The Living Cat will want the box to be opened sooner rather than later, and will try to influence everything and everyone it can to do so. The Dead Cat will want to delay the opening of the box as long as possible, in order to increase the likelihood of its own existence. And both cats must balance their potential retroactive erasure if the box is opened against the possibility that a favorable waveform collapse will allow them to operate free from their counterpartâs interferencenote .
The Light represents a possible outcome of the universe where things like life, unity, civilization, knowledge, goodness, etc., are able to overcome entropy and create a perfect state where everything is able to exist in perfect harmony. The Darkness represents a possible outcome of the universenote where entropy and âthe law of the jungleâ pre-empt everything, and all that exists is a brutal, selfish, nihilistic entity that destroys anything else that might compete with it. And until the waveform collapses (i.e., the end of time), from our perspective they both exist simultaneously at the end of the universe.
Both of these entities are sufficiently powerful/advanced that they can operate in an âacausalâ or âanti-causalâ manner (words that appear with surprising regularity in Destiny fluff, especially where the powers of Light or Darkness are mentioned), which allows outputs to precede inputs (basically, it allows them to affect the past from the future). And both of them are conspiring to affect the âpastâ (the story's âpresentâ) in such a way as to guarantee their eventual supremacyâthe Light encourages the harmonizing and organizing aspects of civilization, while the Darkness encourages war and a hyper-Darwinian philosophy of chaos. The Traveller and King Oryx are both agents of the Light and Darkness, respectively, but are also both potential identities of eachâfluff indicates that King Oryx might have one day become the core of the Darkness (before you killed him), and it seems likely that the Traveller might also one day be the core of the coming Light.
Ultimately, the War between Light and Darkness is just our slow-motion perspective of the waveform collapsing. Or, from the Vex perspective, itâs one set of timelines warring on another set of timelines for territory/dominance. Either way, the name of the series derives from it being a fight over (and between!) two alternate destinies of the universe.
The Darkness breaks and destroys everything through constant contact and conflict. And, by it's own account, it will one day reduce the universe to a homogeneous state where it is the only thing that exists.
The Light and the Dark both exist as singularities at opposite ends of the timeline, and what we perceive as their conflict is one gradually fading into the other.
The name of the game comes from the fact that the entire story is a parable for the destiny of the universe.
The Universe of Destiny is the result of temporal tampering. The story goes like this:In a future not longer achievable to the city, the Traveler, and their Guardians, a great federation came to exist between the four races: Humanity, the Hive, the Cabal, and the Fallen (or Eliksni). Each race had its part in a utopian society The houses of the fallen acted in defense of the alliance, The cabal worked diligently to build and craft the wonders of this utopian age, the Hive, sharing a single mind even at impossible distances held the federation together, and humanity was on the cutting edge of science and technology. This union of the greatest of each race would eventually culminate in one of the greatest scientific achievements outside of traveling into another universe: Time Sliding. For eons time travel had been possible, but the process was inefficient and unreliable, Time sliding was simple and wasted little energy. But with the ease of Time Sliding came a new challenge, how do you prevent its abuse? And thus the Vex came to be. Each race contributed to the new Guardians of time, The fallen gave them an unyielding sense of duty the Cabal forged tough cases to hold the vast energies of each unit. The hive linked their minds together in vast networks and the Humans installed within each one a Time slider device and the capability of entering the Garden, an extra-temporal space that would act a home for all Vex. The final gift was the light. through a process of distillation of their own genetic structures, the races had managed to create a biological version of the light granted by the Traveler, though there were imperfections. To combat the corruption if the light, every vex was granted a fixed lifecycle, beginning and ending with the dismantling of a unit. The programmes were to follow this highest of laws without question, without hesitation. There was one Programme however that resisted, instead of dismantling older Vex units it hid them in a distant corner of the Garden away from it masters and fellow Vex. The corruption escaped the vex units it was trapped in and began to infect even new units with a growing instability until even the central Mind of the program lost itself. It began to hate, hate its situation, hate the orders it was given and hate those that had made it less than perfect. It needed power, and so it would used the very nature of the Garden to achieve it, leaving the garden and returning to before it left, combining with a past version of itself in an unending feedback loop, each time growing more powerful, and unstable. (It is during the early part of this plan that it becomes the Heart of the black Garden and the player is sent to destroy it, but this doesn't change a thing because