Hopefully this puts the discourse among the community about the Traveler's intentions to rest, so that everybody understands that yes, Snowball Mom loves us, and is just trying her best.
@@Noname72105 If it wants to lie, why be silent to the point of being seen as an uncaring god, nothing suggests that the traveler intends to deceive anyone.
Aunor Mahal is worthy of her own seasonal arc for sure. Imagine if they put her front and centre with you in Revenant though. Going on a monster hunt, she’d be in her absolute element.
I really do like the idea that the traveller doesnt understand worshipping and just gets brain nuked by it. But i do like the idea of the traveler having to yeet memories of prior "childern" when escaping the witness
The Black Garden being the 'original' Garden makes the Vex presence there make perfect sense thematically. The Vex are all up in time's guts, so the place where time began would be highly significant to them.
I find it interesting that the Traveler, a thing that represents light or “physical reality” is a thinking, feeling being, while the veil as a thing of darkness or “conscious reality” acts more like an unthinking object rather than a sentient being.
i feel like those are more aspects of the light and dark rather than the Traveler and the Veil, while yes those are what they represent, the Traveler also represents diversity and complexity, while the Veil represents the simplicity and patterns and what is more complex than a sentient being with its own thoughts and feelings and more simple than an object that reveals a power that anyone can use for their own purposes
So not sure how controversial this is, but I think both the Traveler and the Veil are creations of the Gardener, its vision of the rule that would promote moving away from that same old pattern. Allow me to explain: The Gardener is very easy to connect to the Traveler, Osiris literally describes the Traveler as "a gardener, if you will" in Lightfall when he speaks with Nimbus about the nature of Light and Dark. Many people have therefore been connecting the Winnower to the Veil, equal and opposite of the Traveler, but that connection has never made much sense to me. Assuming Unveiling to be entirely truthful, though filled with metaphors, there are a few things we can say for certain about both the Winnower and the Gardener, the important one however is this: The Gardener was the one who opened flowers in the flower game, the Winnower was the one who closed flowers. The flowers, broadly speaking, represented possibilities: a cellular organism, a person, a planet, a star, a galaxy. In opening flowers, the Gardener can be described as being the one who created the possibilities, whilst the Winnower closed flowers (cut off the possibilities that the rules stated must be ended). The Traveler can very easily be tied to the idea of creating life, creating possibilities: it literally terraforms planets, but in my opinion the Veil cannot be tied to the idea of cutting off possibilities: the Neomuni had it for a very long time and reached greater technological heights than Golden Age humanity did. On top of this, if the Deep as described in the Books of Sorrow is indeed the Winnower and the Winnower could enact its influence through the Veil, why are the Neomuni so different from the Hive, whom the Winnower seems rather fond of. Recall how the Winnower basically said to Oryx: "Pal, how do we explain to them that this sword logic is so dope". One could argue that the Neomuni weren't under the Veil's influence for long enough but I disagree. In the Chirality Lore book, the entry titled "Bird in the Hand" (which I believe to be written by Cayde-6: "I keep hearing how Light and Dark are connected. Not sure I'm into it. Maybe it has something to do with being reborn here, with being all made up of Light now."), Cayde describes having been around for hundreds of years ("I've got hundreds of years of rolling around this old solar system with fire in my gun and Light in my heart."), for the sake of argument we'll keep it as short as possible and make it a flat 200 years until Cayde died at the hands of Uldren Sov. Add to that the 4 years between Cayde's death and us discovering Neomuna, and that gives us a bare minimum of 204 years during which the Winnower could have influenced the Neomuni. If the Winnower is indeed tied to the Veil and can influence people through it, I cannot imagine we would not see any effect of such influence on the Neomuni after 204 years at minimum. So, if the Veil is not tied to the Winnower, what is it? In one of the visions of the Traveler (the sixth one, found in the divide), we seem to see the moment the Veil was connected to the Traveler, the moment the Veil was used by the Witness to enter the Traveler. This moment is described as "being reunited with a family member". This vision later goes on to reference the shard of the Traveler in the EDZ, but Micah-10 describes this memory as "a fusion of several similar memories". So, the Traveler considers the Veil a family member. The Veil is also often described as the equal and opposite of the Traveler, I even did so myself in this comment, but looking closely I only see 2 fundamental differences between the Veil and the Traveler: The Traveler uses the Light, where the Veil uses the Dark The Traveler is active: going to places, fighting against the witness, terraforming planets. The Veil is passive: it gets brought to Neptune, it gets used to open a portal into the Traveler, it gets used as a power source by the people of Neomuna This difference can also be seen in the powers we gain from them: The Traveler gives us the Light, but the Veil did not give us Strand: we had to discover and figure it out ourselves. One important difference we might expect here is missing though: Both the Veil and the Traveler see those around them make rapid progress, scientific or otherwise: Neomuna has had the Veil for at least 204 years and is technologically far beyond Golden Age humanity. In other words: Both uplift the species around them. And therein lies the core of my theory: The Gardener wanted growth away from the final shape, to add a rule that would stand apart from all other rules and that would promote moving away from those same repeating patterns found in the final shape, and both the Veil and the Traveler seem to be doing so, the only difference being the use of Light or Dark, and how active they are. I do not think the Veil has anything to do with the Winnower, in fact I believe that both the Veil and the Traveler are creations of the Gardener: they are its vision of the rule that would promote moving away from the patterns of the final shape. Through the Paracausal powers we have gained from both the Veil and the Traveler, we Guardians subvert the rules of the flower game, the rules of the universe, and make our own fate. The rules of the flower game might dictate that our flower must be closed, but through our paracausality we keep it open. EDIT: expanded on my theory and explained my thought process
@@MynameisByf Gardener seems to mirror creation, growth, change, adaptation, evolution, etc. Winnower seems to mirror destruction, entropy, survival of the fittest, etc. Veil might've been the creation of the gardener. Witness just harnessed it.
On the one hand, both light and dark are paracausal powers that seem to be oppositional to the winnowers ideas of a perfect pattern emerging in the garden, which would be more aligned with the vex and their dominance over causal powers, but on the other hand the winnower and the gardener became rules in the game according to unveiling, the winnower becoming darkness hence why it speaks through the darkness and thus probably creating the veil in the process. The winnower might like a wholly causal cosmos dominated by a single pattern, but since the light ruins that for it, it had to become the darkness to keep the gardener from getting its way
@@MynameisByfsomeone on d2 lore Reddit was saying the traveler was regaining consciousness/memory when it was reconnected to the darkness/veil. A lot of the lore hints towards the traveler not being able to handle all of the deaths. So it severed its mind to not feel that burden anymore. The theory also says the traveler and veil are part of the same thing. It was a couple of weeks since I read the theory so sorry for not being able to site where I found it.
Hot take, Micah should’ve been the Cosmodrome NPC. Traveling around with ghosts, close connection with the traveler. It would make for an amazing opening NPC
I'm p sure that Micah-10 not only found and read up on her past, but downloaded her entire exomind in the eventide ruins. If anyone thinks her name rings a vague bell, remember the lore pages you got from those penguin toys scattered about Europa? That's Micah as a kid writing letters to the traveller, naming and collecting all of her penguins
micah and these traveler visions are maybe my personal favorite thing from the dlc, just scratches an itch, love when deep lore characters are brought into the spotlight, and also anything regarding the travelers voice
20:02 the Traveler/Gardener never struck me as not having a "preference" for what actions we choose for ourselves, it obviously desires us to choose a more peaceful path. But it always presents it as a matter of faith in life, in general, to make that choice for themselves. Faith in the idea that life is both capable of good and will choose it of their own accord without being commanded to by a god-like figure saying so.
I enjoy this point of view, even outside of destiny lore. I get the idea that the traveler simply enjoys helping and seeing that same goodwill blossom naturally in those it helps, without any desire for recompense or thanks. The traveler perhaps represents genuine altruism made manifest.
@iponce2 for sure, 100%. It may be flawed and not able to see the future, but its actions show that it's as close to objectively good as something like that can be. It's a shame that so many interpret the Traveler's silence as abandonment instead of the opportunity to voice our own answer.
Just throwing things around... 1 - The Winnower is behind the Vex. It wants a eternal universe, that flows without decay, like the future the vex predicted were there is no light and no darkness. 2 - light and darkness comes from the Gardener. The Traveler and the Veil were probably one in the beginning, but was bisected by the Winnower. (The traveller+veil = creation with direction) I am, very probably, greatly wrong.
The Vex were the perpetual "winners" of the Flower Game, weren't they? The reason the Gardener got bored and wanted to change the rules. This resulted in the Gardener and Winnower injecting themselves into the game as the Traveler and the Veil. The Winnower wasn't so much behind the Vex, more like they were just inevitable.
What if the Gardener is a different entity, usually mistaken as the traveler. But it could be inside the Traveler, and it always talked to us all this time. The voice that is 3rd person explaining the traveler like dreams of alpha lupi is the Gardener. Hmmmmm
Perspnally I’m glad we got these instead of more lore tabs. Hearing it in the voice of a character we know is an incredible alternative and a great way to wrap up d1 and d2.
I'm so glad that there wasn't a humanoid-esq being inside of the traveler who was the actual traveler and that it's a being that is effectively unfathomable to us, good job Bungie
@Daniel-mo7bj I agree! Although I don't dislike stories that have the human-esq spin. I get really excited by entities that are more alien and difficult to wrap my head around. :)
@jackyamero5129 imo retconning lore to give a better experience is better than letting yourself get pigeonholed into a weird plot point by a writing decision made 5 years ago
@@jackyamero5129 A godlike entity can have as many avatars as they want, especially in interpretive dreams. Its not a retcon unless you want it to be, which I assume you do.
@@MICROKNIGHT3000yeah i definitely understand his frustration but the other visions should help him understand that the traveler never intends to hurt anyone or is intentionally malicious, it's just trying its best the only ways it knows how, plus the visions are as close as you can get to the traveler speaking since there's no indication that it could do that even if it wanted
@@MICROKNIGHT3000 he just showed us a respective. He’s a titan that held the last city so he understands that part of it, the fear and scared feelings and he understands how to rise above the fear isn’t solo, it’s sharing and remembering the things that share us the strength and what we move for. What helps us move? He sounds like he’s just finally seeing that the thing he thought was god was just another thing connected to everything. It isn’t god itself but has to share to reveal everything. After all, the word god only means everything and if everything is sharing then we see why god isn’t one thing and doesn’t really take a form but shares it. Just like we can choose to share our life with the differences. This also helps to understand why satan rejected everything and lived in the darkness, molded by it. We gotta share the light or we get lost in the darkness. When i say share the light i don’t mean like take or make happen i mean more like listening and helping the pieces fall into place. Like when we go to do something and just keep snagging ourselves on things along the way, that could be everything speaking to us but we don’t listen. Like dreams and the subconscious whispering through the differences.
I'm put in mind of a recent video by Kyle Hill, discussing models that supposedly show off the 4th dimension, and how they're flawed. Most notably, he talks about how the reason these models are all flawed, is because we've not evolved to the point where we could ever perceive the 4th dimension. At best, any model that purports to show how the 4th dimension might look is only showing a shadow of how it might look. Now consider the Traveler; how many dimensions does it perceive? And moreso, how does it even relate to beings it can barely notice?
Traveller reminds me in the mindset somewhat of an Lovecraftian being - not a cosmic horror per se, but incomprehencible by our own mind. And it finds us incomprehencible, to a degree, as well.
That’s been sort of my feeling about the Traveller also. Anything with the ability to shape reality, either deliberately or not, is something that probably exists on another level of consciousness that cant really be understandable. At least not to us, anyway
I deeply enjoy the exploration of divinity as fallible, and as such not omniscient. The Witness sought it as a means to an end, to bring its version of the final shape to fruition, while making mistakes along the way that allowed us to stop it. The Traveler seems to have no plan beyond uplifting life wherever it goes, nurturing it into what it could be, but then that life asks questions to which it has no answers. That life worships it and sees it as all-knowing when the Traveler outright isn't, couple that with the fact that it can't communicate directly with us and... yeah. It's just very interesting to see this massively powerful being put in a pedestal it did not ask for and a role it fundamentally can't fulfill, time and time again.
My only issue with the Micah stuff is I wish we got more. Her quests were some of the most interesting content in the entire expansion. I really want to learn more about The Traveller and what’s all going on there.
My understanding of Micah's Europa Record from her dialogue when talking about Cayde(Post Mission) is that she didn't just find records, she literally found her original copy in the system. I'll admit that I haven't read her lore, so I could be missing something, but from the way she explained it it sounded to me like she wound up the same way as Crow/Uldren. As a guardian with their original memories(most in her case as she wouldn't have her post-Exo memories). As we've seen with Crow this wouldn't override the Guardian personality, but integrate instead as, from what we've seen, Risen tend to have the same type of personality they had at death.
