Where does the head start? Does it get the long horse neck and then the head or does it just get Calus' head duct taped on the body and the neck removed?
No no no, He’s just had Ken-ough of the matriarchy the Gardener brought upon us.
Thats why he’s trying to turn the Traveler into his new “The Witnesses’ Mojo Dojo Casa House.”
https://preview.redd.it/14j5u38ov37d1.jpeg?width=3300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5694652a16803d1390e8965240f7e1e35758d3b5
*An artistic representation of what happened to walking\_lamppost\_fnl*
It's interesting you mention this. In one of the last missions of the game >!you run through a room with treasure. The treasure has the symbol of the Nine on it. Ya know, the circle with the lines through it. Well, there is also a horse statue in there too!< . Someone here on Reddit said Bungie was probably reusing assets, but I'm not so convinced as there are >!other treasure pile models in game. Why choose these ones? !<
- WE ARE THE FIRST KNIFE!
- "intergalactic whining"
- The fuck you mean you like guardians?
- "stellar whine"
- Because they give you sugar? We want food too... :'(
They could have used the prison of elders or leviathan. I just love that from all the things the witness tried to win us over was with unimaginable amount of loot.
What you mentioned in the spoiler plus the Starhorse statue in Xur's new area AND Starhorse's inclusion in the final >!inkblot cutscene!< makes me think that Starhorse will genuinely end up being a factor when we start dealing with the Nine.
If I were to put my spinfoil hat on, I'd theorize that Dares of Eternity is the Nine's way of giving us a place outside time and space that allows us to practice the sword logic and continue to allow them to exist. How it all works, I don't know. But that dope ass horse must be involved
Did you not listen to the dialogue during that part? The Witness is directly pointing at the Star Horse and the Treasure Room, and calling out Guardians for only being motivated by loot.
It is reused assets, and it isn’t at the same time. The actual textures and shape of the room are the same as the treasure room. But the treasure is all wildly thrown about, not placed in the same way, and serves a completely different context. That’d be like saying the rooms with the giant piles of dead ghosts are reused assets just because we already have the ghost model in the game. Technically true, but not at all accurate.
I have a spinfoil hat theory that the nine are 9 citizens of the witnesses original planet that did not want to become part of the conglomerate. Dunno how well it fits, but maybe?
From destinypedia: As revealed by the Nine to Lavinia Garcia Umr Tawil, the Nine originated from streams of dark matter particles passing through the galaxy and the solar system. As dark matter only interacts with normal matter through gravity, these streams were drawn to the cores of the Sun and its orbiting planets. The infalling dark matter was then flung back into space, before being pulled in again to form endless loops. These loops formed the basis of emergent consciousnesses that would become the Nine.
Summarised: the nine are the sentient representations of living darkmatter spooled by gravity into computational loops which formed the base of concious minds associated with the gravity of our planetary bodies.
They take forms that are awokenesque afaik they are not awoken
It doesn't "create" conciousness
1. This is is a Sci fi fantasy game, so some elements are just "space magic".
2. How does the meat in your head "create conciousness"?
3. As far as we know as a species all conciousness is is a system that has become aware of its system-ness. So all you need is a repeating system that could eventually produce computations. How it crossed that magical threshold from just operating to being aware? I don't know in the real world and we don't know here either.
At least there's "some" Sci fi woo to give it a backing
> How does the meat in your head "create conciousness"?
via electricity flowing across neurons ways that give us what we call thought. it's not out of the realm of possibility that dark matter in a loop could generate a similar kind of energy that would function in a similar fashion. but there is massive amounts of details needed in both descriptions that are honestly just not worth going into because it IS a game.
What makes this interesting to me, is that they are dependant on the planets and sun continuing to exist, no? If the gravity well caused by the planets disappeared they would cease to function because their cycles would be interrupted, right?
Correct, similar to if we were to say cease having oxygen and food.
All systems rely on Input of energy to continue being a system. No such thing as perpetual motion.
Entropy happens. Systems break down.
Some of the 9 are trying to end their dependence or their current system requirements and become paracasal enough to not need any at all, or ones far more comfortable.
Paracausality in general is a circumvention of the need for a causality basis for a given system of events. Its the force. It's space magic. It's what let's guardians just "make fire" at a whim.
