Clovis Bray I

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Clovis Bray I
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Earth
Species:	Human (formerly) Exo
Gender:	Male
Eye color:	Red
Political and military information
Affiliation:	Clovis Bray (corporation)
Notable info:	Founder of Clovis Bray corporation Creator of the Exos Communed with the Witness through the K1 Artifact Survived the Collapse as a giant Exo head buried beneath Europa

"Maps end. Maps insist on having borders and edges or the table falls away. Which isn't the way the universe works."

— Clovis Bray I

Clovis Bray I was a Golden Age scientist, the patriarch of the Bray family, and the founder of the technology and research company Clovis Bray. He survives to the present day as an AI copy of himself kept in his company's facilities on Europa.

Biography

Founding Clovis Bray

At some point during the Golden Age, Clovis I founded the Clovis Bray exoscience corporation and married Lusia Lin. His son, Clovis II, became a senior researcher at the company, as did his grandchildren Elisabeth, Alton, Wilhelmina and Anastasia.

Mission to Europa

Toward the end of his life, Bray embarked on a mission to Europa, both to catalogue the moon's native life-forms and to investigate a source of power alluded to in messages from the K1 anomaly. The paracausal force empowering the artifact, which Bray referred to as "Clarity", had promised Bray the secret to immortality - a secret which Bray was desperate to obtain.

Upon reaching Europa, Bray discovered both native life in the moon's subsurface ocean, and the source of "Clarity," which Bray named "Clarity Control". Bray requested that his granddaughter Elisabeth, who was suffering from inherited fatal insomnia caused by the elder Bray's genetic meddling, join him and assist with his work, which she agreed to do.

"Clarity Control" instructed Bray to build a Vex gate, which Bray accomplished by stealing a Vex from the Ishtar Collective. The completed gate led to a blue giant star system, in which the star had been surrounded by orbiting particle accelerators, statites and other Vex megastructures in order to both prolong its life and use it to generate heavy elements via fusion.

During his investigation of the Vex, Bray discovered that exposing Vex milk to "Clarity" resulted in a substance with paracausal "anti-structural" properties, but lacking the virulence of raw radiolarian fluid. He then administered some of this substance to the physical hardware of an exomind, and discovered that it seemed to solve the "loop/billboard/crash" problem of exomind deterioration. Comparing this miraculous substance to the mythological Alkahest produced by the legendary Sorcerer's Stone, Bray decided to name his workplace on Europa the Deep Stone Crypt. Ultimately, however, another problem presented itself, Dissociative Exomind Rejection (or DER), which not even Bray's "Alkahest" could solve.

Bray later hit upon two solutions to DER. The first was a protocol for periodic retrograde amnesia, or "memory wipes", which would effectively reset the exomind to an earlier state before DER had set in. The second was to build Exo bodies with humanlike traits, such as an ability to eat, that would reduce the dissociation exominds felt with their machine bodies.

However, as the Vex began to infiltrate Europa by subtly encoding their patterns within the minds of Exo work teams returning from the 2082 Volantis, Bray subsequently extended the Exo memory-wipe protocol to trigger whenever certain classes of informational hazard - such as Vex machine code - were encountered. He referred to this as a sort of "noetic immune system", and noted that it would also return the Exos to peak mission readiness during future combat missions.

By then, the Vex infection had spread to Bray himself, corrupting his body at the molecular level. In order to save himself, Bray subjected himself to automated surgery, with the goal of replacing most of his organs with cloned replicas grown from pigs. However, during the operation, a Vex-defecting copy of Maya Sundaresh subverted the surgical machinery, ordering it to gruesomely vivisect Bray and awaken him after completion. He was rescued by Elisabeth, who had uploaded herself into an Exo body and destroyed the corrupted medical frames and the Vex unit, and was reassembled.

During the remainder of his surgery, Bray experienced a vision from the Traveler in the form of Alpha Lupi, which chided him for being so easily seduced by the Darkness. She explained that the visions Clovis had experienced during his recent brushes with death were warnings she sent, as the Darkness had no interest in speaking to those who were on the verge of dying. Everything else was a product of Clovis I's ego. He subsequently berated the Traveler for not personally intervening sooner.

Rebirth

As his body continued to be corrupted by the Vex, Bray chose to upload himself into an exomind format, cleansing himself of the infection once and for all. The Vex copy of Maya continued to torment him even as he was in the process of uploading, controlling his motor functions to scrawl taunting messages in his journal as Bray recorded his last words.

