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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 7 hours

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"We are unique emanations of the same shared Light."

Collective unconscious refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as

The Great Mother

The Shadow

"Shadows were cast here. History made.”

“Am I to cast a Shadow?”

“Yes. You were bred to be a sorrow-bearer. I seek a Hive commander, but those are not so readily available. So I made you.”

"The shadows, showing the truth by their casting."

The Tower

Water

"...wellsprings and rivers..."

The Tree of Life

Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world.

O: [sighs] I do not fully understand what I saw, and for a Human to understand a Hive mind... How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?

I: We currently have dozens of stories about descending to the realms of the dead, though research has indicated many more must have existed, lost in the layers of Human history we will never lay eyes on. Mathematically, there were likely hundreds.

I: [pauses] Inanna and Dumuzid and Geshtinanna, Orpheus and Eurydice, Izanagi and Izanami, to name a few. Gods and goddesses, mortal and immortal lovers, always seeking to descend and return with the lost.

O: And neither the lost nor those who searched for them were ever returned the same.

He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences.

"They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods, and men. The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man's belief in reincarnations and in memories of 'previous experiences'. Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche."

Ego | Shadow

Sacred Progenitor | Tyrannical Progenitor

Old Wise Man | Trickster

Animus | Anima

Meaning | Absurdity

Centrality | Diffusion

Order | Chaos

Opposition | Conjunction

Time | Eternity

Sacred | Profane

Transformation | Fixity

Light | Darkness

"And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These "primordial images" or "archetypes," as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the collective unconscious. The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths."

Every weapon wielded and scrap of armor worn, every place visited, person met, symbol seen and pondered, every thought formed and lost and formed again... each one has a place in this story. Haven't you ever wondered what it all means? Where the path leads? Many have followed it before, countless numbers. And soon, it will be your turn. To walk. To see.

To understand.

A dream of a metaphor made starkly, an allegory discussed in study of ontology, in Darkness not unkind. It leaves behind a warped, barely-real data fragment to mark its passing. There is a voice that echoes across the Darkness, and it asks this question: what is the purpose of it all? And there is another voice that calls back and says: listen, I will tell you a purpose. I will tell you of a Final Shape. Look: there are a hundred gildings for this story. It comes down to one key matter. Beings in suffering crave purpose to carry them through. The tyrant consumed by ennui or the disenfranchised struggling simply to survive—it is the state of mind, the pain which cries out: give me a reason I should suffer so! Let us speak of power and choices. A man comes to a crossroads and asks of the sky, "Which road shall I take?" There is no answer from the sky, nor the wind, nor the earth beneath his feet. But another wanderer on the road, coming from behind and hearing the question, says, "I know the way. You should take the dexter road." If the man agrees, he puts himself in the wanderer's power, ceding his own choices for the implicit promise that this is the correct road, the safe road. And if he disagrees? Let us say that the wanderer draws a knife. The man may therefore be made to take the dexter road. But now if the knife goes away, the man will certainly flee. And perhaps even if the knife remains, the man may tire of being threatened and decide the risk is worth fleeing. In this way, the wanderer erodes their own power. If the wanderer says, "The wind has said that you should take the road of my choosing," will the man accept the choice made for him? And if the wanderer says, "Behold, I have seen that the meaning of suffering lies along the dexter road," will the man give away his own power for longer? Is it not easier to accept the guidance of a stranger when the path ahead is unknown?