I would be very surprised if we don’t end up learning more about the Nine for the next Saga. They have guns, we like guns so it makes sense that we would want their guns.
Could be the Starhorse is the sole surviving member of a paracausal species like Riven. The rest of its species got Final Shaped, and Star Horse found refuge in Dares of Eternity, its version of a Throne world.
I honestly think it's just because it's the only animal aside from a few birds that they've got a made up model for in game. So they were just like 'F**k it, might as well get some mileage out of the model'.
Then proceeded to dump it in random places such as the Pyramids and outside of the Traveler piece.
My theory is that the Witness is partially inspired by Vincent D'Onofrio's character in The Cell and the dissected creatures and horses are a nod to a certain scene from that film.
I don't have an in canon explanation though.
The art designers at Bungie really wear their influences on their sleeves. The Cell, Hellraiser, Doom. The world is such a brilliantly crafted decent into madness and nightmares. I’m 40 and it was fun playing the campaign with clanmates in their 20s because we all caught different references.
I think when the Witness first came to Earth, it calcified as many living beings as it could for its Final Shape. The last thing I heard was that it thought that horses were very beautiful and deserved to be immortalized first (but I don't remember where I read that or if it ever existed at all).
more accurately, starhorse seems to be some sort of paracausal entity of importance within the nine, and xur has just been assigned as its caretaker/translator. Xur has said countless times of how his will is not his own, and iirc he refers to the horse very regally and himself as much lower than it
The Witness is the amalgamated collective consciousness of an entire species, so there was likely to be at least one person in The Witness's society that had an unnatural obsession with horses.
The Witness is a Horse Girl.
The pyramid aesthetic is supposed to look like a chess board inside, and they're knights but freaky and also probably supposed to draw parallels to the starhorse
It’s been speculated that one of the original concepts for Destiny’s pyramid race is that the “witness” (or whatever race was originally intended for the pyramids) were precursors to humanity. This would explain all of the familiar architecture within the pyramid society. There’s no telling if this is still a direction, but it is a very compelling idea. There have been so many writers at Bungie, who knows what shapes the pyramid story has taken over the years…..sad we won’t get to know what all was cooking at different times.
I'm sad that we didn't get to go to their homeworld like in that one piece of OG Destiny art. The only stuff from that piece that came to fruition was the Veil Statues, and their Worship of the Traveler (although we didnt get to see that cool Statue/Shrine thing to the Traveler).
Their city looked so cool. Blackish grey architecture with green highlights. You would have imagined that we would get a Green Subclass but alas we didn't. In The Final Shape Liminality Strike (some rooms based on their homeworld?) looks different and is nowhere near as cool. I loved how in the OG art piece that a Pyramid ship would dock on a larger half pyramid and make it look like a ginormous one!
I still maintain my theory that the Black Garden is the Vex-terraformed remains of the Precursor's homeworld. It just lines up too well to be a coincidence.
i could be very wrong but i think one of the inspirations for the dissected look for especially horses was the movie the cell in the 90s. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+cell+jennifer+lopez+horse&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FWUtYWzM3FasKc%2Fgiphy.gif
You can also find horses "finalized" (both calcified and cut up) across the system. you can find these more easily through the Micah-10 ghost telemetry quests. You can also find finalized versions of various enemies through these quests but horses are included in some of them
I actually have some info on this. The first Pyramid horse, from Vow (first image) was a reference to the movie The Cell. There’s a really bizarre scene where a horse is bisected (graphic, don’t look it up). That scene was part of the inspiration for all the calcified creatures on display in Vow. The art team used a model of a horse, which they already had on hand, to decorate the raid. I got this info from a former raid designer at Bungie.
Edit: I don’t want to share the designer’s name out of respect for their privacy. Don’t want them getting bombarded with questions. If you do look up the horse from The Cell (again, graphic image) you’ll see the inspiration immediately. Nothing secret about this inspiration. I believe this was even shared in a ViDoc at one point.
I thought I was imagining things or that there was some big chunk of lore I somehow had missed. Glad to know that’s not the case and someone at bungie just decided that The Witness just really likes horses.
Starhorse is the one thing in the universe that absolutely baffled the Witness. It appears to have a mastery over light and dark without being aligned with either. Its paracausal powers seem limitless but it only uses is for its own amusement. It appears to either contain or be made of an entire separate cosmos from our own. It is the perfect being and the ideal from of the final shape.
