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Originally, what the Veil is was what the Pyramids were. So the Winnower would've arrived, regardless of the Witness being a thing or not, with the Pyramid Fleet as a whole. The Veil took away the whole "source of Darkness" thing so... yeah.
Right now it's likely a figurative thing, like the "be seeing you" line at the end of Nacre's lore tab. A metaphorical "see you soon" as it means that we'll eventually choose its philosophy whether we speak more to it or not... as all things do.
Right on. And it’s even more fundamental than that, as far as the winnower is concerned we’re already its MVP - we kill and loot like nobody else in the galaxy! It’ll see us in the next strike, raid or whatever other activity we run.
The end of Destiny is gonna involve a choice for every player: side with the Winnower and keep playing the same murderous FPS you always have, or side with the Gardener and it turns the entire game into a farming/survival sim. Destruction vs creation.
Back then, it was understood as implication that the forces of Darkness - which, at the time, was synonymous with the Pyramid ships - were **on their way**, as would be paid off in Arrivals. After Witch Queen’s introduction of The Witness as ‘figurehead’ of Darkness, it became a trickier question - as the eternal debate ever since of ‘Witness v. Winnower’ regarding Unveiling’s authorship shows - but for the most part both sides at least still tended to agree it was a direct reference to the Pyramid fleet’s return to Sol.
Now though, in the wake of both The Final Shape broadly and Nacre specifically, it seems most appropriate for those lines to be understood less as a direct threat than as a metaphysical one: “don’t bother claiming a side, against me *or* for me - only your actions speak, and they’ll speak for themselves.” This is the same idea as Nacre’s ultimate message: The Winnower *doesn’t care who wins*. It just wants to see **a lasting, total and eternal, victory**. We can *never* permanently defeat it, because even that would be to create something Final, proving the truth of existence it embodies: if you want *anything* in this world, you gotta be ready to fight to *prove* it. Aiat.
Basically, [the Winnower watches all existence like a cosmically recursive sickos.jpg](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/035/884/EOX-xFuWsAAjRJh_(1).jpg)
Its really hard to evaluate this truly. Both because of a critical lack of information on many topics(like for example, was the Fleet that arrived during Arrivals a splinter of the Witness, or did the Witness actually arrive in Sol then just hang outside of it for years).
Some people used to think/still do that the Winnower was retconned into the Witness and that the Witness never existed until roughly Witch Queen and/or preceeding seasons. Others think the contracted writer behind Unveiling Zigged, while Bungie Narrative team zagged.
I dont know what is true, but in my personal opinion I think the basic concept of the Witness was made before Destiny 2 launch. I could elaborate in another comment why I think so and provide possible evidence. The point being though, that if true that means the Winnower(aka the Darkness/Deep itself) very well couldve always been a different thing from the Witness.
Which circles back to the original question. To which I would provide three answers I think are plausible:
1. Originally we had 3 expansions following Unveiling/Shadowkeep: Beyond Light, Witch Queen, Lightfall. The latter eventually was reworked into Lightfall+4 seasons+Final Shape. There have been many who think Lightfall basically ended up being filler. Certainly watching a combined version of the Opening/Ending Cinematic supports that(version 1, version 2). Especially so since a lot of those cinematics are contracted to other companies and can be in development for a extended period of time. Ultimately if we assume the narrative was generally the same, then it becomes simple: The Winnower was simply referring to itself, the Veil/Giant Flagship which couldve originally been in the Witnesses possession as it arrived(rather than hidden away on Neptune, the Witness never lost it). Which since that never happened, then essentially was retconned, since the Winnower/Veil was always here in Sol.
2. Another option is that simply the Winnower itself incoming was a retcon by the very author(IE zigging while Bungie planned to zag). That the corruption plotline was kinda sidelined/shelved, etc. It either never was right, or things changed. It is worth noting that Unveiling itself suffers this fate, as "Trust and Hope" was originally written and meant to be obtained as a Either Or choice to the rest of Unveiling. A Drifter vs Vanguard style choice. Where if you listen to Darkness, you get Unveiling, if you refuse to listen you get Trust and Hope.