After the download, Clovis I's mind was installed as as an artificial intelligence in the Deep Stone Crypt, housed within a giant Exo head located in Creation. From there, Clovis I oversaw the activation of a specially-prepared high-spec Exobody he developed for himself and imprinted with his basic identity. However, Clovis-1 grew to resent Clovis I's cruelty and egomania, uniting with Elsie's to purge Europa of the Vex and undo the damage he had done, although he went through dozens of resets to do so. Clovis I's Exo head was shut down by Elsie and Clovis-43, who then reset himself to forget his identity as Clovis.

Reawakening

Centuries later, the destruction of the Morning Star and intrusions into the Deep Stone Crypt reawakened Clovis I. When one of the intruders approached Clovis I in Creation, he berated them for their actions and demanded to know who they were for interfering with and destroying his work. The Guardian's Ghost explained that they were not the intruders and had been attempting to stop the Fallen. Clovis I was confused, and the Ghost explained that they were an alien race who appeared after the Collapse. Caught off-guard by this new information, Clovis realized he had a lot of developments to catch up on since his deactivation. He offered his thanks to the Guardian for their help in stopping the Fallen but requested that they not destroy any more of his work in the future.

After some time, Clovis would have a family reunion with two of his grandchildren, Ana and Elsie, after the Guardian cleared the Exoscience labs of Salvation Fallen. Though Ana was surprised and in awe to meet her grandfather again, the tone would turn sour after Elsie revealed her intention to use his Stasis research for the betterment of humanity. This shocked and angered Clovis, claiming that Stasis was always meant for his legacy, for the Bray name only, regardless of the damage done. Elsie wouldn't be surprised by this but was nonetheless disgusted by Clovis's single-minded desire to ensure his legacy. Clovis however, reminded Elsie of how he aided him in Project Exo and Clarity Control despite her hatred of him and that no matter what she thinks, she will always be a Bray. Clovis would return to a dormant state, leaving Ana and Elsie to discuss the situation, with Ana disregarding her grandfather, stating they will use his research exactly how he doesn't want to be used: for the betterment of humanity.

Schemes and Lies

Over a year since his reawakening, Clovis would find himself under assault but not just Salvation Fallen once more but by the Wrathborn Hive, servants of the Hive War God, Xivu Arath. They intended to subjugated the Bray patriarch in their efforts to corrupt and then assume full control over the Warsat Network since Rasputin remained incapacitated since it's encounter with the Black Fleet. Though Clovis used his weaponized frames to hold off the assault, they were losing ground, forcing him to hide his intelligence in the mainframe. Fortune would come his way, however, as the Guardians came searching for Clovis to aid Ana's efforts to restore Rasputin. After clearing the labs of the Fallen and Hive, Ana Bray and Osiris arrived to meet with Clovis and inform him of recent events. Clovis wasn't impressed when Osiris introduced himself but Ana informed him of Rasputin's condition and they needed his help in repairing the Warmind. Once again out of a desire to save his legacy and for his own self-preservation, Clovis agreed to aid his progeny, having his personality downloaded into a prototype Exo Frame stationed on the H.E.L.M.

To begin repairing Rasputin, Clovis directed the Guardians to acquire the data of Rasputin's Subminds, such as Malahayati and Charlemagne. After that, they would infiltrate the main control hub of the Warsat Network, Seraph Station, hovering in orbit over the Last City, and prepare it for when Rasputin is ready to be uploaded and assume control. During all of this, Clovis continually demanded the Guardians to be careful with his "property", much to Ana's and Elsie's aggravation. His smug arrogance would also anger the other coalition leaders, mainly Osiris and Mara Sov herself, with the Awoken Queen referring to him as a vile man. Despite this, he would slowly grow impressed with the Guardians capabilities in the field, even offering them a place in his "private guard" should the day come.

Unfortunately for Clovis Bray, Ana would find a means to repair Rasputin at a quicker pace through the use of Felspring, the Ghost of the Iron Lord Felwinter, who was recently discovered to have once been a piece of Rasputin's code placed in an Exo before being made a Lightbearer. The plan actually worked in restoring enough of Rasputin that the Warmind could speak directly with Ana and the Guardian, using Clovis's speech patterns. However, the Warmind would reveal the full extent of Clovis's deception in repairing Rasputin. In truth, Clovis never built the Warmind to protect humanity but to serve as a means for him to assume control, for in his mind, Clovis believed only he was worthy of being humanity's savior and thus sought to build a machine god of his own that would actually replace the Traveler. However, due to Ana Bray teaching Rasputin things which Clovis found irrelevant, such as history, philosophy, art, music and independence, the Warmind refused to adhere to Clovis's plans, as Rasputin saw the beauty in humanity which Clovis could not. As a result, the Warmind changed Clovis's protocols and locked him out, infuriating Clovis. Rasputin revealed that in the elder Bray's new state, he intended Rasputin to serve not as his proxy but as his prototype, the means through which he would upload himself into the Warsat Network and assume direct control, becoming a machine god himself and the self-proclaimed savior he always envisioned himself as.