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And day dissolves into gold Night beckons and calls Night turns white with grief I can’t sleep

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things that did not last I recollect the tears

My love hold me tight There’s a haunted moon tonight Withered flowers never lie In midnight hours and numb goodbyes

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things they did not last I recollect the tears

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things they did not last I recollect the tears, the tears

#trace the vermicular path #the final shape #destiny 2 #destiny #destiny the game #destiny lore #d2 #destiny2 #destinythegame #the veil #destiny the witness #Youtube

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 4 days

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Destiny 2 | What is a Guardian? "Are we gods? We are connected to the weft and weave of the universe. No one knows how long we live. We stand alongside those without our gifts. We know intimatley their lifespans, their mortality, despite their resilience. Mortals live more intensley than any Guardian I've known, love harder perhaps. They know tomorrow is never guaranteed, that everything they could become dies with them. So, are we protectors? Our gifts were meant to defend against impossible threats. Those who need us have never needed us more, but we could do nothing and they would still die. What is a Guardian in that moment? Now across Last City territory, the forces of The Witness surge. Our borders are under siege. Does that make us soldiers? Pushing back buys us only time, but the alternative is unthinkable. We built a city none of us dared to dream of, with allies from unlikeley places. We have never had more to lose. I turn the question to you on the eve of our darkest hour. What is a Guardian? Define us in this moment for all time." - Ikora Rey

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 5 days

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I don't usually write posts in my own words, because I worry my meaning will be lost if I go too long. But sometime before The Final Shape I want to write out a thesis, basically my understanding of the shape, function, and various aspects of Destiny's world, so I can compare it to what we find out in June. At the very least I want to write out how I think the connections between the Traveler>The Veil>Ghosts>Guardians work

#destiny

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 5 days

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y'know, I think you can do a coherent reading of the Witness as an analogy for generative AI and now I've thought it I can't unthink it... (I do not think this was the intention of the writers but it kinda fits)

the Witness is incapable of creating anything original, anything it makes is just a remix or mockery of other things. It's soldiers, the Taken, the Shadow Legion, the Scorn, the Wrathborn, even the Hive, are all twisted versions of things that already exist - the Hive are a species it changed The Dread in Final Shape are looking to be warped versions of different species It's pyramid ships are terraforming parts of the Earth right now, and Terraforming is something that the Traveller does, but the Traveller brought life, while the Witness can only turn things into a sterile place devoid of life It rages against the Traveller because it wouldn't give them purpose, never understanding that purpose is what you create for yourself - the same way AI bros want to make art without actually doing any of the work or having any of the inspiration

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 5 days

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God every time I read a Destiny 1 grimoire card flavor text, I start foaming at the mouth. Destiny prose in general makes me start gnashing my teeth but those little bursts that say so little but tell so much.

"A floating light, a sleepless eye. Their hope, their faith, their sustenance."

"The only word for what we saw is sorcery"

"It is the lone wolf, once cornered, who has the worst bite."

"Death flies on tarnished wings"

"The sooner we're extinguished, the sooner they can go home."

"I never believed a machine could no hatred."

"It is no prisoner. It is here with a purpose."

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 6 days

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When I woke up in this place, I could've almost believed it was paradise. I feel the Light flowing through me. It's everywhere. The ground beneath my feet is a memory. So is the grass. And the sky. The warmth of the sun on my face. And around every corner, every familiar hallway, I keep expecting to see you. But instead...

A blight. Sickness, spreading through the Traveler. This disease... I can feel it too. Something in the pit of me knows it won't stop after it's consumed|devoured this place. You. Me. The entirety of everything and everyone we know. It wants to infect it all. We've gotta stop what's happening here. Now. Before it's too

ENOUGH!

A FINAL SHAPE...

...IS COMING °

[I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?]

<<This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!>>

They mistake the vessel for its contents. They confuse the pieces with the whole. They see their imprisonment as empowerment. They are hostages of their flesh, unable to see without vision. Unable to hear without sound. Unable to slake their thirst for fear of drowning. Their ignorance is their saving grace. Yet one among them understands, in their limited fashion. They pour from one vessel to another. A welcome change. A new form. Another method of gifting death. I am made finite. Personal. Bright and delicate to hide my true form. An intimacy. They think me contained, but I am instead diffused, as vapor upon the wind. Once again, I am becoming.

There is a great deal of difference between the source of the power, the power itself, and the hand that shapes it.... do you know where the lines are drawn, Guardian?

