Talk:Darkness

Origins of the Darkness

How do we know for certain if the Darkness originated from the Black Garden? The Darkness has even been with the Worm Gods on Fundament. It's still unclear for certainty where the darkness even originated from in the first place. So I strongly suggest it should remain unknown until future content says otherwise. -- Titan66 (talk) 22:10, 19 June 2017 (EDT)

You make a valid point. Correction has been made. --Δαντε τηε Γηοστ ^{Ι ωονδερ ιφ Ικορα γιϝες ηυγς το Γηοστσ. Ηεη... ανψωαψς, νιξε ωορκ. Τηις ις ωηατ Ι υσεδ.} 22:46, 19 June 2017 (EDT)

Triangle Ships

Again, we don't know for certain where the Darkness originated from so those Triangle ships could be anything until more information in the future shows up. -- Titan66 (talk) 23:41, 09 September 2017 (EDT)

They responded to the activation of the Light and turned toward it, but beyond that you're right. However they were concept from the beginning of a fifth race, showing those same pyramid ships as a concept for the Taken, so all evidence points to them being what we call the Darkness. --Δαντε τηε Γηοστ ^{Ι ωονδερ ιφ Ικορα γιϝες ηυγς το Γηοστσ. Ηεη... ανψωαψς, νιξε ωορκ. Τηις ις ωηατ Ι υσεδ.} 23:43, 9 September 2017 (EDT)

Oh cool then I stand corrected then! :) -- Titan66 (talk) 23:44, 09 September 2017 (EDT)

Definitely a race of aliens

I'm kind of objecting to saying flat out that the Darkness is definitely an alien race. We actually don't know that for a fact. I have little doubt that the things shown in the stinger of Destiny 2 is supposed to be the Darkness, but we don't know yet what they were. They might not even be ships. Also, when the Darkness spoke to Oryx in the Books of Sorrow, it referred to itself as "I", not we, so the Darkness appears to be a single individual, not a race. I feel it's too early to say flat out that the Darkness is a race of aliens instead of a single individual. -- SFH (talk) 12:39, 10 September 2017 (EDT)

True. The Ships may just be a vessel for the Darkness to act through. You can make whatever changes you need. :) Arcmind ^{Execute long hold for reactivation. AI-COM/ACMD SIGNOFF} 12:47, 10 September 2017 (EDT)

Source on Drown.jpg?

Title; I've never seen these images in any Destiny material, curious where they're sourced from? —This unsigned comment was made by 104.222.147.144 (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~

Shouldn't Use Pyramid Ship Image for the Darkness

The Pyramid ships are the counterpart to the Traveler, in that they are an avatar of their respective paracausal force. The Traveler is of the Light, while the Pyramids are of the Darkness. While the Traveler is near synonymous from the Light, both are distinct. The same logic should be applied to the Darkness and the Pyramids. Additionally, the Black Heart is a manifestation of the Darkness, yet it is distinct in itself. We don't use an image of the Traveler on the page for the Light, the same should go for the Pyramid with the Darkness. Unless it's otherwise confirmed that the Darkness itself, the whole paracausal force, is indeed the Pyramids, we shouldn't be using the Pyramid image as the main image for the Darkness. On that note, besides having a distinct image for the Darkness, representative of it being an almost conceptual entity, the same should be done for the Light if such an image exists. -- Jzpelaez (talk) 10:56, August 6, 2020 (EDT) ~

Clarification between Darkness actions and Witness actions

Now we know that the Witness exists, shouldn't we edit this page to split their actions? We know the Darkness can talk and communicate (when it talks to Oryx through the baby Ogre he makes, and throughout Unveiling in general), but the page posits some actions which are clearly the Witness' to the Darkness (speaking to us in the Black Garden vision, giving Rhulk his abilities, giving Oryx his ability to Take, etc).

I'd do it myself but I'd rather talk about it first because I know someone will probably shoot down my changes because they don't like them, or understand them. The Witness and Darkness are two separate entities for sure, and have a separate list of actions. —This unsigned comment was made by ProstatePuncher (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~

Distinguishing Between the Darkness and the Winnower

I think at this point there is substantial evidence in support of the Winnower as, at the very least, a distinct character from the Witness, as well as perhaps slightly less strong evidence for the Darkness being synonymous with the Winnower. In no particular order:

1. The narrator of Unveiling explicitly identifies themself as the Winnower, and goes on to say that they transformed themselves into a rule in the flower game; this rule is associated with simplification, which mirrors the discoveries made by Clovis Bray I in his studies of the Darkness.
2. The Lore entry for Nacre is written in exactly the same tone as Unveiling, and seems to be a direct continuation of those messages; the narrator refers to their message as "one more nice sit-down for the books." The entry references "my beloved," and the narrator goes on to say that they are not referencing the Witness' version of the Final Shape ("my sedimentary necrolite, frozen in time" clearly refers to the Final Shape as envisioned by the Witness). Therefore, the entry takes place following the defeat of the Witness, and so the speaker cannot be the Witness.
3. The entry "Majestic. Majestic." in the Books of Sorrow is written in exactly the same tone as the above entries, and the narrator (who is described as being the Darkness itself) uses the first person, indicating that they are almost certainly not the Witness; the word "majestic" is used by the narrator again in Unveiling, in what is clearly intended as a callback to the BoS entry.
4. The Witness explicitly says during The Final Shape that is it not the Winnower, but merely "the First Knife clutched in its hand."