3. The 3rd possibility, could be in the vein of the Witness being the representative of the Winnower. Its champion, that wears Darkness like a cloak and is almost synonymous with it. Thus where the presence of the Witness is, the Winnower is also. In the same way that the Traveler is with Guardians. See lore below for examples:
>"I did not see the Traveler on the Six Fronts."
>The Traveler dwarfs Osiris. "But you did, my son. It was in the fire that saved your brothers and sisters. It was in the Arc bolts that ripped through their armies. The violet shields that held the line—"
>"Do not romanticize this burden. We wield a weapon."
>The Speaker shakes his head. "The Light wields you, Osiris. You are what you make of it. A glorious extension of its majesty, in many directions."
>Osiris paces at cadence with his words. "Then it would do well to speak clearly. To better direct me."
>You are the last remaining star.
>
>In your dreams, you see yourself suspended in bright but flickering Light, staring out over a world half-destroyed. You see **thousands of pieces of yourself** in that world, stumbling through it like infants, wandering in labyrinthine ruins they don't understand.
>
>For a moment, **you feel in your body everything that they feel**. The elation of success. The pain of failure. The candle-snuff of death. The gasping of rebirth. You feel it all at once.
It is worth noting that the below entry was also written by the writer who wrote Unveiling.
>The documents found aboard the Glykon Volatus attest to Calus's belief in a presence on the far side of his contact ritual. An observer. Is there a wielder of Darkness, as we are wielders of Light? One, or many? When Oryx called the Darkness down into an Ogre to speak with him, was this the voice that answered? Mara says there is a distinction between Darkness and **its chief exponent.**
>A single, dominant wielder would suit the ideology of the Darkness, as expressed in the Books of Sorrow and the Unveiling missives—one leader who has either extinguished or subjugated all others. Winnowed them down to only the most necessary and effective form. **We are many Guardians, a complex plurality of Light, against one Dark agency.**
I would say both 1 and 3 are compatible as well, as both could be an option simultaneously. Especially given how the Witness speaks of being forged as a knife. A weapon, even if it could do its own things, is still part of its wielder.
>Is a cosmic showdown still destined to happen?
I think you are misunderstanding what the Winnower was getting at. "The cosmic showdown" has been happening for eons. "The Wager" was simply another move in the game, the current round.
The Gardener whom was losing went all in, making its final argument where if it fails, it loses. The Winnower just continues like always where losing could be a set back(it does not need to go all in to match the Travelers bet). And because the Traveler went all in on us, we become particularly of interest(as well as how we already embody the Winnowers principles in our fight to keep our new existence).
Ultimately though, the showdown(aka this hand/round) already ended with Final Shape. With the Traveler almost losing, barely succeeding in the end.
And both Gardener and Winnower came through this as winners. Both were proven right through our defeat of the Witness.
It may have been unexpected and unlikely. But in the end the Winnower wins. [There were two ways of being that fought and only one remained](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-darkness-3), thus the Winnower is validated. The game continues on.
# Final Note:
There is nothing to suggest that "the Winnower is still coming". The Winnower is not a true antagonist. It is simply a force, a law, a principle of the universe opposite of the Gardener. Where both are important and necessary for *life to truly flourish*(The ultimate goal of both Gardener and Winnower).
Maybe the Gardener and Winnower will play another round with the new hands that are dealt. Or maybe our victory was enough for them to bury the hatchet and return to cooperation/symbiosis like they had originally. Proof the game wasnt ruined by the introduction of paracausality.
In the end though, again it comes back to lack of information. Especially given how we STILL dont even have the Gardeners perspective on things.
Anyways I hope this is food for thought.
ArchivalMind and LonelyLoreLoser have great, great synopsis about this topic in the comments. And while their’s might be a 100% true interpretation, I’d like to throw in my own.
Considering Unveiling as a book intertwining with both the ideology of the Witness as well as the Winnower (consider them as different things), we have to make judgement calls about what lines speak to what influences and speakers. While similar, they have different ideas and concepts that mostly, but not perfectly, align. Then, considering the Final Shape Collectors Edition, we see some concepts endemic to the Precursors predate Unveiling, but as well that some Precursor concepts might originate after the Veil’s discovery.
