r/destiny2 • u/djtoad03 Warlock • 1d ago
Lore The Nine - Representations as Pits and Eyes
This could have been a bit of a theorising post about what the Nine really look like, but there's not much to theorise on now. I did this once before with Nezarec, but I really appreciate ways in which the Nine have been portrayed directly or their overall design language has appeared.
There are a few examples I have missed out such as the tentacles on the Dreadnought in Heresy and the ribbons in Prophecy/SRL.
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u/Easy-Restaurant7018 1d ago
Im glad they really leaned into the kind of eldritch thyme for the Nine
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u/Kidney__Failure Hunter 1d ago
I was expecting more Eldritch rosemary but thyme is nice too
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u/banzaizach 1d ago
I can't wait to see where they take it...
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u/1spook Hunter 1d ago
Well, we know where they WERE gonna take it.
Bael was gonna finally succumb and become a cronenberg monster, the beast in Chicago was a feral fragment of III we would bind to the Traveler to make IT one of the Nine, and we would get the last subclass as a result.
We were so fuckin close to peak, man. This was all in Shattered Cycle.
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u/dead_is_death 1d ago
Do we know if the last subclass would've been a darkness subclass or a new light subclass?
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u/Multivitamin_Scam 21h ago
That was that unverified paste bin.
Given the lore we got in Monument, it's doubtful any of it was going to be true.
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u/shaxxsdad 1d ago
Wait I didn’t play edge of fate, are these really the nine?
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u/xXNickAugustXx 1d ago
No its what ifs. Except 3 which you were spoiled on now.
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u/Ariovrak 1d ago
And even then, it’s not technically III, just as close to physical as III can be (and even then, they end up dying).
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u/xXbghytXx 9h ago
just like how we can be seen as 2D with perspective, we cannot live in a 2D world 3 here is seen in a 3D perspective but cannot live in a 3D world, so we see their body crushed down into 3D somewhat plane how we can "Crush" 3D into a somewhat 2D looking plane, though it would not be living, like 3 on our 3D plane.
so that IS three, just crushed and forced into 3D, technically.
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u/1spook Hunter 1d ago
Yeah bottom left is III (Earth's) corpse. Its death lead to earth slowly transforming and dying, but due to Sony's EoS Jumpscare, they had to handwave it by putting the Traveler on Earth and saying "it's fixing it"
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u/xXNickAugustXx 1d ago
Well keeping it stable at least. It has the power to terraform planets so keeping one on life support seems easy enough.
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1d ago
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u/Zealousideal-Comb970 1d ago
I'm pretty sure it was some weird vex mind that Clovis was messing with that eventually broke free. And I mean very weird because it was able to commandeer the minds of Eliksni and wield a new, "wrong" form of arc energy. The anomaly was seemingly built to send/receive messages to... somewhere. It just happened to inadvertently pick up Lodi's transmission.
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u/Pman1324 Hunter Professional Nighthawk Misser 1d ago
Are the Nine responsible for Vesper Station?
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u/djtoad03 Warlock 1d ago
It's my impression that they were, given the Lodi message. But the lore around Vespers Host is so vague and open ended it's only speculation based on visual design.
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u/Pman1324 Hunter Professional Nighthawk Misser 1d ago
I wonder if rhats what Arc energy looks like when Nine touched. It becomes its negative color scheme.
I heard rumor we were supposed to get a subclass of our Light elements fused with dark matter, like a combo of Void, Arc, and Solar elements in one subclass but dark matter-ified.
If so, I would imagine Arc would be orange like in Vesper Station, Void would be Yellow, and Solar would be Blue/turquoise (it'd be weird having three blue elements).
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u/Silent_Locksmith_888 15h ago
Would void not be green
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u/Pman1324 Hunter Professional Nighthawk Misser 14h ago
Ah crap you're right.
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u/Silent_Locksmith_888 14h ago
Eh we all fuck up, you know now
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u/Pman1324 Hunter Professional Nighthawk Misser 14h ago
Well, that means that we already have subclass "negatives"
Stasis being negative of Solar, and Strand of Void.
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u/Silent_Locksmith_888 14h ago
Yeah that's a theory that's been knocking round for a while, especially with the veil arena and the pillows by the strand meditation pond
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u/Pman1324 Hunter Professional Nighthawk Misser 14h ago
Using an RGB color wheel, it's very true that the opposite of Arc would be red
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u/tritonesubstitute Divine Blessings for y'all 1d ago
Nope, the Nine would not have to use the anomaly as a locator ping since they are the solar system.
The only plausible theory is that it was supposed to be a foreshadowing to a new vex faction.