Ana would feel incensed that her grandfather had lied to her to further his selfish schemes, leading her and the Guardian to confront Clovis on the H.E.L.M. with Elsie present. With his true plans exposed, and held at gunpoint, Clovis attempted to justify his deception, claiming the Traveler can't be relied upon, citing the entity's past actions of abandoning the Eliksni and recently giving the Hive the Light. He attempted to reason with Ana, stating that once the Warmind was repaired and under their control, they can fight the enemies of humanity together. Ana lowered her weapon but instead of complying with her grandfather any longer, she decided to remove him from the mission, by uploading Rasputin into the prototype Exo frame. Shocked as Rasputin aggressively took control over the Frame, Clovis grew desperate and demanded Elise to stop her sister but the Exo Stranger did nothing of the sort, merely standing by and watching as he lost the battle with Rasputin, leading to his personality to be deleted from the frame.

Despite deleting his personality from the frame, Rasputin clarified that Clovis continued to exist as an AI, now confined to the Exoscience Labs of Europa once more. Before his deletion, he sent a warning to his facility there, informing himself that the Guardians now knew of his true plans, something that Ana also confirmed. With his plans exposed and in ruins, Clovis was left completely infuriated but powerless to do anything as the Guardian continued the mission in gathering submind data. He would attempt to make contact with both of his granddaughters but they refused to answer, leading the Warmind to speak for them, stating that his services are no longer required and that his progeny have surpassed him. Incensed and refusing to accept this, Clovis began to rant and demand Rasputin to cease but Rasputin merely cut his communications, leaving Clovis Bray trapped in the Creation lab. Out of spite, Clovis attempted to repeal the Guardians' access to BrayTech weaponry that he granted earlier but Rasputin stymied his efforts before locking him out entirely, angering him further.

Many weeks later, Clovis would learn that Rasputin had sacrificed himself in destroying the Warsat Network to prevent them from being used against Traveler after Eramis had gained control over the network. Disappointed in that the Guardians "threw away" one of humanity's greatest creations, Clovis would continue to taunt the Guardians saying that had he fulfilled his goal, then he could've protected them and humanity. This claim however, would be angerly countered by Elsie, who stated that he was actually playing into the enemy's hands once again like with the Witness and the Vex and yet instead of learning his lesson, he never suffered the consequences and nearly made things worse. Elsie ends the conversation stating that she should've let him die on the operating table.

Personality and traits

Model of Clovis-1 and drawings of Clarity on Clovis' desk.

"Clovis may have been a bastard, but a brilliant one."

— Exo Stranger.

According to his son Clovis Bray II, Bray hated maps due to the fact that they ended, which he felt was not the way the universe worked. He viewed the work of his corporation as expanding a map that could never be completed. Bray also viewed everyone he worked with, including his employees and family, as collaborators rather than subordinates.

Toward the end of his life, Bray appeared to suffer from megalomania and delusions of grandeur, with his diary entries proclaiming his intent to become the "LUCA", or Last Universal Common Ancestor (a term borrowed from biology), of all future human interstellar civilization. He saw his family as only being relevant insofar as being extensions of his will, a trait seen in psychopaths.

According to his own notes, Bray apparently had an antipathy toward women. This, combined with his megalomania, may have prompted his decision to donate his own mitochondrial DNA to his children in lieu of their mother's during their embryonic development. He was also obsessed with micromanaging his family line, and seemed to resent his adopted granddaughter Ana over her genetics, though it's unclear whether this is outright racism or simply rejection of non-Bray DNA. Further, he resented his grandson, Alton Bray, as he found his genetics "useless" and only used him to act as a troubleshooter and administrator for his company, hardly acknowledging him for anything else. Despite his desire to become an Exo himself, Clovis I would spin up several instances of the same person's exomind to further study the exact ways in which they inevitably died suffering, suggesting a lack of empathy or regard for ethics. Due to his actions towards his own family, most of the Bray Family had nothing but contempt towards Clovis but they couldn't openly oppose him due to his status and power as head of the corporation.

