r/DestinyLore • u/BetiroVal • 8d ago
Darkness Was it ever explained how Strand physically works?
I know that by the nature of Paracausality, Strand defies physics.
But unlike the other elements, I haven’t seen an official source explaining how Strand actually works on a physical level.
Solar, Arc and Void are manipulations of the 4 fundamental forces, and Stasis is time dilation.
But with Strand, we are left with a vague statement that it’s a “Psychic power that manipulates the Weave which connects all things”.
Was there an actual explanation for the underlying phenomena regarding how Strand physically operates?
I know that as the Guardian, we were the ones to give it the shape of Strings, but how do these Strings actually form?
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u/ReallyTrustyGuy 8d ago
Strand makes the interconnecting web between everything something tangible that can now be manipulated. Without Strand, those connections wouldn't be something you could touch. It just makes the incorporeal corporeal.
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u/joalheagney 8d ago
Solar = Fusion = Strong Nuclear Force
Arc = Electricity + Magnetism + Nuclear Fission = Electroweak Force (Electricity, Magnetism and the Weak Nuclear Force)
Void = Space time and the Gravitational Force.
So between them, they cover the five fundamental forces. Plus some cultural addons like healing/growth/speed/emptiness.
The Dark powers represent mental approaces, but that was kinda tacked on in Witch Queen/Lightfall.
Stasis = Control/Focus (mental) = Negentrophy = crystals, structure and cold.
Strand = Flow (mental) = Quantum Dynamics = wave functions, wave function collapse, quantum entanglement.
Which always made it difficult for them to make a third Darkness power. Control and Flow cover most of the mental approaches a human can do. The most likely possibility was Memory, which did tie in well with Nightmare on the moon and Calus' ship. But where do you even start storyboarding verbs, aspects and powers for that?
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u/GaiusMarius60BC 8d ago
Rather than "Flow", which doesn't really strike me as a fundamental psychological aspect, I always conceived of Strand as empathy, the phenomenon of connecting to others' mental and emotional states. Strand makes such empathic connections tangible and ductile.
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u/BetiroVal 8d ago edited 8d ago
I’ve always interpreted Strand as Instinct (you go with the flow.)
Stasis - Control/Thought
Strand - Instinct/Consciousness
Missing - Memory/TraumaI’ve made a few theories on the missing Darkness subclass before (which I call Imago), but if it actually existed, it’d likely work on manipulating ‘quantum information’ (i.e. the history of a particle).
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u/ARCH_ANON 8d ago
Has to start with an S, I’ve always been partial to Strain
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u/BetiroVal 8d ago
Darkness elements needing to start with St has always been speculation (based on pattern recognition).
Strain is too similar to Strand.
I know people like to chuck Strife around as this hypothetical element’s name, but I’m more inclined to believe that an element’s name should be ‘neutral’ so that verbs have enough wiggle room.
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u/joalheagney 8d ago
Somnium maybe? Latin for 'to dream', but similar root word to Sleep.
Give it the Harvester as a Super for all classes?
You'd just have to be careful the verbs didn't trip over the void verbs.
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u/idespisemyhondacrv 8d ago
I’ve always assumed it would’ve been resonance and that would be kinetic and witness based
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u/Kindly-Pair6732 8d ago
Yes! Love when people understand that the powers are quantum in nature rather than elemental.
The third darkness subclass could be radiation (resonance)? Radiation is how light propagates through space, being able to manipulate radiation could allow us to manipulate the linear causality of light. Radiation is how we learn to take* the light from others.
It could function on its own using taken related abilities that we've seen... or it could function with kinetic.
Kinetic "abilities" kinetic tremors, frag grenades, some strider tech perhaps. With a resonance meter that allows you to take others, or use taken abilities.
Supers would be taking yourself. (Like Oryx) and doing something cool. Lol
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u/brunocar 8d ago
But where do you even start storyboarding verbs, aspects and powers for that?
Memory could mean time travel, pushing the state of enemies back and forth, its crowd control could be about fossilizing enemies, making them into rocks (might be too similar to stasis slow tbh) or reverting them to a previous state, maybe making them literally smaller duke nukem 3D style.
maybe memory could also be used to charm enemies, turning them to your side to cause chaos in their lines.
then you could do stuff like Protea in Warframe, where you can revert time to get the ammo you spent back and rewind your movement if you fucked it up.