The way DER is described in the lore, it sounds very similar to what gender dysphoria is like. The brain’s disconnect with the body it’s in, causing immense distress and, in the early exos’ cases, eventually tearing themselves apart in an attempt to free themselves from it. I’m only now learning that Micah is trans but it makes me happy that somewhere in the writer’s room, they’re making that connection, too. A transgender person becoming an exo to maybe help with that gender distress is exactly what I’ve talked about with friends for so long. Really great stuff Bungie
The Traveler memories give me the impression that Gardner and the traveler are definitely two different entities. Happy the way they executed Micah. The six coyotes cloak was my fav in D1 so I'm proud as a hunter.
@@MynameisByf I think that's the case. Same with the Veil and Winnower. Aspects of satellite's to bigger forces. It's always been my suspicion that the Story of the Vex can't truly be told without digging into long term plot points for Bungie...but we may be headed there now with the winnower laid low. The Sol Divisive may yet again be at the heart of that mystery if brass gardeners is anything to go by. But my curiosity lies with the other directives.
I feel like the veil and the traveler are two parts of the gardener that separated when they became part of the game, split between the physical in the traveler and the metaphysical in the veil.
From the memories of the Traveler I have a guess that the Traveler and the veil was one part and they made the first tree of silver wings that was in garden, the one that the Winnower cut when they began a fight with the Gardner. The Traveler was always supposed to have both dark and light and now that it's whole again, It's remembering things and something greater is awakening.
Darkness is memory, consciousness, and things swallowed up in death. Therefore, by contrast I think it's safe to assume the Light has no memory. It's like a newborn baby, confused, scared, unable to understand. When darkness was introduced into the traveler, the traveler's consciousness is going to manifest into reality.
Hey Byf, no idea if you will see or read this, but I've been playing FF14 recently and just finished Endwalker, and while playing through the game noticed something that made me think of Destiny. There are some spoilers here as a warning: Endwalker's penultimate villain is a being named Meteion, described as an Entelechy. In the games own description, a being capable of influencing and being influenced by emotional energies (in the game described as Dynamis, seemingly an intangible energy that makes up the majority of the universe, and is made up of and influenced by emotions and memories, in contrast to Aether, which is essentially the tangible energy that most living matter consists of or possess.) So in watching your videos lately, each time the Entelechy lore book is mentioned with all of the stories within it, I can't help but mentally turn back to that especially with the knowledge of how the light and dark interact with reality, and what that might mean about the perspective or domain of the Winnower. I dont know if there is any deeper meaning to be found from all this, but I feel like the word Entelechy is chosen VERY specifically for this purpose. No idea if you've explored that specifically before but just thought it was neat and wanted to share it with you. Thanks for the fantastic work as always!
Wow micha having the ability to protect other ghosts while they search for their guardian is incredible. Not to mention micha will be there to help the newly revived guardian understand whats going on and help them as well
It will be hilarious if this is a Madoka situation; Madoka the magical girl, madoka the god, and madoka the law of the universe itself. All the same entity created from one wish, yet all 3 entirely separate as well.
Hey byf just checking that you know something: if you do the lost ghost quests before completing excision then Cayde has dialog with Micah in some of them. In the mission where you redo the Cunning mission, Cayde says some real emotional stuff.
In the cutscene showing zavala in the precursor world, the traveler floats up and it's super small compared to its moon size now, I think the tiny traveler would've fit perfectly into the other side of the veil. And why was the traveler so tiny compared to now lol??
I just realized something that absolutely blew my mind and I feel the need to share: For those who don’t know, the word “Christian” means “Little Christ” referring to Christian wanting to be like Jesus Christ; Little-Christs = Christ-ians Christians Supposedly according to Micah here, the Traveler thinks of us as “Little Gardeners” and in this context we are worshipping both the Traveler and The Gardener so we are; Little-Gardeners = Gard-ians Gardians …Gaurdians I’m not so sure this was on purpose, but then again I wouldn’t put it past Bungie to reference a real world cultural phenomenon.
The gardener and winnower were the same being originally. The idea of the traveler and the veil being physical manifestations of the gardener and winnowed is interesting. Especially if we think of them as once being united as a singular object. Like I believe the gardener and winnower once were. Even in Unveiling the writer identifies as the winnower, but everything that it tells in the past tense, could’ve been done by the same being. 1. The Gardener does stuff in the morning and the Winnower does stuff at evening. Especially since the day lasts “all of time” and night is more brief than a singular moment(makes it feel constant, like a mathematical limit) 2. In unveiling, whenever the Gardener speaks, it’s quoted, and out loud. Then when the winnower responds, it’s not. Almost like the being has these realizations, and then comes a little inner rebuttal of doubt. Which eventually has a sort of identity crisis, leading to the fracture of identity, and the discovery of the first knife. Which subsequently leads the winnower to recording the event that just happened(the unveiling lore book). Which also is interesting that this is a record kept by the winnower, and supposedly the veil is a record keeper of all of time and existence. I also am aware that the gardener and winnower are not necessarily “beings” but rather “principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures”. But also that’s just how the winnower views them. So who knows how it all plays together. Either way, unveiling is my favorite lore book and I absolutely love the symbolism and how things tie together. And every step we take into discovering and understanding more is super fun and enjoyable!
There's nothing suggesting that the gardener & the winnower were one and the same. There's only evidence of the traveler and the veil being connected. We see that in veil containment.
Perhaps the Traveler and the Veil were once one entity, as you suggest. However, it seems to me that when the Traveler separated from the Veil, it experienced some form of amnesia or memory loss. The Veil might literally represent veiled memories. It could contain the Traveler's consciousness, but their merging might bring about the end of the living universe. I'm speculating, but maybe the Traveler is part of the Winnower, which is trapped within the Veil. They could have originally been a single being, struggling to understand itself and its purpose. This internal conflict led to the entity splitting into two parts: the Traveler, which roams the universe bestowing bountiful gifts without fully understanding its actions, and the Veil, which retains all the memories from before the split, linking it to souls and the metaphysical realm.
I still think there is this wierd clash going on. On the one hand, the Traveler is this "god" with devine and mythical origins and immense power. But on the other hand, it's just a giant white, and mostly innert, ball in the sky.
I'm glad to see the community, largely, come back to the side of the Traveler. For the past couple of years, the Traveler was seen in a very negative light. But BYF, you should also know (if you haven't already commented on it and I missed it) that you can find hidden feathers in Cysts missions that have Misraaks interpreting visions from the Traveler as well. Some are pretty interesting. One of them pretty much confirms that the Traveler was done with running away by the time it came upon humanity. Something that most people knew, but it's nice for it to be confirmed in-game. I know some people still distrust the Traveler, but it did not have to stay. It could have left back in Season of the Seraph. Instead, it stayed, tried to fight, and even endured torture for the past year to prevent the Witness from enacting the Final Shape. Whatever sins the Traveler has committed, I think it has paid for them after having the Witness dig around in its guts for the past year.
I haven't heard that specific feather, but I hope that shuts up everyone who thought the traveler was running at the end of Seraph. Homie was getting away from the city to prevent collateral damage and give us a fighting chance.
@@MynameisByf Cool! I'm very interested to see what happens with the Traveler. I think the harmony of Light and Dark happening inside of it could potentially be a positive thing. It was for us, so far as I can tell. Even Micah says the Traveler isn't corrupted. Perhaps the Traveler will have a more developed mind, one capable of memory. Perhaps it will finally have the ability to learn and it will be able to speak. It reminds me of the Lore Tab for the Radiant Accipiter where the Speaker talks what the Traveler showed him before it was trapped in Ghaul's cage. The Speaker claims that he has seen so many things, and that, in time, the Traveler will speak freely and that a new age is dawning. To my knowledge, neither has happened. The Traveler has been characteristically silent for the most part, and it's possible the "new age" he was referring to comes after the Witness's defeat (this lore tab was released during Beyond Light). What new behavior will come from our quiet, spherical friend after this 'transformation' has been completed?
@@iponce2 I don't remember the specific Cyst mission that it's in, but I definitely remember Misraaks saying, plainly, that it, the Traveler, is done running. The vision mentions a planet third from the Sun, and someone (Ikora, I think), realizes that this (naturally) is referring to Earth. I, too, got tired of people speculating that the Traveler was intending to run. Ironically, even BYF did this, theorizing that the Traveler was going to leave but only stayed due to Rasputin's sacrifice. While Rasputin's sacrifice was undoubtedly a factor, I think I don't think it was the only thing. Older lore entries have hinted that the Traveler was determined to fight upon entering the Sol System. The Traveler chose to stay and defend humanity as best as it could. It failed, but then it endured a year of torture to give us time to find a way inside to confront the Witness. Its resistance to the Witness is shown plainly in the intro of The Final Shape, where the Traveler blatantly undoes the Witness's calcifying of Earth. If that is not evidence that the Traveler cherishes its children (humanity, Eliksni, Awoken, and even the Cabal and Hive), then I truly do not know what is.
I completely agree with @jochem12jdj that the Traveler and the Veil were both created by The Gardener. I bring new evidence to the table. The Veil presents itself as something "once connected to the Traveler" - yes, but specifically, it presents itself as something that *grew* from the Traveler. In the shot you use, you can clearly see that the Veil has mycelial 'roots' where you could fit the Traveler. The metaphor goes beyond that, though - we know that Light is the fundamental force of life. We know that the Darkness is the fundamental force of memories and thought. You cannot fundamentally have "memories" or "thought" before the birth of life itself. Life is the seed from which the Tree of Memories and Thoughts bloom - aka, the Traveler is the seed from which the Veil grew. The imagery Asher Mir shows us also implies that. From The First Knife - ["No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game."] - When the Gardener says "Growth" and "Preservation", I believe it is referring to the Light, and Darkness respectively. Light is Growth, or the creation of complex life. Dark is the Preservation, or memory and ideas that have been created and grown. When the Gardener says "I will make myself into a law in the game", I believe it planted itself into our physical material Universe the only way it knew how - as a Seed, the Traveler, from which the Veil grew. Growth and Preservation, manifest. When, at the end of the lore entry, the Winnower claims the following - [I looked at the gardener. I looked at my hands. I discovered the first knife.] - I believe this was the moment it decided to slice apart, or Winnow, the Traveler and the Veil into two different entities. [An abrupt severance], as Micah puts it. The ramifications of the Traveler and Veil being connected also implies there was infinite potential in one joined spot - the Light and Dark united - enough to create the entire universe. In T=0, the Winnower describes from its perspective the same moments Micah is describing at the creation of the universe - [And I won. I won, because the gardener always stops to offer peace. And when they do, I always strike. But by then, it didn't matter. The game was over. The garden had given birth to creation, the rules were in place, and there would never be a second chance. We played in the cosmos now. We played for everything.] "I always strike" - the moment of separation of the Traveler and the Veil. "The Rules were in place" - the Light and the Dark, the new paracausal rules. "The garden had given birth to Creation" - The Gardener, giving birth to the Traveler+Veil combo (the TraveVeil?), begins creating an infinitely complex Universe from the joint forces of Light and Dark, but the Winnower stops it soon after. From Nacre - ["Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria."] - I think this is the Winnower's admission that it did not care for the Light or Darkness, aka the "Change in Rules"- for after slicing the Traveler and the Veil apart, it simply let the universe run its course, confident that once more, the Universe would reach the same, all consuming pattern. After all, the Winnower did not need to interfere with the Precursors - they developed their obsession with the idea of a Final Shape on their own. From Nacre, again - [Now, let me show you: my beloved. (...) I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.] - Here, the Winnower claims that he is proud that he put an end to the instant of Creation, because had he not, the Traveler+Veil would have never stopped creation, and the Universe would only consist of fullness, and no emptiness. Them striking is what ensured that there would be emptiness, space for the same old pattern to re-emerge. [This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.] - This last paragraph re-affirms this notion that the Winnower doesn't care for the Light or the Darkness existing, as long as someone is using those powers towards Winnowing the universe towards nothingness. This is why he took a fancy to the Hive: the pureness of their Sword Logic aligns so very closely with what the Winnower believes to be natural In p53 - [Patterns will participate in a structure only if participation benefits their ability to go on existing. The more successful the structure grows, the more temptation accrues to cheat. And the greater the advantage the cheaters gain over their honest neighbors. And the greater the ability they develop to capture the very laws that should prevent their selfishness. To prevent this, the structure must punish cheaters with a violence that grows in proportion to its own success. My question follows. Is p53 an agent of the Darkness, or the Light?] - With what we know of the Darkness and the Light today - that neither force is implicitly "evil", and it is the wielder that chooses to use it however they wish - we know that this is a rhetorical question, where the Winnower was almost making fun of our naivety. The Winnower is proud of p53, the suicidal genome, since it wouldn't have been created at all if the Winnower did not stop Creation by slicing apart the TraveVeil. In The Cambrian Explosion - [It was the first defector-the first predator. It changed everything. Now the oozeballs needed sensors to watch for danger, and brains to integrate those senses and generate plans of survival, and swift neurons and muscles to enact that plan. This was the Cambrian Explosion, the great birth of complex life on your world. I caused it. I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes.] - This reaffirms the same notion. He cares not for Light or Dark, but for evolution as it ought to be. Birth is the Beginning. Survival is the Middle. Death is the End. This is the pattern. The Gardener seems to believe in infinite life, and infinite preservation. Look at the Traveler - resurrecting us, who have long since lost the right to exist. Look at the Veil - coalescing and trapping the memories of all the things that ought to be forgotten. The Winnower's philosophy goes against both of these equally. This is why The Witness claims to deviate from the Winnower’s plan - it wanted to cheat, use the New Rules, to achieve its personal idea of The Final Shape. The Winnower, of course, does it approve. --- This is probably my longest RUclips comment to-date, I hope you read it, and find something resembling value in this.
