The Nine are a mysterious group who inhabit the Jovian worlds. Jovian worlds refer to the gas giants Jupiter, other gas giants, and their moons. They're also called outer planets, or outer worlds. How do we know this? Well in his visits to the Tower, Xur, Agent of the Nine makes several remarks about the planets to suggest that they are where he calls home. [quote]These inner worlds are very strange.[/quote] [quote]The pull of the outer worlds is so faint here. The sun is so heavy.[/quote] Because of the Awoken, we also know the Nine control Rhea, a moon of Saturn, a Jovian world. [quote]"More of your brother's Crows have entered the Cauldrons of Rhea." The Witch directly before her spoke with a dry buzz. "The Nine do not approve." She stopped a moment to study the sealed face of a cell. The cloud of her breath mingled with the slow exhalation of cryonics. "Send them one of our prizes. Something to commemorate our mutual victory. (Ghost Fragment: The Queen)"[/quote] From the last quote, you can tell the Nine have a relationship with the Awoken. This is further supported by Variks. [quote] Why do the Awoken whisper to the stars and listen for the whisper back, the voices from the Jovians, the song in the dark? (Skolas: Defeated)[/quote] [b]Basics are out of the way, let's tackle the identity of the Nine.[/b] We know there were Jovian colonies of humans back in the Golden Age. [quote]Lord of worlds, massive Jupiter and its moons must have been a cornerstone of Golden Age civilization. But the nature and extent of human presence there is now unknown. Old records refer to cities in ice and world-spanning oceans. (Jupiter)[/quote] Xur says interesting things in his visits. In one quote, I believe he is talking about the fall of the Golden Age Jovian human colonies when the Darkness attacked the system. [quote]we saw the colony fail...not knowing what we saw.[/quote] He also mentions that the Jovians had a choice that the Awoken were never given. [quote]The Awoken did not make a choice...but we did.[/quote] A choice about what? Well let's examine what happened to the Awoken. The Darkness, or something related to the Darkness bonded to them and changed them to what they are now. Queen Mara Sov even says her father was the dark. [quote]"I am noble too, oh Lord of Wolves. Starlight was my mother; and [b]my father was the dark[/b]." (The Queen)[/quote] [quote]Inside me was an essence woven from beyond. Was I Awoken before this? [...] My soul lay between those two entities. And that’s how I am still: The boundary, the seam. (Ghost Fragment: Awoken 3)[/quote] So the Jovian colonists willingly accepted bonding with this dark alien entity. This fits perfectly with one of the possible identities of the Nine proposed in another card. [quote]The Nine are survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival. (Ghost Fragment: Legends 2)[/quote] Further support that they are bonded to something of the Darkness, Xur feels pain from being in the presence of Light. [quote]So much Light here, I suppose I feel pain.[/quote] The Nine are not merely Awoken though, as they have radically altered their bodies to better survive in the the Jovian worlds. [quote]Some of this bodies ancestors where born on this world but we were [b]greatly changed to live in the outer worlds[/b].[/quote] If these changed Jovians are the Nine, then why the name The Nine? It could simply be that the Jovian government is an oligarchy ruled by nine individuals; perhaps because they are the most powerful. In the Tower, Xur states that the Nine are very large, but not in a way that he can explain, so perhaps he is not talking about physical size, but large in terms of paracausal abilities. I have a guess that it might be because the nine leaders share a hivemind, so their minds and powers are pooled into one large collective. Hiveminds are not much of a stretch if you consider that the same power that changed the Awoken made the Nine, and that the Awoken have mental powers (whispering to the stars and getting answers from the Jovians and the dark). [quote]The Nine are very large... I cannot explain. The fault is mine.[/quote] *Paracausal: beyond material physics and cause/effect. Usually thought of as "magic" like Darkness and Light ([url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/170958432/0/0]more on that here[/url]). [b]The Harbingers and The Ageless War[/b] They are some sort of minds used as weapons; these were used by the Awoken in the battle against Oryx. [quote]Harbinger Minds they kept here, trophies from an ageless war, and weapons in the right hands. (The Coven)[/quote] I hypothesize that the Harbingers truly exist beyond the veil, and that they don't have a physical existence in our universe, (hence why they are referred to as just minds). The lack of physical body makes sense given how they need to use dead things