The Nine (often represented as the IX) are the enigmatic rulers of the Jovians, the worlds beyond the Solar System's asteroid belt. They maintain contact with the City via their agent Xûr, and have formed an alliance with the Reef. After the apparent release of Skolas, their loyalty is in doubt.
Very little about the Nine or the Jovians is known due to the isolation of the outer Solar System. One legend describes the Nine but offers seemingly contradictory clues to their nature:
- The Nine are survivors of the cis-Jovian colonies who made a compact with an alien force to ensure their own survival.
- The Nine are deep-orbit warminds who weathered the Collapse in hardened stealth platforms.
- The Nine are ancient leviathan intelligences from the seas of Europa or the hydrocarbon pits of Titan.
- The Nine arrived in a mysterious transmission from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster.
- The Nine are the firstborn Awoken and their minds now race down the field lines of the Jupiter-Io flux tube.
- The Nine are Ghosts who pierced the Deep Black without a ship and meditated on the hissing silence of the heliopause.
- The Nine are the aspects of the Darkness, broken by the Traveler's rebuke, working to destroy us from within.
- The Nine is a viral language of pure meaning.
- The Nine are the shadows left by the annihilation of a transcendent shape, burned into the weft of what is.
Osiris had met with the Nine on Europa. According to Brother Vance, "He says the Nine are vulnerable every moment they touch our world."
Trivia
- The name, 'The Nine' or 'IX', is likely a reference to the 'Ix' in Frank Herbert's Dune series; a mysterious, technology-oriented group whose name, unbeknownst to them, was simply 'nine' in a long-dead language (Roman Numerals).
- Corona Borealis is a constellation, known as the "Northern Crown". It is made up of seven stars, one of Bungie's many references to the number seven.
- Heliopause is the boundary between Solar Wind and external cosmic rays, effectively the outer boundary of the Solar System. Therefore, the "Deep Black" is outside of the reach of the Sun's influence.
- The Jupiter-Io Flux Tube is a cylindrical section of Jupiter's magnetic field line which passes between Jupiter and Io. If it were able to be seen by the naked eye, it would resemble a tube of electromagnetic force between the two. Electrical current passes along this flux tube forming a circuit between the planet & moon, which ionizes the cloud of volcanic sulfur, oxygen, sodium and chlorine into a ring of plasma which surrounds the planet, boosting its already powerful magnetic field even further. The flux tube itself boosts radio emissions from Jupiter, making them increase considerably when Io's orbit brings it closer to Earth.