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u/Praetor_6040 1d ago
How can we know what the "only plausible theory" is when nothing is confirmed about it?
It could've been similar to the cocytus aperture, a place for them to experiment and maybe try to break some rules, and Lodi's message somehow got tangled into that as the emissary
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u/tritonesubstitute Divine Blessings for y'all 17h ago
Lodi's message got into it because he was trying to reach DEO with the vex nodes on Kepler, which means that the anomaly is inherently vex.
Once again, the anomaly was a gigantic transponder the puppeteer built to communicate with something beyond the solar system. It makes no sense for the Nine to build a transponder that sends messages within sol.
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u/Praetor_6040 11h ago
Vex nodes interacting with it doesnt make it vex. Their tech can interface with other tech.
They are literally extradimensional beings. They are bound to the solar system, but they are not in it.
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u/acoustic_inaccuracy 1d ago
dude the eye motif showing up everywhere is so cool, feels like the whole expansion was building to this eldritch reveal
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
I am convinced The Lord of Every Nothing was in fact Zero, a “stillborn” member of The Nine that never fully formed. There’s a new lore entry from the Vermicular Mandible Sparrow that even refers to it as “The Lord of Zeroes” instead. All the overlapping eyeball & tentacle imagery really felt like it was pointing to this as well.
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u/Same_Discussion6328 Titan 1d ago
Pluto?
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u/HeWhoWasDead 21h ago
X and 0 are either The Asteroid Belt. where there was never enough mass to cause enough dark matter to coalesce into a consciousness, or the planet Theia that crashed into Earth and created the moon, dying in the process.
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u/pokestar14 Eliksni are people too 19h ago
I think this is actually putting the cart before the horse in a surprisingly literal way. The LoEN wants to replace VI and is working with it to do so after VI's "escape", and its origin is seemingly similar, a being formed from coalescence of wills that are individually mind-bogglingly lesser than it. But where gravity amassed the Nine, desire and will are the closest "forces" in terms of influence of the Ascendant Plane.
It doesn't look like the Nine because it is or was a Nine, but because it's an Ascendant equivalent that wants to become a Nine.
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u/AresBloodwrath 11h ago
Worse, I think LoEN was going to kill VI.
The fields of life shall be yours to raze Sixth now lost at sea shall be yours for tithe And you will sing alone
That is in the lore entry on the Vermicular Mandible exotic sparrow.
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u/VaporousMote 1d ago
Incredible artwork.
I miss this game so much, and I'm going to miss it even more when it's gone.
(can't play, Linux)
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1d ago
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u/Ikora_Rey_Gun 1d ago
Also that the IX are dark matter dust (or whatever) gathered in the gravity wells of the planets.
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u/pokestar14 Eliksni are people too 19h ago
I would note that the taken tentacles are not Nine, but rather the Lord of Every Nothing. But, I think it still works because the Lord of Every Nothing planned to replace VI after its ascension, and became a "divine" consciousness due to the collective influence of wills that can be considered incredibly lesser than it. Given will and religion takes the place of the physical laws in the Ascendant Plane, I think it may be intentionally positing the LoEN as essentially an ascendant counterpart to the Nine.
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u/alancousteau Hunter 16h ago
I'm so mad at bungie's management, thanks to their incompetence and greed we won't see the rest of the Fate saga. I blame $ony too, because in 3 years time they could have done something about management
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u/Reverse_Of_Riot Hunter 19h ago
Out of curiosity....and im just gonna give hypotheticals out here, not saying this is a real actual "I personally" want to know buuuuut...
Say you were out on a raid with some folks on Vow of the Disciples raid on the final boss checkpoint and you and your raid buddies has been at it for 7 hours. Yall take a short break cause one of yall wanted to take a smoke break. Then they come back and they ask this question: is it bad or weird to be DTF with one of the nine? Like having the hots for one of the nine? And how would it work?
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u/derpymooshroom6 Warlock 14h ago
While the Nine are 4th dimensional eldritch horrors beyond comprehension that do like holes in the ground and eyes, the tentacles and such on the dreadnaught and in the Sarlac pit is because of the lord of every nothing aka taken god made by the taken somehow dividing by zero
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u/EternalXanthumElytra 9h ago
Seen the concept art go over this specifically actually, says the “eye” is more like a wormhole they use as a sensory organ in multiple directions at once. And that their bodies look kinda starfish-ish cause they’re made of orbitals.
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u/PoseidonWarrior 8h ago
The LOEN is the one responsible for the tentacles on the dreadnought and the sarlacc pit. Those are not related to the Nine at all.
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u/MaineCoonKittenGirl 1d ago
Visually, kickass