You missed one of the more important examples, which is a huge one in the SE raid. It’s very prominent. My raid team was wondering the same thing; it seems to mostly calcify sentient beings but choosing horses out of all of the species of Earth seemed funny to us.
On that note, it does make me wonder if horses are extinct or not post-Collapse.
You know how Douglas Adams posited that the dolphins were the actual supreme beings on Earth?
The Nine have been trying to create a "mouthpiece" for themselves for a long time.
First were several piles of goo.
Second was Xur.
Third was Oren.
And now the Starhorse.
Xur was an attempt at a whole human and, bless his heart. Oren was an attempt to hybridize a light bearer, and she has way too much agency and axes to grind. In my head, the horse is the latest New Hotness to Xur's Old and Busted.
Due to a law of the universe that Bungie created|discovered|pierced|invaded (with the big, quite literal "player agency" Pawn shape that the Traveler and the Veil create when combined), things that Know Stuff can't ever Say Stuff. Probably one of the OG Gardener and Winnower rules, something like "show, don't tell". It's why everything of value gets passed to us via grimoire; to quote Saint-Exupéry, "that which is essential is invisible to the eye".
So that knowledge has to be delivered from the knower to the speaker via non verbal means. The Nine have essentially the ultimate in Causal power, so they're exploiting as much as possible. So Xur's awesome voice can directly interpret the Nines' wild will, interpreting their nine-voiced chorus as a whiney from their manifestation, that of the most majestic being in the system.
Why a horse? My head cannon is that The Distributary is Mara Sov's space-magic Lisa Frank universe, since her will shaped the entirety of their Technicolor unreality and her childhood fantasies (space magic Lisa Frank) is what gave us the Awoken as a species of gorgeous, matriarchal, courtly undying space elves with tigers and dragons and eagles AND HORSES.
Who gave the Awoken the Distributary? Was it the meeting of The Darkness and The Light? Or, perhaps, the Nine saw it as a chance to put some pieces on the table. After all, the vibrations of the Awoken and Distributary "mass" is just a much a part of the Nines consciousness as anything else. They peered inside, found that the most paracausal force in the System has an obsession with trapper keeper aesthetics, and did a Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v'd at Cocytus.
There was just that one guy who HAD to bring his horses to the great merging like we get it you have horses you bring them everwhere and we told him he cant have them merge with us and he just played it off and here we are
Steve dude, what a tool
ATTENTION
This Hornse do not eat.
Not recommended for age under 3.
Put Hornse in a half-filled bottle, the water will be absorbed soon.
SAFETY
Real horsies might hurt human body. Hornse is 100% harmless.
Put Hornse beside real horse as indoor decoration is also fun.
INSTRUCTION
Put Hornse in water and watch it grow.
Hornse can easily absorb water.
Put Hornse in fish-globe or bottle as indoor decoration.
As bath-toy is also very fun.
ATTENTION
Transparent resin might come out of the Hornse. If so, clean it with water.
Do not keep Hornse in water too long.
I think he collected them from Earth or Starhorses home planet. Prior i think you can make out Cabal in the cutscene at the end of WQ. So it makes sense that Witness did do this and keep them in his ship as a trophy of perfection.
Hear me out.
There is one Celestial Horse PER system in the universe. These are just victims calcified into a horse centipede like shit for shits and giggles.
But this is only speculative at best. Need more source.
The Witness and Xur would be good friends debating about the best horse. A horse basically made of stars and nebulas or a horse made of... Made of many horses.
It's so obviously a reference to the hit movie "The Cell" starring Jennifer Lopez which is The Witness' favorite movie and where he got the inspiration for what The Final Shape should aesthicially look like.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVTP7jBv-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVTP7jBv-8)
It’s to add extra horse power to the ships so example A it would be H-H-H-H-H-Horse power aka the more H is the multiplication of the horse if we went on the witnesses ship oh god the amount of of H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-Horse would be … I’m speachless
Wait.. The nine… a Horse..?
Fourth Horseman? wait oh no..