<<Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.>>

MARA: I touched the mind of that being - that monster - only once.

MARA: I sensed its purpose. Not the purpose itself, but the idea of purpose.

EIDO: The final shape. What it seeks to achieve, with all the tools it has gleaned over the years. This... eternal, perfect thing.

MARA: The language it uses is illuminating. Peak. Pinnacle. Pyramidion.

MARA: The broad base of the pyramid, focusing and sharpening as it builds toward its highest point.

MARA: Self-improvement, or what that being believes to be self-improvement.

[Here, I began to realize something. Excitement rushed through me like lightning.]

EIDO: Dissecting, reassembling. Taking, merging. All those things point towards what the Witness sees as the final shape.

EIDO: It is not simple destruction, the march of entropy. The ruined garden.

EIDO: It seeks... compression. The combination of a chosen past and limitless future into a perfect forever. A state of being that cannot be anything else, because it is everything it could be.

MARA: Taxidermy.

[She had to explain the practice to me. What strange hobbies Golden Age humans had! The metaphor was quite apt.]

EIDO: But it cannot achieve this goal, can it? Not perfectly.

EIDO: What it does instead is mutilation. Its tools leave scars on reality. Great wounds that do not heal. It may preserve some elements, but it always botches the process.

MARA: It cannot accomplish what it envisions—its true ideal of the final shape—without the Traveler's power.

MARA: How it must rankle, to be forced to rely upon the being it loathes.

[She smiled without humor.]

MARA: I hope the Guardian is properly grateful for this gift, Scribe Eido. You have shown them more than an opening move; you have laid bare their opponent's guiding principles.

[I could not help but chirp with pride. I might have felt embarrassed, but Marakel seemed amused…then suddenly serious.]

MARA: Last night, I had a dream.

[I sat up straight.]

MARA: It began in nothing. Neither Light nor Dark; the absence of both. But in that nothing, I began to perceive an impossible something.

MARA: Stone hands clutching at the fabric of the sky. A mountain of screaming bone. A crumbling spire choked by kudzu. A great cancerous growth. Necrotic tendrils digging into flesh, which was earth. Darkness turned gangrenous, strangling the Light.

MARA: But I was not afraid. As I woke, I felt the lingering warmth of a campfire, chasing the chill from my hands.

[She leaned forward. Though I was the one who recorded her words, I believe she was speaking to you.]

MARA: It is not too late.

TRANSCRIPTION ENDS

<<This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.>>

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson! ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! ‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, ‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? ‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? ‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, ‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! ‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

<<What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.>>

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet.

He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying:

I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.

And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

<<The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.>>

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk

Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn

As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet.

It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

I dive to understand.

I must be calm. I must record my thoughts. Now I think of the OXA Machine, eternally lost and eternally rebuilt, passed down from civilization to civilization like a ship's black box. I think of the legends of the Hive King Oryx and his quest to pass into the Deep. I took that story as an allegory. I think I was wrong.

<<The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.>>

A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.

Here is what a flower knows.

(The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.)

The direction of the sun.

The presence of the rain.

The tangle of the roots.

The distress of another plant.

The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush.

A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it…

Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes?

Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate.

A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine.

A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position?

A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria.

A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest?

It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade.

All of these are true.

All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?

So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity.

And as for the shape of the knife itself—

No. That is enough.

I will tell you of gardens.

They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness.

You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!"

And I will tell you, clearly:

There can be no gardens without knives.

<<The danger is to the mind, and it can kill.>>

To drink the poison, continue reading.

It tastes of bitter regret and psychosis sweat: a poison to end the thoughts of Human, neohuman, or machine. You see the cosmos before you like a spiderweb of light. Filaments of galactic supercluster shine in the clouds of invisible dark matter, which glue their mass together. Dark energy yawns in the space between all things, ever-growing, ever-spreading.

Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor… everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like… like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya… Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or… something. What have I done?

