomuna since its inception, and if it's taken or destroyed, that means millions dead and that's enough for me, right now" or Osiris saying, "Hard to say, Guardian. We don't truly know. It will take weeks of research and analysis to deciphjer its mysteries. For now, Calus and the Witness seek it to further their war against the Traveler. Which must, above all else, be stopped. When the smoke clears, we'll then seek our answers." You know? Just say that you don't know. But we didn't get that.
@@StatusMusicDesign It is bad writing. It is Bungie reverting to their D1 levels of story telling. This expansion screams of being a stop gap measure because they desperately needed on more expansion for D2.
Just look at the opening cutscene. It is an opening cutscene literally paused with Neomuna expansion shoved in the middle of it. Am I meant to believe the Vanguard and The Witness just sat there patiently while the Neomuna campaign was going on?
"We don't know what the veil is or we can't reveal it yet and need to drag it out, so we are just going to have no one ask the most basic obvious questions anyone would ask."
I agree with you but you are really bending over backwards to explain Osiris and the Ghost, but yes I agree. If Bungie doesn't want to reveal anything about the Veil yet, they could have done it in a much better way than just having all the characters not ask basic questions about what is going on.
@@jigawatt1.215 Oh, I'm 100% with you that the whole thing is disjointed as hell. I don't think I'm reaching too much on that explanation, but I agree I'm doing a little more work than I should be to make it make sense.
Heck, in that last mission, Nimbus says something like, "Legend has it that Veil is WAY down, deep under the surface." And I was like, "Wait...LEGEND? You've been talking like you know what the Veil is and now you're basically saying no one's been in this facility in your lifetime...and no one's gonna say anything about that?"
I think they did a ton of things RIGHT in this expansion, but the writing needed another pass.
@@StatusMusicDesign Honestly, id like to throw in my incredibly bad 2 cents here and say. I always kinda ssumed that the reason we specifically werent told about the veil by anyone. is because the traveller told the rest to not tell us.
I kinda jsut assumed that due to us using stasis, the traveller Had alot less trust in us since even if we did not turn to the darkness it did look like it for a bit.
its a massive stretch but honestly that was always how i saw it when everyone BUT us knew anythign about the veil.
sure it doesnt explain the neomuna people not telling us but for me it was enough to suspend my belief.
Okay to be fair it happened before. Both in shadow keep and early in lf
I like to think of The Veil as a paracausal curtain. It seems it can connect 2 points in space (perhaps time as well), hence how it showed us the conversation between The Witness and Calus, as we watched through a sort of "veil". I think The Witness can use a similar power to some extent, and the seed (the black heart) that the Vex mentioned being planted in the garden on Venus was done so by the Witness. I think the black heart was essentially The Witnesses "ring camera" to monitor events happening in Sol, as well as to suppress The Traveler. This link made it similar to The Veil, but because it was of the darkness, and not darkness and light, he couldn't do what he could otherwise do with the power of The Veil. I think his connection with The Veil, allowed him to see through the curtain to the world within the Traveler, which allowed him to enter. IDK, I'm just rambling.
If the Black Heart was a copy of the Veil, I'm betting the Pale Heart looks exactly like a Light version of the Veil. Both parts together would look like an hourglass - one side white, one side black - with roots growing around each opposite side. That means the Traveler was originally a being of both Light and Darkness, but the Darkness part of the "heart" was extracted by Savathun (perhaps by ripping off the EDZ Shard from the bottom), and that's why Guardians only know it as a being of Light; we've never actually seen the Traveler fully intact.
This also explains why the Eliksni weren't given powers of Light, while humans were: If it was some sort of inhibitor, then it couldn't give out its powers freely or make ghosts until the Darkness element was extracted from it. Guardians actually throw off the Light/Darkness balance of the universe: We're canonically OP.
One thing that came to mind to me, watching the complete Veil, is the Garden of Salvation's statue. The fact that the vines around it were circling a "globe" of no Light. What if the emerging, purple part is in fact darkness surrounding an area of absence of darkness, while the hidden, white roots were surrounding an area of absence of light? This would maybe explain the caleidoscopic properties of the purple lights, and it would also explain why the portal the Witness opens into the Traveler has the same properties: it opens into an area of pure light.
I'm thinking the thing we've called the Traveler for so many years, the big white orb, is the pale heart. The Traveler is something else
Even though I'm still not happy about how the campaign handled Strand and the Veil, it's been really fun having this massive mystery where it isn't just outright explained to us and we need to dig through every piece of lore to figure it out. I feel like if the Veil wasn't revealed by Rasputin and we just learned about it during the campaign, there would be a lot less discussion around why it wasn't revealed and more on what it is, like this video. We went into the campaign with the expectation of looking for the Veil so not knowing much about it by the end is the main issue.