In my mind it makes more sense for the traveler and the veil to be the gardener inserting itself into the universe to change things, the body and soul being the traveler and the mind/brain being the veil two paracausal sides that change the rules, because it doesn’t seem the winnower needs anything for its rule of the universe for death and decay and it doesn’t feel like the veil being memory associated really fits in with what the winnower would be about, and now considering we have been contacted by the winnower, not through our ghost or the veil as its own separate entity it gives more weight to the theory
The cutscene of the astronaut makes me wonder... We saw all subclasses represented, but only the traveller seems to be 'local'. Are we sure that stasis and strand are dark powers?
Ya, when I was picking up these pieces to get exotic khvostov, the lore bits blew my mind. Seeing that the Seeing the traveller had so many worries of its own was wild to me.
Honestly, at some point soon I'd like to learn what the deal with Egregore is and more about the importance of the mycelial network, it turned up even more in the pale heart's blighted areas. I'm leaning towards it being "spores" or a sort of offspring of The Veil, an extension of the Veil's connection to the darkness and consciousness, allowing some to tap into it, much like a ghost and the light.
I love that for all the Traveler has done for us, and us for it, there is still no way for us to directly trade words. We get meaning and led by visions, but we can only interpret so much. Love a good unknowable cosmic entity.
Not sure if the veil and traveler were physically connected since the traveler is the size of a neutron star while the veil is the size of a large building.
I wonder if the traveller has forgotten what it is. Just like guardians do. Maybe the gardener decided to manifest in reality as the traveler in order to prove to the winnower that the final shape is not necessary. In the process, it lost its identity. It either can't speak or doesn't know what to say. All it can do is act, by terraforming planets, creating advanced technology and making guardians.
I would love to see more videos dedicated to single characters. Not only because they interest me but would help introduce my friends to some shallow lore
Hey Byf, I believe about 2 months ago I left a comment on one of your videos about a theory I had regarding the Veil and how it seemed to me that the Traveler might have once been attached to it. I believe the Veil is what remains after the Traveler and the equivalent dark entity were “grown” and subsequently divided. It’s pretty cool hearing that this could be the truth. Thanks for all the great content.
Something that I think might be interesting is how having the Gardener and Winnower enter the Flower Game changed them. Because, as you said, the Light doesn't remember, the Gardener may have lost some of their personality when becoming the Traveler, which is why it seems less of an active player than the god that changed the rules of the universe. Similarly, the Winnower seems to have kept its aloof and omniscient perspective because it retains/remembers its identity as a god outside of the game. Also, with the warning the Winnower gave the Gardener about how changing the Flower Game would only cause pain and suffering without changing the outcome, it could recast that warning as for the Gardener personally, foreseeing the grief and confusion that we now know the Traveler feels since it seems like the Winnower doesn't care very much about how mortals feel.
Kind of makes me feel like the traveler could be the last fruit of the silver tree. The way the memory is conveyed sounds less like it's one particular civilization and more of a continuing pattern. It talks about many worlds being touched and many peoples beginning to study it, only to eventually fall into religion and worship.
@@MynameisByf I know. I love hearing both of your perspectives. And I thought that lore book was PRIME byf material. Well, Im excited for when you do cover it 😄
The only problem I have with the whole "mycelial roots of the Veil once gripped the Traveler" theory is that... the Veil is tiny. I mean the Calus boss fight in Lightfall was directly underneath it and that arena isn't anywhere near as big as the Traveler.
Considering that the Veil is literally capable of opening a separate dimension within the Traveler, I believe that the Veil was inside and not outside the Traveler
This reminds me of a weird consistency that's been bugging me lately. Ghost says he resurrected us from a pile of bones. However, there are 2 problems with that. First, awoken did not die in the collapse, but died after arriving from the rift awoken thingy. Secondly, Exos, as far as i know, do not have bones. It's been bugging me for years now, and the memory just resurfaced.
To help with this. Exos do degrade over time they are made up of metal and other forms of plastic and our bodies were just out in old russia for a long time so it makes some sense as there were probably Exos near the or in the cosmodrome during the onset of the collapse. And it's probably due to the fact we died during the near start of the dark ages or somewhere in the city ages. For awoken those who chosen the awoken path probably died when the awoken became Riven and split into reef and earth born awoken. And we probably died during one of our travels.
I might be overthinking things, but my guess is that the Gardener is actually both the Traveler AND the Veil. Both Strand and Stasis have an aspect of joining, binding, and fixing things together, and that just doesn't have the Winnower's vibe to me. I think we will find out that the Winnower is actually something totally new and unseen to us, and the process of putting the Gardener back together, rejoining the Traveler (the physical body and light aspect) with the Veil (the memory, consciousness, and darkness aspect) will play a major part in our encounter/confrontation with the Winnower. Given the nature of the Winnower as one who cuts and separates, I get the feeling that the division of the Traveler from the Veil was one of the decisive moments in their new Game of Life, the optimal winning strategy for the Winnower's victory.
Adding to the thoughts about jade and carnelian: these two colours are all over the the scenery touched by the Witness, and in RoN for that matter; wherever extreme concentrations of pure Light and Darkness meet, these colours start creeping into the architecture. The bit that particulalrly sticks out in my mind is that arena where we fight the knockoff Fanatic in the Lightfall campaign; we race around on platforms of dark grey, burnt orange, bright green and pinkish red.
If anything, the third vision (vision at the impasse) does a very good job of showing that the Gardener and the Traveller are two seperate beings. The Traveller's lack of memory from the primordial garden and the uncertainty it has about its own existence are distinct to that of the Gardener, who knows well what they are and how the universe came to be.
She isn’t the only one who can see and comment on these visions, in each of the cysts you can find a feather of light laying down on the ground when picked up mithrax will comment
for the moment where the traveller says it's struggling to remember, my first thoughts were about how it was seperated from the veil--from darkness,-- and so what couldve been memories, maybe even shared by the veil, have faded and been lost
The traveler spreads change and the veil helps us remember the differences. Without the veil the winnower just spreads change and can be just as the veil can do the same. Unknowingly the traveler spreads what it’s fighting so instead of digging further, it shared so we could help it and it could help us. Sharing to expand. Maybe the thing before time changed so it could share with the differences and the witness was a part but returned after being defeated, banished back to the memory and the traveler is scared at what is potential. I mean, it makes sense when you think about how the traveler has lost its memory and the memory is the veil.
The only other instance of carnelian and jade are two of the three colors on the wrist of the Witness in the raid, best seen after the boss kill where you can grab extra loot from. However, there is a gold or darker yellow there as well. Jade and carnelian are complimentary colors and jade/carnelian/gold are 3/4 of tetradic colors with the missing one being a dark blue, kind of like the blue you see in the light pools in Salvation's Edge. In that way the gold is kind of the color of Resonance, blue is Traveler's Light and jade and carnelian are colors of their mutual origin
I wonder if, eventually, we or someone else, will conjoin the Veil and Traveler again. It seems that lore is slowly pointing towards them being one again.
The description of the black garden from that first vision is also reminiscent of where we are revived in old Russia in destiny 1. The rusted cars and grasses make for those 2 primary colors. Probably a visual parallel
Just having a thought - what if the Veil and the Traveler were, together, the original tree of Silver Wings? What if the Veil was in fact attached to the burn out stump we fight the final boss in during Garden of Salvation? Of more relevance though - it sounds like the Traveler doesn’t even remember the Garden or the Winnower. It doesn’t even know what it is actually fighting against.
This reminds me of an old (or new, can't really remember) lore tab. I paraphrase : The Gardner is busy with her hands in the mud, listing the insects chirp and feeling the warmth of the sun.
From how I interpret things: The Gardener and Winnower are two seperate entities that entered the game on their own. By doing so, they broke the rules of the game they had set. The Traveler and Veil are just the hands of the Gardener and the Winnower respectively. They shape and unmake. But they don't know. They don't think. They're instinctual, like hands in a fishpond moving around the murky waters. If you were to cut yourself on a reed you would feel it, but the hand itself can't interpret beyond the input it gets. It cannot give more than it is: A tool. A vessel. No more no less. It can show the fish in the pond the right way, it can clean up the pond, but these hands can also take away. And what is a hand to do when fish want more? It can only give and shape what it has at hand. It can't offer the answers. It can only offer tools The power to find out for oneself I think this is why the Traveller felt guilty. Especially towards the precursor people. It could not give them the purpose they sought. It couldn't give them all the answers. They were finding ways to give life meaning, but, the traveller couldn't. And the traveller felt guilty, because this is probably when the Gardner realized the winnower had a point; To mingle in the lives lf their craations in such ways brings unnecessary suffering If the traveller was never with those people. Those aspirations may have never grown. The precursor people would have been content with doing what they were doing before the traveller was found. Because finding out answers sparks a certain mindset. And when philosophical ponderings grow too much, it can eat at you. You suddenly won't be content living life, doing what you were thought. You seek answers, you wish for there to be more. But when there isn't. Beings may suffer.
Someone already wrote a long message somewhat about this. I personally think it's very possible the veil is tied to the winnower but then I also think it's possible the veil is tied to gardener or at least is a part of the traveller. My reason for thinking this is that the light is all about creating and destroying right but the darkness is about the mind, it's memory and thought. I think it's possible that the traveller and the veil where some kind of godly being, the veil being the mind and the traveller being the body. We know from the travellers memories that it finds it really hard to think and remember, painful even to do so. This could be because it has quite literally lost the part of itself that is meant to do that. Despite missing this part the traveller can still move around and function because after all its essentially the body of a god, or at least a god by our standards, where as the veil just sort of sits there because it's the mind, it's incapable of directly interacting with the world around it. So the light and darkness would just be byproducts of these parts of a god. It's godly power being emitted and available for use. So why is the darkness often associated with corruption and evil, I think the reasoning for this is kinda talked about by the dissenters. Light forgets and forgives, darkness remembers. The traveller is good because it doesn't matter how much bad shit happens it forgives life, it doesn't become bitter, it just tries again. It's possible that while the veil itself isn't evil it may have a corrupting effect on people due to the length of it's memories and the weight they impose. Even though people that use darkness obviously don't remember what the veil has experienced they may still feel its weight on them. The traveller and the veil probably balance each other out and allow it to essentially function like a normal being would. Where this theory falls apart is mainly with oryx. Oryx summoned the deep itself into an ogre and what he summoned was the winnower. So this would then imply that the winnower is the darkness. However perhaps the pooled darkness was what allowed a being like the winnower to apear. So therefore he isn't the deep itself he just used the pooled darkness as a way to manifest. I don't think the witnesses race being made by the winnower and using the darkness really confirms that the winnower is the darkness. It's entirly possible the winnowers whisperings is what made that race so unsatisfied in the first place and what lead them to the veil. Once under the influence of darkness perhaps they were easier for the winnower to influence. This may be the case for why the winnower is associated with darkness, perhaps it allows him to influence people more. Who knows really. I think the traveller and veil could be parts of the same being but I also think the winnower could be associated with the veil, or even be the veil. I think it's worth noting that the winnower didn't want to add anything to the game so it would have been odd for him to add darkness but I guess it could be a response to the gardener adding light. Or perhaps the gardener added both and they were intended to be used together. Adding darkness to the traveller allows you to reshape the universe after all. Perhaps the traveller and veil are parts of the gardener herself. She did say she would add herself to the game as rule
13:59 what if the beginning is also the end. Imagine we created the traveler but then realized, after understanding nothing is gone just changed, that we didn’t create but found the traveler. Like how humans aren’t created, they are found between the mother and father and all the relatives of connections. Like genes and the womb, a baby can’t be that without that otherwise it would be something different. Like how we see time as difference and the witness tried to stop difference and failed but also succeeded in sharing with us that we can’t do that. Remember when we saw a portal on titan and the humans on the inside saw us too. Time travel isn’t forward and back it’s non Euclidean.
