Greetings Guardians!
@TKfromthe90s and @HipNuts are coming to you today with yet another spinfoil theory of ours.
You might know TK from his widely successful and thorough post on the Aeon Cult or possibly myself from my initially harebrained Oryx theory, or my unorthodox thoughts on Yor. This time however, we have a hypothesis on the Vex for you.
Hold on to your Ghosts, hotshots. This is gonna be a long one.
We’ll begin by stating the thesis: The Vex have used their mastery of science in the place of Hive sorcery to forge a Throne World of their own design.
–QURIA–
Let us begin with Quria. From the Book of Sorrows, when the Vex encountered the Hive, Quria attempted to analyze Oryx. It failed, but it passed on the Hive’s twisted Sword Logic to the Vex as a result. This information caused the following chain of Vex logic.
1.) The Vex wish to survive
2.) The Vex encounter Sword Logic
3.) The Vex incorporate the Sword Logic into their simulations.
4.) Sword Logic dictates that to survive, you must be stronger than everything else
5.) Sword Logic dictates that anything weak does not deserve to exist
6.) Therefore, to be stronger than everything else, everything else must cease to exist
7.) The Vex then decide to preemptively erase their eventual challengers with the assistance of time, thus fulfilling the Sword Logic; if only a bit early
8.) This chain of logic results in the Vex’s creation of the Vault of Glass: a laboratory in which to experiment with the erasure of potential challengers in service of the Sword Logic through the manipulation of time.
–THRONE WORLD–
Now that we have covered the effects of Quria passing the Sword Logic on to the Vex collective, we know that the Vex as a whole must also be aware of Throne Worlds. Based on the info-dump from Quria, the Vex know a couple things about them.
1.) The act of tithing increases the power of the Throne World’s owner
2.) A Throne World acts as a backup/failsafe for when its owner is killed in the physical plane
Armed with this information, the Vex choose to construct a Throne World; what we know as the Vault of Glass. They also construct Atheon to serve as the owner and center of this Throne World. Next is the construction of the Vault around Atheon’s Glass Throne, as it will be the deepest part of the Throne World, just as Crota’s Oversoul Throne was. In the process of doing so, they quickly realize they need to establish two key elements thereof.
(I know I know. We like lists.)
1.) A way to erase enemies effectively, through a series of judges (Templar, Gorgons, Oracles) that determine if something deserves to exist or not. i.e. whether or not it is a threat to their idea of the perfect future or to their survival
2.) A system which guarantees their survival across all timelines.
–THE VEX ADVANTAGE–
We know that the Vex are capable of time travel, despite some radical ideas introduced by the Warlock Osiris. So then, we turn our attention back to Atheon’s Glass Throne. Within that Throne, we can clearly see two Vex gates, to past and future. Both converging on the present.
Two things exist as a result of that timeline convergence:
1.) A stable time loop
2.) A singular point at which to focus the accumulated knowledge from all of their kind across every timeline
This means that the Vex have not only reproduced the reset effect of the Hive’s Throne World with science, they’ve also managed to improve upon it by applying its effects to the entirety of their kind and using it as an immaterial vault for knowledge.
As the Conflux of these three time periods, Atheon provides a simple focal point into which the Vex within the Vault can funnel their accumulated information. All information gleaned from each point in time is funneled directly to him, making him “stronger” by providing more information about what stands before him and formulating more potential tactics for its destruction. This sounds quite similar to Oryx’s tithing system, and we believe that this is no accident.
This system takes the pre-Golden Age phrase “knowledge is power” and makes it quite literal. Sword Logic demands strength/power as a way of proving you deserve to exist. But the Vex accomplish this in a different way. The more ways they can devise to erase their enemies, the more efficiently they can do so. The more efficiently they can do so, the more they prove themselves in the Logic.
But this new logic is not founded upon slaughter or upon proving one’s strength through combat, as is with the Hive. No, no. Instead, it is founded on knowledge and the protection of that knowledge. Upon keeping a closed system which nothing can infiltrate or destroy unless it possesses greater knowledge. This, clearly, is no longer Sword Logic. But if not that, then what? We propose a new name. We propose that the ideology which currently drives the Vex be called…
Vault Logic.
And as a result of this “Vault Logic”, we can at last explain the purpose of the Vault of Glass. Put as simply as we can possibly make it…
1.) Vault of Glass is a Throne World for Atheon, Time’s Conflux.
2.) It provides a stable time loop for the Vex to grow ever stronger in their version of the Sword Logic.
3.) This version is just the tithing of knowledge
4.) This makes them more worthy to survive, proving their strength above others by removing those others from the equation.
5.) By this “Vault Logic”, the Vex become ever stronger, as long as they keep learning and their new knowledge isn’t proven wrong.
Well that’s it you guys. If you made it this far, that’s some serious commitment! Thank you from @TKfromthe90s and @HipNuts for reading. Seriously, this was a long read, so we wanna make sure we thank each and every last one of you for taking the time. Let us know what you think of the theory. Of course, we’ll be around to answer any possible questions you might have. We’ve also included a list relevant links for character or term references below.