You’d think after so many Whirlwinds and Collapses across the history of Destiny, SOMEONE would have thought to make doing those catastrophes illegal.
Did the Ecumene ever think about using a strongly worded condemnation? Did the Qugu ever think about holding Savathun legally accountable in a court of law?
God, it’s like I’m the only one in this universe who likes to think sometimes
Okay, this is it for Act I and now we have to stew for 20 days, I'm okay and not feeling abnormal at all (lie). But there's SO MUCH that I want to mention.
The mission starts normally, we're just collecting samples for Failsafe, but then Osiris calls us to come help him with Saint. And then shit hits the fan. Saint has apparently walked off alone into Nessus and isn't answering his comms. Normal and cool!
I'll go into the whole thing, under read more for length (long ass post, I'm having normal thoughts and feelings about this whole thing):
Right away, no more lake where we were fishing (only in the mission though):
Strange! The Vex appear to have let Saint pass through here without a fight. Once again, there's a mix of Vex in this area; some are normal Vex units with collars and some are Precursors without (the boss, the cyclops and the hobgoblins are Precursors):
The Precursors aren't collared, but they still participate in this and are also changed ("uplifted choral cyclops" = part of the chorus even without a yoke). This is incredibly strange. And then more strange information:
Okay!!! What is going on! We've seen in the last week's lore page that the Vex are behaving incredibly strangely. In short, they seem to be behaving more like individuals, rather than what we're used to seeing from them. This adds to that. They are developing tactics and changes that they previously weren't engaged with because, essentially, they didn't have to be.
Anyway, we get to finally hear Saint and he's... Talking to himself. About how he's not real. We find him collared and he appears to be hearing a voice talking to him; the voice is only identified as a "Conductor." At this point, I don't think there's any doubt about this being Maya. The same term was used by her in her experiments with the Veil: she needed someone to be a "conductor" to the "chorus" of minds when she was trying to merge fabricate consciousness (which she succeeded in with Lakshmi). Maya died in the "conductor's chair." What we don't know is ... Well. Anything else. What is she doing and why and what state is she in. The assumption right now is that she's using the Vex as a chorus, but why are they allowing this and why are some of them participating even without the collars? No clue.
What's interesting is that she seems to have analysed Saint and knew about him, either from her own analysis of him after observing him during our expeditions or from the Vex themselves. Or both. I suspect a combination of both because he's been involved with what we've been doing so she would've been interested to see why, and then she would've also gotten additional information from the Vex who recognise him. I would assume the Vex also had information about the rest of us, including Osiris and YW, but Saint was easiest to control.
With what she was telling him, it also means that Maya now knows how we saved him. His entire story is directly linked to the Vex and Vex technology so naturally all of this would be recorded with them and would allow Maya to find out about it. She knows that in some timelines he dies and he is saved in this one. She filled his head with the idea that he doesn't belong here, that he shouldn't have been saved. That he's an error that's "corrupting the true timeline."
As a sidenote, when you come into this room, Curse of Osiris music starts playing, again, as it has been playing for a lot of stuff this episode (specifically the Panoptes fight track). I'm super glad to hear that OST again. I'm also insane about them dropping Mercury music and Precursors at me.
Saint has more concerning lines:
And then we reach him:
Totally okay scene to see. Saint in his bubble, with a yoke, Vex arranged around him in their worshipping pose and the mysterious figures hovering above him. Saint continues:
Okay! *cries* He snaps out of it when Ikora reminds him of Osiris. Old man yaoi wins again!!
Then there's the conversation between Osiris, Saint, Ikora and Failsafe where Osiris is desperately trying to convince Saint that he's real and fine and that there's nothing wrong with him. I crode.... Man, they really said "you WILL watch these old men lovingly put hands on each other." But also, Saint confirms that he just heard a voice speaking to him on Nessus and that he couldn't do anything except obey its commands. It wasn't a Vex; Saint describes it as something that "connected to his mind" and called itself the "Conductor."
Failsafe pointed out that the Vex and Exo share radiolaria as a "base material" and that the Vex were perhaps trying to interface with Saint for information about what we're doing. But Saint said that they did not care about that at all. Instead, they "measured" Saint's "humanity" and "legitimacy."
Osiris does his best to convince him otherwise:
Bro. I am crying in the club what the fuck. Osiris had access to other Saints, but he didn't want to mess with them. He wanted to save the Saint he knew. It was the whole deal with the Sundial being so specific to find "the right moment" and "the right Saint" to save him and why it didn't work for Osiris, because of the paradox with the Young Wolf.
Ikora points out that this is all just a tactic against us and Saint does seem to understand that, and Osiris' reassurances, but it's still difficult to deal with. Saint has previously already dealt with the feelings of not being sure if anything he's experiencing is real. He's spent decades in the Infinite Forest surrounded by simulations. It's a hard thing to adjust to, especially with all he's been through since.
He'll need time to process this. He needs to be alone.
Failsafe is normal about it:
You and me too bestie!