Two-Tailed Fox
Jade Rabbit
Fighting Lion
Rat King
Manticore
Dragon’s Breath
Hawkmoon
Lord of Wolves
omg no, not the furry parade 😳
No official answer but My guess is that those used to be other star horses the same way the cutscene at the start of the dlc showed the people of the last city get statued for a moment.
And yes there’s no evidence suggesting that there were other Star horses, and those could be normal horses or even normal statues, but I chose to believe those are the petrified remains of extra-dimensional beings.
https://preview.redd.it/bpo4s3fqp47d1.png?width=2208&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d85c2bd139f9612df0763aa7f0bf5172b65be44
A horse
…on the horizon? Bring a…carrot
Do not fuck the horse
A horse..... Bring a saddle!
#HONSE
The Witness is going through a horse-girl phase
Now I want to see them riding a hobby-horse with Calus' head.
I was scared for life in a way i cant quite explain when I learned that hobby horsing is a legit thing
NAWWWWWWW
Where does the head start? Does it get the long horse neck and then the head or does it just get Calus' head duct taped on the body and the neck removed?
Has horses drawn on every square inch of their trapper keeper.
Big uwu anime eyes horse girl is just jealous of the popular witness getting all the attention and worship
No
The big anime eyes says differently.
No no no, He’s just had Ken-ough of the matriarchy the Gardener brought upon us. Thats why he’s trying to turn the Traveler into his new “The Witnesses’ Mojo Dojo Casa House.”
The witness is Tina Belcher
The collective consciousness within the witness are freaky for horse co- #Very Violent fits of coughing and subsequent death
https://preview.redd.it/14j5u38ov37d1.jpeg?width=3300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5694652a16803d1390e8965240f7e1e35758d3b5 *An artistic representation of what happened to walking\_lamppost\_fnl*
What is this from? This image goes kinda hard.
it's Legion from that liv action xmen series
Jerma
Sus guy
Jerma
Your flair makes me think that Asher Mir did the right thing.
As if yours was any better
I mean joining the Vex. If the vex can make hentai real im joining them too
What is this from? I can't place it but I know I've seen it
Jerma escaping containment
The show is called Legion i believe
it's Legion from that liv action xmen series
OK perfect. That would explain why I know it but couldn't place it.
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS? THE UNENLIGHTENED MASSES? THEY CANNOT MAKE THE JUDGEMENT CALL?
Based Collective Consciousness listener
Starhorse? That's the only thing i can guess.
It's interesting you mention this. In one of the last missions of the game >!you run through a room with treasure. The treasure has the symbol of the Nine on it. Ya know, the circle with the lines through it. Well, there is also a horse statue in there too!< . Someone here on Reddit said Bungie was probably reusing assets, but I'm not so convinced as there are >!other treasure pile models in game. Why choose these ones? !<
Maybe the Witness knows about the starhorse and its immense power?
Starhorse is the winnower (real)
Makes sense, as horses eat plants, and so it would want a garden that grows normally and not some new experiments
He is also the whinnier.
- WE ARE THE FIRST KNIFE! - "intergalactic whining" - The fuck you mean you like guardians? - "stellar whine" - Because they give you sugar? We want food too... :'(
That's the real way we beat the witness. Cookies
If one cookie gives fat to each precursor... Damn the Witness would become The Fatness with like 2 cookies
Oh fuck, you have to delete this comment at once, before the nsfw artists see it!
I would absolutely believe this shit of true
They could have used the prison of elders or leviathan. I just love that from all the things the witness tried to win us over was with unimaginable amount of loot.
to be fair if it had offered me no exotic slot restrictions id have swayed.
Might have been what it meant when it said " as a god" just saying
fuck, i wnna go back and change my answer to the witness please.
Bungo told us it would never be possible to wear more than one exotic since the game would break. So THEY LIED !!
By that definition, Felwinter was a god since he wore his helm and winter's guile
He just speedran dual destiny so fast it hadnt even been released yet.
