Osiris: I've reached the extent of what I can glean from the research data.
Nimbus: What've we got?
Osiris: Less than I'd hoped for. But the last of Chioma Esi's research has led me to an intriguing topic: Ghosts.
Nimbus: Ghosts? As far as I know, Neomuna never had any contact with a Ghost before you all showed up. We knew about them, but…
Osiris: Precisely. Chioma Esi was researching the entanglement of Light and Dark without fully understanding either. Our Ghosts are a link to the Light of the Traveler. Then how was the Witness able to — on numerous occasions — communicate through them?
Nimbus: Is this about the, uh, the magnets thing? The parallel energy fields, right?
Osiris: Very good. In areas of Darkness, the Witness is able to create a link, not unlike what it created with the Veil and the Traveler.
Nimbus: Ah, like the Vex are able to hack into the CloudArk with their tech! It's a parallel connection.
Osiris: And I believe that connection may not be one-sided. I believe that our Ghosts may be able to leverage this connection against it.
Nimbus: Turn the enemy's weapon against 'em — well, that sounds great. But how?
Osiris: That… I do not know. But what I do know is that while the Witness is out of our reach, it is also out of the reach of our Ghosts. Which means whatever lies beyond that portal — whatever is inside the Traveler — has left the Witness blind to OUR actions.
Nimbus: And given us an opportunity to make a plan without it knowing.
Osiris: Precisely! The Witness has played all the pieces it can. This is its final act, win or lose. Whatever we do from here determines the fate of everything.
Nimbus: No pressure.
Super interesting questions that tie back to the whole idea of the Light and Darkness not being opposites and everything in the universe functioning by being able to use/channel them both. Probably going back to the theory that the Veil and the Traveler were once a single entity.
Interesting stuff about the Witness not being able to see what's going on in the system. Previously we didn't know about it, but then we got lore from Xivu talking to the Witness (in Deep) while the Witness was in the portal. And Xivu was able to report to it and the Witness reported back. So the Witness can't see outside of the portal on its own... But can if something deliberately seeks it out. Obviously our Ghosts won't do that so it can't reach back to them.
Similarly, with the new season stuff, Mara said that the Sol Divisive are acting as the Witness' eyes and ears in the system while it's away, but we honestly have no clue what the Vex are truly doing and I'll talk about that in another post. Either way, it seems like the Witness can't reach to us now, not through Ghosts.
This might be some stuff preparing us for whatever wild shit we're gonna learn in TFS in regards to the Light, the Traveler, Ghosts and the rest. Ghosts are capable of also channeling Darknes, much like the Guardians. It shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still intriguing that there's such a direct connection. Also interesting to know that our Ghosts might be able to seek out a connection to the Witness as a form of a weapon.
Chioma: Chioma Esi, personal log: incidental. Maya's dead. I found her in the conductor's chair, alone. Nobody knows what she was doing. Her "copy" — that thing, Lakshmi — is still developmentally incomplete. It doesn't understand what happened to Maya. I had it quarantined until we can... Until we... Do something.
Nimbus: There's no dates on any of these files. There's no telling how much time is set between them.
Osiris: Time enough for loss. How many are left?
Nimbus: Three more.
Osiris: Then let us hope there are yet more answers to uncover.
I'm glad that this situation was dealt with fairly quickly because going into any possibly gruesome details about Maya's death would've been probably insensitive. Given that Maya died in the conductor's chair and that she was alone, I don't think the death was particularly "normal." Trying to psychically connect to the Veil and "conduct" a whole web of consciousness didn't go well for anyone else. Chioma sounds super devastated here.
I wonder if Lakshmi's existence being mentioned here again has a deeper meaning. We still have to deal with Lakshmi's overall significance and her somehow coming to Earth so. Nimbus also accurately points out that the timeline of this is unclear. I can't believe science lesbians would do this to me (not label the research and logs with a date).
Chioma: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface. Maya and I have finalized a prototype interface for the Veil. Hopefully, it'll allow our research team to investigate it in detail. The system's designed like an orchestra, with a central "conductor" directing a symphony of minds to act like a distributed network. The... idea came to us by watching how collective networks like SIVA and the Vex operate. The hope is we can aggregate and parse the vast amounts of psychic data emitting from the Veil. Turn it into something intelligible. If we're successful, the interface will provide us with a starting point for any future technological research tied to the Veil. The risks of — of such integration are high. The estimates mortality rates are... but I... I... I don't know what I'm doing. This is wrong. This is so wrong! We shouldn't — all she ever talks about is survival! "Think big picture!" What about your survival? What about your heart? My heart? [sighs tearfully] I can't keep doing this. I can't. I can't!