But wait! There's more! We still have the radio message which is between Osiris and Ikora talking about the changes to Nessus and the Vex. It's naturally Osiris' way to distract himself from the issues with Saint, but also we really do need to keep researching what's going on so he's got a good idea. Nessus is "changing rapidly" according to Osiris, "moreso than when the Vex first assimilated it, if Red War records can be trusted." Osiris also notes that this isn't just limited to Nessus, but to everything, including our data and the radiolaria that we collected. They're "mutating."
This bit in particular is important and concerning because that's just not how the Vex do things. As Osiris said, when they change, they change because they have time shenanigans so they essentially gather data in the future and transmit it back, then alter themselves from the past, to appear as if they were always that way. But now? They're adapting "in real time." They learn linearly and adapt on the go.
This is bizarre with the utilisation of Precursors because they are the past Vex. However, they do not have the collars so they're not directly "compelled" and yet, they still participate and change alongside all of the other collared Vex. They also send their minds, again, not collared, to control the collared Vex and lead them. This is baffling.
Ikora is linking this to the impact of the anomaly, the echo. While Saint was down there, Geppetto mapped some of it, including the radiolaria around the site; apparently, the Vex are "swirling around the impact site for miles below the surface." It's also "causing disturbances in the planet's EM field." Ikora concludes that the Vex must be doing "something big."
Osiris also mentions the importance of Saint saying that it was a singular voice directing him, not a collective one, like a Vex would be. He reminds us that this isn't how Vex do things usually and this thing with Saint was just a test. He speculates, and Ikora agrees, that the Vex behaviour is like this because they found "a new leader." Obviously, the Conductor.
That concludes Act I. The seasonal activity, Breach Executable, has new lines as well. I've only played one, got some more sad Saint lines and then had to pause to stop crying. Act II starts in 20 days.
But wait. There's MORE! Of course we can't forget the seasonal lore page. And this is also where they went straight for the jugular. The lore page is about Mithrax visiting Saint and finding him not feeling well. Saint is distressed and Mithrax is trying to help him feel better, especially about his feelings of not belonging. Mithrax understands those feelings and he's trying his best to help Saint not feel that way. A little bit of joy in the gloom:
Saint groaned and waved the question away. "Do not say something smart to me now. Osiris does this, and I have had enough of it."
I LOVE when Saint compares Osiris and Mithrax, it's so good and also funny. But anyway, let's get back to the pain. As Saint realises where Mithrax is going with his questions, he relents and accepts that yes, sometimes we feel like we don't belong, but that is clearly not true.
And then Mithrax experiences something strange:
Suddenly, his vision narrowed and darkened. His headache shrieked, filling his mind with blinding pain. He doubled over as a terrifying urge—RULE, KELL—roared through his chest.
The pigeons burst away in harried flight, leaving the seed untouched on the ground.
Saint was still watching the pigeons wheel through the sky and down into the City. Mithrax wrapped his arms around himself until the shaking subsided and took a deep draw of Ether.
"You are good friend," Saint said quietly, his gaze fixed on the City. Mithrax walked over slowly and sat down next to him again.
"I try," he said softly.
Hello? Okay. So on top of Saint having massive issues, we're still seeding the future plot of something getting absolutely the fuck worse with Mithrax. Cool. Cool. I'm jumping off a bridge.
And Mithrax doesn't tell Saint about this, obviously. Saint is preoccupied with his own problems now and this is the way of Titan; care for others first, then yourself. Mithax should NOT be copying this from Saint, but alas. Enjoy brewing in this little piece of terrifying information until we get more on it next episode, I presume.
But wait. There's EVEN MORE! For finishing Act I, we got another lore page, from another lore book called Dynasty. We had no clue what this would be until now.
And well. It's a completely separate story from ancient past, about the Qugu civilisation. This is an incredibly packed lore page, one of the longest I've seen to be honest and it features a lot of bizarre alien stuff from an ancient civilisation, but the gist of it, for now until I can truly dive into it; it follows a member of the Qugu species as he's rising in the ranks to become a military leader. The Qugu are ancient civilisation we first learned about in the Books of Sorrow, as they were wiped out by the Hive. We got an update on them in Inspiral, telling us they were Darkness users, utilising the psychic abilities to connect each other's consciousnesses and talk to their ancestors.
In this page, we see some stuff about their culture, their connection to the creatures they're in symbiosis with, the way their civilisation worked in regards to how they ruled and how many planets they occupied. It's a fascinating read, but fairly hard to get through. The page ends with the Qugu discovering the Hive and the Black Fleet that attacked one of their systems and they try to get back to warn the others. I assume the rest of the book will be about the Qugu as well, to further flesh out this plot.
Why this now? I am unsure. Possible setup for something going forward down the line? One other idea I've had is that this will somehow relate to the "ally" of Maya we speculated about when I talked about the lore pages from the seasonal exotic gear. It makes sense that this "ally" is an alien because of Maya mentioning his fascinating origin, culture and biology. This would also explain why we got this lore book for finishing Act I, as it would make it relevant to what's going on. But this is, for now, a really big speculation. We'll need more pages, which I assume we'll get for finishing other Acts, so good look not exploding in curiosity until then (I've already exploded). I'll most certainly analyse this lore page more in-depth because there is NOTHING in this world I am more interested than digging into ancient space civilisations.
