Speculation Saturday #8: The Vex *SP* (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Saturday, August 23, 2014, 02:12 (3749 days ago)

Some Saturdays ago we took a look at The Hive. Undead servants of The Darkness? Maybe. Creepy? Definitely! This week, we're going to take a closer look at what might possibly be Destiny's most mysterious race: The Vex. Please note the spoiler tag (*SP*) in this week's title. We'll be getting just a bit into unreleased story info this time around!

The Facts:

Scattered reports indicate that the Vex appear to be mass-produced machine units, constructed of an unknown metal alloy resembling hammered brass. All attempts to communicate with them have failed. They are hostile. They are unrelenting. They are deadly.

The fantasy of them that we wanted to play was these endless waves of metal armies marching at you. They aren’t entirely machines. They have some organic part to them as well. They’re a little bit of a mixture of robots and creatures. We wanted to make them with tails and long, claw-like fingers, not your typical sci-fi robot or android. We didn’t want to go that route.

They’re creating armies. They’re creating these big warp gates around the solar system. They can potentially bring in armies from elsewhere. They might time travel or come from another distant time. Where they came from or when they came from is inscrutable. They’re not shiny, brand new, right off of the assembly line. They’re made of almost something that feels like hammered brass or something that could be thousands of years old. But that mixed with the robotic design of them gives you that [feel] of ancient robots.

Their weakspot is not their head like many of the other characters. It’s in their abdomen. It’s a glowing white energy core. And when you shoot it, it just explodes this glowing liquid. [Remember] in Halo the grunt birthday party skull? When you shoot a grunt there’s this spray of confetti and this noise like, “Yay!” That’s absolutely what inspired the way you kill Vex.

We wanted with them to create architecture that wasn’t logical in some way. Like you don’t understand why they’re making it. I think that’s the crux of why we did that. It’s inscrutable in some way. Whether it’s some routine they’re running or some ceremonial thing they’re doing or if they’re just doing it because they have always done it.

You’ll come across [everything from] small pillars of stone to massive towering citadels. The architecture that they build is almost like stone anthills. They’re building in an organic fashion. There are corridors inside them where it’s almost imperceivable what’s up and what’s down. You don’t go in there and see staircases and railings and the coffee machine. They’re very much alien.

The Vex. They are unlike any enemies I’ve fought in other games. The fiction behind them is really fascinating, which, in turn, creates one of the coolest deaths in the game.

The Manifold Seeker armor was built to help Warlocks survive the secret realms of the Vex. Don it and brave the pocket worlds buried in the nameless depths trapped beyond space and time.

The following mission descriptions were taken from DestinyDB. It seems someone managed to backtrack and query Destiny's activities database during the Beta revealing some or possibly even all of the short mission descriptions for Destiny's story. These are unconfirmed but they feel right.

Lure out the Vex Gate Lord that protects the Endless Steps and bring its head back to the Awoken.

Present the Gate Lord's head to the Queen for entrance into the Black Garden.

Seize control of the Black Garden Spire held behind the wall of the Cabal Warbase and wake the Gate Lord's Eye.

Find and destroy the source of the Vex surging to protect the Black Garden.

Informed Supposition:

- Right off the bat we see from the leaked mission descriptions that the Vex are fairly important. Perhaps they are the glue that is going to connect Destiny's first story together. We've seen various versions of the gates Vex emerge from on at least Mars and Venus. Presumably on the other sides of those gates is some kind of Vex stronghold or factory. Could one of the later missions be to damage the Vex's production capability?

- What would the Awoken or their queen specifically want with the Vex? Time travel perhaps? The ability to build a huge army of robots? Or maybe instead they want to take control of the Vex?

- The Vex aren't actually robots, they are cyborgs. I've found it interesting that their energy core could be mistaken for a contained Fallen soul. Could each Vex unit have a soul? Would that soul be a Vex soul or might they run on the souls of other races? We've seen a mission counter in one of the Vex videos instructing the Guardian in the video to prevent Vex sacrifices. The question was who are they sacrificing. Themselves? Others? Others becomes a much more interesting option if the Vex are harvesting souls!

- Interestingly, the Vex are fans of Geomancy. I'm a bit embarrassed I missed this for so long, but check out the etched circle below this Vex Hydra featured in the Vex enemy video on Destiny's website and the more recent Venus trailer. It should look very familiar to anyone who has been following Destiny since the beginning:

vs.

That second image is from Destiny's announcement mini-ARG. It was our reward for working together across the globe to decode a strange signal from the Alpha Lupi system. The patterns of circles and lines deal with geomancy and divination. One of the quotes, the one for Mercury on the upper right, says:

One face is blistered, the other plunged into a brutal chill. Is this how it's always been?

You remember hot oceans, nourishing atmosphere. But something transpired, kicked what was wet and fertile into space, stealing away everthing of value. Or perhaps what thrived here for a day or for ten million years decided to leave, peeling its wet organics off the bones.

A name offers itself, and another, and a thousand more.

The answer feels like the iron heart of a collapsed star, and your realize the union between the past and the future is now.

We know the Vex have a major Citadel on Venus, but we've also seen a significant facility on Mercury. Would perhaps time traveling robots have anything with the past and future? Could all the quotes on that image possibly be from the Vex's point of view?!

Rampant Speculation:

- If the Black Garden on Mars is important to the Vex, and Cabal, and the Awoken... Well, we need to ask why. I think the answer is actually pretty simple. All one needs to do is watch Destiny's opening cinematic. Humanity first made contact with The Traveler on Mars. What if this Black Garden is the area we first met The Traveler? Maybe someplace where it first shared information with us. The place we started our Golden age. Could there be artifacts left over from that time? Or something The Traveler left behind in case of emergencies? I've said a few times I don't think Humanity is what our enemies are after. If they want us they could more easily poke around at our Golden age cities on Mars and Venus and learn everything about us. I think they are after The Traveler and since we're defending it with Guardians the Black Garden on Mars is the next best thing.

- Do the Vex even time travel? We have a single text reference to time traveling, and Bungie has mentioned it in passing a few times in interviews that are hard to track down but this more recent revelation of pocket worlds makes me wonder if they don't so much time travel as they exist in multiple times. Sure, the attack us in our time so it's not a huge distinction having a pocket world in a different time then traveling to attack, but it's an interesting twist on what the Vex might be.

- If the Vex can time travel... why haven't they won yet? Either something is limiting their power, or they can't time travel to any point in time they wish, or there is something vitally important about now that isn't true in the past OR future. Well... right now The Traveler is damaged and dormant. Maybe it never was before and never will be again?

- Why are Vex structures so strange. They like oddly space rectangles with a light smattering of circles. Are their structures geometrically pure or some such thing?

That's all for this week. Really it was more than I thought I'd be able to get out of the Vex!

Next Saturday: The Cabal

An ordinary expansionist army? Of rhinos? Why are these strange militaristic giants here in our system? Join me next Saturday as I once again gather the Facts, makes some Informed Suppositions, and get carried away with a good dose of Rampant Speculation. Until then:

All Speculation Saturdays:
Speculation Saturday #1: The Golden Age
Speculation Saturday #2: The Fall
Speculation Saturday #3: The Fallen
Speculation Saturday #4: The City
Speculation Saturday #5: The Gameplay
Speculation Saturday #6: What's New?
Speculation Saturday #7: The Hive
Speculation Saturday #8: The Vex
Speculation Saturday #9: The Cabal