Vex
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- "When the world does not match their eternal pattern, they alter the world to suit it. There is no difference between reality and simulation to them. Inside is the same as outside, and the two must be made to correspond."
- — Clovis Bray I[5]
The Vex are a cyber-organic species that are as ancient as the Universe itself. Enigmatic and inscrutable, they work ceaselessly to convert planets and other celestial bodies into vast machines, and are hostile toward any other life-form that gets in their way. Their technology is among the most advanced ever encountered by humanity, enabling incredible feats of material and spacetime engineering and even time travel.
The Vex have been present in the Solar System for billions of years, and their sophisticated and watchfully guarded structures can be found on multiple planets, including Venus, Mars and Io. Some Vex locations, such as the Black Garden or the Vault of Glass, are artificial realms existing outside of normal space and time.
Overview
The Vex have been described as a "hyperintelligent time-spanning thought-mesh"[6], a collective intelligence composed of countless component minds distributed across time and space. Each mobile Vex armature contains a mind core filled with a milky suspension of radiolaria, microscopic organisms that are the Vex's true guiding intelligence.[7]
Vex come in a diverse array of shapes and sizes, but the majority share features such as triangular or conical "heads," single glowing photoreceptors, jointed limbs, and in several cases arrays of flexible tentacles. Despite their often animalistic appearance, the Vex appear to be mass-produced units, constructed of an unknown metal alloy resembling hammered brass.[8] Headshots on humanoid Vex do not do much damage and instead send them into a berserk state; however, shooting the exposed mind cores in their abdomen will cause them to explode.[9] The Vex travel to the Floating Gardens to recycle their mechanical bodies when they are no longer functional.[10]
History
Origins
- "They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle.
They learned those rules, because they were those rules.
And in time the gardener became vexed." - — The Winnower[11]
According to the allegorical story recounted in the Lore Book Unveiling, the Vex originated as patterns in the "flower game" played by the two entities known as the gardener and the winnower in the primordial "garden" that existed before the creation of the multiverse. Every instance of the flower game would end with a single, self-sustaining pattern that dominated the entire grid of flowers. This was pleasing to the winnower but irritating to the gardener, who desired that the game produce endless novel patterns instead.[11][12]
When the gardener and winnower began to war with one another, initiating the creation of the multiverse, the patterns from the flower game escaped into the newborn universes, this universe among them. In the initial hot state of the universe, the abstract patterns existed as quantum fluctuations before eventually creating a more stable physical substrate for themselves in the briny seas of the first worlds to form: microscopic silicon-based entities known as radiolaria. This was the origin of the Vex as they would later come to be known. From this point forward, they were driven to once more dominate the reality they found themselves in, though operating on "outdated" rules that did not account for the paracausal powers of the Darkness or the Light.[13]
The rest of the Vex's evolutionary history is a matter of speculation, but Clovis Bray I hypothesized some likely intermediate steps during his studies of the Vex structures around 2082 Volantis. He conjectured that the Vex had developed in extremely high-energy environments, and that under these conditions competition and predation were not optimal strategies. Instead, group signalling between the radiolaria formed the basis for the evolution of a swarm intelligence. The radiolaria went on to develop crude armor, possibly hydrogel or silica plating, to shield themselves from intense cosmic radiation, allowing them to remain close enough to the surface to feed off this plentiful energy source directly. From here, the Vex constructed and developed ever more complex structures, storing the information in the radiolaria colonies' patterns. Their microscopic nature allowed the Vex to deduce and experiment with quantum and high-energy physics at an early point in their evolution, while the radiolaria themselves essentially became microscopic tool users.[5]
The Vex developed rapidly, and at some point in their development in the early universe, they developed megastructures around the short-lived hypermassive stars their home planets had formed around. These megastructures artificially extended the lifespan of these stars, allowing the Vex to use them to 'forge' heavier elements that would have been otherwise fantastically rare in the early, low-metal universe.[5]
The Ancient Past
- "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."[14]
The earliest historical event associated with the Vex is when the Hive god Crota, Son of Oryx opened a portal to a place where the Vex were present, hoping to find a secret power for himself. Instead, he allowed the Vex to invade Oryx, the Taken King's throne world, the High War.[14] At first unsuited to the Ascendant Realm and the rules governing its reality, the Vex quickly learned of the Hive's Sword Logic, creating Quria, Blade Transform to investigate it. Through Quria, the Vex learned to achieve divinity by killing all who opposed them and adopting worship as a primary function.[15] Though Oryx eventually succeeded in eliminating the Vex from his realm, they preserved what they learned and passed it on to the rest of the Vex hive mind.[16] Quria would later ambush Oryx when he attacked the Nicha Thought-ship.[17] In the ensuing battle, Quria generated a simulation of Oryx's original form: Aurash. As Oryx was distracted by the simulation, Quria devoted the rest of its resources to sending what it had learned to the rest of the Vex hive mind. Quria was then Taken and given to his sister, Savathûn as a gift, however, Oryx allowed Quria to retain a portion of its own will.[18][19]
