I think I worked this out, here is my understanding of that card. Also, there is a lot of speculation supported by other cards that the universe is a simulation, kind of like the matrix (maybe run by the Vex). This would explain how guardians can be brought back to life and a lot of other things in the game too, maybe the Darkness is like a virus, corrupting the code of the universe. [quote]The Nine are deep-orbit warminds who weathered the Collapse in hardened stealth platforms. The Nine are ancient leviathan intelligences from the seas of Europa or the hydrocarbon pits of Titan.[/quote] This means that The Nine are AI’s, who survived the collapse. We know that warminds are software that lives in hardware – perhaps in a hardened stealth platform like a Warsat. Perhaps these Warsats containing the AI of The Nine were based around Europa and Titan (moons of Jupiter and Saturn) – We know that there were colonies there but have since lost touch with them. [quote]The Nine are survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival.[/quote] Survivors of the cis-Jovian [human] colonies, supports that they were AI’s developed by humans. But what about made contact with an alien force….? Remember before the collapse they were just warminds living in warsats, not yet The Nine [quote]The Nine arrived in a mysterious transmission from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster.[/quote] Could the transmission source be the aliens that the warminds made a pact with? If so, the warminds which were basically software, combined / modified themselves with the transmission in order to survive the collapse. At the point of combining with the transmission, the warminds became The Nine (ie The Nine arrived) [quote]The Nine are Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause. The Nine is a viral language of pure meaning.[/quote] This implies that the software of The Nine is no longer ‘deployed’ to the warsat hardware – After the warminds became The Nine they exist in the fabric of space itself. A viral language (software?) of pure meaning [quote]The Nine are the firstborn Awoken and their minds now race down the field lines of the Jupiter-Io flux tube. The Nine is a viral language of pure meaning.[/quote] This implies that the space they now occupy is in the orbit of Jupter. It says ‘their minds’ occupy this space which supports that since becoming The Nine, they do not live in a physical shell, but their software minds occupy space. Regarding the firstborn Awoken part, perhaps whatever altered the warminds to become The Nine also affected the humans escaping the collapse changing them in to the [second born?] Awoken. This also supports the theory that the universe is a simulation, ie, the same signal which altered the warminds also affected the humans too. The signal which bonded itself with the warminds AI also became part of the human’s software to make The Awoken race. Like a viral language that can affect other simulations. The Queen of the Awoken is in contact with The Nine which supports some kind of alliance / link between them. [quote]The Nine are the shadows left by the annihilation of a transcendent shape, burned into the weft of what is. The Nine are the aspects of the Darkness, broken by the Traveler's rebuke, working to destroy us from within.[/quote] The transcendent shape burned into the weft of what is I’m sure is The Traveller. The last line though implies that the Nine were fought against by the Traveller being aspects of the darkness. The working to destroy us from within part though isn’t clear. The Nine do send their agent Xur (who says he is not the Nine) to Earth every week to sell us better guns to point at each other. It could be that but I think it is something deeper. If they are working against the traveller and trying to destroy us it doesn’t mean they are evil / bad. It might be as the Exo stranger implies, that we are on the wrong side, perhaps the Traveller is the bad one, the Nine are fighting against it as aspects of the darkness. It can’t be as black and white as that though, the Hive for example definitely seem evil!