19:22 imagine being able to see all paths and then seeing a creature that has the potential to see start pleading and begging for help, what happens when the lost are found by something that can see? The witness took, the gardener shares and the winnower shares as well but it’s the misunderstanding between. The winnower shares understanding, that’s why the witness is a witness, and the traveler shares unconditionally or without understanding but in all forms are possible. It’s like we gotta share both together within and then let it shine out of us. Light shining into the darkness of the unknown and the reason we are is because when they go against each other, it always ends the same but when they are combined and shared to expand, then we can push the bounds and explore new frontiers. I think we may be able to explore potential dimensions using the traveler but not using more like the traveler sharing with us the opportunity so we can share instead of take like the witness’ people. They didn’t understand and kept fighting so they couldn’t expand with free will.
Consider, the Traveler and the Veil were once a single physically form. The Traveler ripped itself away from the Veil. What if the Veil holds the Traveler’s memories. Some (if not most) of its cognitive functions. Without the veil, the traveler can feel, but thinking is difficult and even painful so it simply doesn’t do it. Imagine trying to get someone with severe brain damage to articulate their state of mind or what their ultimate desires might be. The lore can give reasons for what the Traveler does, but does the Traveler know why it doing what it’s doing or is it just following an instinct or responding to an emotional state? A sea of confusion,wonder, joy, and frustration. Everything I’ve ever seen the Traveler do has been an instinctive response to outside stimuli. Lore bits like these make me wonder just how much of the events of D1 and D2 it is actually aware of much less truly understands.
Regarding the Traveler remembering being separated from something or someone, I think this 'someone' is the Veil, and the Veil is NOT the Winnower. Remember, it told Maya that it was the Veil. And remember, the Winnower did not like the idea of extra rules in the flower game. I interpret this to be paracausal powers, based on the fact that the Vex (the winning flower in the flower game) would be unstoppable if it weren't for their inability to predict paracausality. Why would the Winnower then be an entity associated with providing paracausal powers? Assuming the Winnower will end up being a major player, I think the Winnower is the end-boss of Destiny, and its goal is the elimination of paracausal powers from the universe (not necessarily the Gardener, just the powers the Gardener provies)
Question: Is there an implication that we are the reborn version of the first group to see The Traveler? It clearly has prismatic. Like Titan that went into the portal, wouldn't we see a glimpse of our previous life? We are the first of humanity that was Chosen.
The thing I don’t get is why the traveler doesn’t talk. It has so much power and has had so much experience to language that it surely can learn how to communicate that way. These memories even show that it is experiencing problems that would be fixed by more direct communication. So I don’t understand why it just doesn’t communicate in a more direct way when it clearly can find a way to do that and would be greatly benefitted by it.
I read in on the lore books you get from listening to the radio broadcasts, and they’re extremely interesting. The first lore book tells of failsafes lonely life on Nessus, when the (presumably) soul of the witness dropped. The next lore book tells of weird vex activities, like building in the dirt, laughing, and even peacefully waving at a guardian. I wonder if the vex are gaining sentience, and am excited to see a video on it
I like this perspective. The traveler, guardians, cabal, hive. All warring with each other for years only to find out they all need each other and all just fighting like hell for their lives.
I've felt for a while that light and dark being two sides of the same coin of the power of life - this video helps support these feelings. Whether the severing of the Traveller was fundamental for it to exist in the new universe or done by the Winnower to weaken it remains unknown. To me the reason that light and dark could never and should never dominate the other is because they should be one. Light is power of the physical and darkness is the power of the metaphysical - both existing in creation. The way the traveller doesn't feel confident or is constantly scared lines up with an entity that doesn't remember or know what it really is, which would make sense if the veil has it's memories and darkness. The Winnower was always happy to win by converting others to it's thinking with it's logic and reason, Oryx, The Witness, it attempted the same with us. I believe the Gardener is the Entity that would result of re-joining the Traveller and the Veil, thus creating the Saga of Life & Death / Existence vs Oblivion.
My only concern is… Let us assume the Veil’s roots were indeed around the Traveler at one point in time. How did it become.. so much smaller suddenly? Or the Traveler so much bigger. It is a simple thing, but I feel it is worth noting.
Something I never thought about until now is how it’s interesting that to us as guardians the light is fundamentally tied to the elements of arc, void, and solar since that seems to be how we, the lucent hive, even Ghaul have manifested the light. However, we’ve never seen the traveler itself manifest those forces. Pure light from the traveler itself has only ever been light. Makes me wonder if part of the reason why the traveler seems so confused by the people around is because its purpose and light are simple in its eyes. They are a fundamental force of creation in the universe, nothing more and nothing less. The very concepts of conflict, worship, or divinity may be so foreign that it’s just against its nature.
Im not sure about the veil being the winnower entirely. My thought is it could be a bit of a byproduct left behind from their separation. The reason I say this is while we most associate the veil with darkness, it is important to remember from the final mission of lightfall that the veil gives off both dark AND light signatures. Not to mention it features dark and light elements.
The Veil we saw in Neomuna is waaaay to small to have contained the Traveler, the Traveler is huge (albeit inconsistently sized) but the Veil is at most 120m across, the Traveler is at least 10x that size in it's absolute smallest and hundreds of times larger at the size it currently appears as.
These are great, I can't wait to hear about the rest. But despite all these answers, there's still one burning question in my mind: of all the races that the Traveler uplifted, why did it choose humanity as the one race that it would stand its ground sacrifice itself for?
I think “tired of running” is the best lore reason. The Witness claimed it had nowhere left to run, but in a literally infinite universe, that makes little sense. The Winnower says that the Traveler made a statement, a wager, because it saw something in us-something that made it believe that, with its power, we would choose to live in a peaceful city surrounded by a ring of spears. Apparently, the other civilizations lacked whatever the Traveler saw. The real reason is because the video game needed superhumans.
I...I cant describe it exactly right. But I feel like there is something more? Like this haze over the memory of the traveler has a deeper meaning. How much of the gardener is the traveler? When they turned themselves into rules how much of them is in these avatars they made? It cant be all of them. Because they are both the light and dark and that can be seen everywhere. So how much does the traveler know? Would it not be more accurate to think of it like a child of the gardener than the gardener itself? It knew so little. All it wanted to do was help. Icant put it into words but I am getting a vibe that the gardener and winnower made the avatars of themselves mostly...independent? The veil never acts. The traveler never seems to get help from anyone but those it helped. I think they are less avatars and honestly more off shoots of these deities. Less Clones and more chess pieces placed onto the board and left alone to act as designed.
I just found another of the "tiny travelers" at the peak of the mountain in the pale heart where you find the prismatic fragment reward for the darkness vestiges. There was a memory about being reunited with a family member. Sounds like its a memory of the traveler being merged with the veil
It’s so interesting to think that the traveller isn’t an all knowing god but something learning and feeling the same as any other creature it doesn’t want worshipped it encourages life and wants new and amazing things to be created by the beings it uplifts, it’s giving me a young child vibe seeking wonder and amazement but confused and scared of death or death to those it connects/ uplifts. Mind boggling
I am a new light that started it's destiny journey only this month, so my perspective might be highly flawed, but I wanted to give my own two scents to the story of the gardener and the winnower. The winnower said that the moment they became part of the game was at the start of time, right? So this is my interpretation. They both chose to become rules in the game to enforce their own view of the game they have been playing. The gardener introduced the light, hope, and magic(para causal) in a bid to nurture variety in the universe. The winnower however, introduced darkness, memory, and time to inevitably reach the final shape. Memory is only the accumulation of experience over time after all, and the god that wants everything to reach a singular, final point adding decay to the mix is only logical. It was afraid of life festering in their garden, so he added time and therefore decay and rot to the world. So yes, it was at the beginning of time... Maybe... Because time as a concept hadn't existed until the winnower made it so. But that are just my own insane ramblings 😅
This is supporting a thought I've been having for a while: The Traveler is the Gardener, but changed, a sort of Avatar that can exist and interact inside the changed Flower Game (the Universe). The answer to "is the Gardener the Traveller" is both yes and no. The Gardener became the Traveler, but is not the same as it was before time began. Hell, it occurs to me this might be why it's call the Traveler in the first place. It BECAME the new law in the game, which means that instead of being everywhere at once in the Garden with the Winnower, it now has a discrete physical form like the rest of the universe and has to travel around protecting and uplfiting complex life. It goes from one The [Occupation Title] to another. I mean you could easily call what the Traveler does Sheparding life. The only difference between a Shepard and a Gardener is what they're tending, and that a Gardener stays in one place and Shepard is often a nomad. Just as the Traveler has been. .
When I first heard that first vision, I thought it was more macro-scaled in terms of the time and events it relayed. The Traveler's Birth, its meeting with, uplifting, and severance with those who would become The Witness. At the time, I just wasn't really thinking much about The Winnower at all; now that we have the Nacre lore tab though, that error is plain for me to see. And it also makes me very intrigued by how Micah ends her own musing on the subject, "It may be so old as to have no significance... and yet, I cannot help but wonder..." The Winnower is coming. And I for one am absolutely THRILLED to see just what that might entail.
This might sound silly, but I feel like the Veil and the Traveler are like the twins from the movie, "The Parent Trap." When the Winnower and the Gardener "split" at the ceeation of the universe, I think they split up the Veil and the Traveler, and each took/claimed one. I don’t have lore to really back this up. This is a purely vibes based observation. The Traveler and the Veil just dont feel like they are the Winnower or the Gardener. They feel like the kids caught up in a weird divorce. Like the Winnower occasionally tells the Veil to tell other people things theough the power of darkness, and the Gardener had the Traveler go out and do things for it. I know, weird and more than a bit silly.
Destiny is, for better or for worse my favorite game. For a long time, I have longed for representation in the medium of story telling I love most in games. To see a character so cool and storied as Micah come forward into the narrative and for her to be trans means a great deal to me. Thanks bungie!
![[DRAGON BALL LEGENDS REVEALS ＆ STUFF] LEGENDS FESTIVAL 2024 Special Edition Part 1](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mV5bGIswTtQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Hopefully this puts the discourse among the community about the Traveler's intentions to rest, so that everybody understands that yes, Snowball Mom loves us, and is just trying her best.
It's trying its best but fucked up every step of the way because of the witness
Because gods would never lie, right?
@@Noname72105 If it wants to lie, why be silent to the point of being seen as an uncaring god, nothing suggests that the traveler intends to deceive anyone.
Looking at you Matpat
@@Noname72105 what reason would a god have to lie
The Six Coyotes are pretty cool. Kinda wish we got to meet more of these legendary Guardians. I keep expecting to meet Aunor Mahal, or Shin Malphur.
One day. Aunor must come forth😅
Aunor Mahal is worthy of her own seasonal arc for sure. Imagine if they put her front and centre with you in Revenant though. Going on a monster hunt, she’d be in her absolute element.
@@MynameisByf I agree. We see little snippets of her throughout the lore, but she hasn't really had her own presence since the allegiance quest.
Shin Malphur could be a character for when we leave the system.
I would love to see Shin Malphur
I really do like the idea that the traveller doesnt understand worshipping and just gets brain nuked by it. But i do like the idea of the traveler having to yeet memories of prior "childern" when escaping the witness
The traveler running on only 2 GB of memory
The Black Garden being the 'original' Garden makes the Vex presence there make perfect sense thematically. The Vex are all up in time's guts, so the place where time began would be highly significant to them.
“No use crying over spilt radiolaria” -The Winnower 😅
I find it interesting that the Traveler, a thing that represents light or “physical reality” is a thinking, feeling being, while the veil as a thing of darkness or “conscious reality” acts more like an unthinking object rather than a sentient being.
singular unique versus uniformed plural
i feel like those are more aspects of the light and dark rather than the Traveler and the Veil, while yes those are what they represent, the Traveler also represents diversity and complexity, while the Veil represents the simplicity and patterns
and what is more complex than a sentient being with its own thoughts and feelings
and more simple than an object that reveals a power that anyone can use for their own purposes
So not sure how controversial this is, but I think both the Traveler and the Veil are creations of the Gardener, its vision of the rule that would promote moving away from that same old pattern.
Allow me to explain: The Gardener is very easy to connect to the Traveler, Osiris literally describes the Traveler as "a gardener, if you will" in Lightfall when he speaks with Nimbus about the nature of Light and Dark. Many people have therefore been connecting the Winnower to the Veil, equal and opposite of the Traveler, but that connection has never made much sense to me.