Upon being encountered by the Guardians as an ancient "confidential intelligence", Clovis remains as arrogant and condescending as he was in life. He regarded the Guardians as intruders who solely aimed to steal his research but was surprised to learn that centuries had passed since his original death, from the Collapse to the appearance of the Fallen. Regardless of becoming an uneasy ally to the Guardians, Clovis continued to be patronizing and smug, despite them actually saving and aiding him. Upon reuniting with his granddaughters, Ana Bray and Exo Stranger (Elisabeth Bray), Clovis revealed that he remained obsessed in ensuring the legacy of the Bray name, even if said measures endanger humanity, claiming that the powers of the Darkness was meant for his family, not for the good of humanity. Clovis even remained unapologetic on how his research on the Vex brought the machines into the Solar System. Though he defended himself on that the Vex appearance wasn't his intent and admitted he may have "facilitated" their appearance, he claimed it was all for his research. This shows that Clovis had a complete inability or refusal to accept that he made a mistake or be willing to take responsibility for them. Even when his Exo experiments led to the death of his own son, Clovis refused to acknowledge that it was his fault, instead finding ways to blame others.

Health scans indicate that while Clovis is capable of feeling compassion, he subconsciously refuses to entertain the notion because of his ego and other preconceptions. Near the end of Clovis's life, he did manage to realize the scale of his wrongdoings and finally accept this fact, confessing to his Exo copy in a written letter attached to The Lament that he had originally started his work out of an intense fear of death, forgetting, and being forgotten (thanato- and athazagoraphobia, respectively), yet lost his way and descended into narcissism after he eventually forgot that the love for his family was why he developed those fears to begin with. Clovis-1 was created with the intention of carrying on this revelation, but the copy in Bray Exoscience would fail to receive a similar epiphany, causing it to descend further into Clovis's worst traits as time passed. With Clovis-1's eventual transformation into Banshee-44, this copy would become the last remaining trace of the original Clovis's individuality, rendering all of the above a moot point.

In Season of the Seraph, the full extent of Clovis's delusions and madness would be laid bare. Under the guise of aiding Ana and the Guardians in restoring Rasputin, he intended to use them to grant himself the opportunity to become a machine god himself and assume control over humanity. He was arrogant enough to believe that he alone was worthy of being called humanity's savior, originally intending to have Rasputin to actually replace the Traveler, creating a savior of his own design. However, he couldn't fathom Ana teaching the things Clovis found no actual value in, the things that convinced the Warmind in the beauty of humanity: philosophy, history, art and music. For Clovis, everything was to ensure his own legacy and regain the control he refused to relinquished. However, after his plans were exposed by Rasputin and casted out by his own progeny, Clovis would be left furious and ranting, unable to accept his granddaughter's independence or Rasputin's statement that his progeny have surpassed him. To further cement his deluded arrogance, Clovis can't comprehend that the Guardians will be able to restore Rasputin or survive The Witness's return without his aid.

Even before he was exposed, Clovis had proven to be rather narrow-minded and smug towards the other coalition members, leading them to often insult and dismiss him in return. Mara Sov especially had a sense of loathing for him, calling Clovis a vile man and a representation of the brashness conducted during the Golden Age. Clovis was also rather dismissive of the more arcane nature of humanities enemies, specifically the Hive, often trying to find a scientific explanation of their properties and powers, though he expressed interest in the nature of the Ascendant Realm. Though he would remained rather smug, Clovis would slowly begin to be impressed with the Guardian's capabilities in battle, even attempting to convince them of his intentions and even offer them a place in his "personal guard" once he had assumed control over the Network. The Guardians however, did not return the sentiment, instead finding his obsessions with his property and patronizing nature, aggravating.

Trivia

• Clovis Bray I's AI is voiced by Brian T. Delaney, who also voices Saint-14 and Praksis, the Technocrat.
• Upon the release of the Mysterious Logbook, initial speculation was that Clovis I's more bizarre characteristics were symptomatic of autism. Writer Seth Dickinson replied to this with, "For whatever it's worth I never once thought of him as autistic. I think that would be a terrible and irresponsible decision to make in writing this character...From my outsider POV I feel like it would be awful to hear "this guy is autistic so he does experiments on humans and has severe issues with women and doesn't care about right and wrong." That's not an effect of autism."

List of appearances

• Destiny (First mentioned)
  • The Taken King (Mentioned only)
• Destiny 2 (Mentioned only)
  • Warmind (Mentioned only)
  • Shadowkeep (Mentioned only)
  • Beyond Light (First appearance)
  • Season of the Chosen (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Splicer (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Lost (Mentioned only)
  • Season of the Seraph
• Destiny: Warmind (comic) (Mentioned only)