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| ::::I have to agree with Dante's statements, but I will say this, the (former as of recent layoffs) Bungie Narrative Director literally stated that the Unveiling lore was just propaganda, a religious text like the Bible in a sense (I know, I don’t like that comparison but that is what it is). The whole Nacre lore doesn’t need to be stated as a proper reference to the Winnower and is more so trivia which I had already added to the Nacre ship page. I had also added the parable link to the Unveiling page as well. | | ::::I have to agree with Dante's statements, but I will say this, the (former as of recent layoffs) Bungie Narrative Director literally stated that the Unveiling lore was just propaganda, a religious text like the Bible in a sense (I know, I don’t like that comparison but that is what it is). The whole Nacre lore doesn’t need to be stated as a proper reference to the Winnower and is more so trivia which I had already added to the Nacre ship page. I had also added the parable link to the Unveiling page as well. |
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| ::::Oryx was not that close to the Darkness as people claim that he was. His ability to take is a fragment of the Witness's own power to move worlds, there are reference links to this on the Taken page.
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| ::::I also want to add that the Gardener IS the Traveler, as with what is described in the Witness's origins cutscene and the majority of what happened in the Final Shape also say the same thing. Even Luzaku refers to the Traveler as Gardener. Adding to this, Gardener was a term used to describe the Traveler since D1, specifically Ghost Fragment: Mysteries. | | ::::I also want to add that the Gardener IS the Traveler, as with what is described in the Witness's origins cutscene and the majority of what happened in the Final Shape also say the same thing. Even Luzaku refers to the Traveler as Gardener. Adding to this, Gardener was a term used to describe the Traveler since D1, specifically Ghost Fragment: Mysteries. |
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| ::::Yes, I know that the Winnower isn’t the Witness but the words of the Witness are conflicting. The "Winnower" doesn’t wield the Witness or could even be considered the one who created the Witness. And if you were to take the Traveler=Gardener, that same comparison could be made to the Veil being the Winnower, but the Veil didn’t create the Witness, it was a tool used by the ones who actually created it, the [[Precursors (Species|Precursors]]. {{User:TheTrueSorrowMaker/Sig}} 19:33, September 15, 2024 (EDT) | | ::::Yes, I know that the Winnower isn’t the Witness but the words of the Witness are conflicting. The "Winnower" doesn’t wield the Witness or could even be considered the one who created the Witness. And if you were to take the Traveler=Gardener, that same comparison could be made to the Veil being the Winnower, but the Veil didn’t create the Witness, it was a tool used by the ones who actually created it, the [[Precursors (Species|Precursors]]. {{User:TheTrueSorrowMaker/Sig}} 19:33, September 15, 2024 (EDT) |
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| (Going to stop indenting so we don't just keep sliding further to the right lol)
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| I think a lot of the confusion and debate around this topic stems from the fact that we have all been (I think, anyway) subject to a massive bait-and-switch by Bungie. Over the course of D1 and D2, we were told that the Darkness was this nebulous evil force; then we were told it was a fleet of Pyramids; then we were told that no, the Pyramids are bad and are associated with the Darkness, but the Darkness itself is a separate force that has no mind of its own and isn't good or bad; then we were told that the Witness is behind all of the bad stuff associated with the Darkness. It seems like most people accept this at face value, and run with the view of the Darkness as a neutral force with no guiding will.
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| But I think what Bungie has been doing here is very clever: By having in-game characters like Osiris theorize and speculate out loud about the nature of the Darkness and conclude that it is mindless and neutral (and therefore okay for us to play around with and blast each other with for fun), and by gradually shifting the attention onto the Witness as the main antagonist of the series, Bungie has caused us to take for granted that the Darkness ''can't possibly'' be evil - "What do you mean? Bungie told us so!!!"
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| But Bungie (or writers at Bungie) also wrote ''Unveiling''. And ''Unveiling'' states very clearly and plainly that the people above are wrong: The Darkness is evil and intelligent, it calls itself the Winnower, and it's trying to manipulate us into doing bad things.