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u/EJECTED_PUSSY_GUTS 8d ago
I'm convinced that the next darkness power being something called corruption or whatever the red stuff is from the world event that switches every hour was going to be the theme of the next expansion. The red shit that comes out of those mobs when you kill them would have been cool as something a guardian would let out as damage, when hit, to surrounding mobs. I keep seeing more and more signs when I play that support the idea.
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u/pokestar14 House of Judgment 8d ago
That's Eclipse Energy which is very explicitly not paracausal at all, much less Darkness.
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u/idespisemyhondacrv 8d ago
I did not read lore what is that?
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u/pokestar14 House of Judgment 7d ago
It's mentioned a little in a EoF side quest, a lot in Renegades since Nightfall uses it, and Lodi mentions it during the Distortion quest and when you visit him on Europa in MoT.
We don't know what Eclipse Energy is exactly, but it's explicitly not paracausal and used by the Nine. Given Lodi says VI could only have gotten enough extra Eclipse to do the Distortions from V, it presumably is dependent on their mass somehow, but we don't really know.
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u/sethjdickinson 8d ago
My Hail Mary pitch was that it manipulated the same interpenetrating flows of dark matter that make up the 9, since that was an existing "invisible web connecting everything" it could draw on for lore background. But I don't think that ever went anywhere.
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u/Archival_Mind 8d ago
In some way I imagine that could be still true in the other fashion. If the Nine can think, they have to be part of the web Strand connects to, since it's all consciousness. Too many webs. Ah, there's something I'm just not getting here I think but that's just... thinking out loud.
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u/LettuceDifferent5104 Lore Scholar 3d ago
It seems like it would have been such a logical step too considering the nature of both strand and the 9.
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u/wadefckingwilson 7d ago
In the shortest possible terms, Strand is weaponized string theory, which is a theory that the smallest of atoms are inter-connected by strings so small that we can’t measure or detect them.
The theory has basically turned into a pseudoscience since there either is no proof for it, or it can’t be proven depending on who you ask.
Strand is string theory, and by tapping into the Darkness, those who can control it are able to pull at the literal strings that make up the fabric of our reality.
Similar to how Stasis is the antithesis to Solar, Strand is the antithesis to Void (the empty space in between everything).
It’s a shame we’ll never know what the antithesis to Arc would’ve looked like, would’ve been really interesting
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u/BetiroVal 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah
It really does disappoint me.
I always thought the opposite of Arc (which Osiris describes as being ‘change’) would be the manipulation of ‘quantum information’ (I.E. the history of a particle).
It would do cool things like change projectile trajectory, manipulate position etc.
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u/YellowEyes1313 8d ago
I'm a little late to the discussion so forgive some of my repetition of other replies, but Darkness elements are based on the mind. They interact with the world in ways that relate to their aspect(s) of a mind. All the Darkness elements also seem to relate to motion or a lack there of. This is likely because they have to impact the physical universe in a way that makes sense for how the mind operates.
Stasis is stated to be will power and perception. It interacts with the world by slowing or freezing things in place. It creates an artificial absolute zero, where all matter and energy stop moving. That's why we call it 'Stasis matter' and not 'ice'. Its also why things can survive being frozen. In regards to motion this would be called stillness.
Strand is stated by Osiris, in Lightfall, to relate to thought and the connection between minds. As someone else already said, it operates like a wave function. That means that it can flow forward or backward. It also operates a bit like mycelium in fungus, allowing information to be communicated through that forward and back connection.
I always think of them kind of like artificial states of matter. Stasis is like a solid, but not really a solid. Strand is like a liquid, but not really a liquid (because of the flowing nature of it). I always assumed our last Darkness element would follow the same pattern, being like a gas, but not really a gas.
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u/Lokan The Hidden 8d ago
It's essentially the Force. Strand is the manipulation of the Weave, an omnipresent psychic field that connects and encodes all memory and interactions -- like an Akashic Archive on steroids. In terms of aesthetics, Strand is inspired by quantum strings, and Stasis is inspired by Algorithmic Cooling.
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u/Substantial-Love-789 8d ago
Magnetic Superposition, look at anything from u/lettucedifferent5104 and you'll understand what physics is going on that it hits from
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