it exists outside of the normal progression of time[action-reaction]). Once strong enough the Mind leaves the Garden, as the Darkness, into a time before its targets could challenge it. The plan was simple enough, destroy itâs creators from within. The first target was the hive, and to this end first Ornyx and them Crota were created. Built in the form of the Hive, but meant to disrupt the Singular mind (the destruction of both may lead to the hive mind reforming). The two would set themselves up as Gods of the now chaotic hordes. The Fallen were easy enough, their rigid social structure could be destroyed or corrupted to meet the needs of the Darkness. It was around this time that it began to hunt the traveler, the one thing in the universe that was still a threat to it. Darkness fell too late on the Cabal to corrupt the species in its entirety, but was content with just pushing them towards someone who needed to die. And to this end they began to aim them towards the final piece of the federation. It reach the Sol system far too late to prevent the rise of humanity into the golden age, but was more than enough destroy their (relatively) primitive means of defence using the Hive, Fallen, Cabal and even the Vex of itâs own programme. It tried to corrupt humans attempting to flee to distant colony worlds, but before it could finish the Traveler intervened, launching a Darkness specific EMP style pulse that froze the Awoken in a state of semi corruption, and freed the Hive and Fallen from the Darkness, as well as forcing the Dark Vex back into the Garden.During itâs final moments before falling into slumber to recharge itâs spent energies the Traveler connected with its future self in the age of the federation to wam it about the tretery of the Darkness. The federation them ordered the Vex Programs under their command to hunt down the Darkness in the past and repair what damage they could. The Vex in the game are not the Dark Vex but rather the Vex sent to repair the damage. They cannot understand the universe that now exists, people that did not exist in the original timeline are prominent players and the Awoken are a race of walking anomalies as far as they are concerned. The Exo Stranger is from the federationâs Future and was tasked with overseeing the vex in their current mission, but she has no way to alter the parameters of their mission to fix the constant aggression of literally everything. The ruins on Venus and Mars are what the history files say should be there at this point in history, so the Vex are trying to repair and ERROR 404: landmark not found (The ruins on Mercury are not however and were created by the Darkness to be a seat of power and were abandoned when the Traveler forced the Dark Vex back into the Garden. Any further Vex presence of Mercury is them attempting to remove the structures.) Their attacks on other races is similar to an antivirus software attempting to remove corrupted/unwanted files from a computerâs hard drive.
- George Washington, Titan
- Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster, Titan
- Summer Glau, Warlock
- Simo Häyhä, Hunter
- Vasily Zaytsev, Hunter
- Chris Kyle, Hunter
- Nathan Fillion, Hunter
- Cayde-6 modeled his current personality (even his voice) after the guy.
- Phil LaMarr, Warlock
- Robin Williams, Warlock
- Dorie Miller, Hunter
- Salahudin Ayyubi,Titan
- Samuel L.Jackson,warlock
- J. R. R. Tolkien ,warlock
- Whoopi Goldberg, warlock
- Oprah Winfrey, Warlock Sunsinger (*activates Radiance* "YOU get a grenade! YOU get a grenade! YOU get a grenade!")
- You, your Player Character
- Do we know what the light is? Good? Charisma? Battle skill? I ask because (cue the Nightmare Fuel!) others like Hitler, Bin Laden and other no-so-nice individuals could potentially be Guardians as well.
- The Speaker's interpretation of his visions, as recounted in Destiny 2, is that to be eligible for becoming Risen you needed to display Bravery, Devotion, Self-sacrifice, and that you need to be currently dead. Assuming his version is at all accurate - though filtered through metaphor and without accounting for differences of opinion among Ghosts - it is perfectly reasonable that someone who was a villain in life could become a Guardian after death. Just ask Uldren Sov.
- Moreso: Do Guardians remember their past lives?
Related to this...
- Jossed: The Hive Gods are their royal family. We also get a lore entry from the Darkness' perspective, and it seems to have a very singular (and oddly friendly), personality.
- It's definitely hinted that the Traveler might not be as good as it is thought to be. Read the Black Garden entry http://destinynews.net/destinys-mysteries/ . It seems also that there may be more to the Vex than crazy murder bots.
- Directly: the traveler itself destroyed human civilization.
- Indirectly: The traveler led those who would destroy human civilization here on purpose.
- Accidently: The traveler led those who would destroy manâs civilization here, but not on purpose.
- Confirmed, the villains followed the Traveler to Earth and it is stated that they are long-standing enemies.
- Alternatively, it's a parallel Durandal who never left the Marathon. Considering the Marathon is Deimos, and the Traveler is the size of a small moon.
- Or it's Durandal at the end of Marathon 2, where ten thousand years later, he returns to Earth in a Jjaro dreadnought to say hi.
- But humanity didn't return to the stars until 100,000 years or so after the firing of the Halos, and they knew nothing of their previous empire. Unless perhaps you mean a second Human-Forerunner war that may arise thanks to the events of Halo 4.