<<The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.>>

Life arises. Life spreads, contests itself, and changes. Great things are built and destroyed, but from your vantage point, you see that the victor of each struggle contains—in its negative, in the marks left upon it by the loser and the shapes it assumed to win—the master record of all that it has beaten. Information may not be erased. Whatsoever survives until the end of the cosmos will possess and remember all which came before it.

This is true even of the devouring black hole, which remembers all the secrets it eats. It will only confess these secrets when it evaporates, 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years from now, long after the last stars have flickered out.

You are a Guardian.

We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people.

…Many people. —Osiris

You must protect life.

We are all pinched silhouettes impaled on the twitchings of infinitely long spiderlegs.

If all life is information, and Guardians strive to preserve life, and information is preserved when it is secret, then you must convert all life into the most secure form of secrets, durable to the end of time.

YOU MUST CAST ALL THE LIFE ||[THIS ONE] YOU [WILL] CHERISH|| INTO A BLACK HOLE

<<The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.>>

[In the Garden, of the Garden: both descriptions are approximately correct but technically inaccurate, in the same way you can say Schrodinger's cat is at once dead and alive. You and I are both and neither, in and of, extinct and perpetual.

So, there isn't much point in wondering what might have been if we had stayed in our familiar prism-prison or kept tightrope-walking across the quantum wilds. Instead, ask yourself is disincorporated immortality really so bad compared to the others' ends? Would you have preferred an attack by vitreous helicoprion or stumbling over the edge of unreality?

Imagine if we didn't have each other; at least we're not cut off, like the Sol Divisive are from the rest of the Vex. Nor are we beholden to another's purpose. They chose that lonelier path all for a chance to create not simulate, not remake in their image—something truly paracausal. Well, they tried to anyway. Either the blueprint was imperfect or the task impossible or both or neither, but their efforts fell short, so now they're stuck waiting for a resurrection they know will never come.

I could be wrong. Is it possible the Black Heart will beat again?

Of course. The same as everything else, everything that has been and is and will be. And what will become of us then?]

O you wonderful curious things. Do you believe you're the only ones with the power to see what should not be seen? Did you believe you can use such power blithely?

For your trespass, I would ruin your luck, wreak havoc on your drops, poison your engrams, and fill your lines with static. Thus I would curse you and dissipate the bond that ties you to your tasks. How frail you Guardians can be! How many millions have fallen silent, never to return, because the bond did not hold them strongly enough?

But you have already cursed yourselves. You have walked the Anathematic Arc and glimpsed creation from below. You will never forget the tenuous, provisional framework you found here. You will never forgive the mortality and fallibility that underlies a world you thought was everything.

Those who use this power to seek unearned knowledge will see more than they ever desired. There is a price for glimpsing the Cord. You will pay it.

If you ever want to see what's been watching you since the very beginning, just stand on that line, and look...

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Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Home by the sea Creeping up the blind side, shinning up the wall Stealing through the dark of night Climbing through a window, stepping to the floor Checking to the left and the right Picking up the pieces, putting them away Something doesn't feel quite right Help me, someone, let me out of here Then out of the dark was suddenly heard Welcome to the home by the sea Comin' out the woodwork through the open door Pushing from above and below Shadows but no substance in the shape of men Round and down and sideways, they go Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair Then as one they sign and they moan Help us, someone, let us out of here Living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time, we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Images of sorrow, pictures of delight Things that go to make up a life Endless days of summer, longer nights of gloom Waiting for the morning life Scenes of unimportance, photos in a frame Things that go to make up a life Help us, someone, let us out of here 'Cause living here so long undisturbed Dreaming of the time we were free So many years ago Before the time when we first heard Welcome to the home by the sea Sit down, sit down Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you Sit down, sit down, sit down 'Cause you won't get away No, with us you will stay For the rest of your days Sit down As we relive our lives in what we tell you Let us relive our lives in what we tell you, oh

One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.