I have tried to make a variety of edits on this and other pages clarifying these points, but I have been repeatedly rebuffed by TheTrueSorrowMaker, who seems to strongly oppose this interpretation, for reasons I do not understand. I believe that this is needlessly obstructionist behavior and ignores the weight of evidence in favor of this connection. I believe that there are many other articles on the wiki which make connections that are similarly hinted at in the lore, in many cases on the basis of far more tenuous evidence. Why is this point so contentious? --Xardwen (talk) 16:18, September 14, 2024 (EDT)

I'm in favor of looking at it more thoroughly myself, as I've always found "the Witness" to not be as compelling a villain and yet otherwise all mentions of the so-called Winnower stem from, at the very least, the Witness' original people's understanding of The Final Shape, almost an invention of theirs to explain the opposite of the Traveler, and yet the Veil as we see in-game is so passive as to be nonexistent.

Sorrow's cautious about inserting fanon into official lore and is rather stringent about it. I agree with his methods. So far, the Winnower's not a concrete entity in the same way the Traveler is. Yes, the Books of Sorrow "Majestic. Majestic." and Nacre share a similar narrator; but consider that the Books themselves are a mixture of selectively edited truth and outright propaganda in favor of the Hive, and all of the lore since then points to Savathûn actively working for the Witness prior to her betrayal while Oryx seems not only oblivious to the Witness' mere existence but actively unaware of it even being a thing

I'd be as cautious as Sorrow too, given that it was a mistake on my part that led to Bungie canonizing Eramis, Kell of Darkness' existence when I was hard of hearing and invented her wholesale instead of what Variks actually said. --Δαντε τηε Γηοστ ^{Ι ωονδερ ιφ Ικορα γιϝες ηυγς το Γηοστσ. Ηεη... ανψωαψς, νιξε ωορκ. Τηις ις ωηατ Ι υσεδ.} 16:45, September 14, 2024 (EDT)

Re: the Eramis/Veekris confusion- was that actually you?? That's wild haha, I love when things like that happen and become canonized.

Regarding the BoS' dubious content, granted- but surely that particular entry wasn't just made up wholesale by Oryx? Why would they do that? And why would they write in exactly the same tone as the narrator of Unveiling? Surely the simplest explanation is that Oryx was in direct communication with the Darkness itself - as he apparently believed he was - and that the Darkness is the same as the narrator of Unveiling, which is to say the Winnower, which (IMO) stops just short of explicitly saying "I am the Darkness" in Unveiling. As for why the Darkness/Winnower would talk to Oryx, when Oryx didn't know about the Witness - why did the Winnower talk to us in Unveiling? We didn't know about the Witness back then either.

Re: all mentions of the Winnower coming from the Witness- is Unveiling written by the Witness? Or is it simply, as it appears to be, a series of messages to the Guardian from the Winnower itself?

I also am in favor of avoiding fanon making its way into the wiki, but the connections I'm making here seem very clearly spelled out, at least to me. Like I said, I think there are other connections made by other articles that are a far bigger stretch than this one. --Xardwen (talk) 17:04, September 14, 2024 (EDT)

Yeah, that debacle was all me and I hate myself for it.

I'm not as well-versed in all this new stuff as, say, Sorrow or WizardWolf are, so I'll let the former speak his reasoning, but I'll say this much: it's a mixture of seeming inconsistency with Bungie's lore writing itself and actual RL glitches, like how Nacre's lore entry was unable to be read when first released until after a patch, after the Witness was defeated, which leads to further confusion. Again, I'll let Sorrow elaborate more or prove my words as me talking outta my behind. Ultimately I'm just trying to keep things as organized as I can as far as my procrastination will let me. --Δαντε τηε Γηοστ ^{Ι ωονδερ ιφ Ικορα γιϝες ηυγς το Γηοστσ. Ηεη... ανψωαψς, νιξε ωορκ. Τηις ις ωηατ Ι υσεδ.} 17:11, September 14, 2024 (EDT)

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.

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.

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.

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. TheTrueSorrowMaker (contribs) 19:33, September 15, 2024 (EDT)

(Going to stop indenting so we don't just keep sliding further to the right lol)

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.

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!!!"

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.

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?

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?

Regarding the other points raised:

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?

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.

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?

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?

5. Why shouldn't we try to interpret Nacre's Lore tab on here? We try to interpret many other Lore tabs.

6. Now, let's look at what Robert Brookes actually said:

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

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?Xardwen (talk) 02:50, September 16, 2024 (EDT)

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". Mirror Zero (contribs) (Fan Fiction) 08:34, September 16, 2024 (EDT)

1. You also forgot to mention the last statement in that link.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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-

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.

The Hive just served as an army for the Witness, ignorant of what the Final Shape actually was.

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.

6. Look at what I wrote for the first point and re-read the last statement in the link. TheTrueSorrowMaker (contribs) 09:58, September 16, 2024 (EDT)