- Subverted: Destiny2 confirms that the Traveler is indeed sentient when it vaporizes Ghaul's soul shortly after his death. It is unknown if it will be helping you more directly.
The Blaze sits inside a nest of little worlds, still too distant to share its heat but plainly staring out at you. A face emerges, drawn from plasmas and radiation...
There must be meanings in its roar.
You listen hard and carefully, and sometimes a lucid melody seems to rise out of random noise, pulling your mind into moments where it seems possible that answers are about o be revealed. Joy builds, and the first hope in ages transforms you.
It seems important, even critical, to tell every star from here to the black between the galaxies that you are strong again.
- Destiny 2 reveals a Warmind Vault labeled "JYS" on Io. Without vowels we can't be sure, but "Joyeuse" is as good a guess as any.
- Confirmed, in the beta. You start the game with your character getting resurrected by a Ghost.
- During the Titan's mission to regain the Striker subclass in Destiny2, we run into the memory of Wei Ning; she has confirmed that her Ghost was female (or at least had a female voice).
- Then there's also Sagira, Osiris's Ghost.
- The fight against the Darkness is far from over and expansion further out into the stars offers the possibility of other races and aliens joining the fight for either side
- What are the player characters called? Guardians. What is the subtitle of the next series installment in Halo? Guardians. The two versions of humanity will band together, trading the powers of Light for direly needed military personnel and materiel. Cue John-117 becoming the most badass Titan in existence. Alternatively, a Hunter instead, as suggested by his cloak in the Halo 5 reveal trailer.
- Granted, it's like saying Event Horizon isn't a Warhammer 40,000 movie, but still...
- What better way to get humanity on your side than to first improve their lot in life, then heroically sacrifice itself to the point of barely functioning? After that, humanity and its allies are gonna be willing to protect it at any cost (a human shield, if you'll excuse the pun), and fight back the Darkness for it, perhaps enabling the Traveler to commit greater atrocities when it's restored. After all, we only have the word of agents of the Traveler and its previous actions (Which can easily be interpreted as protecting itself by creating an army) to support the idea that Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil.
- From a pragmatic standpoint, the Traveler deliberately intended to use humanity as an army, because it could not fend off the Darkness itself, and its arrival into the Solar System brought the Darkness following it. However, if the Darkness had found humanity before the Traveler did, humanity would instantly be driven to extinction with no chance to resist. Thus, a forced alliance brought ruin to both parties, but prevented outright destruction. The Traveler gave humanity the tools to resist Darkness, enabling protection for both the species and the Traveler.
It's stated that the Darkness hunts the Traveler wherever it goes. Maybe the Traveler uplifted the Fallen the same way it did to humanity, only when the Darkness came around and toppled their civilization, the Traveler didn't sacrifice itself for them. Instead it fled the Darkness, and much later it encountered humanity and the process repeated. The difference is, for whatever reason, the Traveler decided to rescue the last remnants of human civilization, whereas it simply abandoned the Fallen to their fates.
For that matter, maybe the Cabal were uplifted too, but the size of their empire meant that when the Darkness came around and apparently razed their homeworld it didn't affect them nearly as badly.
- She's not a Guardian, and says that she was not forged in Light. Your Ghost says that the last place the Light touches is the Reef. Beyond the asteroid belt where the Reef is are the Jovian worlds, all of the gas giants, where the Nine rule. The Stranger is working for someone else and didn't come to Venus alone when she first met you, and is continuously updating someone on your status, plus her weapon is said to have technology beyond anything the City has built.
- Specifically, it has parts that "shouldn't exist yet". The magazine contains a temporal anomaly that sometimes retcons missed shots as not having fired.
- Its triangular parts having been scattered into space to act similarly to the way it did on Earth, to uplift and gift a species with its light (a many lights in the darkness kind of thing) - a later plot will involve uniting with those uplifted species and restoring the Traveler to its Ghost state.
- He's doing something with those planetary defences. He's fought the darkness and still lives. If the traveller is killed outright he may step up.
- Or at least a direct ancestor. It's a Warmind, which is part of a Solar System scale distrubuted network. It is orders of magnitude more complex than a human being, and it is one of the few things that survived the Collapse intact. Using the data it gathered from the darkness, it evolves over the millenia. It learns to create mobile units that are part of it's own network. It discovers the Black Garden and the Darkness at it's heart, and uses the fact that it is outside time to ensure it's own evolution. That's why the Vex are at war with the Cabal on Mars.
- You were one of the warriors fighting during the Collapse that the Traveller took notice of... The Ghost supresses your memories of what you once were. Part of the future plot is that your memories start to reassert themselves, and through them you learn what went on during that time. The Exo Stranger also knew you were due to be resurrected, and made sure to keep an eye on you. She doesn't know you don't have the right memories, thats why she seems cryptic.