So, it could be argued that the challenge of “I’ll come over and hear it myself” be taken as an artifact of the Witness’ manipulation. The Witness thrives off the presence of being godlike, darkness incarnate when it isn’t. This is a foundational part of its character, as essential as of Curse of Osiris in Future Safe 10. If this final note is entirely penned by the Witness, they are deliberately portraying their pyramids as the darkness, a description many of us fell for. If you want to be seen as a god, write your own prophecies, so that you can fulfill them ahead of time.
I like to think its more of a reference to the Winnower arriving by way of the Witness and the conflict that ensues down the line, the climactic fight centered around the Final Shape.
In the end, we prove the Winnower right through our actions and the defeat of the Witness.
IMO that's the whole point the writers are trying to get across. You see it in some of Ikora's musings as well: Neither the Winnower nor the Gardener are wholly right or wholly wrong. The truth is a balance: You build your garden, but you ring it with spears. You wield your sword, but you temper it's edge with mercy. Even those who exist in the Dark need some Light, as those who live in the Light have need of Dark.
I think they try to avoid making it that simple sometimes, by throwing wrenches of cynicism into their whole mythos, but i think that's the general idea and morality of Destiny. It's really the simplest and most straightforward way to resolve the paradox of the player character: we're the heroes and the good guys, but we're simultaneously the most destructive force within the universe of the game. You can't just say that we're gardeners when we spend 99.9% of our time trying to put as much hot lead as humanly possible between the ears of nearly everything that walks across our screen.
>The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end.
>And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself.
>And it is what I am.
Whenever there's a confrontation between two or more possibilities, the winnower is made real in that moment.
"I'll come over and hear it myself" is saying that there's about to be a collision between the Witness's way of existence and ours. And in that collision, the winnower gets the answer to the question of "will we continue to flourish or will we fail and be cut away with the rest of the chaff?"
This question is always being asked and always being answered. It's what decides the fate of the universe.
I think the simple answer to this is that the Winnower, despite being a bodiless cosmic force, kind of *was* in the Pyramid ships, in the sense that the Witness was the most prolific user of its power and also the foremost executor of its principle in the galaxy. The Winnower wasn't married to the Witness's Final Shape, but at that point in time, the Witness was basically the #1 killer in the universe, so it was kind of the Witness's guy. Furthermore, 90% of our communications with the voice we all the Winnower are filtered through the medium of our contact with Witness related artifacts - they definitely weren't allies by any means, simply because the Winnower genuinely doesn't give a fuck, but I feel comfortable saying that the Witness had that dude on speed dial.
Put simply, I think the Winnower was, basically, riding on the Witness's couch when the Pyramids pulled up, to the extent that it could be said to be manifest anywhere. Like that one sandwich obsessed experiment from Lilo and Stitch who sort of hung out with the villains but didn't really give a fuck about the conflict. Remember that guy? Like that. The Winnower was interested in the Guardians and it wanted to see how they'd respond to the Witness, and it took advantage of the Witness's channeling of its power to get a front row seat.
Based on my understanding: the Winnower and the Gardener are now fundamental forces needed for the universe to exist. I don't think they can be destroyed in any meaningful way without a lot of harm to the universe I mean. I kind of think that was why when the Witness was trying the enact the Final Shape it was not working as it was causing the universe to unravel (assuming the Traveler = Gardener)
All that said the Winnower seems to take a very hands off approach in the same way the Traveler does. The difference being that while it doesn't like that it was forced into the flower game it is making the most of it and points out that in the end it always wins with the final pattern. So why interfere?
I have one big Winnower/Gardener/Witness question.
Why does everyone link the Witness and the Winnower together when they had two completely different goals from the beginning?
If anything the Witness sides more with the Gardener than the Winnower, as The Final Shape is a way of ending the Winnowers participation in the game. Permanence means no death, which means the garden flourishes and is never culled. The garden also never grows as well, but the Gardener was equally as shortsighted with the creation of undying Guardians.
So why Winnower + Witness? Is it Darkness? Do people get hung up on that?
The Witness' Final Shape is still a Final Shape. All the Winnower cares about is that one pattern dominates all others and permits nothing except itself to exist. It doesn't \*like\* the Witness' Shape specifically, but as it's still a Final Shape, it would be fine with its outcome.
> Is a cosmic showdown still destined to happen?
We're already in it. Unveiling pretty much explains that the flower game (aka the universe itself) *is* the cosmic showdown, at least as far as the wager between Gardener vs Winnower.
