OXA Machine

The Odyle Xenotaph Anarchive, commonly known as the OXA Machine or OXTA, is an ancient and mysterious device said to be capable of clairvoyance, both revealing past events and supposedly predicting the future. Its latest iteration was destroyed by the Cabal Empire when the Psions were conquered and enslaved. Centuries later, it was rebuilt by Freeborn Otzot.

History

Origins

The OXA Machine is of unknown origins, having been built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times throughout history by a variety of different alien species. Umun'arath described it as a "black box for galactic civilizations": a means for civilizations facing destruction to record their demise and pass on their knowledge to others. Its oldest records contained information about the Hive.

At some point in the distant past, the Psion race became the latest to possess the OXA Machine. This was destroyed when the Psions were conquered by the Cabal Empire.

Calus' Reign

Centuries later, a brilliant Psion scientist known as Otzot recreated the OXA Machine on a Psion-controlled moon called Brand. Umun'arath dispatched a Cabal armada to bomb Brand to destroy the device once again, but was ordered by Emperor Calus to stand down. Rather than punish Otzot, Calus rewarded her, and the OXA Machine was appropriated for the Empire's use.

At some point, the OXA Machine led the Cabal to investigate the planet Aark, whose inhabitants had been annihilated by the Hive.

Calus claimed to have "interpreted the mad prophecies" of either the original or remade OXA Machine, one of which detailed in vague terms the long-ago rise of the Hive under Oryx, the Taken King. Various elements of Hive history relayed by the machine would subsequently make their way into Cabal mythology and culture; for example, the Cabal learned of the Hive word caiatl, which expresses the concept "it may not always go as it needs to go," from the OXA Machine, and it subsequently became the name of both a star and later the Princess-Imperial Caiatl, daughter of Calus.

During the Midnight Coup, Otzot harnessed the OXA machine to transmit plans to her co-conspirators in secret.

Sol System

The Vex maintained records of the OXA Machine within the Insight Terminus on Nessus. This information was accessed at unknown times by both Otzot and the Ishtar Collective scientist Maya Sundaresh, whose consciousness had survived since the time of the Collapse within the Darkness of the Veil, and had subsequently infiltrated the Vex Network. After the Red War, Kargen, the Technocrat led an offensive on the Insight Terminus, seeking information about the OXA Machine. The OXA Machine was later mentioned by Tazaroc, the Sun Eater in the Season of Dawn, where she described it as a "mad thing" that produced "troubled ramblings", suggesting that The Sundial was superior to the OXA Machine in its predictive power.

During the operation to stop the Witness and prevent them from completing the Final Shape inside the Pale Heart, the Guardian would help Micah-10 to do what they could to heal the Traveler and locate several lost Ghosts. One of these missions involved finding and saving Bean, a Ghost that was investigating the ruins of the Exodus Black on Nessus. Once they got close to the location, Micah, Cayde and the Guardian detected a detachment of Red Legion, even though their leadership had been dismantled for some years, leading the team to think that a Cabal warlord was acting on their own or worse they were following the Shadow Legion. Overcoming their defenses and advancing deep into the planetoid toward the Terminus, the Guardian would encounter a clone of Kargen, the Technocrat, whom they killed once again.

After recovering Bean's signal, the Ghost would discover that Kargen's clone was once again trying to access Vex data on the OXA Machine. Micah-10 noted that the OXA Machine sounded very similar in function to the Vex-derived "Device" that Maya Sundaresh had helped build during her time as a researcher in Lhasa, which would later be used by the Future War Cult. The Ghost stated that he could not say for sure that the two machines were not of the same design; he also noted that Kargen's clone had been looking for information about the Sol Divisive's research on the Veil, but he could not determine what connections there were between these seemingly disparate topics.

Trivia

• "Odyle" is another word for the "Odic force", a hypothetical "life energy" that was proposed to exist during the mid-19th century.
• "Xenotaph" is a pun on cenotaph, a symbolically empty tomb commemorating a person whose remains are elsewhere. Cenotaph is a compound word in Greek combining kenos (empty) and taphos (tomb). Xenotaph replaces kenos with xenos (literally foreigner or stranger, though commonly used to refer to aliens), so it can also be read as "alien tomb".
• The acronym "OXTA" is an anagram of Taox, the name of an ancient proto-Hive female who once served as a mentor to the children of the Osmium King on Fundament, and who survived for millennia after the rise of the Hive before vanishing. As much of the information derived from the OXA Machine by the Cabal seems to relate to the Hive specifically, combined with the above etymology of "empty (alien) tomb", this may hint at a connection between these two entities. Additionally, as referenced above, "Odyle" references a sort of "life force," and on multiple occasions, references are made to the Hive's "bio-energetics".

List of appearances

• Cabal Booklet (First mentioned)
• Destiny 2: Warmind (Mentioned only)
  • Season of Opulence (Mentioned only)
  • Season of Dawn (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Wish (Mentioned only)
  • The Final Shape (Mentioned only)
• Beloved (Mentioned only)