[b]WARNING:[/b] [i]this post contains spoilers from Forsaken and the Season of the Drifter. You have been warned.[/i] For more of my posts, check out my [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/228191135/0/0]Master Post[/url]. With the arrival of the Season of the Drifter, new lore has been released regarding the Nine. This lore speaks of what the Nine are. [b]But this was not the first time we were told what the Nine are.[/b] In reality, it was already revealed to us when Forsaken was released. The rest of this post explains how we first learned what the Nine are. If you haven’t read the new lore about the Nine, one of the pages that explains their existence is in the spoiler below. I suggest you read the whole Book: Dust. If you want to check it out now, here’s a link to it in the [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/book-dust?highlight=Dust]Ishtar Collective[/url]. [spoiler][b]Book: Dust The Nine[/b] I am. I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I. At first this is all the loop of dust can calculate. It is the hardest thing in the universe for the dust to make a loop at all, because, like a gust of wind or a river, it was only meant to move one way. For a mind to function, the end of one thought must alter the beginning of the next: so, like rivers, like wind, the Nine could not have minds until they could make loops. Lavinia Garcia Umr Tawil comprehends the Nine. They were already ancient when the first human beings named themselves. Their flesh was older than stars: the dark dust wind that blows through the galaxy, pinched by the gravity of Sol and its planets, drawn into their cores and exhaled again. These were the Nine. In time loops did form. Great arcs of outbound dust collapsed back to their sources to create circuits of shadow. The thickening and thinning of these circuits were the first thoughts of the Nine. They dwelt in massive indifference, unborn primordial gods. There was no force among them except gravity; no structure except the distribution of mass. Their hearts were in the cores of worlds, but their farthest streams faded out into the turn of the galaxy. They were the fountains of Achlys, the night before chaos. But life arose on the worlds at the heart of the Nine, tiny complicated motions of ecosystems and metabolisms and computations. That life left mass-shadows in the wind of the Nine, plucking at them like harp strings. From these trembles of structure the Nine learned to seed enormous resonating waves, thoughts vaster than worlds. So the Nine awoke. And in time they understood that they were as fragile as they were mighty; for if the life that seeded their thoughts ever passed away, they too would vanish. They had no eyes to catch light. They had no ears to hear. And yet they turned their wills upon the alien world of Matter, and strove to learn, for they knew they had to protect their hearts, or die. With a horror of revelation so absolute that it would drive her mad if she still had sanity to lose, Lavinia understands where the Nine have always been. They are within everyone, every system, every living and moving thing. Trillions and pentillions of slim dark matter tentacles plunged through all our bodies, drinking up the complexity of our lives and thoughts. We are all pinched silhouettes impaled on the twitchings of infinitely long spiderlegs.[/spoiler] This came as a big revelation to the lore community. But this is not the first time we have been told what the Nine are. When Forsaken released, the Dreaming City Book fell into our hands. This is one of the pages: [spoiler][b]Book: The Dreaming City Oracle[/b] There came a morning when the Techeuns spoke in unison, though none were near each other, and they said, ++WHO ARE YOU WHO BUILDS A HIDDEN CITY HERE IN OUR THOUGHTS?++ And Mara, alone in the Queenswalk of the Dreaming City, heard their voices ring out as if each Witch stood beside her, and she said to the empty air, "I am Mara Sov. Who are you?" The answer came at once, ++WRONG! IT IS THE EKPYROSIC. WE ARE THE NOTHING-SPACE FABRIC.++ Hearing this, Mara recognized a riddle. She turned at once and left the Queenswalk so that Riven would not be inspired. As she walked, she thought. At length she said, "Wrong. You are the Ancients. You are the idea that gives fate its shape." That one-voice came again, as clear and strong as the birth of the universe, booming with dispassionate curiosity, ++IT THINKS ITSELF WISE! HOW DID SOMETHING LIKE IT ATTAIN SUCH REVELATION?++ Mara lengthened her stride, taking the steps three at a time so that she could duck into a little-used transport gate. She emerged in a small coastal observatory—then nothing more than a grand dormitory—and found Kelda Wadj, the Allteacher, hovering four feet off the ground. Blood poured from her ears and nostrils. Her eyes saw nothing. The other Techeuns were transfixed thusly in a geometric array around the Dreaming City—each one inert, suspended, bleeding. Mastering her horror, Mara said, "I have lived alongside you." And because she was afraid for Kelda, she asked, "Do you intend violence?" At once, the Techeuns collapsed to the ground like marionettes from severed strings—all but Kelda Wadj, whose augment blazed with coruscating light. She rose higher into the air and began to unravel, particle by particle. As she came undone, she said, ++NOW IT INSULTS US.++ Mara steeled herself against the horrific sight of her old friend's ruin. She had been a fool to think the riddling was over. She said, "Of course." Violence, after all, is a matter of perspective. "What I mean is, what would you ask me?" Beloved, wise Kelda Wadj burst apart and then collapsed all at once into a singularity that burned and burned and burned but destroyed nothing around it. From her un-throat came the voice again, which Mara felt in the atomic marrow of her bones, and it said, ++WHAT WOULD IT ASK US?++ For fifteen days and fifteen nights, the singularity burned unshielded. On the sixteenth day, they began construction of the Oracle Engine, which took the singularity of the Allteacher as its seed-heart.[/spoiler] When this was first released, I didn’t understand it. I thought the Techeuns were just being…weird, like usual, I guess. After all, the making of the Dreaming City involved a lot of bizarre things. It was confusing to me, driving me crazy. But the new lore on the Nine has revealed the true nature of this page. [quote]”Great arcs of outbound dust collapsed back to their sources to create circuits of shadow. The thickening and thinning of these circuits were the first thoughts of the Nine.” “There was no force among them except gravity; no structure except the distribution of mass. Their hearts were in the cores of worlds, but their farthest streams faded out into the turn of the galaxy.” “That life left mass-shadows in the wind of the Nine, plucking at them like harp strings. From these trembles of structure the Nine learned to seed enormous resonating waves, thoughts vaster than worlds.”[/quote] The Nine are dust, dark matter. Their hearts are the planets and the solar system, and their thoughts were born from the ripples caused by life. [quote]”++WHO ARE YOU WHO BUILDS A HIDDEN CITY HERE IN OUR THOUGHTS?++”[/quote] This was when the Nine first spoke to Mara, after she built the Dreaming City in their “thoughts”, as their minds and flesh are the dust that flows through the galaxy. They spoke to her through the Techeuns. And when Mara asked who they were, they answered. They directly told her what they are. [quote]“WE ARE THE NOTHING-SPACE FABRIC.++”[/quote] So we already had our answer when Forsaken was released, even if we didn’t realize it. It‘s not nearly as elaborated or coherent as in the pages from the Dust Book, but it was the answer we’d been waiting for this whole time.