Destiny 2 Lore - The Winnower. Who are they? Are they real? Are they The Witness? Unveiling's Lore.

The line "my man oryx" was the one that convinced me of the difference. The witness would never say that in a million years.

22:09 Final shape Hive version: "git gud scrub" Final shape Witness version: rage quit

I've noticed that the witness talks to us like we're a rare toy on a shelf. The winnower treats us like a unique specimen in an experiment.

I ❤ the Winnower and how chill they sound talking with “My Man Oryx”

Yea, the Winnower even referred to Oryx as “my man”, like he was a good friend. The Witness doesn’t speak like that when I read Unveiling

"lore daddys lullaby" goes EXTREMELY hard. Absolutely fantastic name

It was really fun working with Venextron on his Unveiling video, cannot wait to listen to what your opinions and thoughts are on the subject, Byf!

The reveal of the stump being in the black garden is crazy cool.

The structure in the black garden being a stump of silver wings made me drop my glass of water. That's actually mind blowing

A Hive Ogre, hulking behemonths that not even Oryx can control. posessed by The Winnower "Hey what's up dude?"

Venextron+Byf+Myelin lore round table when?

Until shown otherwise in-game, I believe that The Winnower is in fact real and that what happened in Unveiling did happen. It just did not happen exactly as the events of Unveiling laid out. What makes me say this? The last entries of Inspiral also speak of a Gardener and Winnower, along with the Garden and The Flower Game. Yet those entries describe that the schism between the Gardener and The Winnower as a mutual thing. Along with the Winnower as far less darwinistic in it's tone and approach. Which leads me to believe The Witness spun/framed the events Unveiling to us and Eris (who transcribed it) in a manner than was more in line with it's thinking and modus operandi. All while it pretended to be The Winnower. So where is The WInnower? Where is it residing? I'd wager, somewhere deep within The Veil. Addendum: I also think this applies to Oryx's conversation with "The Deep". This was The Witness masquerading and adopting the mannerisms of The Winnower. To make itself seem more "final" than primordial. Remember, Oryx harbored a shadow of doubt about his ultimate purpose. What better to reassure him than to pretend to be what is effectively god. Yet this false guise The Witness took was based on a real entity The Witness knew and understood. Not only that, The Witness was very selective of who knew it's identity. I think it's also important to remember it was Savathûn selected to be a Disciple-In-Waiting. Oryx seemingly never knew of The Witnesses identity, and Xivu didn't seem to know until very recently. This suggests that The Witness only revealed itself to Xivu Arath as it saw no need to hide it's identity with The Final Shape. Above all else, The Witness is deciever and manipulator who rivals Savathûn...and even exceeded her for a while.

"grab a popcorn bucket" *shows the dune bucket*....what are you telling me to do to this video Byf?

Clovis Bray: hmmm...booba scary

One thing I do actually want to add here. We do have a little bit better of an idea of how Taken are created. When an entity is pulled into that other dimension, something speaks to it. Every type of Taken we’ve encountered (at least in D1) has a Grimoire card recording these conversations. The way these are phrased, the mannerisms of the speaker, are very similar to the voice that speaks to Oryx when he entered and conversed with the Deep. And I think that’s where beings go when they are taken. They stand before the Deep. At the end of each card, the taken entity is presented with a “knife” and told to take its “new shape.”This is the first time we saw this terminology and it is what the Winnower references when it says it found the first knife in the garden. Thus, it can be assumed that the Deep that transforms the Taken, that presumably spoke to Oryx, is the Winnower. Something to note as well; even in Unveiling, the writer mentions that the concept of the gardener, Winnower, garden, etc. are metaphor, dumbed down to a level that we are able to understand. How that measures up with us being able to visit the black garden as a physical place, the idea that the gardener is a person, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get answers in The Final Shape. Maybe we won’t.

The Witness wants to end the game. The Winnower wants to see who wins. Very fine, but very important distinction there. One is a tournament manager, and the other is a vengeful, spoiled child. Shaxx is like the Winnower. The witness is more like Shayura, or Clovis, or any other character who just wants to 'unplug' an existence through hate.

I still think the black garden is a simulation of what the original garden is, the vex may be from the original garden and carried some memory of it, then simulated it as close as they can because they don't currently have a way to simulate paracausal things yet. I say that because having a way to just mosey on in to a place before time and a source of pure paracausality just seems odd.

There is a lot of similarities in the concepts of the Gardener (light/physical) and the Winnower (dark/consciousness) and the overall genesis story of Gnosticism. The Witness in this instance would represent the demiurge trying to excise it's will on creation as a supreme and ultimate entity within our macrocosm, where as the Gardener represents Barbelo, (mother nature) and the Winnower is Bythos (father consciousness) and the Garden itself is Monad (conceptulaized existence before time, the one that is before all, and the all that are the one). 'We grow forever in the garden of both directions.'

29:30 I just can't help but point out that Oryx is quoting the ancient S'pht from Marathon 2 - "In primordial space, timeless creatures made waves. These waves created us and the others. Waves were the battles, and the battles were waves."

BYF this is genius! The WITNESS is actually not the WINNOWER. I can now relate to what Savathun said when she was describing the WITNESS "IT IS NOT DARKNESS BUT WEARS IT LIKE A CLOAK"