Are light wielding guardians limited to human, awoken, exo?

Xur is a Jovian. And I couldn't help by draw multiple similarities between Xur, and the Hunter that threatened Drifter. Both have same shaped glowing yellow eyes, that hunter mask could totally contain them snake faces, both sounded very similar. Both dabble in weapons of light and dark(?) Both have similar clothes.

I don't know enough about the Shadows and lore in general...so these are all question/theories with no knowledge behind them.

Could Xur have been a Shadow?
Could the Shadows be Jovian?
Could Xur be all gnarled up because he got jacked up by dabbling too much with darkness?
Did he dabble too far and The Nine stopped him and his pittance is to provide weapons/armor of light to those who fight the darkness?

Xur has always been a mysterious creepy character...suddenly he is providing content that is telling the story of The Drifter, The Nine and The Shadows. That cant be a coincidence.

What's ol' snake face got to do with all of this?

His will is not his own.

Shadows of Yor are Guardians who are dabbling in using the Darkness to obtain greater power. They are not necessarily all bad and some, like the legendary Shin Malphur (aka: owner of The Last Word, aka The Man with The Golden Gun) fight against Guardian corruption while also experimenting with the Darkness.

The Nine seem to be Giaforms, embodiments of our planets, whose minds are made of vast collections of dark matter. Life on each planet (plants, animals, humans, etc) cause these star system sized strands of dark matter to vibrate and resonate and eventually these giant-sized minds began to think. By they are very alien from our point of view and probably have limited concepts of things like death and time. Also, they sorta depend on other life on their planet to continue to supply the motion and energy that let them resonate and think so the Darkness is a threat to them because it is a threat to us.

Xûr might be some sort of artificial life form created by the Nine. They were experimenting with creating biological life (and failed several times in spectacular fashion) but may have ultimately succeeded. His/their goal is to understand Guardians and our Light because the Nine are ultimately ruled by linear cause and effect. They want to be free of that and the reality distorting paracasual effects of Light are what they need. Interestingly, the Nine were previously making deals with the Ahamkara, who also had reality altering powers, before the Guardians (with secret support of Mara Sov and her Awoken) hunted the Ahamkara to extinction.

This stuff is still a bit theoretical, since lore is still being revealed week to week, but if you want to read a lot of it yourself I’d suggest reading the books Dust and Ecdysis over at Ishtar Collective. Quite a lot got revealed with Season of the Drifter

The best way to learn about The Nine is to read the lore book "Dust", especially the final 2 entries. You can find it on the Ishtar Collective website. It's difficult to explain concisely what they are, but suffice to say Xur is not exactly an entity like our Guardian or The Drifter.

All these grimoire and data websites are cool...but I miss the days of speculation and crackpot theories.

It’s all in universe. All narrators are unreliable. Crackpot theory away because a fair portion of things are still never quite definite.

It’s all in universe. All narrators are unreliable. Crackpot theory away because a fair portion of things are still never quite definite.

I'll second this - Raga's analyses are fantastic, but they're not always 100% right, because he's working with info that's sometimes quite unreliable. I love it when he comes up with some really insightful perspective, and someone chimes in with "huh... I always thought X" - the same info can have wildly different interpretations.

Keep crackpotting, Kitten. ;)

Keep crackpotting, Kitten. ;)

Well then I'll stand by my theory that there is some sort of connection between The Nine, Xur and the Shadows that goes deeper than we realize. Whatever we learn about the Drifter and his dealings with the Taken will bring something to light.

The way things are going story wise, I still don't know who the bad guys and good guys are. Traveler, Rasputin, Pyramid Ships. There's a lot of stuff to consider.

Keep crackpotting, Kitten. ;)

Well then I'll stand by my theory that there is some sort of connection between The Nine, Xur and the Shadows that goes deeper than we realize. Whatever we learn about the Drifter and his dealings with the Taken will bring something to light.

The way things are going story wise, I still don't know who the bad guys and good guys are. Traveler, Rasputin, Pyramid Ships. There's a lot of stuff to consider.

Ran some Tier II Reckoning last night (not enough to clear bounties, sadface - couldn't find anyone who wanted to join me), and there was interesting voiceover. The Emissary basically said she was Xur, Mark II. (He was a 'prototype', and they improved on him to make her. We know she started off human, so...)

The way things are going story wise, I still don't know who the bad guys and good guys are. Traveler, Rasputin, Pyramid Ships. There's a lot of stuff to consider.

I hope the Destiny lore continues down the "grey" path it's currently heading. Although that's not even quite accurate: one of the themes I find fascinating in SF is the idea that alien races may have no concept of good or bad at all. The Books of Sorrow explored this with The Hive, whose culture has developed based on the fact that they must destroy to survive, so to them there is only "strong" and "weak".

And the Traveler is a truly interesting case, an entity that has been anthropomorphized considerably both in and outside the game. When speaking of what the Traveler "wants", I like to keep in mind it may not be capable of "wanting". It may not be sentient at all. Maybe it feeds on the energy of sentient beings, and excretes paracausal phenomenon which would then tend to attract and grow the nearby food source.

And the Traveler is a truly interesting case, an entity that has been anthropomorphized considerably both in and outside the game. When speaking of what the Traveler "wants", I like to keep in mind it may not be capable of "wanting". It may not be sentient at all. Maybe it feeds on the energy of sentient beings, and excretes paracausal phenomenon which would then tend to attract and grow the nearby food source.