The Golden Age
- "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." - — Recorded Ishtar Collective transcript[20]
During humanity's Golden Age, Vex structures were found on Venus dating back to a few billion years before humanity's existence.[21] Ishtar researchers suspected that the Vex ruins came from an alternate Venus and came into being when the Traveler transformed Venus into a habitable world.[22]
The Collective also recovered a live specimen of Vex and discovered that it had created an internal simulation of themselves, accurately predicting their every move. To Collective researchers, this ability raised profound philosophical quandaries about the nature of reality. Eventually, the researchers were driven nearly to madness, as they started to wonder if they themselves were just Vex simulations, so they decided to bring in a Warmind to intervene on their behalf. Warminds were many orders of magnitude more complex than humans, and it was believed that the Vex would be unable to simulate them; thus, the Warmind's presence and actions would be a sufficiently chaotic variable to allow the researchers to discern which universe was real and disrupt the simulation.[23][20][24]
The Vex first appeared on Mercury during the Golden Age as well, shortly after the Traveler terraformed the planet into a garden world. Dendron, Root Mind was created following the Vex's arrival, and began converting the planet into a Machine World that would house the "reality engine" known as the Infinite Forest within its core.[25][26]
At some point, Clovis Bray I, the patriarch of the Bray family and founder of the Clovis Bray corporation, arranged for a Vex to be stolen from the Ishtar Collective and transported to his research site on Europa.[27] This Vex then built a gate leading from Europa to 2082 Volantis, a blue giant star system in which the star had been surrounded by Vex megastructures.[28] Clovis I's ensuing research into Vex radiolarian fluid and the mysterious paracausal power he called "Clarity" resulted in a breakthrough in the development of Exominds.[citation needed] Bray also oversaw the creation of project on Vesper Station in orbit around Europa to integrate his technology into a Vex Mind that enable him to control it and provide a window into the Vex Network. However, the Mind would quarantined after it became hostile.[29]
During or before the Collapse, the colony ship Exodus Black left Earth on a trajectory out of the solar system. It was intercepted, however, by the planetoid known as Nessus, which had become fully converted into a Vex Machine World and had left its usual orbital patterns.[30][31] The entire crew of the Exodus Black was captured or killed, with some being kept alive by the Vex for a time for experimentation and analysis.[32]
Destiny
The City Age
- "They brought us here. The Vex. Evil so dark it despises other evil."
- — The Exo Stranger[33]
Sometime before the events of Destiny, the Guardians Kabr, the Legionless, Pahanin, and Praedyth ventured into the Vault of Glass on Venus, a major confluence of the Vex network. Inside, they were quickly thwarted by the Templar and its Gorgons. Pahanin managed to escape, but Kabr was assimilated after giving his Light to fashion the Aegis,[34][35] while Praedyth was captured and trapped outside of time.[36]
On Mars, the Vex (under the Virgo Prohibition) waged an intense war with the Cabal, who managed to repel the machines despite the vast numbers of them that continually assaulted Cabal positions.[37] This massive, if ineffective, offensive against the Cabal was an effort by the Vex to bar entry to the Black Garden, which the Vex were being summoned to for a then-unknown purpose.[38] Upon successfully infiltrating the Black Garden, the Guardian discovered the Sol Divisive,[39] a collective of Vex dedicated to worshipping an entity within the Garden known as the Black Heart,[40] a replica of the Veil.[41] This seemingly-uncharacteristic behavior was later thought to have been as rational as everything the Vex do; they simply determined that worshiping the Heart would be the most advantageous course of action.[citation needed] This hypothesis was supported by the presence of the Sol Progeny, a trio of Vex frames meant to serve as vessels for the Heart—and to use its power to further the ends of the Vex Network.[42]
Subsequently, a second group of Guardians would enter the Vault of Glass, seeking to further break the Vex's power following the destruction of the Black Heart. The Aegis—having been designed specifically to counter the reality-bending capabilities of the Vault's denizens—allowed these Guardians to escape the fates of their predecessors, fight their way to the core of the Vault, and engage and destroy Atheon, Time's Conflux, the Vault's overseer. [43]
The destruction of the Heart had caused the Black Garden to become a part of normal spacetime, with several entryways on and beneath the surface of Mars.[citation needed] The Undying Mind, an ancient Vex Hydra, would later attempt to seal the Garden away from normal spacetime once more, to secure it against further intrusion. Following the destruction of Crota on the Moon, a strike team entered the Garden and destroyed the Mind, stopping its work—though, true to its name, it would eventually return.[44]
The Taken War
- "They want me to send a message… The creatures will soon reach the heart of the Vault. When they do, they'll destroy the Vex. Once they take the Vex, they'll come for the Light."