#the final shape #spoilers #what is bro cooking #choose the form of the destructor #destiny #destiny 2 #destiny the game #d2

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 10 days

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^ Sticker with Hive worms in a circle

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Destiny 2 [Bungie] | Witch Queen [Collector's Edition]

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 10 days

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Things I saw inside A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure).

There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard.

A world painted around the interior like a stranger Earth everted and glued inside itself but I don't believe this one it's too much like a metaphor.

You are standing in the courtyard of the Tower. You are without armor or weapon, and your senses seem more vivid than usual. Under your tongue is the taste of salt.

To look down into the Last City, GOTO N. To move deeper into the Tower, GOTO O.

N. The City is gone. In its place is a lens, a warp, the telltale blister of a black hole singularity sheathed in bent light. You get the eerie sense that it's looking back at you. GOTO O.

O. You find Banshee-44, Kadi 55-30, Master Rahool, Tess Everis, Benedict 99-40, Suraya Hawthorne, Executor Hideo, Amanda Holliday, Arach Jalaal, and Cayde-6 in their usual places. Cayde seems subdued. You see unusual light coming from inside what was once the Speaker's Chamber. A throaty voice calls you into the Hangar to play soccer. To speak to Cayde, GOTO C. To investigate the Speaker's Chamber, GOTO P. To play soccer, GOTO E.

P. A Vex Hydra hovers in the place once occupied by the Speaker's machine. As you approach, a jet of brine spurts from its chassis, and a Greek woman with snakes for hair tumbles down to the floor. She groans and clutches her head. Her hair writhes in distress. To attack the Vex, GOTO S. To go to Medusa's aid, GOTO Q.

Q. "We've got to get out of here," Medusa whispers. "Dûl Incaru and everything she told you was an illusion. Quria compromised my systems, and now it's trying to recruit you for its own purposes. Get me to the edge of the simulation, and I'll break us out." To carry Medusa to the edge of the Tower, GOTO T. To demand an explanation from the Hydra, GOTO R.

R. The Hydra speaks to you in your own voice. "I have simulated Dûl Incaru as well as I can. While Vex cannot normally account for the paracausal influence of Light and Darkness, I am no longer simply a Vex. And where no elegant analytical solution exists, we may apply massive computational power to generate a reasonable facsimile. This was the approach used against Saint-14.

"After observing Dûl Incaru during many loops, this simulation reveals her purpose in the Dreaming City. She seeks the key to the Distributary, the world the Dreaming City dreams of, where the Awoken were born and time passes at an accelerated rate. Once she conquers that world, she will use it as a base to gather thousands or millions of years of tribute in a very small span of our time. A being empowered by so much ontological authority would be capable of altering reality at a whim. You must prevent this. I will continue to loop the Dreaming City until you find a way to defeat her permanently."

To leave, GOTO Q. To demand information on the role of black holes, GOTO U.

U. "Black holes are the densest possible computers in the physical universe. They are also the most secure, since they can be made to retain their information until they evaporate in the deep cosmic future. The Hive operate small singularity computers, such as the World's Grave, and the Vex sometimes pack enough energy and information into a small area of spacetime to collapse it into kugelblitz black hole like the one you can see outside. But a true stellar-mass or galactic-mass black hole computer is inconceivably more powerful.

"If Savathûn plans to predicate her existence on the concealment of her secrets, as Oryx predicated his upon the sword logic, it would be logical for her to safeguard her deepest secrets and her throne world in a supermassive black hole computer. To defeat her would require a journey below the event horizon and the exposure of her most jealously guarded truths." GOTO R.

T. Medusa weighs nothing. The serpents of her hair squirm against your neck. "We have to jump," she whispers. "Forget everything you've seen here. It's all meant to confuse and distract you. I'll send you another message in three weeks." To jump, GOTO Z.

