A brief history, and a theory. About the Vex, Osiris, the Aeon Cult, and Kabr
After being appointed Vanguard Commander, Osiris often found himself beyond the walls of the City. It began with a hunt for Oryx but soon turned to an obsession with the Vex.
The unenlightened wonder at my so-called “fixation” upon the Vex. They believe our gravest existential threat is the Hive, for those beings have made a pact with the Darkness itself via the medium of the Worm Gods (according to Toland, at least, and I see no reason to doubt him in this).
But Darkness is not merely absence of Light. Darkness is an entity unto itself. Put simply, Darkness is not Nothing.
But the Vex? The Vex seek neither Light nor Darkness. They seek Convergence, the reduction of all life to its simplest, most meaningless form. An entelechy of zeros and ones.
“Evil” is a word for sentimentalists and fools. But, in the ontology of the sentimental, the Vex are more deserving of the term than the Hive.
Kairos Function
We were told as much by the Exo Stranger
“They brought us here. The Vex. Evil so dark, it despises other evil."
A Strangers Call
His obsessions led him to clash with the Speaker and to set others lives at risk, to fulfill his own purposes.
This was your greatest crime: Hunters chose to pursue your visions instead of protecting refugees, Titans assembled teams to chase the legendary Vault of Glass instead of striking the Fallen, and Warlocks turned away from the study of the Traveler in favor of your ultimate obsession… learning the exact nature of the Darkness.
Osiris
The Speaker didn’t understand the the Vex. Not like Osiris. The Vex, so often misunderstood, are strangers in a foreign land.
Two siblings cleaved by time and space, reflections never found alone, The ending of the eldritch race—a path long seen but never known.
Garden Progeny 1
The Eldritch Abomination are a race in Dungeons and Dragons with incomprehensible morality and unfathomable intellect. They inhabit realms alien to them and take forms based on when, where, and near what they arrive.
But while Oryx traveled to observe the Deep destroy an ancient fortress world, Crota conspired with his sisters to learn their secrets. “I too will experiment with a wound,” he said. With his sword Crota cut open a new wound, into a new space. In here he thought he might obtain a secret power.
Out of this wound came machines called Vex. They invaded Oryx’s throne world.
XXXVIII: The partition of death
Though they can take on many forms their base form consists of a boiling mass of limbs and organic matter, often with tentacles.
"Multiple analyses confirm: the milky radiolarian fluid found in Vex chassis is organic in nature."
Kairos Function Vest
When Eldritch enter a realm they are often innocent, or rather have a neutral sense of morality, but it is quickly shaped based on their initial experiences.
“I’ll cut them apart,” Crota said. But just then, the Vex ritual-of-better-thoughts manifested a Mind called Quria, Blade Transform. Quria deduced the sword logic.
I have to kill everything, Quria resolved. Then I will be powerful.
XXXIX open your eye : go into it
While many Abominations scoff at the idea of religion some are curious and may chose to undertake worship.
By directing worship at the worms, Quria learned it could alter reality with mild ontopathogenic effects. Being an efficient machine, Quria manufactured a priesthood and ordered all its subminds to believe in worship.
XXXIX: open your eye : go into it
On rare occasions cults arise, believing that the the Eldritch will grant them power or kill them last.
“We are unique emanations of the same shared Light.” —Cult of the Aeons
Aeon Swift
And so after encountering Oryx, the Vex predicted their own annihilation and sought to prevent it. Seeding their subnets. One of which was the Infinite Forest. Seeded by Panoptes.
The Forest, “infinite” in so many ways, is still only a small fraction of the Vex’s true capabilities.
Kairos Function
Many subnets, many equations, all executing toward the same answer: convergence.
Kairos Function
An infinity of possible worlds, so perfectly simulated as to be indistinguishable from the experiences I once called “reality.” I can touch them, taste them, pass lifetimes in them! They grow within this machine like fruit upon a tree—no, a forest of trees, its fractal expansion nigh unmeasurable.
Kairos Function
In their forest of simulation the Vex sought a solution. A convergence. A way to live forever.
I had a friend back at the Tower. She used to say, “Praedyth, there’s always room in the mind for hope. It’s the crack that lets the Light in.” The Vex have no hope. No imagination, no drive, no fear. All they have is the pattern. Everything must fit. If it can be made to fit, good. If it can’t, it gets cut away.
Paradox Daily
The forest worked together with the Vault of Glass. Panoptes calculating realities and Atheon executing on the Eye’s vision.
Perhaps Atheon was the centerpiece of this project, a command nexus that unified efforts across time.
Atheon, Time’s Conflux
So Osiris sent Kabr to the Vault. He sought to stop the Vex by removing Atheon from the equation. But Kabr did not succeed. He gave himself to the Vault. To the Vex. To the sea of simulation. That we might have hope.
These are the last words of Kabr, the Legionless:
I have destroyed myself to do this. They have taken my Ghost. They are in my blood and brain. But now there is hope.
I have made a wound in the Vault. I have pierced it and let in the Light. Bathe in it, and be cleansed. Look to it, and understand:
From my own Light and from the thinking flesh of the Vex I made a shield. The shield is your deliverance. It will break the unbreakable. It will change your fate.
Bind yourself to the shield. Bind yourself to me. And if you abandon your purpose, let the Vault consume you, as it consumed me.
Now it is done. If I speak again, I am not Kabr.
Relic: The Aegis
I drank of them. It tasted like the sea.
