My original idea was to make this part of a much larger post, but I decided to split it into two parts, with this one posted now, and the one about the Vex later. ------------------------------------------------------------- [i]The Edge of Fate[/i] expansion is the first expansion in Destiny to both focus on the Nine and give voice to its members. Although we've known they've had an Emissary for a long time, establishing that the Nine are fourth-dimensional beings, and the way the Nine speak through the Emissaries (Orin and Lodi) in the expansion made something click for me: the common thread of how communication with higher-dimensional beings is handled. The way the Nine speak with us is through an Emissary. They can both send Emissaries visions to directly communicate with them, and take direct control over their bodies so others can hear them speak. It is the only way for them to commune directly with us, and it is exceedingly rare for them to find a proper Emissary, at least a once-in-a-millennium deal. The Traveler, over the course of Destiny's history, has communed with the Guardian and other characters through dreams and visions to help guide us to places we need to be. The Speakers, people born in harmony with and attuned with the Light, have received these visions from the Traveler, and others include Micah-10 and Crow. Even Clovis Bray I received visions from the Traveler, who tried to warn him from the path Clarity was sending him down, but his ego kept him from seeing the warnings for what they were, and interpreted them as being from Clarity. Speaking of, the Winnower. In the [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/xxxi-battle-made-waves]Books of Sorrow, XXXI: battle made waves[/url], Oryx went down into the Deep from his Throne World, and he prepared an unborn Ogre to act as a vessel for the Deep when he communed with it. Heresy's Artifact, the Tablets of Ruin, confirm that the one Oryx spoke to was the Winnower. Furthermore, in Clovis Bray's case, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F_gzYo0FtY]the Crypt AI from Deep Stone Crypt[/url] calls Clarity Control "an entity from beyond our own dimension", and we know that the rest of the Veiled Statues contained Dissenters split off from the Witness, so Clarity Control is something else entirely. While the Traveler and the Veil are physical representations and sources of Light and Darkness within the universe, I think the true forms of the Gardener and Winnower might reside in a higher dimension. In their case, the Field of Possibility from the "Unveiling" Lore Book, and one step above the four-dimensional space in which the Nine reside. It was the reveal that the Nine are four-dimensional beings that set me down this line of thought. While they have a physical presence within the universe through dark matter, [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-nine]since their awareness arises from life causing vibrations within dark matter loops that flow through the celestial bodies of Sol[/url], III was murdered by Maya Sundaresh when she commanded them to enter into our dimension from the 4th Dimension. As Lodi put it, they cannot exist in our dimension, just as we cannot exist inside a painting. The Nine need an Emissary, but otherwise act through dark matter; the Gardener's connection to our universe is the Traveler, and the power it channels is the Light; the Winnower's connection is the Veil, and the Veil is a source of Darkness. There is more, but I'll make another post later.