#lightfall ce

[synnthamonsugar]

Spoilers for Lightfall CE Lorebook (Elsie's) (Doesn't spoil Lightfall)

OUGH THE ELSIE AND TOKKI AND ELSIE AND POUKA INTERACTIONS IM OBSESSED WITH ELSIE ALWAYS HAVING A LITTLE FRIEND AROUND. MORE OF THIS PLEASE (eats up the human-familiar/companion dynamics two-handed)

The brief Nightmare-Eriana & Eris interaction killed me. Seemed to be one of Elsie's bad timelines (I think? I would like to hear opinions on it), tho given she could get through to Eris I'm not sure she was, or was very far, lost to Darkness. Knowing how nightmares operate the idea that Eris is or could be carrying a germ of an idea that she betrayed her friends by turning to the hive to save herself SLAYS me and casts Eris' reaction to Mara taking a piece of Oryx's power for herself in a new light.

Speaking of Mara. Mara commanding Taken (but being on Elsie's side?) at some point. Easy to chalk this up to Dark Future timeline weirdness but given we know (from the WQ CE) that Mara made off with some aspect of Oryx . . . guys I think this isn't something specific to this timeline. I think this is just how Mara is (or a skill she can develop).

OH. ERAMIS TOUCHING ELSIE'S CHEEK.

Ikora killing Elsie in one timeline UGH OUGH HOUGH AOUGHHH (weeping throwing up etc.)

There being room on the ship for Ana......I die.....................

[alketaire]

ce lore pseudo-liveblogging under the cut

link to an upload post

started with the osiris logs. always fucking stoked when ikora and ophiucus are doing their thing.

he can’t even say Sagira’s name nooooo ;_; IKORA CAN’T EVEN DESCRIBE HOW HE LOOKS AT HER SHELL NOOOOO TT_TT

and then he’s a tea snob lol ofc. if you hand osiris anything he’s prob encountered it in at least 320400 timelines, he’s a ___ snob all day every day

we’re at a 2-harrumphs-per-page consistent rate so far, most excellent

significant discussion so far of potential ways both Sagira and Savathûn could be brought back. HMMM.

ooh, use of “katabasis” in the mythological sense as a metaphor for what Osiris thinks Savathûn might have gone through, neat

why is Osiris mumbling to himself a point of worry, he’s been talking to himself for three kajillion years. plus he’s mumbling about inanna and i am ALWAYS down for more sumerian mythology in media

lol Ikora and Ophiucus talking again is great bc the second one of them agrees with the other they switch sides and keep arguing, love it

-

ok on to calus! dan said this one has people in an uproar which. the woman is a civilization of problems in a 500-pound bag, i think i’m ready *immediate missing mom* oh no.

baby caiatl slip slidin around you deserved so much better than the everything ;_;

oh, cool, specifics of uluran biology/history/culture! love it except this family is still a fucking nightmaOH JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK

ok why is Umun’arath the least insane person here

wait. wait. WAIT THE FUCKING SECOND. THIS SEEMS TO IMPLY THE PSIONS ARE THE ECUMENE. WAS OXA MADE FROM TAOX. I THOUGHT THAT SHIT ON REDDIT WAS PURE SPINFOIL BUT WHAT THE FUCK

this whale riding shit sounds like if you asked calus what he thought “drunk driving” should be

aw MANNNNN i wanna turn into a monument of solid bone when i get too old

gotta say all the like uluran worldbuilding so far is just. cool as fucking hell. lithium-carved cave art would be super shiny for a while compared to the oxidized rock surrounding it. shame torobatl and the uluran homeworld wherever it is are fucked.

speaking of cool as fucking hell, caiatl, empress of ‘rip to my copilot but im different’

lol @ calus smooshing his face through a model of the Almighty as he throws a drunk tantrum at umun’arath. he’s, uh, not wrong tho?

glad that caiatl and dan agree about ghaul’s voice. that man could be telling you to go to the corner store for milk and you’d be ready to duel someone to the death for the last carton of lactose-free 1%

OOOOOOO THE GHOST PRIMUS WHO WILL RESURRECT OUR EMPIRE HOLY SHIT HOHOHOHO guardianghaulsomehowplease

mood whiplash, am now crying

so MUCH fucking light imagery around ghaul, cmon now

aaaaand ahamkara. fuck’s sake. do we - OH NO. oh shit. caiatl empress of being fucking BORN paracausal!!