I just finished the Dynasty lore book and... did all of the Qugu people become the Echo of Command? Are the Echoes made of civilizations destroyed by The Witness? Because wowie that would be so cool I think
Yep! Here's some in-game voice lines and explanations from Act 2:
1:
Ikora: The Witness is dead. There was no predicting what would come next. But this is what we know…
When the Witness fell, the Black Fleet's eons of salvation and death… surged. Its Darkness merged with the Traveler's Light. Formed first into memory… and then into shape. This impossible object, this Echo of the fleet's victims, holds immense power. And it was left for anyone to find.
The Echo grants the ability to compel. To control. To command. And with it, the Conductor has the potential to turn their threat into our annihilation.
2:
Ikora: Genocide. Thousands of civilizations across the universe, all visited by the Black Fleet. All lost to the violence of the final shape. That's where this Echo comes from. At least, that's our theory. Reports from the Pale Heart, readings on the Valence emanating from the Traveler... Everything we faced when we stared down the Witness and broke its fleet. At first, we didn't know what to call them. But Echoes seemed apt. Memories from the victims of the Pyramids, held by the Darkness... then coalesced by the Light into artifacts as sharp and fatal as their pain. If Darkness is memory, and Light is form... What else could they be? But... there's still so much we don't know. Is this the only one? What forgotten people gave form to this Echo? What was their final cry at their end? For control? A means to turn back their oppressors?
Obviously we, the players, know from Dynasty. Maya mentions it directly in a radio message, revealing her "ally" as Te'Qal:
Commander Te'Qal's strength was their individual perspective. Their skill at directing an army, not a hivemind. The Echo of Command and I were equally shapeless before we joined. It reformed my consciousness even as I made it into my mantle. Power joined to individual will: this is the key. Commander Te'Qal lacked one, and the Witness lacked the other. I hold both.
Dynasty is one of the coolest pieces of lore they've ever made, genuinely. Absolutely love it to bits, it's one of those proper scifi things to get into and really well done. It can be tough to read through and it's fairly long, but I do recommend reading for everyone who hasn't. I'm super excited to get something similar next two episodes, I assume, because other Echoes should be made from some other species.
Could the Qugu be the Vex? Or their creators? The lore page today heavily focuses on their shared consciousness and the transmission of data through time, two things associated with the Vex. The Qugu specifically had memory transferring mangroves and the 'data trees' we encounter in Breach Executable are essentially the same (I think 'mangroves' might be actually used at some point). Finally, the Qugu link their fleets by wearing a psychic crown and all the shots of the Conductor from the trailer and art show her wearing a crown.
I think there will be some connection between the Qugu and the current story in some way, since we got the page for finishing Act I and I believe it should be somehow relevant. It's possible that it's not, but I feel like it should be in some way.
Is it going to be relevant like this, I don't know. For now, I don't think so, mostly because so far everything we've known about the Vex implies they are far older than anything else, especially the stuff we know about the Forge Star. The Vex are unfathomably old and the analysis about Volantis doesn't seem to be in any way incorrect. The Vex were one of the first living beings in the universe, inhabiting one of the first stars. As of now, I don't think there's a reason to doubt that, though obviously there could be new information in the future.
Obviously when there's shenanigans with time, so you could feasibly make a link in any way you want, but it doesn't feel that way to me, mostly because in that case, the Qugu would have it too.
The Qugu, however, knew of Darkness, and were using its psychic/consciousness aspects normally as a part of their civilisation. This comes from the Veil and that neatly makes the link between Maya (who is presumed to be the Conductor unless some incredible plot twist happens) and them and the Vex. It's also important to note that so far we've repeatedly had some strange connection between the Veil and Vex-based prediction technology (like the OXA and FWC Device), reiterated in TFS as well. As Ghost says, we don't know what the connection is here, but it's likely there's something going on.
For comparison, Psions also have the ability to share consciousness and speak psychically and share in "metaconcerts" that join minds of many individuals, even those that don't have psionic abilities. As in, this isn't just a Vex thing; rather it seems to be a Darkness thing. The Vex are also a little bit different in that they're just a species that functions this way, rather than being a species utilising a specific ability.
But again, any of that could possibly change going forward, and the further expansion on the Qugu lore is incredibly fascinating and begs the question: why were we given this information now? I think there will be something connecting the current plot to them and there's always a chance of some big new reveal, but for now I wouldn't overthink it too much in that direction.
My first thought was that the "ally" Maya spoke about might be a Qugu consciousness lingering somewhere from which Maya learned more about the Darkness as a source of consciousness, and possibly more about the Veil and how to use its latent powers on the Vex. Not needing to be in proximity to the Veil to use the Darkness to control consciousness or speak to people across time and space would be useful to her. This is just my initial thoughts, it could be totally off the mark, and we'll have to know a lot more to understand it better.
