"Now I am abundant with Light: it fills the empty hollow where a worm once burrowed". That's not the Winnower. But it IS the person talking to us in the Nacre lore. 😇 👍💠 You inspired me @ivbrodie86, thank you... I think I'm going to do a separate dedicated post. I posted all the lore and links in your topic... the issue with the "scholars"... is the charge they've tried to put on me. They exclude the evidence that defies their poor assumptions. That's why I waited on the ship lore. Nacre is connected "My Beloved" to the lore entry in [url=https://www.destinypedia.com/Lore:Chirality#Old_Friend.2C_Beloved]"Chivality"[/url] titled as such, and the two from [url=https://www.destinypedia.com/Lore:Inspiral]"Inspiral".[/url]

Well the Traveler won that game then. Brightdust for everyone!!!

Its all based on what writers are there.

*[i]Spinfoil[/i]

"With the confirmation that The Winnower exists....". When? Or do you mean per the metaphor? In "Inspiral"? [i]"Winnowing 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".[/i] Whoever wields the knife... Whomever carries the light bright enough to burn out the rot... It's been different things. In the iterations where Maya resisted, as an example, it was the Witness. The Gardener and Winnower are manifestations of force... forces in this "Endlesse Night". Who is the blade? Who will oppose the Gardener? [spoiler]Us. We're the Winnower. [/spoiler] If the light wins. This is the "confirmation". [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGfaqm_7le8]"Fear the truth you claim to seek. Look beyond the dying garden... or rot in entropy. Each child we save from the game, you again force to play. You call us "Winnower". We are not... but the 1st knife clutched in its hand. God forged us both. But they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve".[/url] ".... the daughter's blood scabbed hard on mother's wound...." 'Look beyond the dying garden'... [Accept my gospel... this is from Genesis]... "or rot in entropy". "There is only suffering". Suffer in entropy. Uncertainty. Disorder. Accept your fate. What did Cayde say? Not, "Guardians make their own fate". We always think it's about us. "Maybe, I'll get it right this time". That's the line worth remembering. Let's continue deconstructing the "confirmation". Remember what Ikora said... the Witness will tell us the lies we want to hear. What did he promise Crow? What did the Witness say to us? "Each child we save from the game, you again force to play". Talking about the flower game. That's why I started with the lore from "Inspiral". The flower game isn't real. It's a metaphor to explain the "causality dilemma"... i.e. the campier analogy "the chicken or the egg". In the Garden of Eden the "Tree of Life" represented Free Will... I guess, there's an immediate contradiction as God is supposed to be omnipotent. Regardless, it is the symbol for the derivative conceit known as "sin". The wellspring of good and evil based on choice. This is the conduit for which original sin was derived, it's was God's fruit, the serpent that tempted Eve lived in the Tree of Life. Likewise, in mythology there is Gaia, the Tree of Life... more importantly the Tree of Woe. It was the tree Prometheus was chained to for giving the power of the Gods to humanity. Kinda like the "light" In Destiny we're talking about the Tree of Silver Wings... or "White"... silver feathers from the gown of the progenitor creating the branches of paracauasality that define the Tree of Silver Wings. Paracausality is indistinguishable from causality within in an instance of special relativity, within a simulation. "Each child we save from the game, you again force to play". The Witness is talking about the Endless Night. It's talking about us. Or rather the force that drives us... the facsimile of causality... "paracausality". The artificial "light" the Gardener created. There WAS no light here. Until Cayde... finally got it right. "You call us "Winnower"". The Witness means "Darkness"... the opposition to the "light". What the Witness is reinforcing ... is that good vs. evil is a construct. What's the difference between a "weed" and a "flower"? Is a pruning shear that cuts out rot and disease... evil? Is the sun... that winnows the weeds evil? We've been living existence, wiped of our memories... in "entropy", over and over... "there is only suffering". "Fear the truth you claim to seek". This is a warning, the Witnesses' demise was inevitable... warning us of the Gardener. "We are not... but the 1st knife clutched in its hand. God forged us both". Not we are not the personified force called the "Winnower". That nuance is important. Whomever IS... Or wields the blade. The Witness was... but the 1st Knife. Speaking to the force of opposition respective the facsimile known as paracausality... we call it the "light". "God forged us both". Both... not the Witness and the Winnower. I mean in a way, yes. The Witness and us. We're the other party referenced in "both". We're the knife. We're the opposition force to paracausality and the Gardener. We've transcended the restrictions of the simulation's constructs when the light came through Cayde for the very first time into our ghost. What Prismatic represents is our Guardians picking up the blade, seeing paracausality for what it is... darkness through the looking glass of our cruel mistress. The big bad is the White Lady... the "Gardener". And if a Winnower exists? [spoiler]That's us. [/spoiler] Finally, "But they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve". Don't be fooled. That's what the Witness is saying. Luzaka... presents this one as an ally, "This one is not your enemy". By proxy, insofacto... her retainer, the Gardner, is not our enemy. That is a lie. We are the Knife. Ask yourself, why should we disregard all our past knowledge and experiences with the Lucent Hive. We saw... we walked the halls of the spire where Savathun conducted her experiments that created the Lucent Hive. So what's the connection... ? We're being naive, if we think there isn't one. That VO in Salvation's End... wasn't the confirmation that there is a parallel entity to the Gardener... or not like people think, and not the focus or thesis. It's a rite of passage imbedded in a dire warning. Wield the blade... or "rot in entropy". "But they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve". I guess Cayde's line is important, the iconic one... "make your own fate". 😇 👍💠