- — Praedyth[36]
In recent times, the Vex had suffered numerous setbacks across the system - a large number of Vex Axis Minds were destroyed by Guardians, leaving the Vex network in disarray. With the arrival of the Taken, attacks against the Vex had only escalated. The Vex have yet to counter these failures, though some believe the cybernetic machines have begun preparing countermeasures as Variks, the Loyal notes, following Skolas' defeat, "Old machines are waking up…"[45]
Praedyth himself was forgotten until the time of the Taken War, when the Taken began to blight the Vex network. After receiving a distress signal from Praedyth, the Guardian was sent to the Vault to investigate and was unexpectedly granted access by the Vex. Inside, the Guardian discovered a series of Dead Ghosts Praedyth had left behind. Praedyth revealed through recordings within the Ghosts that he had seen what the Vex had calculated would be their future: eons hence, they would be completely corrupted by the Taken, becoming an eternal part of the legacy of Oryx, the Taken King. Although the Vex were able to foresee this future and compelled to seek a way to avert it, they concluded that this grim fate was inevitable without the Light; allowing the Guardian to fight the Taken blight that plagued them was an act of desperation. Traveling through a portal, the Guardian was transported to the Vex's future, where the blight was defeated, the Vex were spared from their fate, and Praedyth's remains and Ghost were recovered. Despite this moment of cooperation, however, the Vex still had no intention of returning the favor or sparing the Last City.[36]
Destiny 2
The Red War
- "A Conflux that's directly connected to Mars. The Vex there are having a heck of a time with the Red Legion, it seems like. "Garden gate gone. Bay lost. Bastion fallen.""
- — Ghost[46]
By the time of the Red War, two years after the Taken War, the Vex had come under attack by the Fallen House of Dusk and the Cabal Red Legion on Io, Mercury, Mars, and Nessus. Of note, on Mars the Red Legion quickly succeeded against the Vex where other Cabal legions had failed for decades: they destroyed the gate to the Black Garden and drove the Vex out of Meridian Bay.[46] According to Cayde-6, the Red Legion has brought even more of their might to bear on Mars than on Earth.[47]
On Nessus, the Red Legion had begun drilling into the Inverted Spire, hoping to study and utilize Protheon, Modular Mind as a weapon but the Vex responded violently, causing a warzone to break out near the drilling sites. The Vanguard found out about the legion's efforts and sent in Guardians to destroy Protheon before the Red Legion could capture the Vex Mind. After fighting through Vex and Cabal forces, the Guardians descended into the Inverted Spire and faced off against the Vex entity. Despite its firepower and altering the battlefield, the Guardians succeeded in destroying Protheon, depriving the Vex of an Axis Mind and the Cabal of a potential new weapon.[48]
While on Io, the Vanguard pin-pointed the Vex's machine conversion of the moon at The Pyramidion, led by Brakion, Genesis Mind. Not only does the Vanguard want to put a stop to the Vex's plans to turn Io into another machine world but also prevent any lingering Taken from corrupting the Genesis Mind into a powerful Taken entity. Storming the Pyramidion, the Guardians, guided by Asher Mir, evade Vex traps, Vex defenders, and Taken enemies and enter a pit that leads to the Genesis Mind. Battling the Vex Mind, the Guardians succeed in destroying Brakion, hindering the Vex's efforts to convert Io and granting Asher Mir a sense of vengeance as it was Brakion who nearly converted him into a Vex machine.[49]
Curse of Osiris
- "We can't stay here… If the Vex succeed, it's the end of everything."
- — Osiris[50]
Following the death of Dominus Ghaul and the reawakening of the Traveler, Vex Minds began to call the modern Vex, Precursors, and Descendants to Mercury,[50] to bring forth a dark future in which only they dominate all life and both Light and Darkness no longer exist, through the means of the Infinite Forest.[25] This required the Vanguard to locate Osiris, in the hopes of stopping them. Despite her reservations, Ikora Rey, the former student of Osiris, gives her blessing to the mission and gains assistance from the Cult of Osiris.[50]
Though the Vanguard gained an ally in the exiled warlock's Ghost, Sagira, the Guardians traveled across the Infinite Forest to find Osiris while also thwarting the Vex's plans. After encountering reflections of Osiris, the Guardians face the mastermind and instigator of the Vex's plans, Panoptes, Infinite Mind, an extremely powerful Axis Mind with the power to delete the Vex's enemies within the Forest.[25] Though the Guardians lost Sagira to Panoptes during their mission to locate the Infinite Mind's lair,[26] they remained determined to stop Panoptes from bringing about the Vex's desired future. With the aid of Ikora and her abilities, the Guardian was able to enter the Infinite Forest once again and find Panopte's lair, Infinity's Crown.[51]