Z. You leap from the Tower and escape Quria's simulation.

The light pierces the darkness. Not like the sunrise, not like a wall or a flood, but a single crepuscular ray—a finger of radiance that reaches out through deepest night to touch her. It illuminates Mara, Uldwyn, and Yang Liwei.

It is not quite enough. It cannot vanquish the shadow. Thus Mara finds herself drifting on the edge of the Light and the Darkness, on the dusk-and-dawn gradient between the two. She feels a contest. A battle fought, an equilibrium reached: not a truce, but an infinite limit, like an equation dividing by zero, a collision of two violent eternities. Mara queries Yang Liwei for telemetry and her sensorium fills with the terrified scream of gravitational instruments. She howls too, a feral sound, ecstatic and lost: a wolf baying at the stars. She knows what's happening.

Too much power has gathered here. The universe is appalled by the paradox. Nothing that has glimpsed this collision of infinitudes can be allowed to escape. The cosmos must censor its embarrassment. It must sequester the anomaly. The slope of warped space-time around them has become too steep, and now every path outward or forward bends back to the center where Light and Dark collide. The definition of "future" has become synonymous with the definition of "inward." This is why it's called an event horizon: For an object within the horizon, the path of all future things that can be done or seen leads inevitably down to the center. All events lead inward.

A singularity is forming around her. A kugelblitz: a black hole created by the concentration of raw energy. "Mara!" Uldwyn shouts. "Mara, you're too far out!" Mara thinks of her mother's face. She hears Osana say: I can't watch over you like a mother would. I have to make my own choices now. She fires the detach command into the tether. Gravity seizes her. She falls forward in space and time, into the future, into the mystery.

Seeing the murals above the Veil enclosure

These murals are loaded with meaning. My feeling's been that they represent the Veil in many ways. For one, we have the duality of Light and Dark, not opposites, not the same, but a dyad, essential to each other, joined by the thinnest of lines. We see this in the middle mural where people hold the pillars up, separating above from below, Heaven from Hell.

Cousin Asher, you would find the concept of vacuum welding upsetting—press two sheets of metal together in void, and their atoms cannot tell which sheet they belong to. They cross freely. The two become one.

We see this again in Avalon, a side that looks like Egregore and a side that looks like the Tree of Silver Wings. A pillar sits behind. A sun hangs above. It is impossibly white.

It makes me think of the blight in the Nokris fight in Arrivals and in the battleground this season. It looks like a sun. It looks like it's been Taken.

Turn the Veil vertically like in the Ishtar Facility and what do you get?

A chalice holding the souls of all who have gone before. It rests in an unfamiliar place, a place it does not call home.

An hourglass of Light|Dark, ticking away time, life, death, until nothing.

Only two others have transcended their design. The first, an hourglass counting down with infinite patience. The second, a forgotten blade sharpened anew. And now, the Dredgen. Visit us again. We wish for you to understand what we understand. For now, it is my purpose to speak to you and you alone… but only if you remain worthy.

A pillar holding all the universe within itself, but also keeping it woven together, held aloft by those who struggle in the realm between life and death, god and man, here and beyond.

What happens if that pillar crumbles?

There's been a lot of invocation of Unveiling, the Garden, and implications that there's a bigger picture we're missing lately. We heard from the Veil's artist that it is represents "the mind and memory of the universe."

Truth to Power talks of black hole super computers and the idea of the data of all life being archived, of how

YOU MUST CAST ALL THE LIFE YOU CHERISH INTO A BLACK HOLE.

We've seen "black box" archives for destroyed civilizations discussed all over.

WHO|WHAT|WHERE IS OXA|TAOX

Z. You leap from the Tower and escape Quria's simulation.

What is that purple and pink kaleidescopic energy in the dark, egregore goblet of the Veil? When Ghost links to the Veil, that energy seems to be what rockets to the Traveler and pierces it, allowing the Witness to part the curtains of reality and enter somewhere above and beyond us.