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| So what do we do here? Do we just say "Oh, Bungie obviously just retconned the Winnower being the Darkness post-Shadowkeep, because now various NPCs say that the Darkness is okey-dokey?" Do we ignore the fact that the Lore tab of ''Nacre'' appears to be an all but explicit and direct continuation of ''Unveiling''? Do we just assume that every statement that came from "the Darkness" throughout D1 and D2 must actually have been from the Witness, perhaps trying to play tricks on us/Oryx/others?
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| Or do we acknowledge what seems to be happening: Bungie tried to pull a trick on us. The Darkness has always been sentient and evil, they just misdirected us into thinking that was no longer canon. And now, with ''Nacre'', they've revealed that they tricked us. In what way is this remotely a stretch? How is this not obvious?
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| Regarding the other points raised:
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| 1. The Witness literally states verbatim that it is not the Winnower, but merely "the First Knife clutched in its hand." How can that mean anything other than the Winnower wielding the Witness?
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| 2. The Veil has never (to my knowledge) directly been referred to as the Winnower; the cutscene from Ahsa says "they desired a Winnower" while starting to talk about the Darkness and the Veil. The Winnower could be the Veil or the Darkness in this context.
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| 3. I think people place way too much significance on the Witness and Rasputin calling the Traveler the Gardener. In what way does that rule out the Light being the Gardener described in ''Unveiling''? Why can't both the Light and the Traveler be called "the Gardener"? Would it not kind of make sense for Rasputin and the Witness' people to call the Traveler the Gardener, just based on what it does, not because they know the story presented in ''Unveiling''? I see no reason why we should disregard ''Unveiling''`s use of "Gardener" to refer to the Light, just because Rasputin and the Witness also used that term to refer to the Traveler. This could very well be part of the bait-and-switch described above. Likewise with the Witness calling itself "The First Knife"- does this mean the Witness is the "first knife" described in Unveiling? Or is this just another case of parallel terminology?
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| 4. Oryx wasn't as close to the Darkness as we were when we received ''Unveiling''??? Are you serious? Do you mean to tell me that a being whose army has destroyed entire civilizations, that has dedicated his whole life to embodying the Darkness' philosophy through following the Sword Logic, is likely less attuned to the Darkness than we Guardians, who are trying to protect a vulnerable civilization in exactly the way that the Darkness is stated to find repugnant? How does this make sense? I don't care if he learned how to Take from the Witness; we got Stasis from the Witness, too. So what?
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| 5. Why shouldn't we try to interpret Nacre's Lore tab on here? We try to interpret many other Lore tabs.
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| 6. Now, let's look at what Robert Brookes actually said:
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| ''"Welcome to the problem that all Bible scholars have trying to figure out — what may or may not have happened and lining that up to actual historical events. Unveiling is a parable. It is effectively a religious text. And how much of that is propaganda, how much of that is myth, how much of that is fact is deeply unclear in the nature of the text."''
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| Brookes says that ''Unveiling'' is a parable; yes, it obviously is a parable. The definition of "parable" is "a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson," which is what Unveiling is clearly trying to do: it is trying to teach us and convince us of the Winnower's philosophy, using simple stories and examples. A parable is not necessarily completely made up; it could reference real events/people. ''Unveiling'' is also effectively a religious text- more accurately, it is a creation myth. But is it actually a myth? Or is it actually telling us what happened, using metaphors and allegory - '''''which is exactly what the narrator of Unveiling itself says it is doing?''''' I believe what Robert is trying to say here is that Unveiling is presented in a way that leaves it open to interpretation, much like an IRL religious text.
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| ''"Players believed it to be 100% fact: there was a literal garden, there was a literal Gardener, there was a literal Winnower. And now it's starting to become clear that those may not actually be just concrete ideas, but metaphors or things that are far less concrete and clear."''