fortunately, she is caiatl and spends the entire next page going “yeah fuck all this bullshit” because a wish for someone to love does not mean a wish for someone who won’t be your downfall lol

omg cabal fantasy football i’m DEAD

-

on to the elsie book! i have known tokki for two lore entries and three paragraphs and i would die for her

oh so cloudstriders are uluran-sized. neat.

hmm. wonder if pouka’s communication works that way with guardians. or even non-exos, for that matter.

oh so elsie knew there was a mega-human out on a station near pluto two four years ago but nbd, what is this fish thing?????? ig it helped her learn stasis but ma’am really?

lol after a bunch of people being all like ooh hive magic is the next darkness class ooo! nah brah hive magic was fancy stasis the whole time

OH NO. yeah fuck that timeline elsie. ooh THAT timeline fucks though

ooh so does that one! mara with stasis yes please

OH POUKA IS AN EMOTIONAL SUPPORT DARKNESS FISH, VERY COOL

the image of elsie breaking out of stasis prison shouting SCIENCE is pretty good, not gonna lie, but for a second i thought it was gonna be ALLAHU AQBAR and that’s also pretty fuckin good

man i knew the brays were all fucked up but “i didn’t in hundreds of years think of just loving my sister (eta: WHO SPENT TWO LIFETIMES DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR WHAT IT MEANS TO BELONG. IF YOU DIDN’T NOTICE.) like a normal goddamn person until i was threatened with death over my need for total control” is a pretty big L, elsie

[hyakunana]

The traditional seasonal visit to the Beyond to —report the news of this timeline— comfort your local involuntary time traveler

[telestoapologist]

baby caiatl sliding around on her belly like a penguin... 😭

[aliaoftheknives]

caiatl play fantasy football 

[thefirstknife]

Did you start the movement to rename Cabal to Uluran, or was that another blogger? I'm doing a post on antisemitism in d2 fandom and am trying to find a source on this

I think so? I know there were people talking about this way before me (including all that stuff that happened during Chosen when they had to rename stuff), but I think this post I made was circulated the most. I've not used "Cabal" since. A lot of people have taken to doing the same after that.

I'm not sure if anyone suggested exactly "Uluran" before, but if they did everyone had the same source at the time; it was mentioned only once in The Forsaken Prince where they named their language "ulurant." It's been mentioned a few times since, including with the variant of "uluranth." Lightfall's CE (page 14) also had a character named "Ulurunth;" I'm not familiar with the reference here, but those who understand figured out that this name is esentially meant to be an equivalent of "mankind." So we're somewhere close to figuring out what they're called in their own language, rather than "Cabal." Would be nice to get a proper official name, like for the Eliksni.

If there's been anything about this before, let us know.

[hydralisk98]

Slowly going towards one TS2 Legacy... Maybe

I mean, I have iterated on such for my conworld for a while but I am definitely having a hard time choosing how to go about it considering I tend to play with many mods, ideally with a couple of my very own coming soon, and prefer having ultimate source code ownership / customization available to me (unlike doing anything with SC4 & TS2/3/4).

It is still 16^12 related, and though I don't enjoy the current source code status of my "modding game workflow" as far as my Civ5 CE Maskoch modpack -> FreeCiv+SimCity4+TheSims2 is concerned, I do like the overall system I have starting putting in place to help manifest my DR goals IRL;

So yeah, here are some of the preparation memopads...

Prior to 1910 (up to two generations behind "ancestors") : May Tiffy, Jana Petri, Kira Fleche, Hugues Tortue; Kala Petit-Ours & Alphonse Grand-Ours;

LEGACY starting context (& overall their goals per "generation")

~1910 : Milan "Kelly" Petit-Ours + Nil "Bayes" Main-Noire;

~1925 : Pana Ninsun + Carter Woodpecker; Konstanz Tunder + Marta Sevres;

~1940 : Rudy Saller + Tekla Wozniak, Ivett & Timur Corbeau;

~1955 : Elka & Bel Arterberry; Keno, Hypathia, Tascha Maynard; Zenon Binh;

~1970 : Ruan Boon & Sina Pallas; Rinne Taygette & Tunder June; Zera, Timur & Aurel Becker;

~1985 : Valenz, Sasha & Dena Becker; Keller, Irma, Pasha Hayden; Kazik, Kush & Ken Ukene;

~2000 : Kate Ker & Ava Booksword ("platonic" relationship, sharing together Shoshona the black Turkish Angora fem housecat), Deno & Wyatt Hayden; [...]

