In Season of Defiance so far, we have seen Mara Sov expressing a broad extent of her abilities, particularly the ability to share her power with Guardians and allow them to enter and exit the Ascendant Plane at will, [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/ecliptic-distaff]even lending them power and guiding their actions towards success[/url]. Older lore pieces from Forsaken also talk about Mara Sov possessing a sort of "Acausality" after exiting the Distributary, specifically explained in Revanche lore entries: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/revanche-i https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/revanche-iv https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/revanche-v#book-the-awoken-of-the-reef People were safer around her, and Sjur even survived an explosion that would have killed her completely unharmed. What we know about Mara Sov is she was the first person to fall into the paracausal black hole which gave birth to the Distributary, and so shaped the laws of that universe and the existence of the Awoken. As others would put it, Mara is responsible for all possible suffering in the Distributary because she denied the Awoken "transcendent divinity". An action that branded her as the devil, "the power that allowed death" and suffering to the Awoken people, when she admitted the truth to Alis Li and Sjur Eido. When Alis Li was believed to be the first to awaken in the Distributary, here is what she was accused of prior to the Theodicy War (which Mara orchestrated): [i]Now there arose among the Eccaleists a woman out of the eight hundred ninety one who called herself the Diasyrm. She went into the cities, calling out, "[b]I accuse the Queen of deicide[/b]!" When she was questioned, she spoke of a foundational crime. "Alis Li was the first to awaken in this world," the Diasyrm preached. "She set the terms of our existence. [b]We could have been gods free of want or suffering[/b]. Instead, Alis Li chose our mortal form. [u]Our Queen is complicit in all the pain we experience[/u]! The Queen murdered all our unborn godheads!"[/i] https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/fideicide-i https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/nigh-ii https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/tyrannocide-iii Enter the Witness. An entity whose motives are so far unknown. What we do know is it believes the universe is one of "infinite cruelty", and it told Calus the following: [b]- We know Pain. Our purpose is its end. - [/b] What can be surmised is the Witness seeks to bring an end to suffering and believes the Final Shape is key to that. What if what motivates the Witness to such extremes is being an entity from its own "Distributary"? It has been on my mind a bit. We know from the Distributary and Eris Morn's words in [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/petulant]PETULANT[/url] that it is possible for an entity who has entered a newborn universe to become a God within it, if they so choose. I suspect this is specifically for paracausal black holes, like the Distributary, in the Destiny universe. Keep this in mind. Mara Sov could have made the Awoken immortal gods within the Distributary, but she didn't. She could have made it so no one could die in the Distributary, but she allowed for death to be possible. She could have given the Awoken omnipotence and omniscience, but she denied them that. She allowed suffering and pain in the Distributary, and she always intended for as many Awoken as she could to follow her back to Sol to fight the Witness. To put it plainly, I believe it is possible the Witness was born from similar circumstances that led to the Awoken people's creation. Only, it instead chose to make the newborn universe one without pain or suffering, and it collected the race who entered into the newborn universe into a gestalt consciousness, the entity we currently know it as. But, having brought this about in its own "Distributary", it became filled with rage toward the parent universe, resolved itself to return to the parent Universe and bring about the Final Shape, however long that takes, to bring an end to pain. Perhaps, depending on where it went, to bring an end to the entities who allowed pain and suffering to exist - the Gardener and Winnower. The power it has is not just mastery over the Darkness, but also a product of its Godhead carrying over from its "Distributary" into the parent Universe, just as Mara Sov brought her own "acausality" with her out of the Distributary. Imagine the following: [i]The Witness and its people using the Light and Darkness to create a paracausal singularity, a newborn universe for them to inhabit. The Witness, whoever it was in the beginning, is the first among its people to enter the singularity, along with others who follow behind - either a colony ship like Exodus Green or the entire species. Whether out of exploration or to escape a calamity that could render their species extinct. I'll lean towards the latter for the following. The Witness enters the singularity and sees the same mandala pattern Mara and Alis saw in Ecstasiate I and II. They see the structure of the newborn creation laid bare before it, they realize their thoughts can shape the new reality before it. They think of those that come after them, the godhead they could be given - immortality, omnipotence, omniscience, a universe and life free of suffering, of pain. From that realization, an unbridled rage at the universe of their birth, one that allowed suffering, pain, and death. Rage at the forces that allowed for it to exist. At the Traveler, which promises life to those it uplifts, only for death to still follow, as it potentially did for the Witness' race. Filled with that rage, it resolves to pursue a Final Shape to rectify what it believes to be the parent universe's "cruelty".[/i] This is just a theory at the moment, but Bungie lore and story writers have put a particular focus on the significance of black holes to Destiny's cosmology. The Distributary being birthed from a paracausal kugelblitz; the speculations about black holes in [i]Truth to Power[/i], answered years later in [i]the Hidden Dossier[/i] with Ikora and Jalaal talking about black hole cosmogenesis, and Savathun's potential desire to escape to a "parent universe" or a "child universe"; Elsie Bray talking about how the Vex intend to collapse every star in the universe into black holes and populate the newborn universes with more Vex. I love the idea, so I'm expecting some pay-off outside of being an explanation of where the Awoken came from. If the above theory is proven true, it would explain why the Witness offered Mara Sov the chance to become a Disciple when they first met. It could also offer an explanation for where the portal the Witness created leads to. If it wants to "end pain", the one place where it could do it in one fell swoop, or attain the power to do so, would be the reality superordinate to the Destiny universe - the allegorical Garden of the Gardener and Winnower.