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| ''Unveiling'' itself makes it clear that there was no literal Garden, there was no literal Gardener, and there was no literal Winnower. It says this right in the book. We are told that these are metaphors for complex things we cannot conceptualize, like the state before the universe existed. Robert is just repeating this to make it clear. He is also acknowledging that the situation is ambiguous, and open to interpretation. What he is '''not''' saying is that the Light is not what the metaphor of the Gardener actually refers to, that the Darkness is not what the metaphor of the Winnower actually refers to, and that the Garden is not actually a metaphor for the state preceding the universe (as, again, ''Unveiling'' says it is). He is saying that these are metaphors, potentially for real things. Which we already knew.
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| I'm not saying we need to 100% commit to the Darkness = Winnower here on the wiki, but can we not agree that this seems to be what all of these Lore entries are pointing to? Should we not acknowledge this on the wiki?[[User:Xardwen|Xardwen]] ([[User talk:Xardwen|talk]]) 02:50, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| I atleast stick to the loose idea regarding the whole Darkness = Winnower as The Witness desired to be that Winnower, it failed but that was the reason behind the Witness's creation, as the Final Shape is the goal of the Winnower, but what that shape is variable. So its a loose idea, as like the Gardener, they sit back and watch as they have no reason to intervene. But as a consequence, their existence beyond symbolic icons is brought into question. I have said my piece, feel free to continue your debate but do keep keep in my what my last words were "they have no reason to intervene so they watch". [[File:Mirror Zero (Icon).png|20px|stick|link=]] [[User:Mirror Zero|<span style="color: #FFC0CB;">'''''Mirror Zero'''''</span>]] <small>([[special:Contributions/Mirror Zero|contribs]])</small> <small>([[User:Mirror Zero/Fan Fiction|Fan Fiction]])</small> 08:34, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| 1. You also forgot to mention the last statement in that link.
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| ''Brookes refused to offer any more hints on how this will all resolve. Except for this: "The contradictory nature has always kind of been intentional. Whatever the Witness says, maybe don't trust it."''
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| So that in itself should say that you shouldn’t really trust the words of the Witness, especially when it was desperate to enact the Final Shape.
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| 2. Ahsa immediately starts talking about the Veil and doesn’t talk about the Darkness in the cutscene until an almost a full minute afterwards.
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| 3. You didn’t read my statement that the Traveler, Rasputin and the Witness's precursors weren’t he only ones who referred to the Traveler as the Gardener. There are other sources within Final Shape like Chirality (which says that people in the City know about it), Luzaku, and even randomly found Mithrax dialogue calls it the Gardener as well.
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| 4. Yes, it’s not that difficult to understand that. We had become greater than Oryx was at the point of Shadowkeep and we even proved to be better than him by killing him in The Taken King. Oryx wasn’t special and he wasn’t the one who was tempted to delve into the Deep. And even then, the Witness directly states in Iconoclasm-
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| ''The sword logic teaches that what cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity. The Hive were lost to this childish game. Too obsessed by the violence of the first knife to see the final carving.''
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| The Hive just served as an army for the Witness, ignorant of what the Final Shape actually was.
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| 5. We don’t interpret lore entries like Nacre especially if we don’t have enough information for it. That is specifically why I said that it stays in the trivia.
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| 6. Look at what I wrote for the first point and re-read the last statement in the link.
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| And another thing, the "Light and Darkness are neutral forces" is not speculation, it’s a fact stated by other entities in the game like our Ghost and even Eris a year before Osiris even woke up and discussed that conversation with Nimbus. And the Winnower is not stated to be a villain. The Gardener and Winnower are more described to be the embodiments and fundamental parts of life and death in the universe. So death is the villain in every story despite it being the balance to life? The whole reason as to why we even concluded that Darkness is evil was because it was primarily used against our enemies. Light isn’t inherently good with the fact that the Hive were reborn in the Light and Savathûn's actions during Season of the Risen add into the fact that Light isn’t inherently a force of good.