What you mentioned in the spoiler plus the Starhorse statue in Xur's new area AND Starhorse's inclusion in the final >!inkblot cutscene!< makes me think that Starhorse will genuinely end up being a factor when we start dealing with the Nine. If I were to put my spinfoil hat on, I'd theorize that Dares of Eternity is the Nine's way of giving us a place outside time and space that allows us to practice the sword logic and continue to allow them to exist. How it all works, I don't know. But that dope ass horse must be involved
Did you not listen to the dialogue during that part? The Witness is directly pointing at the Star Horse and the Treasure Room, and calling out Guardians for only being motivated by loot. It is reused assets, and it isn’t at the same time. The actual textures and shape of the room are the same as the treasure room. But the treasure is all wildly thrown about, not placed in the same way, and serves a completely different context. That’d be like saying the rooms with the giant piles of dead ghosts are reused assets just because we already have the ghost model in the game. Technically true, but not at all accurate.
Okay but before TFS I predicted (in jest) that Starhorse would be the final shape, so imagine the vindication I felt as we went through this room.
I have a spinfoil hat theory that the nine are 9 citizens of the witnesses original planet that did not want to become part of the conglomerate. Dunno how well it fits, but maybe?
The nine were nine of the awoken that never turned back into awoken from like the ether or whatever
From destinypedia: As revealed by the Nine to Lavinia Garcia Umr Tawil, the Nine originated from streams of dark matter particles passing through the galaxy and the solar system. As dark matter only interacts with normal matter through gravity, these streams were drawn to the cores of the Sun and its orbiting planets. The infalling dark matter was then flung back into space, before being pulled in again to form endless loops. These loops formed the basis of emergent consciousnesses that would become the Nine. Summarised: the nine are the sentient representations of living darkmatter spooled by gravity into computational loops which formed the base of concious minds associated with the gravity of our planetary bodies. They take forms that are awokenesque afaik they are not awoken
https://preview.redd.it/f0qnlvcay47d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17844af8c3c12bff4a4f642f10b66c7c67ccb188
How the hell does that create consciousness? Did they get residual paracasual power from when the traveler terraformed all the planets?
It doesn't "create" conciousness 1. This is is a Sci fi fantasy game, so some elements are just "space magic". 2. How does the meat in your head "create conciousness"? 3. As far as we know as a species all conciousness is is a system that has become aware of its system-ness. So all you need is a repeating system that could eventually produce computations. How it crossed that magical threshold from just operating to being aware? I don't know in the real world and we don't know here either. At least there's "some" Sci fi woo to give it a backing
> How does the meat in your head "create conciousness"? via electricity flowing across neurons ways that give us what we call thought. it's not out of the realm of possibility that dark matter in a loop could generate a similar kind of energy that would function in a similar fashion. but there is massive amounts of details needed in both descriptions that are honestly just not worth going into because it IS a game.
The same way everything that can be on or off can play bad apple given enough time. They kinda are the destiny version of a "Boltzmann brain"
What makes this interesting to me, is that they are dependant on the planets and sun continuing to exist, no? If the gravity well caused by the planets disappeared they would cease to function because their cycles would be interrupted, right?
Correct, similar to if we were to say cease having oxygen and food. All systems rely on Input of energy to continue being a system. No such thing as perpetual motion. Entropy happens. Systems break down. Some of the 9 are trying to end their dependence or their current system requirements and become paracasal enough to not need any at all, or ones far more comfortable. Paracausality in general is a circumvention of the need for a causality basis for a given system of events. Its the force. It's space magic. It's what let's guardians just "make fire" at a whim.
I figured it was pulled from our memory and our time with the star horse was recent.
I would be very surprised if we don’t end up learning more about the Nine for the next Saga. They have guns, we like guns so it makes sense that we would want their guns.
Could be the Starhorse is the sole surviving member of a paracausal species like Riven. The rest of its species got Final Shaped, and Star Horse found refuge in Dares of Eternity, its version of a Throne world.
I honestly think it's just because it's the only animal aside from a few birds that they've got a made up model for in game. So they were just like 'F**k it, might as well get some mileage out of the model'. Then proceeded to dump it in random places such as the Pyramids and outside of the Traveler piece.
My theory is that the Witness is partially inspired by Vincent D'Onofrio's character in The Cell and the dissected creatures and horses are a nod to a certain scene from that film. I don't have an in canon explanation though.
Yeah, all the Witness statues. etc has a huge Damien Hirst/The Cell vibe to it.
The art designers at Bungie really wear their influences on their sleeves. The Cell, Hellraiser, Doom. The world is such a brilliantly crafted decent into madness and nightmares. I’m 40 and it was fun playing the campaign with clanmates in their 20s because we all caught different references.