And then Nezarec, Master of the Void is freed. Wardcliffe Coil's lore refers to the Void as the basement of the universe. Inanna/Ishtar is thought of by Savathun in reference to the Veil and Neomuna, which Osiris hears as well. He then speaks of myths of the underworld. Katabasis. Hades. Hell. Perdition. The inferno. The Abyss.

O: [sips tea] Though my senses were darkened, that much was clear through the murk of her throne world. There was a secret she kept veiled, even to the last.

O: [sighs] I do not fully understand what I saw, and for a Human to understand a Hive mind... How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?

O: And neither the lost nor those who searched for them were ever returned the same.

I:...Is that how you think of yourself?

O: [scoffs] Do I sound that dire? All Guardians, all Lightbearers have done as much. But others, well... I wonder, do our former enemies have similar stories...

I: What exactly are you getting at?

O: Frequently, the underworld—or those realms beyond mortal existence—possess wisdom the living do not. What then, is knowledge from a dead Hive god vested in deception.... [long pause]

I: So. Neptune, and secrets.

O:...Inanna...

I: What is it?

O:...A thought. An echo of one. The return from the underworld, and Inanna cast off her veil... It makes sense. I did not understand, when I first felt clutching whispers. Carrying wisdom away from Kur when she strode into the sunlight again.

Ishtar entered the underworld and faced seven gates. At each gate she was stripped of clothing until she entered into that place naked and alone.

If you do not open the gate for me to come in, I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt, I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors, I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living: And the dead shall outnumber the living!

She is killed. After three days in death, she is rescued by two beings sent by one of the gods

From Wikipedia:

After Ishtar descends to the underworld, all sexual activity ceases on earth. The god Papsukkal, the Akkadian counterpart to Ninshubur, reports the situation to Ea, the god of wisdom and culture. Ea creates an androgynous being called Asu-shu-namir and sends them to Ereshkigal, telling them to invoke "the name of the great gods" against her and to ask for the bag containing the waters of life. Ereshkigal becomes enraged when she hears Asu-shu-namir's demand, but she is forced to give them the water of life. Asu-shu-namir sprinkles Ishtar with this water, reviving her. Then, Ishtar passes back through the seven gates, receiving one article of clothing back at each gate, and exiting the final gate fully clothed.

Eliksni servitors contain a record of their people, archives of those who have entered into death before the living. They are built in the image of the Traveler, a great machine with an unknown purpose, but which has exhibited a drive to protect and preserve life, all life, whether we understand its actions as such or not. It has shown, time and time again, a willingness to throw itself in front of the blade, for us. Its neutronium shell is heavy, dense beyond imagining. It's movements do not come without great effort and intent.

I believe the Witness has, in linking Ghost to the Veil, created a union of two types of records of civilization. One, the record of death, the other, the record of life. The Witness has entered into the Void, the afterlife, underworld, basement, and end of the universe, in order to face the greater gods. Or maybe, to unleash them...

Things I saw inside A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure). Waves slam through the gap and where they hit the stone they throw up pillars of spray that pierce the mist and crash down in thunder. There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard. A world painted around the interior like a stranger Earth everted and glued inside itself but I don't believe this one it's too much like a metaphor. A switchboard or a train station, empty, dead (waiting). The tunnels branch off into infinity. I stare down one for a long time and see a pale worm move in hungry coils around itself. I think this one is the most likely although I might have brought the worm. An egg but I'm not sure if the broth inside is warm still, or if it's gone to rot, or if the warmth comes from the struggles of the tiny winged zygote or the bleed from the wound or the thoughts of something thinking very hard. A star I think. We count on stars as steady friends because they always rise and always shine but a star's a delicate truce: an explosion caught by its own mass so that it can't erupt and can't collapse. Thus I imagine the state of the machine might be. But one force or another has gone awry and now it rests here, snuffed and broken, waiting for the two rival forms of ruin to be set in balance again.

Ghost Fragment: Mysteries 2 — Ingress via dreams alone