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| {{User:TheTrueSorrowMaker/Sig}} 09:58, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| Before this discussion goes out of left field, let us all agree that the Winnower as an entity has thus far had only exist in third-party references. This is a similar situation to Nezarec, whom Bungie had only presented in second-hand references prior to [[Season of Plunder]]. Since currently there isn’t anything substantial present in the current moment, I vote that we withheld any further mention or discussion of the matter of the Winnower until more information is presented in future D2 content. [[User:Didactic Mind|Kuato, Didactic Mind]] 10:32, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| ^This is exactly my point as to why I don’t want the information to go out of hand or to be posted. {{User:TheTrueSorrowMaker/Sig}} 10:54, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| If we must present information, we ought to at least use every source, in-universe or out-of-universe, available to us and confined to specific sections in certain articles. For the present, the section on the Winnower we have on this page itself is good enough and we can expand it with everything we *do* have on it so it’s at least *somewhere*.
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| As for “Majestic. Majestic.” in all the articles that deal with as objective “historical” info we have, like the Golden Amputation and suchlike, I’ve since added a note post-TFS’ release cautioning about being too ready to tie together the “voice in the Darkness” Oryx spoke to with The Witness as we know them.
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| Hopefully, as Didactic has mentioned, Bungie will cease being vague and retconny and actually help clear up things in the near future. —{{User:Dante the Ghost/Sig}} 11:35, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| :Regarding Bungie being vague and retconny: Where have they actually been vague and retconny on this topic? They released ''Unveiling'', Robert Brookes said that we shouldn't take certain parts of it literally (which we already knew), and now we have ''Nacre'' virtually outright confirming that the Winnower is real, and that ''Unveiling'' is therefore a message from the Winnower, who also claims to be the Darkness in ''Unveiling''. Where is the retcon? Where is the vagueness?
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| :Regarding Brookes' last statement: he is making it clear that Bungie is deliberately attempting to confuse us and promote speculation, yes. Which is what I've said they are clearly doing. As for not trusting what the Witness says: did the Witness write ''Unveiling''? Or did it just relay a direct message from the Winnower? I believe it is clearly the latter, and therefore Brooks' statement does not apply.
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| :Regarding Ahsa's cutscene: Sure, we can argue about what exactly the name "Winnower" is used to refer to in that cutscene, but I maintain that it is ambiguous and in no way certain to be the Veil specifically. And even if the Veil is also called the Winnower: So what? It's just another case of the same term being used for different but related entities, like the Gardener being used to refer to both the Light and the Traveler. And again: why does it matter how many characters/sources refer to the Traveler as the Gardener? Does that mean that the Light is not also referred to as the Gardener in Unveiling? Or perhaps the Traveler is the physical avatar of the Light in our universe, and is therefore actually the same as the Gardener in Unveiling?
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| :Regarding us being closer to the Darkness than we are/were: Sure, one could argue that by killing Oryx, we gained the Darkness' favor and became "closer" to it than Oryx ever was. Does that mean that he was never close enough to the Darkness to receive messages from it? Does that mean that ''"Majestic. Majestic."'' was just totally made-up BS, or it must have been the Witness ''pretending'' to be the Darkness, while coincidentally sounding exactly like the Winnower?
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| :Regarding the Witness' statement about the Sword Logic: What if the Witness was wrong? What if the Sword Logic is actually just a parallel way of achieving the Final Shape? If the narrator of ''"Majestic. Majestic."'' is the Darkness, as it is stated to be, then it sounds like it's actually pretty much fine with how the Hive were going about things- which is in character with its goals as described in ''Unveiling.''
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| :Regarding it being a fact that the Light and Dark are neutral forces, because certain NPCs say that they are: are you familiar with the concept of an unreliable narrator? Do Eris, Osiris, Nimbus, and Ghost all somehow have insights into the true nature of the Darkness? Or are they as much in the dark (pun intended) as the rest of us, and they're just trying to make sense of things based on what they've seen so far? The Darkness '''seems''' to be neutral and mindless, because we've seen that it can be used without necessarily corrupting the user to do evil things - does that mean that it is actually neutral and mindless? Or is it possible that it actually is intelligent, with goals that run counter to the ideals of peaceful civilization, and it is just sitting back and letting the universe play out on its own, confident that it will eventually be proven right - '''''which is exactly what Unveiling says?''''' Like Mirror Zero said: they have no reason to intervene, so they watch.
