Destiny 2 Lore - What is Egregore? The Darkness Fungus at the heart of Calus's Plans! 

Brother, it is not the kind of shrooms you take in. Trust me.

Drifter going on about the time he smoked space mushrooms is way too on brand.

Don’t smoke any egregore from the leviathan I got an extra eye now

I laughed after I read this

@@elitegamer9310 its a suppository. Shroom on concentrated dark matter pill format

He's going full Gravemind and I'm all for it

Considering that these pyramids can exist in a realm/place that is described as 'the absence of light, dark, life, death, the absence of anything, even of absence itself.' and unfold the pyramidion (infinite dimensional Hilbert space). The fact that Calus is attempting to control it with the Egregore is fucking terrifying

Sounds alittle like savathuns lines about her throne world...

@@anosvoldigoad3021 maybe to the degree that he's making his own 'throne world' or at least another pocket dimension of his/The Witness's image.

That is very similar language to what savathun used to describe us running around on her throne world

Egregore is also similar to the sculk in Minecraft. It’s an inter dimensional fungus that grows when things die on it, and it harvests their souls to fuel itself… never thought I’d make a comparison of Destiny and Minecraft

Me too very flood like.

So that basically makes calus a grave mind

The word "Atavist" at the end of the Psions (talking about egregore atavist psions from nightmare containment) names means that once they had some sort of connection to the egregore plants that has re-emerged on the leviathan. So maybe the Psions once were apart of the darkness and have reconnected to it and may have helped Calus connect to it also. Just my theory and I haven't watched the video yet.

@@Redpanda3c or maybe there species had contact with the Egregore once upon a time? I mean the witness and the traveller have been around since the dawn of time? Whose to say that there answers didn’t encounter it

This is far more subtle in execution though. The Flood was very in your face and immediate as a threat. The egregor isn't nearly as immediately threatening, but it's creepy in its omnipresence.

The scorn have flood-like vibes as well. It’s really cool to see Bungie delve back into this particular form of cosmic horror after spending a lot of time really planning it out and tuning their narrative abilities.

There is much talk, and I have listened, through rock and metal and time. Now I shall talk and you shall listen

Nice 😉

"This one is machine and nerve, and has its mind concluded. This one is but flesh and faith, and is the more deluded." “And this last one’s blueish purple lol”

The Drifter kicks ass

What lore is this from

@@Sorcha_Sol It's from the Eidolon Pursuant armor from the season. It's the same for all three classes, and you read it in Head-Arms-Chest-Legs-Class Item order.

@@dsgowo thank you

How? The spores don’t kill people. People kill other people and the spores take advantage

@@H240909 Its more how the fungus is sentient, can communicate with itself, across space and dimensions. The Flood do the same. All Flood forms are connected, and they use infection forms, one of which being Spores. Egregol uses spores and death to grow. Flood do the same. The only difference is that there aren't any creatures formed from the spores yet, and that people killing other people allows it to grow. The flood dont have those limitations.

Our guardian would never receive memories back. It takes away the personal narrative for the PC. Each player gets to make their own “history” of their guardian. Giving our guardian a defined narrative and past would take all that away

I'd like to have a momentum based set of abilities that scale off rapid kills as the egregore feeds off the death

They're not saying it was caused by the Darkness, they're talking about how it shows the depths of human evil, much like the feeling they get when connecting with the Darkness.

There was a hunter helmet in D1 that looking back on it was probably egregore, the Achlyophage Symbiote. In practice it just gave you an extra golden gun shot, but it could easily be reworked.

I believe Ty Franck played/plays Destiny, he has a FWC shirt on in the promo photo on Amazon. Felt like the Protomolecule was a bit influenced by the Flood especially in the books where it's a bit more gruesome and reanimates just like...pieces of people. So this is some fun influence begets influence.

Cordyceps? Yeah that one is creepy, they based the fungus zombies in The Last Of Us on a strain of that infecting humans.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is the full name. Fun fact: There's another mind-altering parasite called toxoplasma gondii, which can be found in cat feces. Enjoy!

They had a sparrow named Cordyception after the same strain.

Maybe it is foliage from the Black Garden, but it appears different outside of it's realm

@@jaredtherock5692 The garden I'm referring to is the one the Gardener and the Winnower gamed (and later fought) in. If I'm understanding the lore correctly, that's a different garden from the Black Garden.

it isn’t really clear if they are two different gardens or not. Hell the metaphorical garden before time where the Gardener and the Winnower “lived” and played their flower game might not even be a real thing. Unless we get confirmation one way or the other we will probably never know. I think it could really swing one way or the other but I do think it’s an interesting idea that the egregore might have came from the Gardener’s and Winnower’s garden. But I truth there is very little we understand about the Gardener and Winnower and the Light and Dark since they are so mysterious and unknowable in nature and the only real hints we have, have all pretty much been fed to us by the Witness which we can’t really trust at all kind of like truth to power and the lore books influenced by the Witch Queen.

Seeing you mention this, takes me to seeing the similarities in a hivemind-esq substance like radiolaria. You mentioned how Calus could feel every bullet fired and people going thru the leviathan, so did Savathun during the Missions in the vex network during Season of Splicer.

