I’m brand new on the Commons. Hi. Anyways, lets get to the point. When reading through the lore for the Nine, which is filled with riddles, the lore page for Adjucator says something peculiar. It says, “Go and touch the Hissing Silence…You found the Devil Himself. A Golden Snake who poses as a god.” Any ideas as to who or what this Gold demon snake is?
Welcome to the forum!
There hasn’t been much discussion regarding the Nine lore lately, but back when the entries first came out, people were speculation that the ‘Golden Snake’ was Calus over on the IC discord, as well as on r/Destinylore. The relevant part of the Adjudicator entry is this:
YOU FOUND THE DEVIL HIMSELF.
A G O L D E N S N A K E A D E V I L W H O P O S E S A S G O D
No more a god than you.
YOU DIDN’T FIGHT HIM.
Y O U T U R N E D A R O U N D S M A R T
Others did.
while we watched
And Calus is big on both the gold and the god complex:
Look to the heavens and you will see me with my arms spread wide. Fly to me and I will bathe you in gold, share the fruits of my gardens, and watch you grow dizzy on libations.
“From this day forward, I shall take up all the empire in my embrace. For I am father of the empire, as I am father to all creation. I will suffer no tired institution nor petty bureaucrat to stand between me and my children. I am the perfect loving god, and all will tremble to know me.”
The main problem here is that we do fight Calus, at least sort of- we kill his robots. We didn’t become one of his Shadows, though, which would fulfill the “Others did. while we watched” bit. There’s no ‘god’ we haven’t killed in the past- Oryx, Aksis, etc. are all dead.
Of course, this is all with the assumption that the Nine are talking to ‘us’ here- they may be talking with the Emissary, or Guardians as a whole- or someone who met Calus and didn’t fight him. Given the first half of Adjudicator:
You sought us out in the deep black.
meditation wasn’t enough for you
GO AND TOUCH THE HISSING SILENCE
Do not fear being submerged.
Not many ships go that far, these days.
you went through hell to get one, and then again to get out there
We’ve never gone out to the “deep black.” Additionally, The “meditation” & “GO AND TOUCH THE HISSING SILENCE” lines are a callback to Ghost Fragment: Legends 2:
The Nine are Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause.
But- obviously- these aren’t referring to the same subject, because the Ghosts didn’t use a ship. There’s the ‘all the Nine entries are the Nine talking to or about Orin’ theory, but that’s mostly spinfoil at the moment. If the Nine aren’t talking to us, then it’s a lot more likely that the ‘Golden Snake’ is Calus.
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All of the Trials lore is the Nine speaking to the Emissary. So this would have to be someone that the Emissary (Orin) did not fight
With the release of SoO and the seeming inclusion of the Guardians into Calus’ Shadows, the idea that Adjudicator is referring to Calus seems even more plausible.