Nimbus: Damn.
Osiris: I... again, I see a shadow of myself in Maya Sundaresh. The man I could have become had I let obsession continue to rule me. I'm worried what the next recording will reveal.
Nimbus: Me too.
This broke me. Chioma's VA is incredible.
But besides the emotional damage, this is once again super interesting. The prototype interface is one of the first things that we encounter as we're going towards the Veil from the final mission of the campaign. The first of the chairs we see is what Nimbus calls a CloudArk prototype:
It's here more generally referring to the room we're in itself; the room we're getting the logs from also features prototype interfaces that were used for initially communicating with and researching the Veil and matches the descryption of being designed like an orchestra. There's 12 of the chair-interfaces in there and they're all facing the Veil and there's a long walkway overlooking the facility that might be where the "conductor" would stand.
Either way, the early researchers found a way to tap into the Veil without getting physically close by plugging themselves into these machines. Having more people plugged in at the same time allowed them to spread the load of the psychic connection and limit casualties.
However, casualties were still happening. It's super interesting that Chioma is still reminding us that the base technology here was inspired by SIVA and the Vex because they're collective networks and they seem to have more success with this sort of thing. So the researchers have to also become a collective network by linking themselves through these machines with the Veil. Eerily similar now to how the Witness' people linked their minds.
This is all the beginnings of the CloudArk, where Neomuni upload themselves and live in a virtual reality. While their bodies are physically in cryo, their minds are in the CloudArk. Again, ominous now with the recent reveals about the Witness. I'm still of the belief that this ability will be important for us to be able to enter the portal. Really interesting re-reading this post now that we DO know about the Witness and that it merged its entire species into one being by using the knowledge of Darkness and the Veil; this now strengthens the possibility that in order to pass through the portal, we need to be psychically merged with... something. The CloudArk might end up being the technology we use to do it and we're being shown how the Neomuni discovered this technology and used it to make the CloudArk by imitating other "collective networks." So far only one "collective network" managed to successfully enter the portal: the Witness.
The rest of this, as I've said already, has broken me. Chioma's pain about Maya's descent into madness is truly heartbreaking and even more so with Osiris recognising his own obsessesion through Maya. Chioma's plea for Maya to stop this is also heartbreaking from our perspective because we know that they didn't stop. The technology was finished and constructed and is still in use today. And as an added beauty to this, it's a gay man finding a connection with a lesbian. I cannot even begin to express how incredible it feels to get this sort of insanely good scifi story where literally everyone involved in the quest is LGBT+.
New Veil log is killing me (nothing new under the sun).
Chioma: Chioma Esi, research log: Exos. Maya and I have built a working theory around the deaths of our Exo crewmates after their exposure to the Veil. According to maya, Exominds contain a combination of Vex radiolaria and something known as "Clarity." Radiolaria are alien microorganism living within a hive mind state. Or, I suppose more accurately, a community. Clarity is... Maya described it as a paracausal power derived from an alien artifact. Something BrayTech had kept secret. Something Maya... Maya thinks that the Veil and this artifact are related. That the paracausal force from the Veil overloaded their Exominds. Unraveled them. It's like taking a powerful magnet to an archaic magnetic storage device. Full erasure. But Maya... she thinks we can reverse-engineer this phenomenon. Use it to write data to a Clarity-infused object. Fabricate consciousness. Scientifically, the process seems sound, but morally... [sighs] maya keeps saying that we're past the point of morality. She said that! She's convinced that our survival hinges on mastery of the Veil. It's like SHE'S the one unraveling. I feel like I'm losing her. But every time I try and push, I feel her move a little further away. I'm-I don't know if I can lose anything else. How much more can any of us lose before there's nothing left?
Osiris: Nimbus... how much do you know about the Cloud Striders' creation? The technology used?
Nimbus: You don't think...
Osiris: I make no assertions yet. But I worry that your neon-lit city may have darker roots than either of us knew.