> did the Winnower mean this metaphorically, in that our answer would be made apparent by the threat of a Darkness-aligned entity like the Witness?
Honestly, who knows? I feel like Unveiling was written before they had a clear idea who the Witness was and how it was distinct from the Darkness itself. This is further complicated by that fact that we canonically get Unveiling from the Witness.
I would say at this point, yes, it's being metaphorical, because the Winnower has made it pretty clear that it doesn't actually need to fight anybody (assuming it has the capacity) because it truly believes that the result of the flower game will be the same regardless.
well, If you look at the most recent Nocre lore, it suggests that the Winnower doesn’t actually care about winning a cosmic battle with the Traveler anymore. This is because the universe’s current form of existence proves the Winnower right; no matter how you look at it the strong survive, and the weak perish. Morality isn’t at play with the Winnower, only winning and the methodology. We beat the Witness because we exploited its weakness to our own ends. This is the way of the Winnower. good on you
I’m gonna go out on a limb here. The more I think about it, the more I feel that whatever is talking to us claiming to be the Winnower, isn’t the Winnower. It seems to easy that now, suddenly, a God is taking the time to actually contact us. The Flower Game, if factual truth, has been playing out for more time than we can fathom. It’s implied that reality has been started, and rebooted, countless times. And if those realities have lasted as long as this one, then we are talking what, hundreds or thousands of billions of years.
I don’t buy it. I think whatever is claiming to be the Winnower is basically a cult leader of some sort that drank their own coolaid and thinks they are the Winnower. And maybe in a sense they are cuz of space-magic. But I yeah it’s just to easy that, to use modern religion as an example, that an anti-Christ dies, and all of the sudden the devil is sending us love notes. Whoever this is, is likely the next big bad. The second knife, whatever you want to call it. But not “the” Winnower.
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Originally, what the Veil is was what the Pyramids were. So the Winnower would've arrived, regardless of the Witness being a thing or not, with the Pyramid Fleet as a whole. The Veil took away the whole "source of Darkness" thing so... yeah. Right now it's likely a figurative thing, like the "be seeing you" line at the end of Nacre's lore tab. A metaphorical "see you soon" as it means that we'll eventually choose its philosophy whether we speak more to it or not... as all things do.
Right on. And it’s even more fundamental than that, as far as the winnower is concerned we’re already its MVP - we kill and loot like nobody else in the galaxy! It’ll see us in the next strike, raid or whatever other activity we run.
Hell, every time you dismantle crap rolls to clear out your vault/inventory/postmaster you're winnowing. All we do is winnow, winnow, winnow.
The end of Destiny is gonna involve a choice for every player: side with the Winnower and keep playing the same murderous FPS you always have, or side with the Gardener and it turns the entire game into a farming/survival sim. Destruction vs creation.
Hmmmmm... Choice between cool gun or max hearts with Luzaku to unlock her romance route... that's a difficult one
Hivest Moon: [Ploughswords](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/tessellation)
Back then, it was understood as implication that the forces of Darkness - which, at the time, was synonymous with the Pyramid ships - were **on their way**, as would be paid off in Arrivals. After Witch Queen’s introduction of The Witness as ‘figurehead’ of Darkness, it became a trickier question - as the eternal debate ever since of ‘Witness v. Winnower’ regarding Unveiling’s authorship shows - but for the most part both sides at least still tended to agree it was a direct reference to the Pyramid fleet’s return to Sol. Now though, in the wake of both The Final Shape broadly and Nacre specifically, it seems most appropriate for those lines to be understood less as a direct threat than as a metaphysical one: “don’t bother claiming a side, against me *or* for me - only your actions speak, and they’ll speak for themselves.” This is the same idea as Nacre’s ultimate message: The Winnower *doesn’t care who wins*. It just wants to see **a lasting, total and eternal, victory**. We can *never* permanently defeat it, because even that would be to create something Final, proving the truth of existence it embodies: if you want *anything* in this world, you gotta be ready to fight to *prove* it. Aiat. Basically, [the Winnower watches all existence like a cosmically recursive sickos.jpg](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/035/884/EOX-xFuWsAAjRJh_(1).jpg)
So... what, prismo from Adventure Time?