~2020 : Tano Booksword (Simply a successor android unit to Ava in her initial role as synthetic-tier domestic servant); Victor/Astra Reuben (Debs pun?); Freya, Ren, Maya, Rex, Alfa Shang (Roosevelt pun?); Anuk, Kaleb, Brittani Hagues (Hugues pun?); Tina, Iwa & Sam Duckwater (Taft pun?);

~2045 : Czar, Aurel & Sakura Kant; Hafar Hades; Kerry / Zenia Constantin; Mao, Vala, Myranda Glosse; Samantha/Samar Reiter; Thales Zeitlich; Tally Lightfall, Parm(in)ae Knossos;

[...]

[siyurikspakvariisis]

ok now that im free of work, for the ship scale: caiatl/xivu 👀

send me a ship and i'll place it in the Benoit Blanc Compass

ohohoho, I trusted you to come with the Destiny rarepairs.

it doesn't make much sense... at time of recording. like, how would that even start? afaik Caiatl and Xivu haven't properly met yet, they're just the distant Enemy.

logistics aside, it does compel me!! why? because Caiatl is as shaped by war and grief as Xivu is. This is by Hive design, as per the Lightfall CE lore books (maybe our last banger by Seth Dickinson, im sad) -- the footprints of the Hive are obvious in names like Caiatl and Umun'arath, but the important part is the importance of conquest in Cabal society. It's Sword Logic, deep inside. And by the Logic, well, what is an act of war if not to hone the edge of your opponent, which is an act of love...

My platform is: narrative mirrors should fuck nasty about it.

Verdict: Doesn't make sense, compels me though!

[forthencho-pacino]

i think Bungie, and by extension, Sony, should acquire Halo

Look, i've been an xbox stan my whole life. never got into console wars as such, but just preferred xbox, mainly because Halo. it practically held my hand and led me into the world of obscure sci-fi and sci-tech. and i heckin love the franchise. the lore, the games, ｓｏｍｅ of the media (didact damn thee, new tv series). and its because i love it that i think the franchise has a foot in the grave rn. we've seen so many people leave, so much hype gone to shit, so much of the player base just...gone.

i'm not gonna say that keeping this kind of a storyline going is easy. shit, i take a week to think up a half-decent daydream scenario. but after so much time, money, and manpower, the state of the franchise really should've been better than what it is. i'm pretty sure its just MCC and HW thats keeping it as alive as it is right now.

plus, i don't really think that microsoft acquiring activision is a good sign, either. this is a studio that has a history of stifling worldbuilding and employee freedom to get its games. heck, Bungie left activision to continue building Destiny 2, with one of the main reasons of the split being ''creative differences''.

game-wise, Halo was in its golden days with Bungie. i'm pretty sure all OG Halo players remember the Bungie opening to CE, their last message post Reach, and overall just how good the game was with them. agreed, the lore might have suffered a bit, but look at Destiny. its one of the most lore rich worlds that we have right now. so, clearly, they've gotten good with the worldbuilding.

HI might've had a good launch, but that was basically because of 2 things:

hey, its a new Halo game, ｌｅｚｚｇｏｏｏ

it takes place on one of the most important locations in the Halo-verse, Zeta

we've literally seen Bungie's rise to fame, as heckin Beyond Light became the console launch, not HI. i don't think i can comment on the player bases, because D2 is available on more platforms, but if you do a comparison of only Steam and xbox player bases of HI and D2, i'm pretty sure D2 will come on top (not gonna bring MCC into this because that's not something that was purely 343 and microsoft).

part of Halo's charm might be the platform exclusivity, but i'm pretty sure that the exclusivity doesn't count for shit if the franchise is practically dead. which honestly looks like a near future event for Halo. HI failed to deliver on multiple fronts, the TV series was practically a MAC shot into the franchise, and all the creative leads for the game leaving microsoft doesn't leave a lot of room for hope.

bungie taking their baby back has some chunky potential to boost the game back up. bungie gets something to work on after D2: Final Shape, Halo, comes into the arms of a team that has been doing pretty well in terms of game maintenance, story writing (ik Lightfall kinda sucked, but lets be honest, the general trend is still in Bungie's favour), and overall upkeep. not only that, the game gets access to an even bigger player base. and i'm pretty sure the worst case won't be all that different from what it already is.

a metric shit ton of people love the franchise, and i really think that most of us won't really mind Halo losing its ''Xbox exclusive'' tag, if it means the saga enters another golden age, which is something we all want to see.