Assuming Unveiling to be entirely truthful, though filled with metaphors, there are a few things we can say for certain about both the Winnower and the Gardener, the important one however is this:
The Gardener was the one who opened flowers in the flower game, the Winnower was the one who closed flowers.
The flowers, broadly speaking, represented possibilities: a cellular organism, a person, a planet, a star, a galaxy. In opening flowers, the Gardener can be described as being the one who created the possibilities, whilst the Winnower closed flowers (cut off the possibilities that the rules stated must be ended). The Traveler can very easily be tied to the idea of creating life, creating possibilities: it literally terraforms planets, but in my opinion the Veil cannot be tied to the idea of cutting off possibilities: the Neomuni had it for a very long time and reached greater technological heights than Golden Age humanity did.
On top of this, if the Deep as described in the Books of Sorrow is indeed the Winnower and the Winnower could enact its influence through the Veil, why are the Neomuni so different from the Hive, whom the Winnower seems rather fond of. Recall how the Winnower basically said to Oryx: "Pal, how do we explain to them that this sword logic is so dope".
One could argue that the Neomuni weren't under the Veil's influence for long enough but I disagree. In the Chirality Lore book, the entry titled "Bird in the Hand" (which I believe to be written by Cayde-6: "I keep hearing how Light and Dark are connected. Not sure I'm into it. Maybe it has something to do with being reborn here, with being all made up of Light now."), Cayde describes having been around for hundreds of years ("I've got hundreds of years of rolling around this old solar system with fire in my gun and Light in my heart."), for the sake of argument we'll keep it as short as possible and make it a flat 200 years until Cayde died at the hands of Uldren Sov. Add to that the 4 years between Cayde's death and us discovering Neomuna, and that gives us a bare minimum of 204 years during which the Winnower could have influenced the Neomuni. If the Winnower is indeed tied to the Veil and can influence people through it, I cannot imagine we would not see any effect of such influence on the Neomuni after 204 years at minimum.
So, if the Veil is not tied to the Winnower, what is it?
In one of the visions of the Traveler (the sixth one, found in the divide), we seem to see the moment the Veil was connected to the Traveler, the moment the Veil was used by the Witness to enter the Traveler. This moment is described as "being reunited with a family member". This vision later goes on to reference the shard of the Traveler in the EDZ, but Micah-10 describes this memory as "a fusion of several similar memories". So, the Traveler considers the Veil a family member.
The Veil is also often described as the equal and opposite of the Traveler, I even did so myself in this comment, but looking closely I only see 2 fundamental differences between the Veil and the Traveler:
The Traveler uses the Light, where the Veil uses the Dark
The Traveler is active: going to places, fighting against the witness, terraforming planets. The Veil is passive: it gets brought to Neptune, it gets used to open a portal into the Traveler, it gets used as a power source by the people of Neomuna
This difference can also be seen in the powers we gain from them: The Traveler gives us the Light, but the Veil did not give us Strand: we had to discover and figure it out ourselves.
One important difference we might expect here is missing though: Both the Veil and the Traveler see those around them make rapid progress, scientific or otherwise: Neomuna has had the Veil for at least 204 years and is technologically far beyond Golden Age humanity. In other words: Both uplift the species around them.
And therein lies the core of my theory: The Gardener wanted growth away from the final shape, to add a rule that would stand apart from all other rules and that would promote moving away from those same repeating patterns found in the final shape, and both the Veil and the Traveler seem to be doing so, the only difference being the use of Light or Dark, and how active they are.
I do not think the Veil has anything to do with the Winnower, in fact I believe that both the Veil and the Traveler are creations of the Gardener: they are its vision of the rule that would promote moving away from the patterns of the final shape. Through the Paracausal powers we have gained from both the Veil and the Traveler, we Guardians subvert the rules of the flower game, the rules of the universe, and make our own fate. The rules of the flower game might dictate that our flower must be closed, but through our paracausality we keep it open.
EDIT: expanded on my theory and explained my thought process
Expand on that. What brings you to that conclusion? I’m interested to know your thought process.
@@MynameisByf
Gardener seems to mirror creation, growth, change, adaptation, evolution, etc.
Winnower seems to mirror destruction, entropy, survival of the fittest, etc.
Veil might've been the creation of the gardener.
Witness just harnessed it.
On the one hand, both light and dark are paracausal powers that seem to be oppositional to the winnowers ideas of a perfect pattern emerging in the garden, which would be more aligned with the vex and their dominance over causal powers, but on the other hand the winnower and the gardener became rules in the game according to unveiling, the winnower becoming darkness hence why it speaks through the darkness and thus probably creating the veil in the process. The winnower might like a wholly causal cosmos dominated by a single pattern, but since the light ruins that for it, it had to become the darkness to keep the gardener from getting its way
@@XenoCrimson-uv8uz you don't know what the word entropy means do you?
@@MynameisByfsomeone on d2 lore Reddit was saying the traveler was regaining consciousness/memory when it was reconnected to the darkness/veil. A lot of the lore hints towards the traveler not being able to handle all of the deaths. So it severed its mind to not feel that burden anymore. The theory also says the traveler and veil are part of the same thing. It was a couple of weeks since I read the theory so sorry for not being able to site where I found it.
Hot take, Micah should’ve been the Cosmodrome NPC. Traveling around with ghosts, close connection with the traveler. It would make for an amazing opening NPC
Hard agree
Huge agree.
I'm p sure that Micah-10 not only found and read up on her past, but downloaded her entire exomind in the eventide ruins.
If anyone thinks her name rings a vague bell, remember the lore pages you got from those penguin toys scattered about Europa? That's Micah as a kid writing letters to the traveller, naming and collecting all of her penguins
The new Sniper you get from the Heart of the traveler explores this! 😊
micah and these traveler visions are maybe my personal favorite thing from the dlc, just scratches an itch, love when deep lore characters are brought into the spotlight, and also anything regarding the travelers voice
20:02 the Traveler/Gardener never struck me as not having a "preference" for what actions we choose for ourselves, it obviously desires us to choose a more peaceful path. But it always presents it as a matter of faith in life, in general, to make that choice for themselves. Faith in the idea that life is both capable of good and will choose it of their own accord without being commanded to by a god-like figure saying so.
I enjoy this point of view, even outside of destiny lore. I get the idea that the traveler simply enjoys helping and seeing that same goodwill blossom naturally in those it helps, without any desire for recompense or thanks. The traveler perhaps represents genuine altruism made manifest.
@iponce2 for sure, 100%. It may be flawed and not able to see the future, but its actions show that it's as close to objectively good as something like that can be. It's a shame that so many interpret the Traveler's silence as abandonment instead of the opportunity to voice our own answer.
Just throwing things around...
1 - The Winnower is behind the Vex. It wants a eternal universe, that flows without decay, like the future the vex predicted were there is no light and no darkness.
2 - light and darkness comes from the Gardener. The Traveler and the Veil were probably one in the beginning, but was bisected by the Winnower. (The traveller+veil = creation with direction)
I am, very probably, greatly wrong.
I am of the same opinion.
Makes sense.
The Vex were the perpetual "winners" of the Flower Game, weren't they? The reason the Gardener got bored and wanted to change the rules. This resulted in the Gardener and Winnower injecting themselves into the game as the Traveler and the Veil. The Winnower wasn't so much behind the Vex, more like they were just inevitable.
well the witness was the first knife after all😊
What if the Gardener is a different entity, usually mistaken as the traveler. But it could be inside the Traveler, and it always talked to us all this time. The voice that is 3rd person explaining the traveler like dreams of alpha lupi is the Gardener. Hmmmmm
Perspnally I’m glad we got these instead of more lore tabs. Hearing it in the voice of a character we know is an incredible alternative and a great way to wrap up d1 and d2.
Another interesting note on Asphodelia; it's listed in the manifest logs of the Precursor species that Eido recovered in Entelechy
Indeed it is. It’s weird but that little flower has become a sort of timestamp that helps us to reconstruct the origins of the universe.
I'm so glad that there wasn't a humanoid-esq being inside of the traveler who was the actual traveler and that it's a being that is effectively unfathomable to us, good job Bungie
Nah they defo retconed a bunch of lore to not reveal any character like this, kinda sucks ngl
@Daniel-mo7bj I agree!
Although I don't dislike stories that have the human-esq spin. I get really excited by entities that are more alien and difficult to wrap my head around. :)
Same, would have cheapened the experience
@jackyamero5129 imo retconning lore to give a better experience is better than letting yourself get pigeonholed into a weird plot point by a writing decision made 5 years ago
@@jackyamero5129 A godlike entity can have as many avatars as they want, especially in interpretive dreams. Its not a retcon unless you want it to be, which I assume you do.
The witness also uses green and red in the finalization transformation. The lore apples in Salvation's Edge are green and red, for example.
24:07 the way crow speaks of the traveler is what i would like to see in the world with people. Makes me wanna cry honestly.
Yeah, after all it did and the previous vision. Thats what zavala cares to point out? He became kinda petty and lost his faith ngl...
@@MICROKNIGHT3000yeah i definitely understand his frustration but the other visions should help him understand that the traveler never intends to hurt anyone or is intentionally malicious, it's just trying its best the only ways it knows how, plus the visions are as close as you can get to the traveler speaking since there's no indication that it could do that even if it wanted
@@MICROKNIGHT3000 he just showed us a respective. He’s a titan that held the last city so he understands that part of it, the fear and scared feelings and he understands how to rise above the fear isn’t solo, it’s sharing and remembering the things that share us the strength and what we move for. What helps us move? He sounds like he’s just finally seeing that the thing he thought was god was just another thing connected to everything. It isn’t god itself but has to share to reveal everything. After all, the word god only means everything and if everything is sharing then we see why god isn’t one thing and doesn’t really take a form but shares it. Just like we can choose to share our life with the differences. This also helps to understand why satan rejected everything and lived in the darkness, molded by it. We gotta share the light or we get lost in the darkness. When i say share the light i don’t mean like take or make happen i mean more like listening and helping the pieces fall into place. Like when we go to do something and just keep snagging ourselves on things along the way, that could be everything speaking to us but we don’t listen. Like dreams and the subconscious whispering through the differences.
I'm put in mind of a recent video by Kyle Hill, discussing models that supposedly show off the 4th dimension, and how they're flawed.
Most notably, he talks about how the reason these models are all flawed, is because we've not evolved to the point where we could ever perceive the 4th dimension.
At best, any model that purports to show how the 4th dimension might look is only showing a shadow of how it might look.
Now consider the Traveler; how many dimensions does it perceive? And moreso, how does it even relate to beings it can barely notice?
Traveller reminds me in the mindset somewhat of an Lovecraftian being - not a cosmic horror per se, but incomprehencible by our own mind. And it finds us incomprehencible, to a degree, as well.
That’s been sort of my feeling about the Traveller also. Anything with the ability to shape reality, either deliberately or not, is something that probably exists on another level of consciousness that cant really be understandable. At least not to us, anyway
I deeply enjoy the exploration of divinity as fallible, and as such not omniscient. The Witness sought it as a means to an end, to bring its version of the final shape to fruition, while making mistakes along the way that allowed us to stop it. The Traveler seems to have no plan beyond uplifting life wherever it goes, nurturing it into what it could be, but then that life asks questions to which it has no answers. That life worships it and sees it as all-knowing when the Traveler outright isn't, couple that with the fact that it can't communicate directly with us and... yeah. It's just very interesting to see this massively powerful being put in a pedestal it did not ask for and a role it fundamentally can't fulfill, time and time again.
My only issue with the Micah stuff is I wish we got more. Her quests were some of the most interesting content in the entire expansion. I really want to learn more about The Traveller and what’s all going on there.
I have a feeling she will become more important as time goes on since she is now the Speaker of the Traveler.
As soon as I heard all the Traveler's memories and visions I was saying I couldn't WAIT for Byf to reach this point!!! And here we are!!
Nice profile picture
@@YuffieGD Worship!!
My understanding of Micah's Europa Record from her dialogue when talking about Cayde(Post Mission) is that she didn't just find records, she literally found her original copy in the system. I'll admit that I haven't read her lore, so I could be missing something, but from the way she explained it it sounded to me like she wound up the same way as Crow/Uldren. As a guardian with their original memories(most in her case as she wouldn't have her post-Exo memories). As we've seen with Crow this wouldn't override the Guardian personality, but integrate instead as, from what we've seen, Risen tend to have the same type of personality they had at death.
Now thats what I call Byf lore 55
The way DER is described in the lore, it sounds very similar to what gender dysphoria is like. The brain’s disconnect with the body it’s in, causing immense distress and, in the early exos’ cases, eventually tearing themselves apart in an attempt to free themselves from it. I’m only now learning that Micah is trans but it makes me happy that somewhere in the writer’s room, they’re making that connection, too. A transgender person becoming an exo to maybe help with that gender distress is exactly what I’ve talked about with friends for so long. Really great stuff Bungie
The Traveler memories give me the impression that Gardner and the traveler are definitely two different entities. Happy the way they executed Micah. The six coyotes cloak was my fav in D1 so I'm proud as a hunter.
