WELCOME LADIES AND GENTS TO ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT BY YOURS TRULY So over the past few days I have been looking over the lore surrounding the Nine. I've been trying to figure out if we have seen all Nine, and what else I learn of them. Let's start with what if we have seen them all. YES In the Lorebook Dust in the "Declaration" card, we see ALL Nine speak amongst themselves. [quote] You want our source, our primal cause? WE ARE THE SHADOWS OF YOUR WORLDS' MASS old dark dust ever gravity-flowing INTELLIGENCES WHORLED ROUND EACH WORLD'S CORE, 9 H O U R G L -blam!- P I N C H E S I N A G A L A C T I C W I N D Too large - to see too small + to miss our mass binds = your matter frees .our philosophi | es lay divided[/quote] Now let's break these down. Nine lines-Nine voices We see five voices using a variation of ordinary text and punctuation We see four voices using math Text: "You want our source, our primal cause?"- Uses normal grammar and punctuation "WE ARE THE SHADOWS OF YOUR WORLD'S MASS"- all caps, no punctuation "old dark dust ever gravity-flowing"- no caps, otherwise normal grammar and punctuation "INTELLIGENCES WHORLED ROUND EACH WORLD'S CORE," -all caps, and punctuation "9 H O U R G L -blam!- P I N C H E S I N A G A L A C T I C W I N D"- all caps, but a space between every letter, so no punctuation Math: "Too large - to see" Subtraction (the syllables ascend after the - in the rest of the card, bu tnot in this quote, probably coincidence" "too small + to miss" Addition, but it seems like there is a symmetry in the syllables "our mass binds = your matter frees" Equals sign ".our philosophi | es lay divided." Equality... or perhaps division? (or an absolute value?) There is an equal number of letters on each side of the split The nature of the Nine, and perhaps why we havn't heard from them since Prophecy In the Lorecard "The Nine" of the Book Dust we see that: " There was no force among them except gravity; no structure except the distribution of mass. Their hearts were in the cores of worlds, but their farthest streams faded out into the turn of the galaxy." So the Nine are the dark matter shadows of the gravity wells of the nine planets of Sol. The four voices usign math-esque language are the inner four planets, and the ones with changing text are the outer five planets. So just for the sake of naming the Nine, (this is pure speculation), let's label the planets they bleong to. For the sake of space I will not be quoting the references. So label the first lin quoted 1 and the next line 2 and so on. Mercury: 9, because its axis of roation is virtually perfect, so it has no seasons, so its weather is absolute since it has realitvly no atmosphere Venus: 7, because the weather of it is hot to sustain life Earth: 8, the weather is just right, equal Mars: 6, the weather is too cold to sustain life Jupiter: 5, being the largest and ridden with storms, it's voice is the loudest and dismebodied Saturn: 4, Being the next largest, and a gas giant, it has the next loudest voice Uranus: 3, being an ice giant rather than a gas giant, its cold surface gives way to a rather muted speech Neptune: 2, being the other gas giant, it has the loudest voice Pluto: 1, the smallest planet, so it has a normal voice Upon furhter looks at it, it does seem that the planets are speaking from outward to inward, I have no ustifiable reasons for these claims about which voice is what planet at all, take them as you will, but all other information seems viable So why have we not heard from them since Prophecy? Because they are a council: the 3 Trials of the Nine weapons from Warmind are labelled "Motion to Supress" "Motion to Compel" and "Motion to Vacate" , very council or business room language , and the lore of them are heated debates between five of the Nine about choices to be made.. more on that later. Now that I have established these two facts, we turn back to what has happened at the beginning of Beyond Light, four planets" Mercury, Saturn (Since we lost Titan), Mars, and Venus. (We also lost Io, but we have Europa, so we still have Jupiter.) So if the Nine are the gravity shadows of these planets, then perhaps the Nine who correlated to the planet lost are wiht their planets, alone in the Deep? Thusly without all of the council, the Nine cannot make decisions, leaving them in a deadlock. But there seems to be an obvious split in the Nine, just as there is a schism in the planets made by the asteroid belt, and of course, as I bring these up as I am writing it, it comes up in "The Witch" lorcard of Dust. "Because there are factions among the Nine: one faction sent Xûr and Orin to study Guardians and the Light, to seek the secret of effect-without-cause and to protect the source of that secret, the last source, now that the Ahamkara are gone. Those five played at alchemy with the Cocytus gates, turning dark dust into energy and then into matter, but they could not unlock the secrets of our mad existence. They needed ambassadors. Go-betweens. The other faction walks a different path. A path of folds and needles slipped through spacetime itself, existential syringes yielding new spaces, to be remade as the Nine desire. They have tried to gather enough dark dust in one place to form a black hole, and found it difficult: when the dark mass collapses in gravity's fist, the dust passes through itself and scatters." So the Five, or the outer planets, desired to know paracausality? They hid Ghaul's adavance to see how he learned to steal the Light so they could know how to, being fascinated by Light and Dark. The Five killed the Ahamkara, as shown in "Motion to Vacate"'s lore. They used them to wish, calling them their "children", but somehow Riven survived, presumably because of being Taken. We know Mara had dealings with the Nine, perhaps to spare Riven? In "Motion to Compel" it speaks that Mara had help from the Nine in her sacrifice maybe to be just lost in the Ascendant Realm. In "Motion to Suppress", someone close to Mara speaks (presumably Petra or Eris) and they listen to her speak of the future...hmmmm. In all other Lore with the Nine speaking, it is only the Five, the Four don't seem interested in talking to us, since they are not concerned with paracausality. But the Four are there, and present. They have tried to make child universes with black holes. A black hole is what made the Distributary. Perhaps they had a hand in making the Awoken? We see at the end of "The Witch" lorecard that Lavinia is taken away by something "dark and hyperdermic", much like a needle, like how they described the Four's methods. Perhaps they sent Lavinia to inside a black hole as a test? It seems like the Four will talk to her inside this black hole by the old lady Needless to say, the Nine are in this game for themselves, and no other. We could see the Five be our "allies" Post-final shape, or they could be the villains, since they want paracausality for themselves. We could see the Four, taking beings (or even worlds? HMMMM) into back holes or gravitational anomalies. Or the Nine as a whole, after being returned, band together? Interesting thoughts Please give me feedback of any errors and heresy I have said 😂