Excellent video as usual
Does anyone else think the veil/portal looks very awoken in design? Would make sense with the light/dark balance and the interesting time distortion within the distributary
Just so you know byf, the longer the video, the better, whenever they are being created and narrated by yourself
I couldn’t help but notice the final in game design of the Veil has some elements reminiscent of the charges used to activate the Blind Well.
Byf sounds like he’s got a smoke and a glass of whiskey in one hand and the other hand running through his disheveled hair as he stares at this lore cork board. Thank you for doing the lords work
I like the time travel angle. would also explain Elsie's time loop shenanegins. I saw your comment about egregore, but I'll also add that during the season of the haunted when we'd wield a scythe sometimes eris would say it was a "manifestation of light and darkness" which makes me think the two can be used in conjunction. stasis being the power given to us from the witness. a power designed to stop, stall, or freeze. a friend told me it was stopping time but never cited any sources to me so I just shrugged. but it being the witness idea of stoping things where as the travelers use our use is strand the web of fate not stopping it but guiding it. really builds on the witness being hard shapes and traveler being organic shapes.
The Jisu Calerondo dialogue about the Einstein-Rosen bridge got me thinking. The Witness said "your pale heart holds the key" at the end of WQ. Jisu said the Witness used the Veil *and* the pale heart to create the portal in the Traveler. We see hide nor hair of this heart in the final cutscene of LF where the link is made. Byf, you even theorize that the Witness needed both Light and Dark to create the link to the Traveler. Since the Black Heart was a failed copy of the Veil, it being entirely Darkness, no link could be made. My theory is: Is our Ghost/all ghosts, the pale heart of the Traveler, or say a piece of it? The Witness used Ghost to create the link between the Veil and the Traveler. The Witness - a being of the Darkness, and Ghost - a being of Light, combined together making contact with the Veil - an artifact that is said to embody both and was seemingly necessary for the Witness' plan to happen. We know the Traveler made the ghosts after the collapse, is it impossible to shut out the idea that the Traveler split its heart into the ghosts to attempt avoiding the events of Lightfall?
btw, in the Brass Gardeners lorebook you read "anomaly ++" just as "anomaly," which in programming, the use of "++" is basically "add one" or "increment positively by 1." Same with a double minus, except minus one/increment negatively by 1. Not sure how you'd choose to read that out, but in case you didn't know, I figured I'd give you the information.
Looking down into the veil really reminds me of the oracle engine in the dreaming city. Makes me wonder if that's where the veil was originally kept. Would love to see a video on your thoughts of loose ends that need addressed and tied up, like the nine, savathuun and her ghost, or the ahamkara egg in the queens chambers.
Yoooo. I think you got most of this right but I think the first incursion into the garden was Savathun, who took the Veil from the garden, hid it on Neptune, and put in its place the black heart. Then the Witness comes in the second time looking for the veil and finds the black heart. His leaving without it tips the Sol Divisive off to the Black Heart not being clean or pure or whatever, so they need to “winnow” it
"The mind and memory of the universe." Given the Veil's shape and design it reminds me a lot of a similar concept from another bit of media, namely the 'artifact' from Eureka back in the day, basically the 'black box' for the universe.
Now that we're talking about the Veil sharing similarities with mushrooms, it reminds me of the Grave Mind from Halo which was also an universal consciousness and just like funghi, it preys on the dead. Kind of how the W'rkncacnter from Marathon turned out being the Traveler.
I hit a 7th column while listening to this video, thank you as always Byf.
Great video Byf, thanks for all the hard work. At minimum if Bungie hasn’t finalized what the veil is yet, hopefully they take everything here to make a cohesive story about the veil and it all lines up
It's been finalized already, they've basically said as much. We were never supposed to know what it was after lightfall. We were only supposed to follow the breadcrumbs and learn over the coming seasons. Unfortunately destiny players are whiny and impatient
Short answer: The Veil's the rushed mcguffin for Lightfall
Long theory: The Veil could be a channel or connect cord for consciousness as it radiates Strand the consciousness based subclass and supports the Cloud Ark, the device that transfers human consciousness into a digital network. Also the Witness, a being of supposedly collective consciousness needs the Veil to enter into a realm with one end Dark and the other Light and the Traveler is not dead nor poisoned (yet) just catatonic, the body and power persist while the mind is suspended.
The idea of this all being linked to time travel would also help explain how the Traveler keeps sending Elsie back in time.
Great video! Glad you're still doing this since D1. You're a true Legend
I like how the hunter lore involving strand actually has the fact we ignore the lift and jump off. I would know since I do that all the time on my hunter
while watching this video I was reminded several times of things we learned in the Unveiling lore book and here is the theory i have come up with.