@@alecschilling2691 yeah, I’ve also heard that there’s several black gardens. Maybe egregore is another “final shape” that’s already won like the vex in their original universe

No, I doubt it was Rhulk; he held contempt for Savathun and looked down upon Throne Worlds. I believe it is the Winnower itself who spoke to Oryx. The informality with which it addresses Oryx in the "Books of Sorrow" matches with the speaker of "Unveiling", and both use the specific word "Majestic" - to refer to the idea of the Final Shape, to refer to the Guardians, and also to the Pattern that would become the Vex.

@@Catalyst375 Possibly, but I'm hesitant to trust anything the witness sends to us so the winnower as we know it may not exist, it's the same thing with the books of sorrow as it's possible this conversation never happened as the book is said by savathun to be full of lies and by that nature the books of sorrow become almost as dubious. We know fundament, the bargain with the worm gods, and the fate of akka and rise of oryx is true but we don't know what other parts of the book are true and/or false

Given that Rhulk is essentially responsible for the creation of the hive on behalf of the Witness I would be surprised if it wasn’t Rhulk or the Witness using Rhulk like a puppet to speak through the Ogre

Could just be an inconsistency. I don't think the Witness was a very fleshed out concept back then so perhaps they hadn't thought about it's speech patterns yet.

@@mosisusasu9205 Possibly but when you look at the grimoire card for keksis the betrayed it mentions the witness's many voices.

See, I'd be very cautious of a subclass linked to the Egregore. With the newfound knowledge that the spores of the Egregore essentially link whoever breathes them in to whoever's watching through the network, we've been giving the Witness intel on every aspect of our methods of combat. Every time we made a move on the Glykon, every advancement we make into the Leviathan, certain aspects of Gambit matches, what goes on in Drifter's room and even our activity within the Helm is feeding the Witness with information. To try to wield that power would be to put ourselves in even more danger, or worse, we may end up in a similar situation that the Hive are in, where we have to slaughter countless lives or be devoured by the Egregore that we've allowed fully into our bodies. In my opinion, the next Darkness subclass could be a Gravity-centered subclass similar to the gravity weapons the Black Fleet used to destroy the structures on Titan during the Collapse. I do like your idea about a poison subclass focused on fighting the Egregore, but wouldn't an aspect of Light be better equipped to do that? I was actually wondering if it was possible. It'd be interesting if we found an aspect of Arc, Solar and Void Light that could be used to destroy the Egregore. It could go something like this: -Void Light Weakens the Egregore after enough focus, softening a portion of it and rendering it vulnerable for a brief window of time. -Arc Light Shocks the Egregore, disrupting the network and making it harder for it to recover from the Weakening effect. -Solar Light Scorches the Egregore, burning it away, finishing the job the other two elements began. If it worked methodically like that, I think that would be a great opportunity for a fireteam to use the synergy of each element in something like a Raid or Dungeon. Just a thought, though.

Lysander

The Egregore have been on Nessus for some time now, take a close look at the ground and you’ll see small stalks. The Scorn, Cabal, even a Guardian are connected. That planet filled with Egregore is potentially a halo related being, a Gravemind but in Destiny. Egregore mashes mind & body together and now Calus’ bloated body is probably even a terrifying mass of Egregore.

I wonder what this fungis use of Katabasis was. The Witness is probably is tormenting him, along with trillions of others presumably with that little snippet of that Egregore planet taking years to get to that point on Calus’ Leviathan.

That’s actually really interesting

The Vex are the Final Shape already; from the cycle of the universe before the Gardner broke the rules of the flower game. All they want is to get back what they had.

The “Deity as egregore” take is a lot like how Terry Pratchett saw the gods of Discworld, except the gods themselves always existed as blobs of ego before being believed in.

Yes, my friend. The egregore is getting stronger and closer to existing in our world the more we speculate and talk about it 😁 Love what Bungie is going for here.

Bungie uses all kinds of real terminology from all kinds of fields for the names because it just sounds cool and solid, and not a lot of people know about the real counterparts signified by them. They hardly ever bothered to connect the in-game things to the real-life ones with the same name/terms.

@@eskarinakatz7723 That also reminds me of the primals in FFXIV, gods made manifest through belief and aether. These beings may or may not exist outside the way their worshippers imagine them to be, but once they are summoned, they take the form and characteristics of that very idea, that concept.

Might be a bit old here,but egregore comes from a root word that means watcher

Didn’t seem very fungal in nature. It’s more plant like a tree or shrub. But not too dissimilar in how darkness can spread.

Nah the lore for that is Rhulk was experimenting with Worms and Darkness infusions so he most likely infected himself with worm stuff to boost his strength, why he had that suit looking armor on that ruptures when we do damage to him and exposes. It's Worms inside him that then erupt out when he dies because it grew too unstable. The same substance can be found on the caregiver boss and we know that boss was created when he put Worms inside a Scorn.

Look at Champions, they have similar filaments growing out of them.

Would certainly explain why when not talking through a machine, his voice seems to just echo in our heads

A cool. A gravemind. Thanks Bungie. I'll await the Library 2 in Destiny 2.

Dust explosion time

Egregore vines and mass combining to form a sort of bipedal horror with weapons? I’d love that

You say that like my Hunter isn't already not some kind of twisted cyborg Scarecrow/Mr. Freeze fusion.

You know, I was wondering if anyone else was reminded of the spore drive when I was writing this. Love the concept of it!

That sucks, crazy that happened. Glad your better now bro! Could have killed you.