Nimbus: Oh.
WILD.
First, more stuff about Exos. Immediately there's a problem: Maya should not know about Clarity. Clarity was a tightly kept secret that even Elsie took a long time to find out about. Clovis worked with the Ishtar Collective at some point, but most certainly wasn't on a personal and friendly terms with Maya Sundaresh and would most certainly not tell her about his most closely guarded secret. Why?
Well, there was a Maya Sundaresh at Braytech on Europa when he was working on solving the Exo billboarding problem (the problem that returns in proximity to the Veil). It was a Vex simulation Maya, not the real her. The Vex-Maya ended up being one of the sorest spots for Clovis, mostly for arguing with him all the time, disagreeing with him and annoying him in general, but especially after she viciously tortured him during his surgery. Vex-Maya was also insisting that he must show her Clarity Control. It was the only thing that she was interested in:
"I'm in these frames. I'm in your systems. I'm in your very bones, old man. Now take me to Clarity Control. Take me to the garden's seed. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me—"
Vex-Maya continued to torment Clovis up until he finally uploaded himself. After that, we have no record of her whatsoever.
But even with all of this, at some point during or after this whole situation, Braytech collaborated with the Ishtar Collective on Soteria and the ECHO project. Clovis never would've accepted this if he was placed in any proximity to Maya Sundaresh. So I highly doubt that he would've even had the opportunity to tell her about Clarity, let alone that he would've actually told her about it. Maya was equally distrustful of Clovis as he was of her and she ended up resigning from the project with a very obvious "go fuck yourself" letter to Clovis. They absolutely despised each other. This makes it also super strange that Maya would dismiss scientific morality; that's what Clovis would do and she would never be like Clovis under normal circumstances.
When Chioma says "Something BrayTech had kept secret. Something Maya..." I believe she meant to add "Something Maya shouldn't have known about" perhaps.
So how did Maya know about Clarity? Pretty much the only connection here is the Vex-Maya, mostly because the situation presented here is heavily linked to the Vex and radiolaria. Maya Sundaresh somehow connected with the Veil when she first saw it; it showed her its own name by saying it to her in her own voice and since then, Chioma recounts, Maya has been acting strangely. This same Veil heavily negatively impacted the Exos who are made with radiolaria and Clarity and Maya insisted that the Veil and Clarity are connected too.
And Strand must be connected as well. Chioma says that a "paracausal force from the Veil" overloads the Exos and "unravels" them. We've already been told that the Neomuna founders knew that the Veil emits a paracausal force. It obviously didn't manifest for them in the same way, but they knew something was there and this is what erased the Exos. It erased their consciousness, reverting them back to the state when the radiolaria wasn't purified with Clarity.
And Maya believed that she can reverse engineer this effect. That she can use it to "fabricate consciousness."
The strangest part is Osiris' line of thinking at the end. He specifically asks Nimbus how Cloud Striders are made; which technology does it uses exactly. And after Nimbus is concerned about this line of questioning, Osiris definitely implies that he thinks that some of Maya's experiments with the Veil led to the Cloud Striders.
Intriguing, because the Cloud Striders are made by fusing highly advanced nanotechnology (which itself stems from SIVA brought on Exodus Indigo) with a human through a mysterious machine called the Sidereal. Extra intriguing to me because a while ago when I was analysing the lore we gained from the Winterbite quest, I made a very long post talking about past Cloud Striders and the Sidereal and I suggested that the Sidereal and the Cloud Striders are inherently linked to the Veil, Strand and possibly the Vex (via the Occlusion, a "loadbearing" Vex that has been living in the CloudArk since its inception). In my write-up on this, I wasn't sure about a lot of this stuff because that was just the beginning, but some of it did point me in the direction of the Cloud Striders being possibly very closely linked to the Veil. This is now very obviously directly implied. Wild.
If the Veil and its paracausal byproduct (Strand) were used to make the Cloud Striders, then we can now possibly construct a scenario where Maya's experiments with fabricating consciousness led to the advancing of the nanotechnology which is used to make the Cloud Striders. In the same way Clarity affected radiolaria, the Veil might be affecting the nanites, fabricating consciousness; giving the nanites incredibly advanced abilities, far surpassing what SIVA could do originally. This, alongside the creation of the Sidereal, led to Cloud Striders. And, curiously, possibly also to poukas.
