So If you have read the Dust lore. You may be wondering “Who is the witch?” And my theory is that it is Savathun. Now It says in the last lore piece that the witch is old and clever looking. This is exactly like Savathun since she has probably lived a million years. And she has been the smartest of the bunch (Oryx, Xivu Arath). Even The Spider says “Ah Yes The Clever Girl” in one of his bounties. And of course a witch is female. But here is the main part of why I think it is Savathun is that she must know everything of everything. She doesn’t know the Nine and had the faintest idea that they exist. She just knows that they are powerful and mysterious. So she must learn them the best way possible. She can’t go after the Emissary and Agent of the Nine (One of them speaks in gibberish and both of them are under the Nine’s control). So when someone finally knew who the Nine were and practically everything about them. She took the chance to get the information. Also since it is her possibly the only chance she gets it would make sense for her to try her best to be as approachable as possible to Lavinia instead of trying to torture Lavinia to spill what she has learned of the Nine (I mean she had been trying to since her first “discoveries”). Now some of you may be wondering why would The clever girl pronounce a human lucky. Now, you got to remember that Lavinia was an infant when she was born so she has no memory or image of the witch. So Savathun (who is the keeper of secrets and knows practically everything in our solar system) just customized a human appearance and chose it and just played along like she was the witch by saying “didn’t I tell you, you were lucky.” Anyway if you have any thoughts I will be open to suggestions.
But wasn’t it the Emissary that pulled Lavinia out of Nine-limbo?
The emissary tried to. She tried to get Lavinia to follow her. But then the ground gave in for Lavinia and she was dismantled particle by particle and reassembled to what appears to be a living room where the witch (Savathun) is.
I think it’s almost certainly Savathun or one of her children.
Lavinia went through the Cocytus gates which - prior to getting smoked by guardians - Crota had control over. Stands to reason that Savathun would’ve established similar connections to the gates. I can’t think of any other entity that would/could do that.
That, combined with the descriptions mentioned above, starts to get pretty compelling.
On a side note, am I the only one who thinks Lavinia could stand to just go sit down somewhere and take a break? Like, quit falling ass over elbows into horrible scenario after horrible scenario.
Well Oryx and Xivu Arath could probably manage it. Though I don’t know if they cared enough to. Also, even though Savanthun is Hive, do you think she’d “spare” us to milk us for the knowledge we are worth thus giving us a chance to survive? I dunno. Just theorizing.
Oryx certainly could have taken the gates. But he’s pretty dead. No reason to think Xivu Arath couldn’t do it, but she tends to manifest as war, so I’m not seeing any pointers to that theme in the entry.
That’s why I think it’s savathun or one of her children.
“Saving” Lavinia to extract information about the Nine seems exactly like something the hive god of secrets would do.
So, I’m leaning towards that - or something entirely new that we haven’t been introduced to yet.
I know but I was saying hypothetically. I get that she wouldn’t do it because there is no reason for her to. But hypothetically she could if she wanted. Right?
I don’t think that Savathun has really anything to do with the Nine or this lore book. It seems much more likely that the witch is some manifestation of the Nine that wants Lavinia to understand them. There are really no Hive connection to this other than Crota’s old connection to the Cocytus gate, which is now controlled by the Nine. Savathun has never resembled anything related to an old witch, while she is called the Witch Queen, she generally does not show herself that easily. The Nine have been manipulating Lavinia throughout the entire book and it seems reasonable that they would show themselves as this witch as a way to start Lavinia on the right track from her birth. The Nine clearly wanted to be found.
Not to burst your bubble, but we have a substantial amount of lore that goes against this. I think we have more than enough reason to believe that “the witch” is Savathûn. Total Victory and With Both Hands both mention “The Witch, Insidious” from the Crown of Sorrows bounties, which refers to Savathûn, the Witch-Queen. We know this because of Book: The Chronicon - MCXXV.
It was through this rift that Savathûn, the Witch-Queen, allowed her monstrous children to pour into the belly of the great ship and flood its corridors with their clicking and skittering. A great many of the Leviathan’s inhabitants were filled with dread and fright. [While this coward invents his histories and futures, I wait. These messages are my gift to you.]
But the great Emperor Calus had seen Death at the edge of the universe and was not afraid, for this witch and her spawn were not Death.
“Witch-Queen Savathûn” is also referenced in Book: Truth to Power- Injection, and I know Truth to Power and The Chronicon are regarded as untrustworthy sources, but they do hold small truths. To back this up, Toland refers to Savathûn as the “Witch-Queen” in A Light in The Darkness:
I stand to meet the light. And I collapse into darkness.
I am awake, I believe—though this feels like a dream.
“You encountered the Witch-Queen and survived.”
To take it a step forward, both Calus and Toland refer to Savathûn as the one who crafted the Song and both refer to her as “the witch” in Shadow’s Robes and Thy Honored Conductor. Eris ties all of the above altogether in The Festering Core (Strike - Timestamped):
Ghost: This Blight… does it look familiar to you? Like the Blight in the Dreaming City?
Eris Morn: Savathûn extends her reach at last.
Zavala: Savathûn? What makes you so certain?
Eris Morn: There’s no certainty where the Witch Queen is concerned. But I have strong suspicions. Above all, she seeks knowledge to inform her plans and seeks pawns to carry them out. The sphere offers both.
Savathûn is a master of deception and is trickery-incarnate, and the entry is called “The Witch”. The Nine have not obtained a way to access the ‘world of matter’, so them becoming a ‘clever-looking old lady’ doesn’t add up. If the Cocytus Gate is of Hive-origin and was used to access our dimension, then it is not beyond possibility that another Ascendant Hive could have utilized this Gate, like Savathûn. This is all occurring after Orin became the Emissary of the Nine (the Red War), so Savathûn has already been traversing our system by the time Lavinia is annihilated and reborn.
Yes, the Nine wanted Lavinia to understand them and that’s why the Emissary went after Lavinia once she stepped through the Cocytus Gate: Savathûn interfered before the Emissary could save her.