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| :Regarding the Gardener and Winnower being the embodiments of life and death: no, they are the embodiments of fundamental tendencies toward complexity and simplicity, respectively. It says this verbatim in ''Unveiling.'' And ''Unveiling'' also says that both entities transformed themselves into special new "rules" in the flower game, which are separate from the "normal" rules - what can this possibly mean, other than the Gardener and the Winnower became the Light and the Darkness?
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| :Regarding the Light not being inherently good and the Darkness not being inherently evil: granted, both forces can be used by "good guys" and "bad guys" to do good or bad things. Does that mean the Light and the Darkness are not sentient, and do not have their own goals? Or are they - again - just sitting back and watching the flower game play out?
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| :Regarding the Winnower only existing in third-party references, similarly to Nezarec: Prior to appearing in-game, Nezarec did not send us a series of love letters explaining exactly who he was, what he's done, and what his goals are. The Winnower has, with ''Unveiling'' and ''Nacre.'' We have far more concrete information about the Winnower than we did with Nezarec - heck, we know more about the Winnower than we do about Nezarec even now. Where did Nezarec come from? What exactly are his powers? And so on.
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| :Regarding the Winnower referring to the Witness: The Witness straight up says in-game that it is not the Winnower. The Witness sought to create a Final Shape; so does the Winnower. The Winnower's idea of a perfect universe/Final Shape is a maximally simple universe where only those things that must exist do exist; the Witness interpreted this goal through its own lens, and tried to bring about a Final Shape where everything is frozen in time, unable to suffer, and under its complete control. They are two separate entities, with two similar but differing goals; the Witness uses the same terminology as the Winnower because it has been deeply influenced by the Darkness and believes that it is carrying out the Darkness' will, in its own way.
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| :At any rate - I believe we have more than enough evidence at this point to at the very least acknowledge in the wiki that there is an entity communicating with us that calls itself the Winnower, which claims to have helped create the universe and also transformed itself into the Darkness, and that it is clearly not the Witness. I believe we can also very safely say that ''Nacre'' is the latest message from this entity, and that it thus confirms that the Winnower is real. I believe that we should edit the pages on the Darkness, Witness, and ''Nacre'' accordingly, to reflect that the Darkness at least appears to be sentient and trying to influence us and other beings. I believe we should do the same with pages relating to the Light, if we have not already. We can include caveats stating that the full nature of the situation is unclear, of course. --[[User:Xardwen|Xardwen]] ([[User talk:Xardwen|talk]]) 16:39, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| ::"Vague or retconny" is my personal frustration with Bungie's attempts at being "an unreliable narrator", stemming all the way back to "''I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain''" fiasco that was D1's utterly fucked storytelling until TTK came along and actually did something concrete. I believe I was too unclear in my words.
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| ::All that being said, I've no real objections to the points raised other than repeated cautioning in our editing. --{{User:Dante the Ghost/Sig}} 16:53, September 16, 2024 (EDT)
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| :::Yeah, I hear you, Bungie completely screwed the pooch with D1's base story (and a few subsequent expansions in D1 and D2 lol); but honestly, I think they've really pulled off something impressive with the Darkness/Winnower here. They went from not knowing WTF they were doing with the Darkness to shaping it into a very interesting and sneaky antagonist, all the while making it look like they were doing a big dumb retcon by replacing "the Darkness" with the Witness. It's actually pretty remarkable, in my opinion. [[User:Xardwen|Xardwen]] ([[User talk:Xardwen|talk]]) 02:28, September 18, 2024 (EDT)
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| :Why, again, have my edits to the Nacre page re: its likely (in my opinion, obvious) reference to the Winnower and the defeat of the Witness been reverted, with no justification? What is this - again - needlessly obstructionist behavior? I simply stated a very reasonable interpretation of the facts; what is the counterargument here?