I'm still unclear how do the Vex tie into this whole thing exactly, but they're a constant background noise when it comes to the Veil and Neomuna, as well as questions about consciousness and memory of the universe, which I also speculated about in this other long post.
My view of the situation right now is that Maya formed some sort of a strong and unique connection to the Veil, possibly tied to her previous experiments with mind-forking and consciousness displacement with the Device, as well as her research into the Vex and Vex simulations. When she came in proximity to it, she saw her own self talking back at her. We know at this point that the Veil has strange effects on consciousness and memory, as well as being able to give people glimpses into various points in time; upon connecting to the Veil, Maya was perhaps exposed to her other selves, her other consciousnesses, the simulated ones, letting her access knowledge she shouldn't have like the name of the Veil and the existence of Clarity Control.
All of Neomuna is built on the Veil somehow, and now it's heavily implied the Cloud Striders are instrinsically linked to it as well. Whatever happened after, we can definitely say that Maya continued with her experiments despite Chioma's best attempts to stop it. Eagerly waiting for more lore about Cloud Striders and the Veil, and at some point we'll most certainly also get some logs that will delve into the CloudArk. Even more exciting lore will be coming our way for weeks.
Lightfall quest is also really good. Seems to be something that will go on for a bit, I think, since the point was to get Golden Age files and we heard only one file. Osiris said there's more but that he needs time to decrypt them.
Files are Chioma Esi's logs! She is a voiced character now! Massive win for the lesbians. Osiris also directly mentions her having a wife, just in case there are people who wanted to be in denial until now.
But before that, really interesting dialogue between Nimbus and Osiris towards the end of the quest. I'll transcribe it and add a link to the video later when it gets uploaded by Destiny Lore Vault:
Nimbus: You know, ever since we defeated Calus, I've been wondering a lot more about the Veil. I think... I think we take it for granted. It's always been here. We always assumed that the Ishtar Collective brought it with them on the Exodus ship, but...
Osiris: But now you question that assumption.
Nimbus: Nezarec seemed to know something, didn't he? When we were inside the Vex network, he said something about... Savathun.
Osiris: My memories cast shadows of Savathun's. Echoes of the time she and I were bound by her dark magic. The more time we spend here, the clearer the outline of those shadows become. The Ishtar Collective didn't bring the Veil here, Nimbus. Savathun stole it from the Witness and left it here... quite possibly for the Ishtar Collective to find.
Nimbus: Why? Why would she do that? Isn't she our enemy?
Osiris: She is. And yet, at times, she is our ally... when it is convenient to her, and in that convenience, we find common ground. Or as a friend once said, the line between Light and Dark... is very thin.
Nimbus: [grunts] I kinda hate that.
Osiris: As do I.
That's really good information and an interesting angle to understand the Veil situation better. First, Neomuni clearly don't even know how the Veil got there. They either assumed (as Nimbus said) that it was brought by the founders or perhaps the founders told everyone they did so, to keep the situation in control. It's easier to build a civilisation on this power if you tell people you brought that power here, rather than telling them that an alien entity placed it there during the time when alien entities were destroying the solar system.
But outside of that, ever since that time, people took it for granted, as Nimbus put it. They didn't really question it or wonder about it. The Veil is there, it's powering Neomuna, it was brought by the founders to make the civilisation, that's it. There's nothing really to wonder about for the average citizen. Not to say that they don't care about it, but they don't view it as something that has to be explained or pondered. As I've said before, the Veil to the Neomuni is a power source. They're not into it because of strange paracausal powers or whatever the hell is going on with it and the Witness. It's nice to see that reading was the intended one; to Neomuni, the Veil is a power source and one that is taken for granted aka isn't being actively researched. Meaning, they can't answer our questions about what the Veil is.
And now transcript of Chioma's first log (very VERY likely that more will be coming throughout the season, maybe on a weekly basis? They wouldn't voice her for one message is my main assurance). The log is accessed in the big room overlooking the Veil:
The log transcript (link):
Chioma Esi, personal log: incidental. Maya arrived yesterday with the Exodus Indigo. I should be relieved, but... in light of the current situation, I... I don't feel much of anything. We're presently en route from Hyperion to the terraformed surface of Neptune. I'm scared. I'm so scared! We don't even know what we've lost. Comms are dead. It's just silence everywhere. We might be all that's left. Maya was right about everything. The cult, the end... how we'll survive. [sighs] I hate this.