[fuze-forge]

Destiny 2: Lightfall est disponible sur Fuze Forge

Plongez dans l'aventure épique de Destiny 2: Lightfall sur Fuze Forge ! Explorez des mondes mystérieux, affrontez des ennemis redoutables et devenez un héros de la Lumière. Obtenez ce jeu dès maintenant sur Fuze Forge.

[warderfromtheborder]

Lightfall CE stuff arrives today!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hyakunana]

We missed you, Spider

[telestoapologist]

brb on my way to get girldicked down by caiatl

[haldenlith]

Spinfoil rambling

Not really spoilers, but I do talk about trailer stuff so... eh?

After the most recent trailer, and looking at all of the hints (in my opinion), I feel like there is a strong case to be made that the "old friend" she's speaking to, the one she's "chased for so long" is definitely The Traveler. They keep pushing the tagline "Take Back the Light," but I feel like it's a giant red herring in a way.

I think Savathun manages to chit-chat with The Traveler and convince it to give her The Light. I don't think she stole it at all. It'd fit perfectly with the narrative Bungie's going with of "The Light isn't always Good, The Darkness isn't always Evil -- it's all shades of gray." It'd also fit in with beginning to pivot to Lightfall (granted, we aren't going to know anything about that for at least another year). Lightfall makes it sound like something terrible is going to happen with The Light, and wouldn't it be perfect if the "terrible" is that The Traveler starts looking at other avenues in order to "win" versus The Darkness? Like giving The Light to other people, including our enemies?

It'd also be a nice parallel to a conversation that Ikora and Zavala had while playing a game of Go (it's in the little book that comes with the CE of Witch Queen). Zavala says the point is to play to win. Ikora says the point is to play to learn and explore your options. That would mean being okay with occasionally losing while you figure out different ways you can play the game, different strategies, different options, different exploits.

Who's to say The Traveler isn't going to start doing that, too? It's abandoned multiple civilizations in its wake of "losing" games while exploring the game. It's tried one different approach now (The Guardians) and found some modicum of progress and success, so why not start trying other things?

Also, I suspect whatever the new raid is inside The Pyramid, will possibly also start that thread that ultimately leads to Lightfall, because it's become increasingly obvious the raid doesn't end with Savathun. I honestly don't think we're even going to kill ol' Savvie. I get the feeling there's going to be complications, be it her bamboozling and escaping us (again), or something arising that keeps us from killing her.

Anyway, last thought, which is just a random thought on Lightfall: I think The Traveler is going to abandon us, but not in the "peace, I'm leaving the system" way. I think it's going to abandon us in the "you guys have been great, but these guys over here are better" sense.

Wouldn't it be a real kicker if we have to leave Savathun alive, for some reason or another, and The Traveler abandons us for her?

Let's be real: we don't have a lot of evidence The Traveler actually cares about us and isn't just acting out of its own self-interest. We could just be "The Experimental Flavor of the Month" to the damn thing. It does seem to like to pop up, experiment with and terraform places, and mess with civilizations, only to peace out when it gets too spicy, clearly deeming the experiment a "failure." It could very well be the only reason it didn't leave us was that it was "injured" during The Collapse, and made a good pass at "playing dead" so The Darkness would leave.

Just saying: The Traveler might not be as benevolent as we think it is. Rather, it may just be passive and not as antagonistic as The Darkness.

[thefirstknife]

The Observatory

I've been rotating a piece of the TFS CE lore in my brain so long I forgot to write about it. There's no transcript yet that I can find (I might do it myself tbh if nobody else does), but here's the scans with the whole text.

So, there's a lot going on in that CE, but the main gist of it is that the whole CE is written like a report from Eido. She investigated information about the Witness and the Collapse to try and help prepare us for our inevitable fight against it. Through her investigation, she found old Eliksni databanks that contain ancient records of past civilisations; main one being discussed is the civilisation that would eventually end up becoming the Witness.

There was a lot going on with them, shown to us through discussions between two specific individuals; they're only identified through code as HNW047622 and RS6243199. I'll call them HNW and RS. I've mentioned this before because we could see one of the pages in the preview of the Collector's Edition.