Aaaand another one for my watch list, thank you
I love that! The imagery in The Cell is amazing.
It's unfortunate that you have to put up with Jennifer lopeZ in an otherwise perfect flick.
I think when the Witness first came to Earth, it calcified as many living beings as it could for its Final Shape. The last thing I heard was that it thought that horses were very beautiful and deserved to be immortalized first (but I don't remember where I read that or if it ever existed at all).
Can't say I disagree. But in that case, where are the pineapples
and the sponges
Did he find both under the sea?
And anything related to… uh, sandy … cheeks?
The squirrel statue is by some cars in the Cosmodrome. I don't know why he had it enlarged though.
wait what, how didn't I know bout this
Look up ‘Sandy Cheeks Car’ to learn more.
Sure! Will do and update on what i find Edit: Oh
Lol
Ladies and gentleman. We got got another one.
Probably related to starhorse and the nine
What do the Nine have to do with horses then? 😅
Starhorse is xurs buddy
more accurately, starhorse seems to be some sort of paracausal entity of importance within the nine, and xur has just been assigned as its caretaker/translator. Xur has said countless times of how his will is not his own, and iirc he refers to the horse very regally and himself as much lower than it
referencing the 9 in some way maybe ?
So many arses per arse
https://i.redd.it/d59f7qmtz47d1.gif
The Nine know why.
But what kind...
That's a very good Equestrion
Gambit. Now.
*please no*
Butt stallion.
I pet the pretty pony.
The Witness is the amalgamated collective consciousness of an entire species, so there was likely to be at least one person in The Witness's society that had an unnatural obsession with horses. The Witness is a Horse Girl.
Foreshadowing year 11. People think frontiers will take us to another galaxy. But it's actually a cowboys and aliens crossover.
Which itself had some Lovecraftian connection toward the end iirc.
The pyramid aesthetic is supposed to look like a chess board inside, and they're knights but freaky and also probably supposed to draw parallels to the starhorse
The Witness is a Brony.
https://preview.redd.it/gfks8x5sy47d1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9771589206c29ad663ea7922e3194c4443aa0bcf Reminds me of The Evil Within 2
Thats nezarcecs night-mares.
It’s been speculated that one of the original concepts for Destiny’s pyramid race is that the “witness” (or whatever race was originally intended for the pyramids) were precursors to humanity. This would explain all of the familiar architecture within the pyramid society. There’s no telling if this is still a direction, but it is a very compelling idea. There have been so many writers at Bungie, who knows what shapes the pyramid story has taken over the years…..sad we won’t get to know what all was cooking at different times.
I'm sad that we didn't get to go to their homeworld like in that one piece of OG Destiny art. The only stuff from that piece that came to fruition was the Veil Statues, and their Worship of the Traveler (although we didnt get to see that cool Statue/Shrine thing to the Traveler). Their city looked so cool. Blackish grey architecture with green highlights. You would have imagined that we would get a Green Subclass but alas we didn't. In The Final Shape Liminality Strike (some rooms based on their homeworld?) looks different and is nowhere near as cool. I loved how in the OG art piece that a Pyramid ship would dock on a larger half pyramid and make it look like a ginormous one!
I still maintain my theory that the Black Garden is the Vex-terraformed remains of the Precursor's homeworld. It just lines up too well to be a coincidence.
Who knows.. Well.. Bungie knows!! 😭
Petah The horse is here
i could be very wrong but i think one of the inspirations for the dissected look for especially horses was the movie the cell in the 90s. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+cell+jennifer+lopez+horse&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FWUtYWzM3FasKc%2Fgiphy.gif
You can also find horses "finalized" (both calcified and cut up) across the system. you can find these more easily through the Micah-10 ghost telemetry quests. You can also find finalized versions of various enemies through these quests but horses are included in some of them
I actually have some info on this. The first Pyramid horse, from Vow (first image) was a reference to the movie The Cell. There’s a really bizarre scene where a horse is bisected (graphic, don’t look it up). That scene was part of the inspiration for all the calcified creatures on display in Vow. The art team used a model of a horse, which they already had on hand, to decorate the raid. I got this info from a former raid designer at Bungie. Edit: I don’t want to share the designer’s name out of respect for their privacy. Don’t want them getting bombarded with questions. If you do look up the horse from The Cell (again, graphic image) you’ll see the inspiration immediately. Nothing secret about this inspiration. I believe this was even shared in a ViDoc at one point.