Different yet, definitely connected in my opinion. The Gardener seems metaphorically a lot bigger. Spiritually and not just physically.
@@MynameisByf I think that's the case. Same with the Veil and Winnower. Aspects of satellite's to bigger forces. It's always been my suspicion that the Story of the Vex can't truly be told without digging into long term plot points for Bungie...but we may be headed there now with the winnower laid low. The Sol Divisive may yet again be at the heart of that mystery if brass gardeners is anything to go by. But my curiosity lies with the other directives.
the traveller is a god's tool.
@@lumi5880 Possible. Whatever the traveler and winnower were, might have been the tool used by the Gardener and Winnower.
I feel like the veil and the traveler are two parts of the gardener that separated when they became part of the game, split between the physical in the traveler and the metaphysical in the veil.
From the memories of the Traveler I have a guess that the Traveler and the veil was one part and they made the first tree of silver wings that was in garden, the one that the Winnower cut when they began a fight with the Gardner.
The Traveler was always supposed to have both dark and light and now that it's whole again, It's remembering things and something greater is awakening.
Darkness is memory, consciousness, and things swallowed up in death. Therefore, by contrast I think it's safe to assume the Light has no memory. It's like a newborn baby, confused, scared, unable to understand. When darkness was introduced into the traveler, the traveler's consciousness is going to manifest into reality.
I ain’t gonna lie, since 2014 your outro keeps me coming back
Hey Byf, no idea if you will see or read this, but I've been playing FF14 recently and just finished Endwalker, and while playing through the game noticed something that made me think of Destiny.
There are some spoilers here as a warning:
Endwalker's penultimate villain is a being named Meteion, described as an Entelechy. In the games own description, a being capable of influencing and being influenced by emotional energies (in the game described as Dynamis, seemingly an intangible energy that makes up the majority of the universe, and is made up of and influenced by emotions and memories, in contrast to Aether, which is essentially the tangible energy that most living matter consists of or possess.) So in watching your videos lately, each time the Entelechy lore book is mentioned with all of the stories within it, I can't help but mentally turn back to that especially with the knowledge of how the light and dark interact with reality, and what that might mean about the perspective or domain of the Winnower. I dont know if there is any deeper meaning to be found from all this, but I feel like the word Entelechy is chosen VERY specifically for this purpose. No idea if you've explored that specifically before but just thought it was neat and wanted to share it with you. Thanks for the fantastic work as always!
The words of Micah "It fears the act of thought" are absolutely harrowing in this context
Wow micha having the ability to protect other ghosts while they search for their guardian is incredible. Not to mention micha will be there to help the newly revived guardian understand whats going on and help them as well
Lets all take a moment to appreciate how much effort this man puts so we can have our Lore handed to us on a silver platter
It will be hilarious if this is a Madoka situation;
Madoka the magical girl, madoka the god, and madoka the law of the universe itself. All the same entity created from one wish, yet all 3 entirely separate as well.
Hey byf just checking that you know something: if you do the lost ghost quests before completing excision then Cayde has dialog with Micah in some of them. In the mission where you redo the Cunning mission, Cayde says some real emotional stuff.
In the cutscene showing zavala in the precursor world, the traveler floats up and it's super small compared to its moon size now, I think the tiny traveler would've fit perfectly into the other side of the veil.
And why was the traveler so tiny compared to now lol??
Been waiting for this, looking forward to it
I just realized something that absolutely blew my mind and I feel the need to share:
For those who don’t know, the word “Christian” means “Little Christ” referring to Christian wanting to be like Jesus Christ;
Little-Christs = Christ-ians
Christians
Supposedly according to Micah here, the Traveler thinks of us as “Little Gardeners” and in this context we are worshipping both the Traveler and The Gardener so we are;
Little-Gardeners = Gard-ians
Gardians
…Gaurdians
I’m not so sure this was on purpose, but then again I wouldn’t put it past Bungie to reference a real world cultural phenomenon.
The gardener and winnower were the same being originally.
The idea of the traveler and the veil being physical manifestations of the gardener and winnowed is interesting. Especially if we think of them as once being united as a singular object. Like I believe the gardener and winnower once were.
Even in Unveiling the writer identifies as the winnower, but everything that it tells in the past tense, could’ve been done by the same being.
1. The Gardener does stuff in the morning and the Winnower does stuff at evening. Especially since the day lasts “all of time” and night is more brief than a singular moment(makes it feel constant, like a mathematical limit)
2. In unveiling, whenever the Gardener speaks, it’s quoted, and out loud. Then when the winnower responds, it’s not. Almost like the being has these realizations, and then comes a little inner rebuttal of doubt. Which eventually has a sort of identity crisis, leading to the fracture of identity, and the discovery of the first knife. Which subsequently leads the winnower to recording the event that just happened(the unveiling lore book). Which also is interesting that this is a record kept by the winnower, and supposedly the veil is a record keeper of all of time and existence.
I also am aware that the gardener and winnower are not necessarily “beings” but rather “principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures”.
But also that’s just how the winnower views them. So who knows how it all plays together.
Either way, unveiling is my favorite lore book and I absolutely love the symbolism and how things tie together. And every step we take into discovering and understanding more is super fun and enjoyable!
so, does that mean the conception of the universe was actually a broken god stabbing itself and splitting in two?
@@dovahfruit9503 in a metaphorical way of speaking, yeah it’s certainly a possibility!
It’s very exciting and fun.
There's nothing suggesting that the gardener & the winnower were one and the same.
There's only evidence of the traveler and the veil being connected. We see that in veil containment.
Perhaps the Traveler and the Veil were once one entity, as you suggest. However, it seems to me that when the Traveler separated from the Veil, it experienced some form of amnesia or memory loss. The Veil might literally represent veiled memories. It could contain the Traveler's consciousness, but their merging might bring about the end of the living universe.
I'm speculating, but maybe the Traveler is part of the Winnower, which is trapped within the Veil. They could have originally been a single being, struggling to understand itself and its purpose. This internal conflict led to the entity splitting into two parts: the Traveler, which roams the universe bestowing bountiful gifts without fully understanding its actions, and the Veil, which retains all the memories from before the split, linking it to souls and the metaphysical realm.
I still think there is this wierd clash going on. On the one hand, the Traveler is this "god" with devine and mythical origins and immense power. But on the other hand, it's just a giant white, and mostly innert, ball in the sky.
Its power is passive. Not active l.
It was nice to have more lore shed light on the traveler.
I'm glad to see the community, largely, come back to the side of the Traveler. For the past couple of years, the Traveler was seen in a very negative light.
But BYF, you should also know (if you haven't already commented on it and I missed it) that you can find hidden feathers in Cysts missions that have Misraaks interpreting visions from the Traveler as well. Some are pretty interesting. One of them pretty much confirms that the Traveler was done with running away by the time it came upon humanity. Something that most people knew, but it's nice for it to be confirmed in-game.
I know some people still distrust the Traveler, but it did not have to stay. It could have left back in Season of the Seraph. Instead, it stayed, tried to fight, and even endured torture for the past year to prevent the Witness from enacting the Final Shape. Whatever sins the Traveler has committed, I think it has paid for them after having the Witness dig around in its guts for the past year.
So, regarding the feathers. I have seen and recorded all 6. There will be a video.
I haven't heard that specific feather, but I hope that shuts up everyone who thought the traveler was running at the end of Seraph. Homie was getting away from the city to prevent collateral damage and give us a fighting chance.
@@MynameisByf Cool! I'm very interested to see what happens with the Traveler. I think the harmony of Light and Dark happening inside of it could potentially be a positive thing. It was for us, so far as I can tell. Even Micah says the Traveler isn't corrupted. Perhaps the Traveler will have a more developed mind, one capable of memory. Perhaps it will finally have the ability to learn and it will be able to speak.
It reminds me of the Lore Tab for the Radiant Accipiter where the Speaker talks what the Traveler showed him before it was trapped in Ghaul's cage. The Speaker claims that he has seen so many things, and that, in time, the Traveler will speak freely and that a new age is dawning. To my knowledge, neither has happened. The Traveler has been characteristically silent for the most part, and it's possible the "new age" he was referring to comes after the Witness's defeat (this lore tab was released during Beyond Light).
What new behavior will come from our quiet, spherical friend after this 'transformation' has been completed?
Some people really have the Witness mentality without realizing it.
@@iponce2 I don't remember the specific Cyst mission that it's in, but I definitely remember Misraaks saying, plainly, that it, the Traveler, is done running. The vision mentions a planet third from the Sun, and someone (Ikora, I think), realizes that this (naturally) is referring to Earth.
I, too, got tired of people speculating that the Traveler was intending to run. Ironically, even BYF did this, theorizing that the Traveler was going to leave but only stayed due to Rasputin's sacrifice. While Rasputin's sacrifice was undoubtedly a factor, I think I don't think it was the only thing. Older lore entries have hinted that the Traveler was determined to fight upon entering the Sol System.
The Traveler chose to stay and defend humanity as best as it could. It failed, but then it endured a year of torture to give us time to find a way inside to confront the Witness. Its resistance to the Witness is shown plainly in the intro of The Final Shape, where the Traveler blatantly undoes the Witness's calcifying of Earth. If that is not evidence that the Traveler cherishes its children (humanity, Eliksni, Awoken, and even the Cabal and Hive), then I truly do not know what is.
I completely agree with @jochem12jdj that the Traveler and the Veil were both created by The Gardener. I bring new evidence to the table.
The Veil presents itself as something "once connected to the Traveler" - yes, but specifically, it presents itself as something that *grew* from the Traveler. In the shot you use, you can clearly see that the Veil has mycelial 'roots' where you could fit the Traveler. The metaphor goes beyond that, though - we know that Light is the fundamental force of life. We know that the Darkness is the fundamental force of memories and thought. You cannot fundamentally have "memories" or "thought" before the birth of life itself. Life is the seed from which the Tree of Memories and Thoughts bloom - aka, the Traveler is the seed from which the Veil grew. The imagery Asher Mir shows us also implies that.
From The First Knife - ["No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game."] - When the Gardener says "Growth" and "Preservation", I believe it is referring to the Light, and Darkness respectively. Light is Growth, or the creation of complex life. Dark is the Preservation, or memory and ideas that have been created and grown. When the Gardener says "I will make myself into a law in the game", I believe it planted itself into our physical material Universe the only way it knew how - as a Seed, the Traveler, from which the Veil grew. Growth and Preservation, manifest. When, at the end of the lore entry, the Winnower claims the following - [I looked at the gardener. I looked at my hands. I discovered the first knife.] - I believe this was the moment it decided to slice apart, or Winnow, the Traveler and the Veil into two different entities. [An abrupt severance], as Micah puts it.
The ramifications of the Traveler and Veil being connected also implies there was infinite potential in one joined spot - the Light and Dark united - enough to create the entire universe.
In T=0, the Winnower describes from its perspective the same moments Micah is describing at the creation of the universe - [And I won. I won, because the gardener always stops to offer peace. And when they do, I always strike. But by then, it didn't matter. The game was over. The garden had given birth to creation, the rules were in place, and there would never be a second chance. We played in the cosmos now. We played for everything.]
"I always strike" - the moment of separation of the Traveler and the Veil.
"The Rules were in place" - the Light and the Dark, the new paracausal rules.
"The garden had given birth to Creation" - The Gardener, giving birth to the Traveler+Veil combo (the TraveVeil?), begins creating an infinitely complex Universe from the joint forces of Light and Dark, but the Winnower stops it soon after.
From Nacre - ["Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria."] - I think this is the Winnower's admission that it did not care for the Light or Darkness, aka the "Change in Rules"- for after slicing the Traveler and the Veil apart, it simply let the universe run its course, confident that once more, the Universe would reach the same, all consuming pattern. After all, the Winnower did not need to interfere with the Precursors - they developed their obsession with the idea of a Final Shape on their own.