The Witness wasn't trying to travel through time and space it was trying to travel to a point outside of it. The witness is a powerfull enough entity that traveling through time is likely not that hard. It would have no need to boost its power to simply create a portal on the traveler. But to travel to a point outside of time and creation would likely require two types of paracausal power (light and darkness). If the Veil is in fact a battery or generator of both light and darkness energy (which is what it seems to be from my interpertation of what we know so far) that would probably be enough to allow the witness to do it.
My theory is that we lose at the end of the Story of Destiny 2.
Because The Final Shape is the last Expansion.
It Would be something unexpected but also the introduction to maybe Destiny 3.
Maybe the Veil has time travel powers and the Witness used it, his powers of darkness and the powers of Light from the Traveler to create a Portal to the past.
He then travels to the Beginning of it all and erases both the Light and the Darkness.
The Light and Dark Saga ends like Bungie said followed by a New Saga about New powers.
For example it could be about the Vex because they do not actually use these paracausal powers.
However this is all just a theory right now.
This videos length will get peoples attention. I love your long lore vids.
Unless I missed something important elsewhere, I feel like one of the biggest disservice this expansion was simply hiding the Traveller apparently actually dying in a report from Jisu Collerando.
I know the folks in the tower lamented the traveller being "gone", but up until that point all we knew is that it was just up above Earth, rather than specifically above the Last City.
Just listening to Jisu's report I'm like "wait, 'remains of the Traveller'? So it's actually dead?"
An interesting note about the Veil and timetravel:
if the witness wants to enact a final shape. A theoretical ending to all things in a specific manner. He would have to change the outcome of "the game" mentioned to us from the gardener and winnower. The game mentioned in that lorebook is something akin to the game of life. A game where the only play the player can make is before the game begins. Maybe the witness is trying to go back to before the "game" is "started" to change something
Nothing like nice, long, Destiny lore video from Byf to build furniture to!
I think it's important for the brass gardeners tab to be deciphered through a computer science lens.
I think a bout a few things:
In CS: Root, Branch, and Leaf are terms that describe nodes in a "Tree" (which can be visualize like a triangle). A tree in CS is a bunch of nodes connected like a family tree. The "root" is visualize at the very top node of the tree and has 2 or more branches (child nodes) that lead to more nodes with more branches, until you get to the bottom of the tree where a "leaf" (a node with no children) resides.
Trees in CS are used to store a lot of data and recover that data is a short amount of time but it also kind of describes the vex. A hydra mind may have a few minotaur subminds that have hobgoblin subminds that have golblins.
I saw that the lore reads "anomaly++" which in code means the variable (possibly tracking the number of anomalies) is increased by 1
It's also worth noting that in CS numbers start at 0, so it's odd that the first anomaly is anomaly One (described as an invasive leaf) and the next one referenced is anomaly Zero (described as the witness). To maybe the witness was the first anomaly and we see only a portion of the timeline, or we are reading it backwards.
From what I read, that Root of Nightmares lore tab was a recounting by the Vex of the events of Destiny 1, in which The Guardian (Anomaly 1) destroyed the Black Heart (Anomaly 0). The reference to the Witness could simply be indicating that the Witness was indeed aware of this event, possibly through the link the Black Heart created to the Darkness for the Vex. It stands to reason that the Vex involved in this instance were serving as Gardeners, only for The Guardian's actions to necessitate a switch, from "Gardener" to "Winnower," and attempting to excise the invader.
It’s odd given the fact the Ishtar collective, must have documents, notes, and lore they built the first CloudArk prototype when studying the Artifact how did they get involved?
That lore book on the Black Garden is interesting. I can’t help but think of possible connections with the gardener and the Winnower. At the start of the entry the Vex frames are referred to as gardeners, makes sense they are in the Black Garden. The first anomaly is labeled as an invasive leaf and gardeners are sent to attend to it. The second anomaly is labeled as infinite/witness and also brings up the seed being planted which is stated as the black heart.
This feels a lot like what we learned happened to the Hive. The traveler tried to make contact but the witness did something to thwart the traveler and corrupted. If the first anomaly is related to the traveler then it would imply that both the Hive and the Vex essentially stolen away from the traveler and corrupted by the Witness’s influence for its own devices.
omg dude that hunter lore was 🔥🔥🔥 so well written! where is that in the training montage? good stuff, Byf!
I view the veil as a sort of super computer in which everything exists within. I really like this theory btw. It’s an interesting idea that the witness wanted to find a timeline in which it would be able to create the final shape. It would also explain why the witness did not care if any of its allies died. Its only focus was making the connection in a losing timeline. We’ll have to see where this goes
I had a very similar theory that the Veil might be used to combine all the dark futures into one future where we might even fight versions of characters that fell to darkness in the timelines that Elsie talks about. Being able to see all the futures where the darkness won and all the futures where light prevailed. If we are able to see these same things when we inevitably traverse the portal, both sides would be fighting blind so to speak, where we know The Witness's every move they will make and vice versa, they know ours, which would only lead us to a future that truly hasn't happened yet.