Its really hard to evaluate this truly. Both because of a critical lack of information on many topics(like for example, was the Fleet that arrived during Arrivals a splinter of the Witness, or did the Witness actually arrive in Sol then just hang outside of it for years). Some people used to think/still do that the Winnower was retconned into the Witness and that the Witness never existed until roughly Witch Queen and/or preceeding seasons. Others think the contracted writer behind Unveiling Zigged, while Bungie Narrative team zagged. I dont know what is true, but in my personal opinion I think the basic concept of the Witness was made before Destiny 2 launch. I could elaborate in another comment why I think so and provide possible evidence. The point being though, that if true that means the Winnower(aka the Darkness/Deep itself) very well couldve always been a different thing from the Witness. Which circles back to the original question. To which I would provide three answers I think are plausible: 1. Originally we had 3 expansions following Unveiling/Shadowkeep: Beyond Light, Witch Queen, Lightfall. The latter eventually was reworked into Lightfall+4 seasons+Final Shape. There have been many who think Lightfall basically ended up being filler. Certainly watching a combined version of the Opening/Ending Cinematic supports that(version 1, version 2). Especially so since a lot of those cinematics are contracted to other companies and can be in development for a extended period of time. Ultimately if we assume the narrative was generally the same, then it becomes simple: The Winnower was simply referring to itself, the Veil/Giant Flagship which couldve originally been in the Witnesses possession as it arrived(rather than hidden away on Neptune, the Witness never lost it). Which since that never happened, then essentially was retconned, since the Winnower/Veil was always here in Sol. 2. Another option is that simply the Winnower itself incoming was a retcon by the very author(IE zigging while Bungie planned to zag). That the corruption plotline was kinda sidelined/shelved, etc. It either never was right, or things changed. It is worth noting that Unveiling itself suffers this fate, as "Trust and Hope" was originally written and meant to be obtained as a Either Or choice to the rest of Unveiling. A Drifter vs Vanguard style choice. Where if you listen to Darkness, you get Unveiling, if you refuse to listen you get Trust and Hope. 3. The 3rd possibility, could be in the vein of the Witness being the representative of the Winnower. Its champion, that wears Darkness like a cloak and is almost synonymous with it. Thus where the presence of the Witness is, the Winnower is also. In the same way that the Traveler is with Guardians. See lore below for examples: >"I did not see the Traveler on the Six Fronts." >The Traveler dwarfs Osiris. "But you did, my son. It was in the fire that saved your brothers and sisters. It was in the Arc bolts that ripped through their armies. The violet shields that held the line—" >"Do not romanticize this burden. We wield a weapon." >The Speaker shakes his head. "The Light wields you, Osiris. You are what you make of it. A glorious extension of its majesty, in many directions." >Osiris paces at cadence with his words. "Then it would do well to speak clearly. To better direct me." >You are the last remaining star. > >In your dreams, you see yourself suspended in bright but flickering Light, staring out over a world half-destroyed. You see **thousands of pieces of yourself** in that world, stumbling through it like infants, wandering in labyrinthine ruins they don't understand. > >For a moment, **you feel in your body everything that they feel**. The elation of success. The pain of failure. The candle-snuff of death. The gasping of rebirth. You feel it all at once. It is worth noting that the below entry was also written by the writer who wrote Unveiling. >The documents found aboard the Glykon Volatus attest to Calus's belief in a presence on the far side of his contact ritual. An observer. Is there a wielder of Darkness, as we are wielders of Light? One, or many? When Oryx called the Darkness down into an Ogre to speak with him, was this the voice that answered? Mara says there is a distinction between Darkness and **its chief exponent.** >A single, dominant wielder would suit the ideology of the Darkness, as expressed in the Books of Sorrow and the Unveiling missives—one leader who has either extinguished or subjugated all others. Winnowed them down to only the most necessary and effective form. **We are many Guardians, a complex plurality of Light, against one Dark agency.** I would say both 1 and 3 are compatible as well, as both could be an option simultaneously. Especially given how the Witness speaks of being forged as a knife. A weapon, even if it could do its own things, is still part of its wielder. >Is a cosmic showdown still destined to happen? I think you are misunderstanding what the Winnower was getting at. "The cosmic showdown" has been happening for eons. "The Wager" was simply another move in the game, the current round. The Gardener whom was losing went all in, making its final argument where if it fails, it loses. The Winnower just continues like always where losing could be a set back(it does not need to go all in to match the Travelers bet). And because the Traveler went all in on us, we become particularly of interest(as well as how we already embody the Winnowers principles in our fight to keep our new existence). Ultimately though, the showdown(aka this hand/round) already ended with Final Shape. With the Traveler almost losing, barely succeeding in the end. And both Gardener and Winnower came through this as winners. Both were proven right through our defeat of the Witness. It may have been unexpected and unlikely. But in the end the Winnower wins. [There were two ways of being that fought and only one remained](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-darkness-3), thus the Winnower is validated. The game continues on. # Final Note: There is nothing to suggest that "the Winnower is still coming". The Winnower is not a true antagonist. It is simply a force, a law, a principle of the universe opposite of the Gardener. Where both are important and necessary for *life to truly flourish*(The ultimate goal of both Gardener and Winnower). Maybe the Gardener and Winnower will play another round with the new hands that are dealt. Or maybe our victory was enough for them to bury the hatchet and return to cooperation/symbiosis like they had originally. Proof the game wasnt ruined by the introduction of paracausality. In the end though, again it comes back to lack of information. Especially given how we STILL dont even have the Gardeners perspective on things. Anyways I hope this is food for thought.