- Her rifle is impossibly advanced for the current timeline, and the reason she was not birthed in the light is that the Traveller is long gone in her native timeline.
- The Exos were created to fight a long-forgotten war before the collapse, but the current ones can't remember a bit of it. The Stranger is part of a group that has been kicking around the entire time, and she predates the creation of Ghosts and Guardians. This also explains her use of technology the City considers impossibly advanced, the group simply kept developing their equipment while the rest of civilization was reduced to scavenging old tech.
- And the Darkness is an even-more-powerful Kriemhild Gretchen. When Madoka Kaname made her contract in the final timeline, a Soul Gem was still created. This Soul Gem survived Madoka's sacrifice, and gradually regained sentience, becoming the Traveler. Being who she is, Madoka decided to help people some more.
- But then, the Darkness came. While Madoka's canonical contract wish prevented her from becoming a witch, multiverse theory suggests that there would be a world where she didn't, and Homura's time loops continued. This would result in the continued buildup of Madoka's potential, until the point where, when she finally made a contract and became a witch, the resultant incarnation of Kriemhild Gretchen would be powerful enough to kill Homura before she could reset the timeline, unstoppably destroy the Earth, and continue to grow... until it became powerful enough to consume and leave the universe itself. (And kill/consume the Incubators if they tried to stop it.) This incarnation of Kriemhild Gretchen became the Darkness, and only the power of Madoka's Soul Gem and her final wish could defeat it.
- As such, Kriemhild Gretchen reached across dimensions to place her Witch Kiss on innumerable followers (as well as possibly sending in Familiars), and drove them to attack Madoka's Soul Gem.
- In the great battles the Speaker talks about, Madoka's Soul Gem was forced to use her powers, depleting her reserve of mana and thus weakening the amount of area she was able to protect, as well as her consciousness. As such, Kriemhild Gretchen is able to act more and more openly, resulting in "the Darkness".
- This means that things are about to go From Bad to Worse - Madoka's Soul Gem is already very corrupted (look at the Traveler; does it look all that bright for a supposed being of Light?) and it's only going to get darker. When it corrupts all the way... either the universe will have to face two super powerful Kriemhild Gretchens, or her wish will override it and it will simply disappear, resulting in the loss of the "Traveler"'s protection, the loss of the Guardians, and the victory of Kriemhild Gretchen.
- Jossed. Krimheld Gretchen's motivations are salvation. The Darkness has actually spoken in a lore entry, and peace and salvation are the exact opposite of what it wants.
- Given that Crota bites it in the aptly titled Crota's End raid (at the hands of no more than 6 Guardians, at that), it's likely that this is no longer an issue.
- It's stated that Aetheon and the Vault of Glass are eternal, because they are constantly rebuilding each other into the timeline. Similar to Garland and Chaos.
However she did not 'shrug' and allow the Vex to be destroyed when she was defeated. She managed to badly damage the Traveller by cracking it's outer layer and taking some sort of organ (The Heart) from it, and placed it in the Black Garden to be protected by her servants. Unfortunately, the Traveller was still able to defeat her, and used the last of it's power to move to Earth. The Vex began to evolve without the Gardener to guide them, and were corrupted by the Heart. They are unable to give the Heart back to the Traveller because they still have the last order from the Gardener hardwired into them, they cannot release the Heart from the Garden. But they worship it, and it wants to return to the Traveller. They are kind of stuck in the logic problem.
When you destroy the Heart's guards, it allows the Traveller to reabsorb the mising piece.
All of this is leading up to the revelation that the universe is locked in a Stable Time Loop: The Darkness chases the Traveler, pursuing it to Earth, where it makes its last stand. There's a reason for that: here is where the possible timelines converge, which is also why the Vex are so interested in our solar system. Hence the added symbolism of the Collapse; it's a reference to the waveform collapse in quantum mechanics and the many-worlds hypothesis. There are are a number of possibilities here: one, supported by concept art and Grimoire entries that associate the Black Garden with the interior of a spherical body, is that the Heart of the Black Garden was actually inside the Traveler, and is the beginning of the Traveler's transformation into the Darkness; the Traveler and the Darkness are the same entity at different points in time, hence their nature of being not so different and the equivalency of Light and Dark. By destroying it, you've temporarily prevented the Traveler from falling and becoming the Darkness. Now think a minute: who told you to destroy the Heart?
The Exo Stranger is originally from an alternate future, and she and her as-of-yet-only-hinted-at allies have been trying to break the Stable Time Loop, having failed in multiple timelines already. Hence her apparent foreknowledge of events, and her statement that "A side should be taken, even if it's the wrong one." - she only cares about breaking the cycle, whether by healing and protecting the Traveler or by destroying it.