Some interesting points right away! Hyperion has been long established as a place where Chioma Esi was working. This is also giving us the Exodus Indigo route: Maya was on the colony ship which made a stop at Hyperion to pick up Chioma (and possibly other people). Shortly after they left Hyperion, the events of Winterbite lore happened where the colony ship was attacked by an unknown entity which left Winterbite in the hull.
Another neat point is that Chioma mentioned that a part of Neptune's surface was already terraformed. This gives us some crucial details; Exodus Indigo was going to Neptune on purpose and didn't just have to land there as an emergency escape. Going there was deliberate which also makes sense given that previously an ECHO ship crashed on Neptune. This makes it's more likely that Maya knew about the ECHO ship crash and about Soteria's possible survival and that Exodus Indigo followed that trail deliberately. The mention of surface being terraformed already also means that the colony was well underway of being established following the ECHO ship crash. Neptune was being hard-prepared to fit a colony.
This also means that Exodus Indigo was most likely a very well known mission and that Neomuna was not originally planned as something secret. They only went dark after making an assumption that they may be the only ones who survived the Collapse, which Chioma mentions in this log! Comms went silent and they had no idea what was going on; if they wanted to ensure the survival of the human species, they had to also assume that they're the only ones left and hide.
Chioma also mentions that "Maya was right about everything." She specifically mentions "the cult" which is Future War Cult, founded by Maya in the Golden Age. FWC was investigating something called the Device, a Vex-tech based machine capable of predicting the future. The cult would eventually regain access to the Device and use it well into the present day for the same purpose. Chioma also mentions "the end" as she muses about Maya being right about everything. Strange and possibly concerning. What exactly did Maya see through the Device?
This is some wild stuff, especially to me now after I've made a really long post about some curious connections between the concept of the history and mind of the universe and how it tends to be adjacent to Vex predictive technology. I mentioned Maya, Future War Cult and the Device in this post as well, trying to see if there's anything worth connecting in an analysis. Chioma alluding to the cult again the first time we've ever heard her voiced is intriguing. I'm not sure if this is something that will continue to be explored and if these connections are important, but it definitely felt like an important point to add into this fairly short voice line that specifies about Maya having been right "about everything," "the cult" and "the end."
I'm really excited to see if we'll get more and I assume we will. Osiris was very direct about us having to protect these logs and that there's a lot of them, but that he will have to decrypt them first. If we genuinely get more logs, it will be an incredible treat to hear actual voices from the Golden Age and the Collapse, of people who founded Neomuna and their first encounters with the Veil and possibly their original research into it.
sorry if this is a lot to ask, but could you sum up the veil lore now that we have all of the logs? I haven't been keeping up with them.
Love your lore summaries <3
Sure thing! I'll quickly summarise most important stuff we found out in each log and I'll put links to them for reading more. Here's the link to all logs in order in a playlist on Destiny Content Vault.
First log is a part of the mission and has some extra stuff going on, but the log itself is there to just establish what we'll be listening to. The narrator of the logs will be Chioma Esi, one of the founders of Neomuna and a Golden Age scientist of the Ishtar Collective. She tells us how Maya Sundaresh, her wife, picked her up with Exodus Indigo on their way to Neomuna just as the Collapse was happening around them.
The second log is immediately a huge lore drop about the Veil and the initial reaction that people had to it. It confirmed that the Veil had already been there before they arrived, that Maya immediately connected with it and it spoke to her in her own voice, as well as how it had an adverse effect on the Exos. Chioma also mentions how the Veil is a "thesis statement to the Von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis" which I mentioned very briefly in my post, but I do not have the knowledge to explain quantum and theoretical physics. However, other people do! Please check out this reddit post about this which goes in-depth in language as approachable as possible to understand how much this single sentence means in the grand scheme of things.
Third log! Chioma is suspicious about the Veil, but Maya insists that this is where they have to settle. It's confirmed that Neomuna nanotechnology comes from SIVA which was on board all Exodus ships, which includes Exodus Indigo. The nanotech helped them build settlements quickly, but not quickly enough before all of their Exos succumbed to the exposure of the Veil.