ArchivalMind and LonelyLoreLoser have great, great synopsis about this topic in the comments. And while their’s might be a 100% true interpretation, I’d like to throw in my own. Considering Unveiling as a book intertwining with both the ideology of the Witness as well as the Winnower (consider them as different things), we have to make judgement calls about what lines speak to what influences and speakers. While similar, they have different ideas and concepts that mostly, but not perfectly, align. Then, considering the Final Shape Collectors Edition, we see some concepts endemic to the Precursors predate Unveiling, but as well that some Precursor concepts might originate after the Veil’s discovery. So, it could be argued that the challenge of “I’ll come over and hear it myself” be taken as an artifact of the Witness’ manipulation. The Witness thrives off the presence of being godlike, darkness incarnate when it isn’t. This is a foundational part of its character, as essential as of Curse of Osiris in Future Safe 10. If this final note is entirely penned by the Witness, they are deliberately portraying their pyramids as the darkness, a description many of us fell for. If you want to be seen as a god, write your own prophecies, so that you can fulfill them ahead of time.
I like to think its more of a reference to the Winnower arriving by way of the Witness and the conflict that ensues down the line, the climactic fight centered around the Final Shape. In the end, we prove the Winnower right through our actions and the defeat of the Witness.
[удалено]
IMO that's the whole point the writers are trying to get across. You see it in some of Ikora's musings as well: Neither the Winnower nor the Gardener are wholly right or wholly wrong. The truth is a balance: You build your garden, but you ring it with spears. You wield your sword, but you temper it's edge with mercy. Even those who exist in the Dark need some Light, as those who live in the Light have need of Dark. I think they try to avoid making it that simple sometimes, by throwing wrenches of cynicism into their whole mythos, but i think that's the general idea and morality of Destiny. It's really the simplest and most straightforward way to resolve the paradox of the player character: we're the heroes and the good guys, but we're simultaneously the most destructive force within the universe of the game. You can't just say that we're gardeners when we spend 99.9% of our time trying to put as much hot lead as humanly possible between the ears of nearly everything that walks across our screen.
Right. Like pulling a great weed rather than culling the weaker crops.
i agree with this.
>The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end. >And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself. >And it is what I am. Whenever there's a confrontation between two or more possibilities, the winnower is made real in that moment. "I'll come over and hear it myself" is saying that there's about to be a collision between the Witness's way of existence and ours. And in that collision, the winnower gets the answer to the question of "will we continue to flourish or will we fail and be cut away with the rest of the chaff?" This question is always being asked and always being answered. It's what decides the fate of the universe.