However, that still doesn't explain WHY the traveler becomes the Darkness. So here's a possibility: Rasputin. The entries surrounding Rasputin and his actions in the game imply that he's started to admire the Darkness, and is in the process of trying to distribute himself across as much of the solar system as possible, devouring other A.I.s in the process, in order to become as solitary and unkillable as the Darkness. It's possible that at some point he takes over or combines with the Traveler (or the Gardener, as he likes to call it/her - another bit linking the Traveler to the Black Garden) and in doing so becomes the Darkness. Then, in line with Rasputin's desire to survive beyond even the universe (as stated in a Grimoire entry pertaining to him), he uses his newfound god-like power to go back in time/to another timeline (the two concepts being one and the same in this case) in order to ensure that this future comes to pass, granting him immortality across all of space and time.
- HOOOOOO-BOY WAS I WRONG! Turns out Oryx is actually a guy and served as Crota's literal father. Whoops. Good news is that he's almost certainly the strongest Hive we'll ever see.
- Of course he had sisters. Just had to shoot me down, didn't ya writers?
- Perspective Flip missions where you play as one of the enemies, either in the present or as part of a historical flashback.
- New categories of weapons.
- This much was confirmed at least; The Taken King included Swords as a new class of Heavy weapons.
- The ability to read Grimoire cards without having to leave the game and go the website.
- Hybrid classes like in Mass Effect. (Hunter+Warlock, Hunter+Titan, Warlock+Titan, eventually Hunter+Warlock+Titan).
- Race specific abilities and perks.
- Missions set in the City itself.
- Story missions where Guardians have to permanently kill rogue Guardians.
- More about the history between the arrival of the Traveller and the present day.
- Arenas set in full out zero gravity.
- An expansion focused on the Cabal. (The main story focuses on the Vex, the Dark Below on the Hive and House of Wolves on the Fallen, so it would be a logical next step)
- While the order seems to have come unglued, there's a great deal of speculation flying about that the Cabal will get a good deal of focus in one of the two expansions following The Taken King.
He is what the Cabal are running from, and he is interested in the Cabal because of their strength and numbers. Given time, and experimentation, The Cabal will become Hive-like or maybe even something new that Oryx will replace the Hive with(after all, even his "son" has failed to take an insignificant blue ball in the boonies of the Milky Way). Oryx is turning his attention to Earth because defeating Crota has piqued his interest in humanity. Alternatively he is being directed by The Darkness itsself to finish off the Traveller and its scattered light.
Another thing to remember, The Traveller was FOUND on Mars. It would explain why they spend so much time tearing apart the ruins of Martian cities, They are looking for ANY clue as to why their great Emperor/Empress would bother with Sol. Apparently it is so far from the other Cabal territories they cannot send messages back and forth(assuming Oryx has not Taken the whole empire by now)
- Jossed by a grimoire card that reveals the attack on the Dreadnaught was ordered by the Emperor himself.
- Also jossed by "Destiny 2": the Cabal we've been fighting were a mere Scouting Legion.
- Why? Because why not?
Hello Guardians, and welcome to my speculations about Destinyâs lore. Today, I want to talk about the nature of the Exo, the Exo Stranger, and the Vex presence in our solar system.
The above quote, from the Exo grimoire card, presents us with an idea. During the Golden Age, humanity still faced real threats as we expanded our influence in the solar system. I think the answer to this question is clear: We faced the Vex.
Ghost tells us that the Vex ruins on Venus predate humanity by eons. The structures on mercury line up with this idea as well - The Vex have been doing work on the planets in our system for a very long time. The Ishtar Collective arrived on Venus, and began to study the Vex structures.
Humanity appears to have first encountered the Vex on Venus. Possibly the Vex were in some sort of stasis, like the ones that we find inside the Black Garden. But other signs point to the idea that the Vex began to appear as humanity began to study the ruins.
This is supported by the name of the Vex we fight in the black garden - the Sol Progeny - or âChildren of Solâ.
This leads me to my first point, remember this: The Vex were the threat that Golden Age humanity had to contend with.
With that established, letâs take a look at the Vex entries in the Grimoire. The 4 ghost fragments that talk about the vex tell a story of a group of Ishtar Collective scientists that are studying a captured vex specimen. In Vex 1, the scientists realize that the mind inside the Vex is advanced enough to simulate its local reality. That is, it can run a complete and accurate simulation of the universe around it, and that is how it decides how to act when not being fed orders from a hydra.