From Nacre, again - [Now, let me show you: my beloved. (...) I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.] - Here, the Winnower claims that he is proud that he put an end to the instant of Creation, because had he not, the Traveler+Veil would have never stopped creation, and the Universe would only consist of fullness, and no emptiness. Them striking is what ensured that there would be emptiness, space for the same old pattern to re-emerge. [This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.] - This last paragraph re-affirms this notion that the Winnower doesn't care for the Light or the Darkness existing, as long as someone is using those powers towards Winnowing the universe towards nothingness. This is why he took a fancy to the Hive: the pureness of their Sword Logic aligns so very closely with what the Winnower believes to be natural
In p53 - [Patterns will participate in a structure only if participation benefits their ability to go on existing. The more successful the structure grows, the more temptation accrues to cheat. And the greater the advantage the cheaters gain over their honest neighbors. And the greater the ability they develop to capture the very laws that should prevent their selfishness. To prevent this, the structure must punish cheaters with a violence that grows in proportion to its own success. My question follows. Is p53 an agent of the Darkness, or the Light?] - With what we know of the Darkness and the Light today - that neither force is implicitly "evil", and it is the wielder that chooses to use it however they wish - we know that this is a rhetorical question, where the Winnower was almost making fun of our naivety. The Winnower is proud of p53, the suicidal genome, since it wouldn't have been created at all if the Winnower did not stop Creation by slicing apart the TraveVeil.
In The Cambrian Explosion - [It was the first defector-the first predator. It changed everything. Now the oozeballs needed sensors to watch for danger, and brains to integrate those senses and generate plans of survival, and swift neurons and muscles to enact that plan. This was the Cambrian Explosion, the great birth of complex life on your world. I caused it. I, the defector, the destroyer, the one who takes.] - This reaffirms the same notion. He cares not for Light or Dark, but for evolution as it ought to be. Birth is the Beginning. Survival is the Middle. Death is the End. This is the pattern.
The Gardener seems to believe in infinite life, and infinite preservation. Look at the Traveler - resurrecting us, who have long since lost the right to exist. Look at the Veil - coalescing and trapping the memories of all the things that ought to be forgotten. The Winnower's philosophy goes against both of these equally.
This is why The Witness claims to deviate from the Winnower’s plan - it wanted to cheat, use the New Rules, to achieve its personal idea of The Final Shape. The Winnower, of course, does it approve.
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This is probably my longest RUclips comment to-date, I hope you read it, and find something resembling value in this.
worth noting: slices of jade and carmine material can be seen in many of the pyramids architecture/ things connected to the witness
this is really making me wonder if the traveller and the veil are the rule, the gardener, or a consequence of the gardener’s new rule
In my mind it makes more sense for the traveler and the veil to be the gardener inserting itself into the universe to change things, the body and soul being the traveler and the mind/brain being the veil two paracausal sides that change the rules, because it doesn’t seem the winnower needs anything for its rule of the universe for death and decay and it doesn’t feel like the veil being memory associated really fits in with what the winnower would be about, and now considering we have been contacted by the winnower, not through our ghost or the veil as its own separate entity it gives more weight to the theory
If anyone remembers the woman in white from the drafts of the destiny’s opening cinematic, I think that this woman is the gardener
Why are you assuming it’s a woman.
She was called The Witch back then
The cutscene of the astronaut makes me wonder...
We saw all subclasses represented, but only the traveller seems to be 'local'.
Are we sure that stasis and strand are dark powers?
Ya, when I was picking up these pieces to get exotic khvostov, the lore bits blew my mind. Seeing that the Seeing the traveller had so many worries of its own was wild to me.
Honestly, at some point soon I'd like to learn what the deal with Egregore is and more about the importance of the mycelial network, it turned up even more in the pale heart's blighted areas. I'm leaning towards it being "spores" or a sort of offspring of The Veil, an extension of the Veil's connection to the darkness and consciousness, allowing some to tap into it, much like a ghost and the light.
I love that for all the Traveler has done for us, and us for it, there is still no way for us to directly trade words. We get meaning and led by visions, but we can only interpret so much. Love a good unknowable cosmic entity.
Not sure if the veil and traveler were physically connected since the traveler is the size of a neutron star while the veil is the size of a large building.
The Traveler is also quite small
@@alexharris3869 it's bigger on the inside!
I wonder if the traveller has forgotten what it is. Just like guardians do.
Maybe the gardener decided to manifest in reality as the traveler in order to prove to the winnower that the final shape is not necessary. In the process, it lost its identity.
It either can't speak or doesn't know what to say. All it can do is act, by terraforming planets, creating advanced technology and making guardians.
The Traveler's amnesia began after the Veil was separated from him, after which he dozed for a long time in the sands of the planet of the Witness
Was anyone else caught off-guard by the fact that Micah is the first Guardian NPC since Shaxx and Saint to always where a full helmet?
I would love to see more videos dedicated to single characters. Not only because they interest me but would help introduce my friends to some shallow lore
Hey Byf, I believe about 2 months ago I left a comment on one of your videos about a theory I had regarding the Veil and how it seemed to me that the Traveler might have once been attached to it. I believe the Veil is what remains after the Traveler and the equivalent dark entity were “grown” and subsequently divided. It’s pretty cool hearing that this could be the truth. Thanks for all the great content.
Something that I think might be interesting is how having the Gardener and Winnower enter the Flower Game changed them. Because, as you said, the Light doesn't remember, the Gardener may have lost some of their personality when becoming the Traveler, which is why it seems less of an active player than the god that changed the rules of the universe. Similarly, the Winnower seems to have kept its aloof and omniscient perspective because it retains/remembers its identity as a god outside of the game. Also, with the warning the Winnower gave the Gardener about how changing the Flower Game would only cause pain and suffering without changing the outcome, it could recast that warning as for the Gardener personally, foreseeing the grief and confusion that we now know the Traveler feels since it seems like the Winnower doesn't care very much about how mortals feel.
Kind of makes me feel like the traveler could be the last fruit of the silver tree.
The way the memory is conveyed sounds less like it's one particular civilization and more of a continuing pattern. It talks about many worlds being touched and many peoples beginning to study it, only to eventually fall into religion and worship.
Wait, you've NEVER covered the Micah Abrams lore book? Man, that's my favorite piece of lore. I could've swore you did
Myelin certainly has.
@@MynameisByf I know. I love hearing both of your perspectives. And I thought that lore book was PRIME byf material. Well, Im excited for when you do cover it 😄
The only problem I have with the whole "mycelial roots of the Veil once gripped the Traveler" theory is that... the Veil is tiny. I mean the Calus boss fight in Lightfall was directly underneath it and that arena isn't anywhere near as big as the Traveler.
Considering that the Veil is literally capable of opening a separate dimension within the Traveler, I believe that the Veil was inside and not outside the Traveler
“What is this feeling? I do not want it!” Said by the Traveler, quoted from Xivu Arath and Savathuun.
This reminds me of a weird consistency that's been bugging me lately. Ghost says he resurrected us from a pile of bones. However, there are 2 problems with that. First, awoken did not die in the collapse, but died after arriving from the rift awoken thingy. Secondly, Exos, as far as i know, do not have bones. It's been bugging me for years now, and the memory just resurfaced.
To help with this. Exos do degrade over time they are made up of metal and other forms of plastic and our bodies were just out in old russia for a long time so it makes some sense as there were probably Exos near the or in the cosmodrome during the onset of the collapse. And it's probably due to the fact we died during the near start of the dark ages or somewhere in the city ages. For awoken those who chosen the awoken path probably died when the awoken became Riven and split into reef and earth born awoken. And we probably died during one of our travels.
I might be overthinking things, but my guess is that the Gardener is actually both the Traveler AND the Veil. Both Strand and Stasis have an aspect of joining, binding, and fixing things together, and that just doesn't have the Winnower's vibe to me.
I think we will find out that the Winnower is actually something totally new and unseen to us, and the process of putting the Gardener back together, rejoining the Traveler (the physical body and light aspect) with the Veil (the memory, consciousness, and darkness aspect) will play a major part in our encounter/confrontation with the Winnower.
Given the nature of the Winnower as one who cuts and separates, I get the feeling that the division of the Traveler from the Veil was one of the decisive moments in their new Game of Life, the optimal winning strategy for the Winnower's victory.
Adding to the thoughts about jade and carnelian: these two colours are all over the the scenery touched by the Witness, and in RoN for that matter; wherever extreme concentrations of pure Light and Darkness meet, these colours start creeping into the architecture. The bit that particulalrly sticks out in my mind is that arena where we fight the knockoff Fanatic in the Lightfall campaign; we race around on platforms of dark grey, burnt orange, bright green and pinkish red.
If anything, the third vision (vision at the impasse) does a very good job of showing that the Gardener and the Traveller are two seperate beings. The Traveller's lack of memory from the primordial garden and the uncertainty it has about its own existence are distinct to that of the Gardener, who knows well what they are and how the universe came to be.
She isn’t the only one who can see and comment on these visions, in each of the cysts you can find a feather of light laying down on the ground when picked up mithrax will comment
Yes but only one of them is currently afflicted with Nezarec
for the moment where the traveller says it's struggling to remember, my first thoughts were about how it was seperated from the veil--from darkness,-- and so what couldve been memories, maybe even shared by the veil, have faded and been lost
The traveler spreads change and the veil helps us remember the differences. Without the veil the winnower just spreads change and can be just as the veil can do the same. Unknowingly the traveler spreads what it’s fighting so instead of digging further, it shared so we could help it and it could help us. Sharing to expand. Maybe the thing before time changed so it could share with the differences and the witness was a part but returned after being defeated, banished back to the memory and the traveler is scared at what is potential. I mean, it makes sense when you think about how the traveler has lost its memory and the memory is the veil.
The only other instance of carnelian and jade are two of the three colors on the wrist of the Witness in the raid, best seen after the boss kill where you can grab extra loot from. However, there is a gold or darker yellow there as well. Jade and carnelian are complimentary colors and jade/carnelian/gold are 3/4 of tetradic colors with the missing one being a dark blue, kind of like the blue you see in the light pools in Salvation's Edge. In that way the gold is kind of the color of Resonance, blue is Traveler's Light and jade and carnelian are colors of their mutual origin
I wonder if, eventually, we or someone else, will conjoin the Veil and Traveler again. It seems that lore is slowly pointing towards them being one again.
The description of the black garden from that first vision is also reminiscent of where we are revived in old Russia in destiny 1. The rusted cars and grasses make for those 2 primary colors. Probably a visual parallel
Just having a thought - what if the Veil and the Traveler were, together, the original tree of Silver Wings? What if the Veil was in fact attached to the burn out stump we fight the final boss in during Garden of Salvation?
Of more relevance though - it sounds like the Traveler doesn’t even remember the Garden or the Winnower. It doesn’t even know what it is actually fighting against.
This reminds me of an old (or new, can't really remember) lore tab. I paraphrase :
The Gardner is busy with her hands in the mud, listing the insects chirp and feeling the warmth of the sun.
Mythrax is dropping fire dialogue lately 🔥
From how I interpret things:
The Gardener and Winnower are two seperate entities that entered the game on their own. By doing so, they broke the rules of the game they had set.
The Traveler and Veil are just the hands of the Gardener and the Winnower respectively. They shape and unmake. But they don't know. They don't think.
They're instinctual, like hands in a fishpond moving around the murky waters. If you were to cut yourself on a reed you would feel it, but the hand itself can't interpret beyond the input it gets. It cannot give more than it is:
A tool. A vessel. No more no less.
It can show the fish in the pond the right way, it can clean up the pond, but these hands can also take away.
And what is a hand to do when fish want more? It can only give and shape what it has at hand. It can't offer the answers. It can only offer tools
The power to find out for oneself
I think this is why the Traveller felt guilty. Especially towards the precursor people. It could not give them the purpose they sought. It couldn't give them all the answers. They were finding ways to give life meaning, but, the traveller couldn't. And the traveller felt guilty, because this is probably when the Gardner realized the winnower had a point;
To mingle in the lives lf their craations in such ways brings unnecessary suffering
If the traveller was never with those people. Those aspirations may have never grown. The precursor people would have been content with doing what they were doing before the traveller was found. Because finding out answers sparks a certain mindset. And when philosophical ponderings grow too much, it can eat at you. You suddenly won't be content living life, doing what you were thought. You seek answers, you wish for there to be more.
But when there isn't. Beings may suffer.