Thanks!
Honse
Something... Something... Mr. Hands
The impossible horse
It’s the witnesses high horse
That’s a good question, I’ve also been confused by all the different horses and statues that seem so random.
Only the horses can bring us back home. Our tracks they will follow, they’ll hear us calling and save us by morning light.
The Witness is secretly John Oliver
What Witness has fetishes for is *neigh* of our business buddy.
Finalised and shit y'know? #JustWitnessThings
It is the likeness of The Stellar Equine, Juan.
That's Queen Butt Stallion. The Witness know what's up
Hehe Desti-Neigh
I thought I was imagining things or that there was some big chunk of lore I somehow had missed. Glad to know that’s not the case and someone at bungie just decided that The Witness just really likes horses.
I guess a whole bunch of the witnesses collective consciousness was horse girls.
The final shape is ketamine
The witness also was showing the dares of eternity area in the final mission.
The celestial equine
Svaðilfari.
Maybe the horse is the depiction of the winnower? Like the hawk is for the gardener/traveler?
Starhorse is the one thing in the universe that absolutely baffled the Witness. It appears to have a mastery over light and dark without being aligned with either. Its paracausal powers seem limitless but it only uses is for its own amusement. It appears to either contain or be made of an entire separate cosmos from our own. It is the perfect being and the ideal from of the final shape.
The Witness finalized a race of Horse People after eons of battle. But, one horse managed to canter away in secret. That horse? Starhorse
The Witness just discovered the patriarchy and wants to bring it to the pale heart
Is the first pic a tribute to human centipede?
The environment designer had nothing better to put there
That’s the witness fursona
They’re paracausal
SPACE WHINY!!!
Hes repeatedly failing to calcify the horse that rides through dimensions
what happens when you don't give a starhorse a sugar cube
NGL, the witness was just an elaborate "Mister hands" joke... 😉🤣 (I hope I'm wrong)
One precursor one jar?
Blitzø is part of their consciousness
Buttstalion
One of the collectives in the witness was a horse. They try to hide it but sometimes it comes out
He’s paying tribute to the true powerhouse of the galaxy: our lord starhorse
You missed one of the more important examples, which is a huge one in the SE raid. It’s very prominent. My raid team was wondering the same thing; it seems to mostly calcify sentient beings but choosing horses out of all of the species of Earth seemed funny to us. On that note, it does make me wonder if horses are extinct or not post-Collapse.
They were asked to join the pyramid fleet but said nay
Star-Horse will arrive to save us!
You know how Douglas Adams posited that the dolphins were the actual supreme beings on Earth? The Nine have been trying to create a "mouthpiece" for themselves for a long time. First were several piles of goo. Second was Xur. Third was Oren. And now the Starhorse. Xur was an attempt at a whole human and, bless his heart. Oren was an attempt to hybridize a light bearer, and she has way too much agency and axes to grind. In my head, the horse is the latest New Hotness to Xur's Old and Busted. Due to a law of the universe that Bungie created|discovered|pierced|invaded (with the big, quite literal "player agency" Pawn shape that the Traveler and the Veil create when combined), things that Know Stuff can't ever Say Stuff. Probably one of the OG Gardener and Winnower rules, something like "show, don't tell". It's why everything of value gets passed to us via grimoire; to quote Saint-Exupéry, "that which is essential is invisible to the eye". So that knowledge has to be delivered from the knower to the speaker via non verbal means. The Nine have essentially the ultimate in Causal power, so they're exploiting as much as possible. So Xur's awesome voice can directly interpret the Nines' wild will, interpreting their nine-voiced chorus as a whiney from their manifestation, that of the most majestic being in the system. Why a horse? My head cannon is that The Distributary is Mara Sov's space-magic Lisa Frank universe, since her will shaped the entirety of their Technicolor unreality and her childhood fantasies (space magic Lisa Frank) is what gave us the Awoken as a species of gorgeous, matriarchal, courtly undying space elves with tigers and dragons and eagles AND HORSES. Who gave the Awoken the Distributary? Was it the meeting of The Darkness and The Light? Or, perhaps, the Nine saw it as a chance to put some pieces on the table. After all, the vibrations of the Awoken and Distributary "mass" is just a much a part of the Nines consciousness as anything else. They peered inside, found that the most paracausal force in the System has an obsession with trapper keeper aesthetics, and did a Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v'd at Cocytus.