In Vex 2, the scientists come to a stark realization. If the Vex can simulate reality, then the odds are that THEY THEMSELVES are simulated. This is a reference to a philosophical concept called the Simulation argument, proposed by Nick Bostrom in 2003.
Bostrom argues that, if it is even POSSIBLE to simulate reality, then the probability that you exist in a simulation is astronomically high. The reasoning behind this is simple: Letâs say that we call Reality, actual physical reality, âprimeâ. Advanced beings create an accurate simulation of âreality primeâ, within âreality primeâ. So now we have Reality Simulation A, inside âreality primeâ.
But if Reality Simulation A is truly an accurate simulation of reality, then inside of that there must be a âreality simulation Bâ, and a âreality simulation Câ inside of that one, and D and E and so on (to infinity!). Even if we assume that this continuing string of simulations stops at 100, we have a pretty large number. Letâs say that it stops at 227, youâll see why later. Now, how many of these realities is actually reality? Just one. Reality prime. Therefore, If you exist, and are thinking, and have a reality that you perceive, the odds are 227:1 that you are in a simulated reality.
Hoping that you all have wrapped your minds around that, we can press on.
Continuing the story of the Vex we are discussing - The Ishtar scientists capture a vex, and discover to their horror that the vex can create an accurate reality simulation. Knowing Bostromâs argument, they know that the odds are high that they themselves are simulated. That makes them freak out a bit.
"ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.
SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.
DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.
ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -
SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.
DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.
SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.
ESI: I didn't think of that.
So our scientists need to decide what to do about this. They plan to make a move - they are going to call in a warmind.
"SUNDARESH: If we're sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we're real, we need to get outside that bubble.
ESI: ...we call for help.
SUNDARESH: That's right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind.
SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can't simulate. It's too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue - us.â
In Vanilla Destiny, this is where the story left off. However, House of Wolves included a new vex card, Vex 4. This card, in my opinion, is RIDDLED with clues as to whatâs going on here.
Maya, Chioma, Duane-Mc Niadh and Shim decide to have a picnic before they send themselves into infinity.
Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. No human being in the Ishtar Academy has ever crossed the safety cordon and walked the ancient stone under the Citadel, the Vex construct that stabs up out of the world to injure space and time. It's not safe. The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yetâ and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate. Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall.
Here we see that the Scientists are using proxy bodies to enter the vex ruins. Not only do the cellular, biological vex elements have hallucinogenic effects on the human brain, but the informational vex elements are insanely powerful. Aggressive ideas, Vex that exist as pure thought, and hostile thoughts that attack human consciousness. Our scientists are linked to these proxy bodies neurally, and a warmind is monitoring these links and scrubbing them for hazardous vex âthought malwareâ as they come back to our scientists brains. A neural firewall protects their actual bodies.
But they walk together in proxy, pressed close, huddled in awe. Blue-green light, light the color of an ancient sea, washes over them. Each of their explorer bodies carries a slim computer. Inside, two hundred twenty-seven of copies of their own minds wait, patient and paused, for dispersal.
"I wonder where it came from," Duane-Mcniadh says. Of course he's the one to break the reverent silence. "The Citadel. I wonder if it was here before the Traveler changed Venus."
This is interesting - Duane-Mcniadh is wondering if the vex were always here, or if the traveler changed venus somehow and they appeared. Note: Duane-Mcniadh is directly specified as a male here.
"It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow.â
Note: Chioma is directly specified as a female here.
Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity.â
Dr. Shim believes that the Traveler pulled this Venus from a different reality. I also like the little shout out to the moonâs gravity, as that was one tiny Destiny mystery that was never brought up
Maya Sundaresh walks at the center of the group. She's been too quiet lately. What happened to them wasn't her fault and maybe she'll believe that soon. "What could you do with it?" she murmurs, staring up. "If you understood it?â
Note: Maya is directly specified as a female here.
Chioma puts an arm around her. "That's what we're going to find out. Where the Citadel can send us. Whether we can come back."
"They're not us any more." Maya looks down at herself, at the cache of her self-forks. "We're not going anywhere. We're sending them. They're diverging."
They rescued themselves from the inside of a Vex mind, two hundred and twenty-seven copies of themselves, untortured and undamaged. Those copies voted, all unanimously, to be dispatched into the Vex information network as explorers.
227? Hmm. Where have I heard that number before?
When Maya and Chioma look at each other they can tell they're each wondering the same thing: how many of them will stay together, wherever they go? How many fork-Mayas and fork-Chiomas will fall out of love? How many will end up bereft, grieving? How many will be happy, like them?
Chioma tries a little smile. Maya smiles back, haltingly, and then, sighing, unable to stop herself, grins a big stupid grin, an everything-is-okay grin. Shim makes a loud obnoxious awwww at them. Duane-Mc Niadh is still thinking about paracausality, and doesn't notice.