More under:
Log number four goes into some of the stuff about the Vex and their relationship with the Veil. The Vex quickly established themselves in Neomuna and started attacking the settlement, but were prevented from going too far into it, stopped by the Veil. The Vex retaliated by creating a "screen" that isolated Neomuna from the outside world. This made Neomuni safe, but also stuck with the Vex.
Fifth log was big, and mostly concerns with the Exos again. This one revealed to us that the Veil is capable of essentially breaking down the alkahest used to make the Exos function. The Veil's power "overloads" the Clarity aspect of alkahest and essentially erases the Exos, rendering them dead. Maya reveals that she wants to use the Veil to instead "fabricate consciousness" into the newly dead Exos. Chioma is sinking further into despair about Maya's behaviour. Osiris also poses the question if Nimbus knows more about how Cloud Striders are made, implying a possible link between them and the Veil's power.
Number six! This one continues in the same vein, showing us how they speculated about using SIVA, nanotechnology that functions similarly to radiolaria (but mechanical instead of biological), and components from both the Vex and dead Exos in order to create some technology or enhance the use of the nanotech. Osiris confirms that there does seem to be some link between the Vex and Cloud Strider technology.
Seventh log shows us further experimentation with the Veil. Maya managed to build a prototype interface for the Veil which consists of an "orchestra" and a "conductor:" multiple people would connect to the Veil with the interface and follow the conductor to sync up and control the input and output, especially to parse through the data. This was very risky and dangerous. Chioma is falling even deeper into despair over how unethical and dangerous what they're doing is.
Eight! Things get worse! Experiments with interfacing with the Veil proved entirely fatal for the whole team. Maya did not seem to care about this and only cared about valuable data, while Chioma was having harder and harder time dealing with the situation. Osiris also points out how similar this whole situation is to what the Witness had done to its species; how they all used the Veil to interface with it and merge into one.
Log number nine caught us all by surprise by revealing that Maya continued with the experiments and used previously dead Exos to "fabricate consciousness" into them; she hooked them up to the Veil's interface and fabricated a new consciousness into an Exo known as Lakshmi-2. We don't know how many consciousnesses were used to create this, but Maya also used her own, giving Lakshmi her own voice and some of her memories. Big implications for everything about Lakshmi, especially Lakshmi's involvement with the Future War Cult as their leader, given that the Future War Cult was founded by Maya Sundaresh in the Golden Age. It also brought some new perspective to Lakshmi's interest in the Spontaneous Exo Reset Syndrome, as well as possibly a bigger reason why Savathun sought to corrupt Lakshmi and remove her from the City. Here's also my post recaping Season of the Splicer after we learned about this, to clear some stuff about her and Savathun's corruption of her back then.
Tenth log tells us about Maya finally succeeding in connecting people to the Veil without casualties. Months and probably years of work eventually paid off and the Veil became a viable source of power for the Neomuni and this event is probably what paved the way for the CloudArk. The Veil is described as a web of consciousness and Chioma further explains why the Vex might want it, as it would allow them to run paracausal simulations, something they aren't capable of doing currently. Chioma recognises that this should be a moment to celebrate, but she can't because she knows the Veil is dangerous but now there's a whole civilisation built on it.
Eleventh log was short and sad. Chioma tells us how she found Maya dead, alone, in the conductor's chair. It's unclear what she was doing and how she died. Chioma is unsettled by Lakshmi who is half-Maya, but "developmentally incomplete" and has her quarantined. Maya most likely died communing with the Veil, which has interesting implications for her consciousness.
Log number twelve tells us a few things about Neomuna's knowledge about what was going on outside of Neptune. Chioma detected Rasputin waking up in the Dark Age by monitoring her ex-work station on Hyperion, the moon of Saturn. Rasputin detected Neomuna and gave it a classification of "Nefele Stronghold." Chioma decided to send a Cloud Strider, Stargazer, to Earth to erase records of Neomuna, not because they wanted to keep their secrets or to save themselves from Warlords (although that must've also been a factor), but primarily to protect the outside world from the dangers of the Veil.