Could The Traveler even just be a tool? it's not an entity at all. It's a scanner for someone....like The Nine. In Xur's quest cut scene she mentions [paraphrasing] we are the third entity like they've seen. The Nine has sent the Traveler all over looking for that special race or entity that can help their cause. The Fallen were tested and failed. The Cabal were rejected. Humanity has shown to be intriguing. With the Drifter's ability with the Taken. Our Guardians wielding it's light "properly."

From earlier posts in this thread, now it sounds like The Nine are potentially interested in becoming physical beings?

I'm suspicious of The Nine and think they will ultimately become the threat in the Destiny Universe.

All the races seem to have intertwining stories at this point that involve the Taken Realm. Now that humans can fiddle with it, all the pieces The Nine need are falling into place.

Yeah, and Xûr used to mention things like his ancestors or his cells were born on earth. Not sure he still does or if he says “this world” even if he’s on different planets in D2. If Xûr was someone else before, I don’t have a guess as to who.

And the Traveler is a truly interesting case, an entity that has been anthropomorphized considerably both in and outside the game. When speaking of what the Traveler "wants", I like to keep in mind it may not be capable of "wanting". It may not be sentient at all. Maybe it feeds on the energy of sentient beings, and excretes paracausal phenomenon which would then tend to attract and grow the nearby food source.

Could The Traveler even just be a tool? it's not an entity at all. It's a scanner for someone....like The Nine. In Xur's quest cut scene she mentions [paraphrasing] we are the third entity like they've seen. The Nine has sent the Traveler all over looking for that special race or entity that can help their cause. The Fallen were tested and failed. The Cabal were rejected. Humanity has shown to be intriguing. With the Drifter's ability with the Taken. Our Guardians wielding it's light "properly."

From earlier posts in this thread, now it sounds like The Nine are potentially interested in becoming physical beings?

I'm suspicious of The Nine and think they will ultimately become the threat in the Destiny Universe.

All the races seem to have intertwining stories at this point that involve the Taken Realm. Now that humans can fiddle with it, all the pieces The Nine need are falling into place.

I honestly could see the Cabal, Vex, and Fallen side with use against a bigger threat. I can't really see the Hive ever siding with anyone.

And the Traveler is a truly interesting case, an entity that has been anthropomorphized considerably both in and outside the game. When speaking of what the Traveler "wants", I like to keep in mind it may not be capable of "wanting". It may not be sentient at all. Maybe it feeds on the energy of sentient beings, and excretes paracausal phenomenon which would then tend to attract and grow the nearby food source.

Could The Traveler even just be a tool? it's not an entity at all. It's a scanner for someone....like The Nine. In Xur's quest cut scene she mentions [paraphrasing] we are the third entity like they've seen. The Nine has sent the Traveler all over looking for that special race or entity that can help their cause. The Fallen were tested and failed. The Cabal were rejected. Humanity has shown to be intriguing. With the Drifter's ability with the Taken. Our Guardians wielding it's light "properly."

From earlier posts in this thread, now it sounds like The Nine are potentially interested in becoming physical beings?

I'm suspicious of The Nine and think they will ultimately become the threat in the Destiny Universe.

All the races seem to have intertwining stories at this point that involve the Taken Realm. Now that humans can fiddle with it, all the pieces The Nine need are falling into place.

I honestly could see the Cabal, Vex, and Fallen side with use against a bigger threat. I can't really see the Hive ever siding with anyone.

If something threatens the Taken Realm, would that indirectly impact the Hive? Since blokes like Oryx create their own realm worlds? If The Nine are interested in that, it could behoove The Hive to fight them too.

The Nine certainly seem like they might be a threat. Their two objectives seem to be:

To escape their status as massive minds made of dark matter dust spread across our solar system. They are too bound to our system and the individual planets that hold their cores or hearts. We’ve already seen the Cabal tear Mercury apart and come close to destroying our entire star system.

To escape the coming Darkness that is a much bigger threat than the destruction of a single home star system. The Nine are pooling vast amounts of dark matter to create black holes and worlds within them, but will that really keep them safe from the Darkness?

What makes the Nine a threat is they see the Traveler’s Light as a way to further both goals and at least some of the Nine seem to be looking to take that light for themselves.

Then there the two they spoke of who transcended their design. The one with infinite patience would seem to be Mara Sov as that quality has been attributed to her in the past. But the “forgotten blade sharpened anew”? Could that be the newly reactivated and empowered Rasputin? He crashed down all the old warsats and is launching new ones that only he can control. But what about Xivu Arath (Oryx’s sister who is the embodiment of war), or Skolas, or Callus, or Riven, or even Uldren Sov?

Yeah, some story stuff is getting more nailed down, but there are still tons of unknowns and tons of places for speculation. For instance:

Why did Wu Ming (aka: Drifter) know about the Nine when he first met Orin when she was on her quest to track them down in response to Sjur’s death. Drifter was a shadow and a Dredgen at one point. Do the other Shadows of Yor care as much about the Nine as he does, or is his knowledge of the Nine one of the things that makes him unique? Can the other Shadows manipulate Motes of Darkness and summon Taken like the Drifter can? The Nine were previously making Wishes with the help of the Ahamkara. Did they never achieve more physical forms back then? What did they wish for? How have those wishes impacted Humanity already?

Oryx would not have, but Savathun is much more clever than Oryx. She might make a deal to save herself. Just watch out for the sudden but inevitable betrayal.