Maya and Chioma are in love. Golden Age tolerance for the win!
They climb. When they find the Vex aperture they plan to use, they overlay the luminous stone and ancient brassy machines with images of sun and sand. They set up the transmitters and interfaces that will translate two hundred and twenty-seven simulations of the four of them into Vex language, into the tangled pathways of the Vex network, to see what's out there, and maybe come home.
In the metaphor they've chosen, setting up the equipment is like laying out the picnic. In the metaphor they've chosen they look like themselves, not hardened explorer proxies. Like people.
Our scientists plan is revealed here. They have rescued 227 copies of themselves from the simulated realities they were stuck in, and all of those copies of themselves are accurate simulations - THEY ARE REAL PEOPLE. Those copies have decided that, since they are simulations, they can probably be translated into the Vex network and explore, and try to get information back for humanity. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.
"Do you think," Duane-Mc Niadh begins, halting, "that you could use this place to change things? If you regretted something, could you find a way through the Citadel, go back, and change it?"
"I wish I could go back and change you into someone else," Dr. Shim grouses. Chioma's shaking her head. She knows physics. "Time is self-consistent," she says. "I think it's like the story of the merchant and the alchemist. You could go back and watch something, or be part of something, but if you did, then that was the way it always happened."
"Maybe you could bring something back to now. Something you needed." Maya runs a hand across the surface of the Vex aperture, feeling it with sensors ten thousand times as precise as a human hand. These proxy bodies are limitedâ they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. "Or go forward and learn something vital. If you knew how to control it, how to navigate across space and time.â
The scientists begin to think that they can use time travel to change something. Maya and Chioma are taken by this idea. but mayaâs paragraph is particularly interesting. these proxy bodies are limited, they crash and need resetting, struggle with latency, canât hold much long term memory. BUT THEYâLL GET BETTER. SHE IS CONSIDERING SOMEHOW TIME TRAVELLING TO CHANGE THE PAST AND FUTURE INSIDE A MORE ADVANCED PROXY BODY. This is super super important.
Note: the Story of the Merchant and the Alchemist was a very interesting read. Released in 2007, it's a short story and i recommend it. basically the theme is that Time travel in Destiny is done "LOST" style: what happened happened and events can't be changed, because they always happend that way.
"So it's just a way to make everything more complicated." Duane-Mc Niadh sighs. "It doesn't fix anything. Nothing ever does! I should've taken that job atâ "
"You would've hated it at Clovis," Dr. Shim says. "We both know you're happier here." Duane-Mc Niadh stands stunned by this courtesy, and then they both pretend to ignore each other.
The four of them set up the interface. Their stored copies wake up and prepare for the journey, so that as they work they find themselves surrounded by the mental phantasms of themselves: two hundred and twenty-seven Mayas and Chiomas knocking helmets and smiling, two hundred and twenty-seven Dr. Shims making cynical bets with each other about how long they'll last, two hundred and twenty-seven Duane-Mc Niadhs blowing goodbye kisses to the sweet golden sun, two hundred and twenty-seven of them shaking hands, smiling, making ready to explore.
Thatâs what we have so far on the vex. so how does this tie into the exo?
Hereâs my theory. The Exo were created during the golden age to allow humanity to combat the Vex.
Hereâs the exo card:
Built for a long-forgotten struggle, Exos are self-aware war machines so advanced that nothing short of a Ghost can understand their inner functions. They remain ciphers, even to themselves: their origins and purpose lost to time.
Whoever built the Exos fashioned them in humanity's image, gifting them with diversity of mind and body. Many of the City's Exo citizens live and work alongside their organic brethren. But others fight again, re-forged in the Light of the Traveler to serve as Guardians.
The Exo are specifically designed to be a cipher. This âencryptionâ is a defense against the vex. We know from the card that the vex basically have thought weaponry, and the exo is probably hardened against that type of thing.
The Exo are an advanced form of the âproxy bodiesâ that our intrepid scientists were utilizing in Vex 4. Golden age humans could be installed in these ârobot bodiesâ, enabling them to fight the Vex. But thereâs even more here.
The Exo Stranger is either Maya Sundaresh or Chioma Esi. My suspicions lean on Maya. Maya is wondering if you could use a proxy body and the power of the citadel to go back in time. Maya is also from the Golden Age, and knows a lot more about whatâs going on in the solar system than anybody else. I think that Maya is working with Chioma or Duane-Mcnaidh, our intrepid scientists are orchestrating everything to try and change the past (their future)
The Stranger meets you on the moon, and immediately directs you to go to the Ishtar Collective on venus to introduce you to the Vex. The stranger does everything she can to change the timeline, and she doesnât even have time to explain why she doesnât have time to explain. And on top of everything else - the stranger KNOWS YOU.