Thirteenth log shows us Chioma deciding to shut down the whole facility known as Veil Containment. She decided to hide it all and not to leave this mess on other people's conscience. She understood that there's nothing else to do and that Neomuna will go on, but that nobody else needs to know how they got to where they are. We're told that there's a Vex signature crawling through the logs, identified as "MSund12."
Number fourteen is where we end for now. Chioma reminds us about how the Ishtar scientists got exposed to the Vex and simulated by them 227 times, fully confirming that the "MSund12" Vex signature is one of Vex!Maya copies (number 12). Chioma decided that there's nothing more left to do or tell and that she made contact with the Vex, presumably to end her life with the hope that by doing so through the Vex, she will return to the Vex Collective and find Maya there. Osiris recaps things for us, reminding us again that the Veil is "the power of consciousness made manifest" and that the Traveler and the Light are the power of the physical world. He recognises the risks here, despite the great power being offered.
This gave us incredible insight into the Veil as a paracausal object and what it represents. Paired with the Witness cutscene, we learned a lot about what it means and how it's used. It's a paracausal entity with great powers over consciousess and the mind, capable of transferring, deleting or creating consciousness. It seems to parallel the Light and the Traveler which are both firmly based in the power of the physical world. Somehow, these two entities have been connected before and can connect again.
The Witness' species used the Veil to fuse their entire civilisation into a single being and set off in the pursuit of the Final Shape. The Veil was also specified as being somehow connected to the Traveler in the past, but that they've become separate and that the Traveler has since been avoiding coming back in contact with it. When the Witness attempted to connect them again for the first time, the Traveler fled and has been fleeing ever since. And now that the Witness caught up with it and finally did what it always wanted to do, a mysterious portal has been opened into a realm of unknown power and origin with unknown consequences to both the Traveler and the universe itself. All of this was made possible only with the Veil which means that the Veil's paracausal power of consciousness must have something important to do with it. Both the Witness and Maya Sundaresh were using the Veil to move and fabricate consciousness, though Maya worked a little bit smaller in scale.
Still, all of this is a great deep dive into some of the most mysterious aspects of the setting. The Veil is still a complicated paracausal entity, but the Traveler remains so as well. Possibly even more so right now. The link between the Traveler and the Veil is still left to explore, especially with how and why they are capable of opening a portal to an unknown dimension when they come in contact. This will for sure be in some way explored in the future, either in seasons themselves, the two remaining Veil Logs or maybe we'll have to wait for The Final Shape to know more. Either way, there's something going on here, in their connection and their parallels and their opposites; something needed to open a portal to a mysterious realm that has been described as "place of new wonders and old memories."
And yes, there's two Veil Logs remaining! One will be available next week when the next season starts and then the final one will be ready in the final season of the year. They've confirmed this in an article with the commentary on the Veil Log quest as a whole and their goals with it. I talked about it here, it's really interesting!
Interesting info from today's TWAB (it will never be TWID to me) about the Veil Log quest!
Veil Containment will continue being unlocked for the remaining three weeks of Season 21, and additional entries will unlock at the start of Season 22 and Season 23.
We have three more entries until the end of the season and then two more: 1 at the start of season 22 and 1 at the start of season 23. That will be a super painful wait. I can't imagine what this last entry could possibly be that it would be such a delayed tease.
The narrative team also acknowledged that they made the quest a little too secretive by trying to turn it into something players would have discover for themselves:
Narrative Team: The Veil Containment repeatable activity continues to tell the story of Neomuna’s history with the Veil as introduced in Lightfall. If you haven’t checked in with Osiris and Nimbus yet, you might not be alone. In wanting Veil Containment to be something discoverable, we went a little too far in one direction and made the activity hard to find, even for the lore-hounds interested in digging more into the Veil. (A lesson learned for any future content of this sort!)
And the rest of the stuff on the quest is soooo juicy and I believe they nailed the vibe they intended perfectly.
Writing the story of Veil Containment was an opportunity to dig into the cosmic horror side of Destiny. Creating the encrypted records of Ishtar Scientist Chioma Esi as she and her wife researched an alien force was a chance to bring the essence of things like the SCP Foundation and creepy podcasts like the Magnus Archives into Destiny.