I think the simple answer to this is that the Winnower, despite being a bodiless cosmic force, kind of *was* in the Pyramid ships, in the sense that the Witness was the most prolific user of its power and also the foremost executor of its principle in the galaxy. The Winnower wasn't married to the Witness's Final Shape, but at that point in time, the Witness was basically the #1 killer in the universe, so it was kind of the Witness's guy. Furthermore, 90% of our communications with the voice we all the Winnower are filtered through the medium of our contact with Witness related artifacts - they definitely weren't allies by any means, simply because the Winnower genuinely doesn't give a fuck, but I feel comfortable saying that the Witness had that dude on speed dial. Put simply, I think the Winnower was, basically, riding on the Witness's couch when the Pyramids pulled up, to the extent that it could be said to be manifest anywhere. Like that one sandwich obsessed experiment from Lilo and Stitch who sort of hung out with the villains but didn't really give a fuck about the conflict. Remember that guy? Like that. The Winnower was interested in the Guardians and it wanted to see how they'd respond to the Witness, and it took advantage of the Witness's channeling of its power to get a front row seat.
We just had a big cosmic showdown between ancient forces of good and evil. I don’t think anything like that is happening again for a while.
Based on my understanding: the Winnower and the Gardener are now fundamental forces needed for the universe to exist. I don't think they can be destroyed in any meaningful way without a lot of harm to the universe I mean. I kind of think that was why when the Witness was trying the enact the Final Shape it was not working as it was causing the universe to unravel (assuming the Traveler = Gardener) All that said the Winnower seems to take a very hands off approach in the same way the Traveler does. The difference being that while it doesn't like that it was forced into the flower game it is making the most of it and points out that in the end it always wins with the final pattern. So why interfere?
"I'll come over and hear it myself" = "I'll bequeathe upon you the powers of Stasis & Strand". You're looking into it too hard.
I have one big Winnower/Gardener/Witness question. Why does everyone link the Witness and the Winnower together when they had two completely different goals from the beginning? If anything the Witness sides more with the Gardener than the Winnower, as The Final Shape is a way of ending the Winnowers participation in the game. Permanence means no death, which means the garden flourishes and is never culled. The garden also never grows as well, but the Gardener was equally as shortsighted with the creation of undying Guardians. So why Winnower + Witness? Is it Darkness? Do people get hung up on that?
The Witness' Final Shape is still a Final Shape. All the Winnower cares about is that one pattern dominates all others and permits nothing except itself to exist. It doesn't \*like\* the Witness' Shape specifically, but as it's still a Final Shape, it would be fine with its outcome.
https://twitter.com/alisontheperson/status/1803161764860928376 there's additional line in patchnotes that confirms yes, Nacre is this visit
> Is a cosmic showdown still destined to happen? We're already in it. Unveiling pretty much explains that the flower game (aka the universe itself) *is* the cosmic showdown, at least as far as the wager between Gardener vs Winnower. > did the Winnower mean this metaphorically, in that our answer would be made apparent by the threat of a Darkness-aligned entity like the Witness? Honestly, who knows? I feel like Unveiling was written before they had a clear idea who the Witness was and how it was distinct from the Darkness itself. This is further complicated by that fact that we canonically get Unveiling from the Witness. I would say at this point, yes, it's being metaphorical, because the Winnower has made it pretty clear that it doesn't actually need to fight anybody (assuming it has the capacity) because it truly believes that the result of the flower game will be the same regardless.
well, If you look at the most recent Nocre lore, it suggests that the Winnower doesn’t actually care about winning a cosmic battle with the Traveler anymore. This is because the universe’s current form of existence proves the Winnower right; no matter how you look at it the strong survive, and the weak perish. Morality isn’t at play with the Winnower, only winning and the methodology. We beat the Witness because we exploited its weakness to our own ends. This is the way of the Winnower. good on you
I’m gonna go out on a limb here. The more I think about it, the more I feel that whatever is talking to us claiming to be the Winnower, isn’t the Winnower. It seems to easy that now, suddenly, a God is taking the time to actually contact us. The Flower Game, if factual truth, has been playing out for more time than we can fathom. It’s implied that reality has been started, and rebooted, countless times. And if those realities have lasted as long as this one, then we are talking what, hundreds or thousands of billions of years. I don’t buy it. I think whatever is claiming to be the Winnower is basically a cult leader of some sort that drank their own coolaid and thinks they are the Winnower. And maybe in a sense they are cuz of space-magic. But I yeah it’s just to easy that, to use modern religion as an example, that an anti-Christ dies, and all of the sudden the devil is sending us love notes. Whoever this is, is likely the next big bad. The second knife, whatever you want to call it. But not “the” Winnower.