Do you remember the only scientist in our group whose gender was never specified?
Dr. Shim.
Which brings us to yet another clue. In âThe Archiveâ story mission, when you descend into the ishtar collectiveâs data archive, the archive computer snaps on and says âWelcome Dr. Shimâ. We get a nice little quote from Ghost here. he says: âDr. Shim? NEVERMIND THATâŚâ. Not âDr. Shim? What is she talking about?â or âWhat does that mean?â but âNevermind that.â
We are Dr. Shim. maybe not his/her personality, or him/her specifically, but we are a guardian occupying Dr. Shimâs body. Maya (the stranger) recognizes us. Thatâs one of the reasons she is so interested in tracking us. She is trying to figure out what the traveler is trying to do with Dr. Shimâs body.
Iâll wrap this up here for now, but Iâm interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Hereâs a TL;DR
The Vex have thought weapons, and scientists need to use proxy bodies to enter their buildings safelyThe proxy bodies became more advanced until eventually the exo were created to fight the vexOne of the female scientists studying the vex was interested in using a proxy body to time travel and change the past/futurethis female scientist, maya, is a consciousness uploaded to an exo body, and is the strangerour guardian is the resurrected Dr. Shim, Mayaâs colleague, and this explains why she is so interested in what we do
- With this in mind, at one point, all the Ghosts will attempt to return to the Traveler trying to restore its form.
All of this raises a big question however: why worship the Darkness in the Black Garden? To answer this, take in to account the Vault of Glass, and the research the Vex are doing there. Within the Vault, the Vex seem to be trying to create ontological weaponry, deciding weather or not things exist. Take a look at the final boss of the Vault raid, Atheon, and at the exotic weapon reward from the vault, the Mythoclast. As previously stated elesewhere (in the Fridge Logic page, I do believe), Atheon is an old word translating to "atheist", and Mythoclast translates to "destroyer of myths". Now why name them this if not for a specific purpose? It's simple: the Vex are trying to erase a god from exsistance, a.k.a. the Darkness in the Black Garden. But why worship it? It is stated that the Vex took to worshiping the Darkness after witnessing the Hive do the same and receive great power. Perhaps instead of seeing the power gained from the Darkness, the Vex saw that worshiping the Darkness would contain it. They set up the Black Garden as a prison, to hold the Darkness until they could wipe it from reality with the use of the ontological weapons from the Vault.
The Qugu are a race described in Books of Shadow entry 23. The Hive destroyed their empire and killed most of them, but their escaping Ark Ships got away when the Hive fell back into their usual infighting. Here's the description:
"For millions of years of evolution the Qugu have been infected by a virus so insidious that it wrote itself into their genome. The virus compels them to offer their limbs for amputation by enormous sessile jaw-beasts. They venerate these beasts and treat them as gods. The virus converts Qugu cells into eggs, from which strange crawling things pupate, to live within the jaw-beast gut. In turn the jaw-beast extrudes sweet nectar for the Qugu to drink, and they have brilliant visions."
That sounds like something that Servitors and Ether could be an attempt to compensate for losing. It would also explain their cultural obsession with chopping off arms.
- Subverted: We meet Dominus Ghaul, the current Cabal Emperor in Destiny 2. He's not really a God-Emperor, just The Emperor of the Cabal after usurping the last emperor; however, just because he has no divine power doesn't mean that he won't apply Authority Equals Asskicking on you...especially not when he's brought The Cavalry with him.
- That being said though, we do meet Emperor Calus, who is probably the real God-Emperor, oh reader mine...
- It's clear it hasn't been used in a while....
- Savathûn and Xivu Arath, Oryx's sisters, will converge on the location of the Traveler, as they are Oathbound to destroy it. Also, they'll likely spend most of this time fighting each other rather than attacking the Traveler. Auryx only became The Taken King because she stepped up to the plate and ate the God-Worm in the Deep. It is unlikely that Savathûn and Xivu Arath would take the throne as a pair, as they see battle and killing as a form of love and expunging weakness — so they'll likely either fight each other while also battling the Sky or they'll be fighting over who will take up the First Navigator's position and take Oryx's place as a King.
As for why he serves something that will turn his people into a mockery of everything they once were, that's still unknown-but in the end, all the Darkness had to do was be honest with him when revealing what the Guardians are; the kind of enemy the Cabal cannot defeat through imperial strength would be enough to send any of them hurling past the Despair Event Horizon and setting them on the same road the Hive walked before.