Movies like Altered States and 2001 a Space Odyssey helped inform the tone of the messages you uncovered, all of which are underlined by the emotional story of Chioma Esi and Maya Sundaresh’s lives unraveling in the aftermath of the Collapse and their contact with the Veil. We’ve even seen some keen-eyed players noticing similarities between what Maya attempts with the Veil to what the Witness did in sacrificing its own people, and even what Calus did with the Crown of Sorrows and a pack of Scorn. Those threads and thematic recurrence are intentional guidelines anchoring us to related moments in the past, and help the curious delve into the deeper lore armed with a fistful of useful citations.
The bolded bit is really good! It's something that we've been discussing a lot. I haven't directly mentioned Presage much recently, but it's been on my mind too and I'm super excited to revisit it next season when it returns.
Another source of inspiration during the creation of Veil Containment was the relation between an outside observer and the concept of the Winnower mentioned in the Books of Sorrow. We wanted to explore the relationships people experience to cosmic, otherworldly forces beyond their understanding and how it tears both their own moral foundations and sense of self apart at the seams. As we’ve discovered with Osiris and Nimbus over the past few weeks, the Veil is a cosmic collective consciousness, a psychic network that spreads like a mycelial network through the universe. There’s intentional visual and thematic connections to Egregore there. But also, an allusion to the famous scene in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf warns Saruman about using the Palantir. “You don’t know who else may be watching.”
I assume it should say "Unveiling" instead of Books of Sorrow. Other than that, this is absolutely my fave. That last line gave me legitimate chills. The connections with egregore are important as well and I'm sure we'll get more mentions of that in the future. Again, Presage was our first real exposure to egregore so I'm happy to return next season. Technically, our first exposure to egregore was the Derelict, Drifter's ship, but it wasn't until Presage that egregore was identified and named (and deliberately connected to the same entity that we've previously seen on the Derelict). Really good summary of egregore lore if you want to dig a little! Also throwback to the (I think) first time I mentioned the explanation for egregore, back in February 2021 when Presage was hot off the press. Actually staggering to me right now that this was 2 years before Lightfall's heavy theme of collective consciousness and merging of minds and they already dropped hints to it back then. Wild stuff. Also take a look at Bungie's dive into making Presage (spoilers obviously for those that never played it).
Capturing that sense of foreboding unknown is a staple of cosmic horror. The moment where you realize that your role in the universe is a small one, that the universe itself may be uncaring, and things lurk in it that you have been blissfully unaware of. As our cast is pushed through these harrowing experiences, it also sets the stage for the future in The Final Shape and beyond.
So true bestie. I am absolutely thriving with this lore and development. Cosmic horror is literally the only thing that matters to me and the sheer scale of how this is presented in Destiny with the Veil, Veil Logs, the Witness and its origins and everything around that has been the best thing in Destiny lore for me tbh. I've always been most interested in researching Darkness and this exploration of it as a cosmic force of consciousness that drives people to incomprehensible actions and spreads like a mycelium network is an absolute blast.
Chioma: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor... everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like... like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya... Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or... something. What have I done?
Nimbus: Dead? They - this killed their entire research team, but it sounds like - it's like -
Osiris: Like their lives held no value to Dr. Sundaresh. There's a troubling symmetry with data we've recovered from Titan. Data on the origin of the Witness. It, too, was once multiple people that became conjoined by the way of some sort of... ritual with the Veil. Perhaps a "conductor" and a "chorus." It is troubling that Dr. Sundaresh seemed to be moving down that same path.
Nimbus: I don't like this, Osiris. I don't like this at all.
Oh boy. As expected, things are going worse and worse for the initial Veil research team. Even when they decided to share the load of peering into the Veil, it went horribly.
Osiris linking this to the Witness is also interesting. This brings the troubling option that their bodies died, but that their consciousness was transported somewhere. In the Witness situation, we saw that; the bodies were discarded and dead, but the minds of the people that inhabited them were simply plucked away and merged into a single being. Of course that would be "valuable data points" for Maya. She's experimented with mind-forking before, with a device that was capable of displacing consciousness.
What happened to Maya, truly? We're barely half way through this so there's still a lot more to learn. I can't wait for them to get into the CloudArk information finally. Because at some point, this has to work. They built their whole city infrastructure and the CloudArk on the Veil. So at some point they will have a breakthrough. Dreading to find out how they managed that and how much more far gone will Maya become. Not to mention that after this failure, at some point, they must've gone back in.