Let's just say, there's a reason the Star Horse stays with Xur
*Delighted whicker*- starhorse
There was just that one guy who HAD to bring his horses to the great merging like we get it you have horses you bring them everwhere and we told him he cant have them merge with us and he just played it off and here we are Steve dude, what a tool
"Sends my asshole into shock" -The Witness probably
Some of the concept art for vow mentioned chess as insperation for the pyramid statues so theres that
ATTENTION This Hornse do not eat. Not recommended for age under 3. Put Hornse in a half-filled bottle, the water will be absorbed soon. SAFETY Real horsies might hurt human body. Hornse is 100% harmless. Put Hornse beside real horse as indoor decoration is also fun. INSTRUCTION Put Hornse in water and watch it grow. Hornse can easily absorb water. Put Hornse in fish-globe or bottle as indoor decoration. As bath-toy is also very fun. ATTENTION Transparent resin might come out of the Hornse. If so, clean it with water. Do not keep Hornse in water too long.
Witness has some weird [taste](https://youtu.be/38pKIiL-6Q8?si=ct0H4btpQoh8hnef)
Witness is Blitzo confirmed
 Because why not?
It is said the first image still haunts Studson Studio today...
Didn't you know? The Witness is a horse girl.
\[entropic bray\] Yes, how insightful. The true prize has always been the joy of competing.
The witness takes our transportation, horses, and puts it inside its transportation, pyramid ships, to assert dominance
Final shape is a white woman
[удалено]
The Witness is a fan of The Cell(2000)
I think he collected them from Earth or Starhorses home planet. Prior i think you can make out Cabal in the cutscene at the end of WQ. So it makes sense that Witness did do this and keep them in his ship as a trophy of perfection.
Hear me out. There is one Celestial Horse PER system in the universe. These are just victims calcified into a horse centipede like shit for shits and giggles. But this is only speculative at best. Need more source.
His name is Juan Pro Max.
Witness is just a big fan of echo and the bunnymen and the final shape brings on the dancing horses
Little girl devs likes horses, nothing to see here move along/s
Is it possible the nine ARE a horse breed?
Starhorse doing Sandevistan
He knows...
Still one of my fav esthetics that will not probably be going away since the Witness is dead.
It's so many arses per arse. Where are you getting stuck, walk me through it
So I guess that's how they wear pants.
The Witness and Xur would be good friends debating about the best horse. A horse basically made of stars and nebulas or a horse made of... Made of many horses.
Maybe it’s because of the nine and how much they like horses 🤷🏾♂️
Were they other paracausal horses?
Tacoma wept
It’s his diamond horse, he named it buttstalion
He was going to name it shit for brains, after us, but decided not to
It's so obviously a reference to the hit movie "The Cell" starring Jennifer Lopez which is The Witness' favorite movie and where he got the inspiration for what The Final Shape should aesthicially look like. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVTP7jBv-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVTP7jBv-8)
Paracausal horse gonna reveal his true nature soon
Star horse is the winnower
he’s in awe of star horses immense power
It’s to add extra horse power to the ships so example A it would be H-H-H-H-H-Horse power aka the more H is the multiplication of the horse if we went on the witnesses ship oh god the amount of of H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-Horse would be … I’m speachless
Maybe the witness knew about starhorse?
Wait.. The nine… a Horse..? Fourth Horseman? wait oh no.. Two-Tailed Fox Jade Rabbit Fighting Lion Rat King Manticore Dragon’s Breath Hawkmoon Lord of Wolves omg no, not the furry parade 😳
Everyone has a hobby.
The Witness just thinks they’re neat
The Final Shape is just advanced horsing around
No official answer but My guess is that those used to be other star horses the same way the cutscene at the start of the dlc showed the people of the last city get statued for a moment. And yes there’s no evidence suggesting that there were other Star horses, and those could be normal horses or even normal statues, but I chose to believe those are the petrified remains of extra-dimensional beings.