Are the Vex, the Hive and SIVA all interconnected?

Lore
#21

Technically speaking, the “Sword Logic” is actually the “natural state” of the universe, just turned into a paracausally-empowered religion for the Hive’s benefit. At least that’s how Seth sees it; he gets annoyed whenever it is equated to Darwinism.

So it is possible for someone to independently understand the Sword Logic, outside of the Hive, they’ll just need to access a paracausal power source in order to fully utilize its benefits. The Worms already knew of it before the proto-Hive made their Faustian pact, so it’s not unreasonable to assume others may have done the same.

In the Fallen’s case, the evidence that they have comprehended the Sword Logic can be found through the SIVA cards. Destinypedia’s article on the Sword Logic perhaps accurately sums this up, in the section dealing with the Fallen. Not exactly like the Sword Logic, not as the Hive practice it, but enough so that the Devil Splicers could be so bold and audacious enough to abduct Hive Ogres for their experiments without undue consequence.

#22

The Sword Logic as a concept isn’t necessarily a Hive-specific thing (I’m reminded of Toland’s atoms comparison), but the way they enact the Logic certainly is. The Worms themselves didn’t constantly expand and destroy; the closest comparison to Oryx we have, the Cabal, don’t follow the Logic through their destruction, either.

Aksis seems to transcend flesh as opposed to transcending liminality altogether, as Oryx did. The article references Dormant SIVA: Fallen 3.4:

~consume enhance replicate~ Life’s procession is written in the corpses of those who came before. But here the great chain breaks. Here we step forward, freed from that which has always bound us. Here we speak as gods. We are they who created themselves. ~consume enhance replicate~

But 3.5 brings the conversation back to the Fallen’s machine gods specifically:

We are they who created themselves out of themselves and died in the creation. No longer merely the god in the machine, but the machine in the god. ~consume enhance replicate~ Here we rise, made equal at last to that which we worship. ~consume enhance replicate~

Unbounding themselves from the Servitors and ether seems to have been the Splicer’s main concern, as opposed following the Sword Logic:

SIVA can make you strong, but we can show you how to wield it, to free yourself from the bonds of Ether. Find us in the wasteland and bring us an offering of SIVA.

The Fallen’s concept of perfection seems unlike the Final Shape, and, as you’ve noted, the Splicers didn’t seem to follow the Hive’s particular brand of ‘kill everything.’

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#23

Perhaps then they fulfill the Logic by perfecting themselves.

#24

Do you mean by simply growing stronger? To do that they could simply keep their growth glands and not have them cut off. (Read your theory on Reddit. Can’t remember the website)

#25

I don’t think perfection (which is a pretty nebulous concept itself) is the only thing that makes the Final Shape, well, Final. The Hive’s Sword Logic hinges on killing everything, and the last one left standing is the strongest, and therefore the only thing worthy to survive:

“This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.”

If I am defeated, I know that I will fall to something mighty. Something that craves might, something that loves what I love, which is the Deep, a principle and a power, the versatile, protean need to adapt and endure, to reach out and shape the universe entirely for that purpose, to mutate and redesign and test and iterate so that it can prevail, can seize existence and hold it, certain that this is everything, that there is nothing to life except living.

If a civilization cannot defend itself, it must be annihilated. If a King cannot hold his power, he must be betrayed. The worth of a thing can be determined only by one beautiful arbiter — that thing’s ability to exist, to go on existing, to remake existence to suit its survival.

The focus is always on killing others, not living oneself. Even Toland’s comparison centers around one thing “defeating” the other, though he might be talking about Hive Logic specifically and as such just drawing Logic-like parallels. Obviously, the Hive’s brand of Sword Logic is not the only brand, but the Logic does, at some level, require the destruction of the weak in order for the strongest to survive.

Meanwhile, Aksis wants to become a (demi)god, and Fallen religion worships machines as Gods. So, he becomes a machine, because to him machine = god. The Splicers did have the end goal of “evolution,” though this seems to be in terms of ending their reliance on ether and, by extension, the Servitors. There’s rumblings of Vosik wanting to kill stuff:

In due time, Vosik will ascend. All his people will. And worlds will fall.

But the Splicers seem to want ‘perfection’ for its own sake, instead of following the Logic. It depends on how broadly Sword Logic is being defined; if any pecking order is ‘Logical,’ then the Forge- and by extension the Fallen- are practicing the Sword Logic.

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#26

If we’re to apply the Sword Logic in its most broadist, universalist interpretation possible, we need to look no further than Toland and his description of the atoms. Even something as mundane as you and I breathing are fulfilling the Logic because we defeat the possibility of not breathing by the mere act of breathing.

But I get what you mean. The Sword Logic ultimately means challenging the strongest thing to defeat it, and the Fallen don’t do that. But SIVA is something that can remake things in its own image, and it started doing that to the Fallen with their encouragement, so there’s that.

I’m not sure I follow you. What theory do you mean?

The Fallen lower arms are amputated and their ether ration shortened to humiliate them and put them in a lower place. The upper-arms seem to be irreplaceable, evidenced by Variks’ upper metal arms. Its the ether that what allows them to grow bigger and taller.

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#27

It is the theory that the fallen pituitary glands are in their lower pair of arms thus explaining the size differences among them. So that combined with a shortened ether supply keeps them small.

#28

Huh, I never heard that one before.

#29

I can’t find where I first read it but basically when they have all four arms they can keep growing bigger. Dregs only have two arms because their others were removed to keep them small until they prove themselves worthy to have them again. After they become vandals and so forth. It explains why captains look like huge vandals.

#30

Well, that’s contradicted by The Elder Cipher. It’s the ether that is responsible, not their pituitary glands or arms.

#31

I think it is both. That means that a dreg can level up (grow stronger) but not literately become bigger

#33

It would be interesting to consider, that since the vex have written themselves into many timelines and no longer have a point of origin, that perhaps in some timeline we created the vex, only for them to change time and become a separate instance. This is a very paradoxical subject but still quite intriguing.

#34

Vex logic hurts brain lol

#35

vex lore makes brain go brrrrrrr