to reproduce. The dead things could to act as vessels for the beings lacking bodies. [quote]The Harbingers, which to prepare?” [...] “All but one, the oldest. It stays with us. Sedia, Kalli, Shuro, take the children, tell her they are to be planted into a dead thing to have children of their own.” (The Coven)[/quote] Now what ageless war do the Awoken speak of? It can't be against the House of Wolves, because the "trophies" implies that they were taken from the enemy, but the Wolves never had the Harbingers. It isn't a war against the Darkness itself because the Reef has been mostly ambivalent, and have not taken sides in favor of light or Darkness (according to the Exo Stranger) until fairly recently. The most likely candidate for the Awoken's enemies in the ageless war, and the original owners of the Harbingers, might be... [i]the Nine[/i]. It makes sense given the physical proximity of the Reef to the Jovian worlds the Nine rule, and the Nine also seem to exist beyond the veil, as they live in another world, and are vulnerable in ours. [quote]He says the Nine are vulnerable ever moment they touch our world. (Brother Vance dialogue)[/quote] Interestingly, I have reason to believe the Darkness itself at least partially exist beyond the veil, which might explain why the Nine exist beyond the veil. More on the veil and the Darkness in [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183462595/0/0]here[/url]. The Reef is located between Mars and Jupiter, so the relative closeness makes sense for war. I don't know when the ageless war ended for sure, but it must have ended before or during the war with the House of Wolves, because the Nine joined the Awoken in fighting the Wolves. [quote]"Send them one of our prizes. Something to commemorate our [b]mutual victory[/b]." "And which of your prisoners would you gift?" If she paused to think it was only for an instant. "Send them Skolas." (Ghost Fragment: The Queen)[/quote] [b]The Dark Traveler[/b] Xur mentions that the Traveler has a dark mirror, which suggest that there is a Traveler out there going around spreading the Darkness. [quote]Your traveler has a dark mirror.[/quote] How does Xur know this? I suspect because this dark Traveler is the one who offered the Jovians a chance to become changed by the Darkness. We already established that the Nine and the Jovians are bound to Darkness, but Darkness is a primal force of destruction. Primal forces don't make deals or negotiate, but an intelligent entity carrying the power of the Darkness can. I believe this dark Traveler to be such an intelligent being wielding Darkness. The Nine possess extremely powerful technology; they have time-bending materials, and their technology is so advanced that it makes our exotic gear appear as trash by comparison. This suggests that much like our Traveler brought a Golden Age, so too has their dark Traveler elevated them. [quote]Slivers of glassy material that appear to alter the flow of time around them. Said to be used by the Nine to transform the properties of Exotic gear. (Glass Needles item description)[/quote] [quote]I am merely a trash collector for the nine (Xur dialogue)[/quote] This Dark Traveler might have been spotted by an exo on an moon of Jupiter. Something tore a hole in Jupiter. [quote]Up in the sky there is a hole in Jupiter and it tears at me when I look at it. It tears at me. It is hungry. (Ghost Fragment: Exo 2)[/quote] [b]The Motive[/b] If the Nine have been turned by the dark Traveler, why would they sell us items helping us fight the Darkness? I don't know for sure, but I have some guesses. 1) Servants of the Darkness compete against each other for supremacy (Oryx vs his sisters in the Books of Sorrow, etc). We have been fighting servants of the Darkness (the Hive and Vex), not the Darkness itself, so they might be using us to eliminate their competition for them. 2) Whatever dark purpose they're using the strange coins for outweighs the help we get from the "trash" exotics they sell us. 3) They might be rebelling against the Darkness. [b]In Summary[/b] A dark Traveler gave the Golden Age human colonies of the Jovian worlds a choice: join or die. The Jovians joined. The Jovians were changed by the Darkness of this dark Traveler, and this lead to the emergence of the Nine, leaders wielding great paracausal power. The Nine engaged in a war with the Awoken, but their war must have ended by the time the House of Wolves became a threat because he queen and the Nine fought and defeated the Wolves together. ([b]EDIT:[/b] Running out of space. short bonus [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183959256/0/0][b]here[/b][/url]. [i]Skolas was freed by the Nine[/i]) [b]For more theories by me, I refer you to the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183288968/0/0]Collected Treatises of The Warlock KAGEHOSHI[/url].[/b]