Someone already wrote a long message somewhat about this. I personally think it's very possible the veil is tied to the winnower but then I also think it's possible the veil is tied to gardener or at least is a part of the traveller. My reason for thinking this is that the light is all about creating and destroying right but the darkness is about the mind, it's memory and thought. I think it's possible that the traveller and the veil where some kind of godly being, the veil being the mind and the traveller being the body. We know from the travellers memories that it finds it really hard to think and remember, painful even to do so. This could be because it has quite literally lost the part of itself that is meant to do that. Despite missing this part the traveller can still move around and function because after all its essentially the body of a god, or at least a god by our standards, where as the veil just sort of sits there because it's the mind, it's incapable of directly interacting with the world around it. So the light and darkness would just be byproducts of these parts of a god. It's godly power being emitted and available for use. So why is the darkness often associated with corruption and evil, I think the reasoning for this is kinda talked about by the dissenters. Light forgets and forgives, darkness remembers. The traveller is good because it doesn't matter how much bad shit happens it forgives life, it doesn't become bitter, it just tries again. It's possible that while the veil itself isn't evil it may have a corrupting effect on people due to the length of it's memories and the weight they impose. Even though people that use darkness obviously don't remember what the veil has experienced they may still feel its weight on them. The traveller and the veil probably balance each other out and allow it to essentially function like a normal being would. Where this theory falls apart is mainly with oryx. Oryx summoned the deep itself into an ogre and what he summoned was the winnower. So this would then imply that the winnower is the darkness. However perhaps the pooled darkness was what allowed a being like the winnower to apear. So therefore he isn't the deep itself he just used the pooled darkness as a way to manifest. I don't think the witnesses race being made by the winnower and using the darkness really confirms that the winnower is the darkness. It's entirly possible the winnowers whisperings is what made that race so unsatisfied in the first place and what lead them to the veil. Once under the influence of darkness perhaps they were easier for the winnower to influence. This may be the case for why the winnower is associated with darkness, perhaps it allows him to influence people more. Who knows really. I think the traveller and veil could be parts of the same being but I also think the winnower could be associated with the veil, or even be the veil. I think it's worth noting that the winnower didn't want to add anything to the game so it would have been odd for him to add darkness but I guess it could be a response to the gardener adding light. Or perhaps the gardener added both and they were intended to be used together. Adding darkness to the traveller allows you to reshape the universe after all. Perhaps the traveller and veil are parts of the gardener herself. She did say she would add herself to the game as rule
Traveler and Veil = Gardening Tools used by the Gardener
The Witness = a knife used by the winnower
13:59 what if the beginning is also the end. Imagine we created the traveler but then realized, after understanding nothing is gone just changed, that we didn’t create but found the traveler. Like how humans aren’t created, they are found between the mother and father and all the relatives of connections. Like genes and the womb, a baby can’t be that without that otherwise it would be something different. Like how we see time as difference and the witness tried to stop difference and failed but also succeeded in sharing with us that we can’t do that. Remember when we saw a portal on titan and the humans on the inside saw us too. Time travel isn’t forward and back it’s non Euclidean.
YES FINALLY!, i love Micah 10 and all of her lore and been waiting for this forever! thank you byf
She’s Awesome ♥️
The fact that Micah-10 could've been Ace.... Wiiiiiild
That revelation made me almost cry. ;-;
Head-canon accepted. I have a feeling this will be one of those “intentionally left vague” sort of deals…
19:22 imagine being able to see all paths and then seeing a creature that has the potential to see start pleading and begging for help, what happens when the lost are found by something that can see? The witness took, the gardener shares and the winnower shares as well but it’s the misunderstanding between. The winnower shares understanding, that’s why the witness is a witness, and the traveler shares unconditionally or without understanding but in all forms are possible. It’s like we gotta share both together within and then let it shine out of us. Light shining into the darkness of the unknown and the reason we are is because when they go against each other, it always ends the same but when they are combined and shared to expand, then we can push the bounds and explore new frontiers. I think we may be able to explore potential dimensions using the traveler but not using more like the traveler sharing with us the opportunity so we can share instead of take like the witness’ people. They didn’t understand and kept fighting so they couldn’t expand with free will.
I love how easy it might be for Byf to turn his videos into a podcast, especially because he says, "Take a listen." instead of, "Take a look."
Consider, the Traveler and the Veil were once a single physically form. The Traveler ripped itself away from the Veil. What if the Veil holds the Traveler’s memories. Some (if not most) of its cognitive functions. Without the veil, the traveler can feel, but thinking is difficult and even painful so it simply doesn’t do it. Imagine trying to get someone with severe brain damage to articulate their state of mind or what their ultimate desires might be. The lore can give reasons for what the Traveler does, but does the Traveler know why it doing what it’s doing or is it just following an instinct or responding to an emotional state?
A sea of confusion,wonder, joy, and frustration. Everything I’ve ever seen the Traveler do has been an instinctive response to outside stimuli. Lore bits like these make me wonder just how much of the events of D1 and D2 it is actually aware of much less truly understands.
It’s surprising that such a correct understanding of the lore is somewhere at the bottom, while the top is again filled with “The Veil is Winnower” 🙄
Regarding the Traveler remembering being separated from something or someone, I think this 'someone' is the Veil, and the Veil is NOT the Winnower. Remember, it told Maya that it was the Veil. And remember, the Winnower did not like the idea of extra rules in the flower game. I interpret this to be paracausal powers, based on the fact that the Vex (the winning flower in the flower game) would be unstoppable if it weren't for their inability to predict paracausality. Why would the Winnower then be an entity associated with providing paracausal powers?
Assuming the Winnower will end up being a major player, I think the Winnower is the end-boss of Destiny, and its goal is the elimination of paracausal powers from the universe (not necessarily the Gardener, just the powers the Gardener provies)
Question: Is there an implication that we are the reborn version of the first group to see The Traveler?
It clearly has prismatic. Like Titan that went into the portal, wouldn't we see a glimpse of our previous life?
We are the first of humanity that was Chosen.
The thing I don’t get is why the traveler doesn’t talk. It has so much power and has had so much experience to language that it surely can learn how to communicate that way. These memories even show that it is experiencing problems that would be fixed by more direct communication. So I don’t understand why it just doesn’t communicate in a more direct way when it clearly can find a way to do that and would be greatly benefitted by it.
I read in on the lore books you get from listening to the radio broadcasts, and they’re extremely interesting. The first lore book tells of failsafes lonely life on Nessus, when the (presumably) soul of the witness dropped. The next lore book tells of weird vex activities, like building in the dirt, laughing, and even peacefully waving at a guardian. I wonder if the vex are gaining sentience, and am excited to see a video on it
I like this perspective. The traveler, guardians, cabal, hive. All warring with each other for years only to find out they all need each other and all just fighting like hell for their lives.
I've felt for a while that light and dark being two sides of the same coin of the power of life - this video helps support these feelings. Whether the severing of the Traveller was fundamental for it to exist in the new universe or done by the Winnower to weaken it remains unknown.
To me the reason that light and dark could never and should never dominate the other is because they should be one. Light is power of the physical and darkness is the power of the metaphysical - both existing in creation.
The way the traveller doesn't feel confident or is constantly scared lines up with an entity that doesn't remember or know what it really is, which would make sense if the veil has it's memories and darkness.
The Winnower was always happy to win by converting others to it's thinking with it's logic and reason, Oryx, The Witness, it attempted the same with us.
I believe the Gardener is the Entity that would result of re-joining the Traveller and the Veil, thus creating the Saga of Life & Death / Existence vs Oblivion.
My only concern is…
Let us assume the Veil’s roots were indeed around the Traveler at one point in time. How did it become.. so much smaller suddenly? Or the Traveler so much bigger.
It is a simple thing, but I feel it is worth noting.
Drifters paraversal haul seems like it's more the size of the veil currently. I'm definitely wrong but I think it's worth noting.
Something I never thought about until now is how it’s interesting that to us as guardians the light is fundamentally tied to the elements of arc, void, and solar since that seems to be how we, the lucent hive, even Ghaul have manifested the light. However, we’ve never seen the traveler itself manifest those forces. Pure light from the traveler itself has only ever been light. Makes me wonder if part of the reason why the traveler seems so confused by the people around is because its purpose and light are simple in its eyes. They are a fundamental force of creation in the universe, nothing more and nothing less. The very concepts of conflict, worship, or divinity may be so foreign that it’s just against its nature.
Im not sure about the veil being the winnower entirely. My thought is it could be a bit of a byproduct left behind from their separation.
The reason I say this is while we most associate the veil with darkness, it is important to remember from the final mission of lightfall that the veil gives off both dark AND light signatures. Not to mention it features dark and light elements.
The Veil we saw in Neomuna is waaaay to small to have contained the Traveler, the Traveler is huge (albeit inconsistently sized) but the Veil is at most 120m across, the Traveler is at least 10x that size in it's absolute smallest and hundreds of times larger at the size it currently appears as.
These are great, I can't wait to hear about the rest. But despite all these answers, there's still one burning question in my mind: of all the races that the Traveler uplifted, why did it choose humanity as the one race that it would stand its ground sacrifice itself for?
I think “tired of running” is the best lore reason. The Witness claimed it had nowhere left to run, but in a literally infinite universe, that makes little sense. The Winnower says that the Traveler made a statement, a wager, because it saw something in us-something that made it believe that, with its power, we would choose to live in a peaceful city surrounded by a ring of spears. Apparently, the other civilizations lacked whatever the Traveler saw.
The real reason is because the video game needed superhumans.
I...I cant describe it exactly right. But I feel like there is something more? Like this haze over the memory of the traveler has a deeper meaning. How much of the gardener is the traveler? When they turned themselves into rules how much of them is in these avatars they made? It cant be all of them. Because they are both the light and dark and that can be seen everywhere.
So how much does the traveler know? Would it not be more accurate to think of it like a child of the gardener than the gardener itself? It knew so little. All it wanted to do was help. Icant put it into words but I am getting a vibe that the gardener and winnower made the avatars of themselves mostly...independent?
The veil never acts. The traveler never seems to get help from anyone but those it helped.
I think they are less avatars and honestly more off shoots of these deities. Less Clones and more chess pieces placed onto the board and left alone to act as designed.
I just found another of the "tiny travelers" at the peak of the mountain in the pale heart where you find the prismatic fragment reward for the darkness vestiges. There was a memory about being reunited with a family member. Sounds like its a memory of the traveler being merged with the veil
It’s so interesting to think that the traveller isn’t an all knowing god but something learning and feeling the same as any other creature it doesn’t want worshipped it encourages life and wants new and amazing things to be created by the beings it uplifts, it’s giving me a young child vibe seeking wonder and amazement but confused and scared of death or death to those it connects/ uplifts. Mind boggling
I am a new light that started it's destiny journey only this month, so my perspective might be highly flawed, but I wanted to give my own two scents to the story of the gardener and the winnower.
The winnower said that the moment they became part of the game was at the start of time, right?
So this is my interpretation.
They both chose to become rules in the game to enforce their own view of the game they have been playing.
The gardener introduced the light, hope, and magic(para causal) in a bid to nurture variety in the universe.
The winnower however, introduced darkness, memory, and time to inevitably reach the final shape.
Memory is only the accumulation of experience over time after all, and the god that wants everything to reach a singular, final point adding decay to the mix is only logical.
It was afraid of life festering in their garden, so he added time and therefore decay and rot to the world.
So yes, it was at the beginning of time... Maybe... Because time as a concept hadn't existed until the winnower made it so.
But that are just my own insane ramblings 😅
This is supporting a thought I've been having for a while:
The Traveler is the Gardener, but changed, a sort of Avatar that can exist and interact inside the changed Flower Game (the Universe).
The answer to "is the Gardener the Traveller" is both yes and no. The Gardener became the Traveler, but is not the same as it was before time began.
Hell, it occurs to me this might be why it's call the Traveler in the first place. It BECAME the new law in the game, which means that instead of being everywhere at once in the Garden with the Winnower, it now has a discrete physical form like the rest of the universe and has to travel around protecting and uplfiting complex life.
It goes from one The [Occupation Title] to another.
I mean you could easily call what the Traveler does Sheparding life. The only difference between a Shepard and a Gardener is what they're tending, and that a Gardener stays in one place and Shepard is often a nomad. Just as the Traveler has been.
.
When I first heard that first vision, I thought it was more macro-scaled in terms of the time and events it relayed. The Traveler's Birth, its meeting with, uplifting, and severance with those who would become The Witness. At the time, I just wasn't really thinking much about The Winnower at all; now that we have the Nacre lore tab though, that error is plain for me to see. And it also makes me very intrigued by how Micah ends her own musing on the subject, "It may be so old as to have no significance... and yet, I cannot help but wonder..."
The Winnower is coming. And I for one am absolutely THRILLED to see just what that might entail.
This might sound silly, but I feel like the Veil and the Traveler are like the twins from the movie, "The Parent Trap." When the Winnower and the Gardener "split" at the ceeation of the universe, I think they split up the Veil and the Traveler, and each took/claimed one. I don’t have lore to really back this up. This is a purely vibes based observation.
The Traveler and the Veil just dont feel like they are the Winnower or the Gardener. They feel like the kids caught up in a weird divorce. Like the Winnower occasionally tells the Veil to tell other people things theough the power of darkness, and the Gardener had the Traveler go out and do things for it.
I know, weird and more than a bit silly.
Destiny is, for better or for worse my favorite game. For a long time, I have longed for representation in the medium of story telling I love most in games. To see a character so cool and storied as Micah come forward into the narrative and for her to be trans means a great deal to me.
Thanks bungie!
As opposed to the funnier representative of Oryx.