Precursors (Species)

“

Boons I grant you, oh bearer mine, but debts must be paid in time.

”

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"...three words, nine word bursts over and over..."This article is based on canon information, but the article title is conjectural, as there is currently no official name for the subject. See the talk page for more information.

This article is about the ancient species that formed the Witness. For the Vex Subtype, see Precursors.

Precursors
Overview
Focal world(s):	System R-3TN-PLRMA
Goals:	Finding purpose in the Traveler (formerly) Define different interpretations of the Final Shape (formerly)
Distinctions:	Pale white skin
Notable group(s):	Consensus (Bountiful Penitent Nihilist Solipsist)
Notable individual(s):	HNW047622 RS6243199

The Precursors were an ancient humanoid species, believed to be the first to be blessed by the Traveler. However, despite enjoying a Golden Age that lasted for eons, they gradually grew dissatisfied with the Traveler's lack of communication and guidance, and began to crave meaning and purpose. As a result, they sought to enforce meaning and purpose upon the universe, and eventually discovered another paracausal entity, the Veil, which held the means to achieve this goal. Upon attempting to combine the Veil's Darkness with the Traveler's Light and remake the universe into a Final Shape, the Traveler fled their homeworld. The Precursors then used the Veil's power to shed their corporeal forms and merge themselves into a single, unfathomably powerful Darkness-wielding being: the Witness.

Overview

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The Precursors were tall, humanoid beings, very similar in overall appearance to humans. In all images or depictions that are currently available, members of the Precursors are shown wearing veils or other full-body coverings, and thus most of their features are currently unknown; assuming that the Witness largely resembles the Precursors which merged themselves to create it, they seem to have had large, dark eyes, a hairless and earless head with a slight horizontal ridge at the back of the skull, and a small nose that lacked nostrils.

History

Origin

Billions of years ago, the Precursors were a nomadic people who trekked through the desert of their desolate homeworld. At some point, they discovered an enormous white orb buried in the sand, which subsequently activated and terraformed their planet into a lush garden world; they called this entity "the Gardener", and began to worship it as a deity.

The Gardener gave the Precursors a Golden Age that lasted for millions of years, transforming the deserts into fertile deltas and lush gardens, and gifting its patrons with the means to build great cities and ships that let them travel to other worlds that they could then terraform themselves. However, despite their prosperity, the Precursors eventually became dissatisfied with the Gardener's silence, as they desired a higher purpose to guide their existence. They also came to view the Light as a chaotic and capricious force, capable of taking life just as easily as it could create it; two factions within the Precursor civilization, the Bountiful and the Primacy, are recorded as having misused the Gardener's gifts to the detriment of themselves or others, reinforcing the Precursors' view of the Light as being a fundamentally amoral force. As a result, the Precursors sought a "Winnower," something that could select a just and righteous purpose from the infinite choices of their open-ended existence, and began to idealize a "Final Shape" toward which their civilization could strive.

In time, various factions arose within the Precursors' governing body, the Consensus, each with their own conception of the Final Shape. The Solipsists believed that the self was the only true "Final Shape", whereas the Nihilists believed that the Final Shape would only be achieved through their own destruction. The Penitent desired to rid the universe of all suffering by any means, and believed that anyone who did not act to do so was complicit in its endless cycle. Eventually, the Penitent became the dominant faction within the Consensus.

The Precursors eventually discovered another paracausal entity in a distant star system, called the Veil. The Veil appeared to be a counterpart to the Gardener, but where the Gardener's Light could reshape physical reality, the power associated with the Veil was linked with thoughts, memory and emotion. The Precursors determined that by combining the powers of the Veil and the Gardener, they could bring their conception of the Final Shape into the physical world, carving away the chaos of existence and calcifying it into an eternal, timeless state, free of even the possibility of suffering. However, when they brought the Veil back to their homeworld to form a link between it and the Gardener, the Gardener fled from their world.

Unwilling to abandon their pursuit of the Final Shape, the Precursors used the power of the Veil to merge their minds into a single, unfathomably powerful Darkness-wielding entity, guided by a unified, unwavering will: the Witness. In at least one location, the process of creating the Witness took the form of a ritualistic ceremony where the participants cloaked themselves in cloth veils, standing in a circle and chanting in unison until their consciousnesses departed their bodies to merge in the Darkness; another depiction portrayed the Precursors as dismembering themselves and piling their body parts upon an altar.

Dissenters

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At the start of its journey, the Witness' component minds were more or less completely unified in their goal of finding the Gardener, free of doubt or dissent. However, as time went on, many within the collective began to question or regret their decision to create the Witness, as they watched it perpetrate countless massacres and genocides out of a desire to "correct" the needless profusion of life (and therefore suffering) left in the wake of the Traveler. These Dissenters were sequestered by the Witness away from the rest of its collective consciousness, with the intent to reintegrate them during the creation of the Final Shape.

Architecture

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From what can be gathered from the Guardians' explorations of the Black Fleet and the Witness' own memories reconstructed within the Pale Heart, the Precursors favored relatively simple architectural forms, especially pyramids, obelisks or other similarly monolithic styles. Most of their buildings appear to have been constructed of slate-like stone, either matte black or stark white.

Technology

At the height of their Golden Age, the Precursors had developed a wide variety of incredibly powerful technologies, thanks in large part to the assistance of the Traveler. Records indicate that some members of the species traveled through space in tetrahedral vessels, similar to those that would later make up the Black Fleet, and were capable of terraforming entire worlds.

Towards the end of their civilization's history, the Precursors were able to develop methods for predicting the future with great accuracy; translated records indicate that the Penitent faction had access to a device known as the Observatory, which showed "future-branches of past visible-light readings." This technology was later rendered more accurate through the use of "glass-minds" which trimmed the "excess branches" of the projected timelines; Eido suspected that these "glass-minds" might have been related in some way to the Vex, which records suggest were known to the Precursors.

List of appearences

• Destiny 2: The Witch Queen (First mentioned)
  • Season of the Deep (Mentioned only)
  • The Final Shape (First appearance)
• Entelechy (Mentioned only)