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| Edit: and no, writing in all caps "''YOU DO KOT(sic) HAVE ANY REASON TO USE A "TIMELINE" LEAVE. IT. BE.'' is not a justification.[[User:Xardwen|Xardwen]] ([[User talk:Xardwen|talk]]) 16:12, October 8, 2024 (EDT)
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| ::You are not stating any sort of fact, you are the one spreading misinformation based on zero, ZERO intel on a timeline that you yourself made up. If you continue with this behavior by spreading speculation, I will have no other choice than to ban you. {{User:TheTrueSorrowMaker/Sig}} 16:14, October 8, 2024 (EDT)
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| :::Which of the following statements include assertions that are inaccurate, or were made up by me:
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| 1. ''Nacre'' (the ship) was released on June 4, 2024, the date that ''The Final Shape'' expansion released.
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| 2. The Lore Tab for Nacre was unreadable upon the ship's initial release on June 4, but became readable on June 18.
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| 3. The ''Salvation's Edge'' Raid was released on June 7, 2024, and the ''Excision'' story mission became available after the Raid was completed for the first time. Thus, we as players did not see the Witness defeated until/after June 7.
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| 4. The Lore Tab for Nacre is narrated by an entity who claims to have spoken with us before, in a friendly, casual manner ("''one more nice sit-down for the books''"), exactly like the Winnower did in ''Unveiling''. The narrator also references the same Darkness-affiliated philosophy of self-interest and survival-of-the-fittest that the Winnower upholds in ''Unveiling''. There is also a metaphorical use of "flowers" to refer to universes (i.e. a callback to the flower game), a "final pattern," radiolaria, and various other cues that- although it is not explicitly stated- seem to draw obvious connections between this Lore entry and ''Unveiling''. One could thus argue that the entry certainly at least ''sounds'' like it is narrated by the same Winnower from ''Unveiling'', and seems to be a direct continuation of that series of messages.
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| 5. The narrator of ''Nacre'' references "my sedimentary necrolite, frozen in time," and says "you've seen that". "Sedimentary" means "rock that has formed through deposited minerals," which alludes to the Witness's Final Shape involving turning everything into something that resembles polished stone. The word "necrolite" can refer to a type of feldspar (i.e. a rock), but if one breaks the word down into its component parts, we get "necro" = death, and "-lite", a suffix sometimes used to refer to types of stone (e.g. ammolite, which is a type of gemstone made from ammonite fossils). Therefore one could easily interpret "necrolite" as "death stone/gemstone", which describes the Witness' Final Shape very well. "Frozen in time" is self-explanatory: the Witness' Final Shape involved freezing the entire universe in time. The narrator says "you've seen that", indicating that this thing it is describing has already happened - in other words, the Witness' Final Shape has come and gone.
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| Tell me which parts of this are "''misinformation based on zero, ZERO intel''" and I will gladly omit them. Aside from that, I see absolutely no reason why the above is any bigger of a stretch than the countless other examples of reasonable and logical (and sometimes unreasonable and illogical) speculation featured on this wiki. Are we really going to hold the position that unless something is explicitly spelled out, we can't connect the dots, even if the lines are basically being drawn for us?
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| And I find it extremely childish that you edited ''my'' previous post because I quoted ''your'' irrational outburst. This is shameful and silly. You should be embarrassed. I am putting it back.[[User:Xardwen|Xardwen]] ([[User talk:Xardwen|talk]]) 16:43, October 8, 2024 (EDT)
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| :These edits were made with caution, and will stay that way until we have definite clarification from Bungie. --{{User:Dante the Ghost/Sig}} 17:25, October 8, 2024 (EDT)
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| == Which is first in Affiliation? ==
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| Is it [[The Witness]] or the [[Precursors (Species)|Precursors]]? [[User:StanNPractice|StanNPractice]] ([[User talk:StanNPractice|talk]]) 22:56, October 23, 2024 (EDT)
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