Vault of Glass
But those were not Kabr’s last words. He spoke again.
while joined( Glass, Sky )
case Past:
return( i m p o s s i b l e )
// grazing, rocked, major, distilled.
case Present:
return( v e s t i g i a l )
// vault, aegis, awakened, infinite.
case Future:
// return( i n e v i t a b l e )
// light, truth, dark.
if( t h e w a r d e n s s e e t h e BRIGHT a s d e a t h ) &&
( t h e THINKERS e q u a t e BLACK w i t h e n d ) then
^K^K
their/our/their desire is not malevolent it is survival she is/was/is wrong there is no evil there is no despise there is no SEPARATION there is harmony inside if you/you/you allow it
it was/was/was not done i/i speak again and was wrong i am still him and i am now them and THAT IS FUTURE^V^V
Kabr’s Glass Aegis
He became one with the Vex. Past, Present, and Future. In one. One shared mind. But despite all our efforts in the Vault of Glass, the Vex continued to search for the function to bring them to Victory. But they found a roadblock in Oryx and his Taken. Is it possible that Kabr instructed the Vex to leave Praedyth alive. So that they might call our aid in the future? To throw an unpredictable entity at an unsolvable one?
If a Guardian has become lost, unstuck in time, we must return them home.
…
[I don’t know why they’re letting] me speak. Now, after so long.
Paradox Daily
We solved the Vex’s problem. We defeated Oryx and removed the Taken from the Vault. Allowing them to run new simulations and achieve their end.
The tree in the Garden with silver wings. The air around it is oppressive and inspires violence in those who even breathe a little in. Shards of the disastrous bark peel from it and litter the ground, and nothing grows in its shadow. It scintillates faintly at dusk. It has achieved its entelechy with every body falling, every civilization laid to waste, every leaf forged into instruments of ruin.
The Gardener is hard to bother; she is constantly amidst her weeds, kneeling in the tangent dust, gloves covered in a mix of distant soils and metallic saps. She is listening to the music of the insects amidst the flowers, the unguent as it begins to drip from the ferns, the slight scratch of the Worm beneath, and not to you, and certainly not to your cries for help.
Mk. 44 Stand-Asides
And though we stopped Panoptes. The Vex still push onward
Osiris hovered, cross-legged, at the center of a ruined Lighthouse. A dead sun loomed in the lightless sky. Arrayed on the ground below to the horizon, yellow Vex eyes pierced the gloom.
Sagira zoomed straight to Osiris’s side. "I thought we averted this future!”
Eyes closed, Osiris shook his head. “Many equations lead to this answer.”
A sound like a drumbeat, but with the impact of an earthquake, shook the Lighthouse.
Sagira darted through the crumbling chamber. “What do we do?”
Another bone-rattling drumbeat kicked up clouds of dust.
Osiris floated to his feet. "We start over."
Null Calamity 9
And you have to wonder and ask yourself. Is it Kabr who now sends us a message? An invitation to join his Aeon Cult. His cult of time? Combined Aeon message
We followed the path. The Path crumbled beneath our feet. Our feet became one mind.
Kabr and his team entered the Vault. But this is all Kabr. He is past, present, and future at once. He is we.
One mind can absorb the truth. The Truth is that Osiris understands nothing. Nothing can describe the joy of shared thought.
He drank the vex milk and joined their collective thought.
Thought you knew what they were didn’t you. You haven’t lived as they do. Do you wish to find your future.
We cannot understand the Vex because we are not one with them. We do not live as them.
Your future is predetermined. Predetermined individuals will never find answers. Answers lie in forbidden places.
What if on some dreadful night, the Darkness were to come creeping up to you and whisper ‘This war, is all there is for you.’ (Lakshmi-2) Instruments of war cannot find the meaning in it. They must seek out meaning from their rulers, their queens. (Jack Queen King 3, Ghost Fragment: Darkness 3)
Places bound by shared dreams. Shared dreams will reveal your nature. Your nature is to destroy.
We are weapons. Purpose built to wage war.
Destroy your sense of self. Self-preservation coddles leaders into ritual complacence. Complacence is something I have forgotten.
We cannot think that we have significance. Kabr is not like Osiris. He does not find satisfaction in his own greatness.
I have forgotten loneliness, uncertainty, life alone. Alone I see with my six eyes. Eyes watching from beyond the heliopause.
Kabr sees with past present and future eyes. He/They/We watches us.
The heliopause is a curtain before the next and final act. Act decisively to meld with yourselves. Yourselves will know you.
Something dark comes our way. We will meet other weapons of war. Other versions of ourselves.
You together alone striving toward your final purpose. Purpose built to move as they move. Move to stand apart from your heroes.
Our final purpose is to be consumed. By the collective, by the Darkness, by the Light. We are not to be as heroes, fighting against it.
Heroes are commonplace these days. Days of change draw ever closer. Closer looks at what is forbidden can only help.
We must choose a queen. Each with their forbidden knowledge. We must decide to be more than weapons.
Help them help you. You are so afraid of taboos. Taboos must be overthrown.
We must make a pact and seek more. The Vex milk is taboo. The Darkness is taboo. The very nature of the Traveler, is taboo.
Overthrown rulers would agree I’m sure. Surely you are convinced by now. Now go and find yourselves.
We must find a new purpose.
Edit 1: reworked the intro. It was detracting from the original intent of the post.
Edit 2: Added citations
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