These individuals talked a lot and gave us insight into the Witness' civilisation. In short, they were super advanced and had something they described as the "Gardener's tools" which they apparently used to terraform other planets. They also talk about the concept of "the final shape" a lot and lead philosophical debates about its meaning and whether or not they have a responsibility to bring that concept to others in the universe. I'll probably go into their civilisation in-depth at some point, but for now I want to go off about something that appears to be a minor detail.

As part of their conversations, In the 5th image from the scans, they extensively talk about the final shape. The RS individual mentions something called "the Observatory." It is apparently some sort of a prediction machine. Full transcript of the relevant conversation and the rest of the post under:

[RS6243199]: I agree with you, in theory, but we do not exist purely in the theoretical. This suffering is already happening now, all the time, everywhere we look. Come see me, and I will show you the Observatory's readings. Such sights as we have seen, my friend, make me sick to my soul. [HNW047622]: I thought that the Observatory could only see possibilities. The future-branches of past visible-light readings. [RS6243199]: We have made improvements. The glass-minds*** trim the excess branches. What we see now are the strongest paths. And in the seeing, they become true. [HNW047622]: Then tell me what you have seen. I gain nothing from running from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. [RS6243199]: Cities turning on themselves in a frenzy of self-destruction. Children offering up parents in superstitious sacrifice to bloodied gods. An entire people who would boil off their own atmosphere rather than let their neighbors enjoy fresh air! Great waves drowning worlds. Bodies which do not decompose, for everything, down to the very bacteria, has died as well. Machine-plagues carving their prediction-machines into moons. Your garden, destroyed. As the Observatory saw it, so it came to pass.

The footnote is a text from Eido:

*** From the context, some sort of computational assistant? There appears to be some etymological overlap with the names of Vex Minds. Something to investigate later, perhaps!

This made me instantly lose my mind when I was reading. Very early into Lightfall's release, I made a post about the Veil and the history of the universe. It's about some very peculiar similarities between a lot of prediction technology and caches of information that preserve ancient history and ancient civilisations and how they may connect to the Veil.

Mind you, this was before we knew a lot about the Veil; I wrote this pre-Veil logs and before it was confirmed that the Veil is linked directly to consciousness and memory. It was also before Season of the Deep which gave us Akashic Revelation: a lore tab in which a Guardian tries to go through the portal and experiences a vivid flashback of memory of his own pre-Guardian life. The name of the tab is important: akashic records is an esoteric concept for a supposed existence of a record of everything that has ever happened in the universe, past or present or future, human and non-human.

This is basically what I proposed in my post, before this lore tab, about the Veil; that the Veil or some source the Veil can tap into, is something similar to that. That all of the prediction machines are essentially pulling from this same source. In the post, I mentioned the OXA machine (the "black box for galactic civilisations" that allowed the Psions to see the future), Inspiral lore book (in which various civilisations and individuals left their records in the Darkness), the Device (the machine built on Vex technology by the Future War Cult in the Golden Age, led my Maya Sundaresh, used to displace consciousness and also see the future as used by Lakshmi-2), and even maybe the Sundial made by Osiris. I also mentioned how there's a possibility that even the whole scope of Vex prediction technology is somehow based on or tapping into this same source.

I am very amused at how I wrote: "It’s also interesting that Maya Sundaresh seems to be quite involved in pretty much every aspect of this." So true past me, that really is interesting! Her connection to the Veil and Lakshmi (and the importance of the Device and FWC) will later be revealed in Veil Logs. Almost like these connections were made deliberately, between all of these machines and the Veil.

With the benefit of new lore being released in the time since I made the original post, I am even more convinced that there's something going on here, and especially after TFS CE because the section I copied here mentions yet another incredibly similar machine: the Observatory of the Witness' species. It's not described in a lot of details, but from what we did get, it's quite unmistakeable that this is similar to things like the OXA and the Device.

The Observatory is clearly shown to be some sort of a machine that can see the future. Or, rather, as HNW says, it can see "possibilities." This matches what we've seen of the Device when Lakshmi-2 was using it; she was able to see different possible futures, futures that were getting increasingly narrow and biased to what she wanted to see. Identical formatting for using some sort of a machine to predict the future is shown as well with a Psion Ixel using... something (? maybe the OXA?) to do the same.

And again, the same formatting is used this season when a Psion Qorix uses her inate Psion abilities to project visions of the future into the minds of those present at Caiatl's War Council. It's worth noting that Psions have huge ties to Darkness abilities, as well as their entire species having been influenced by Nezarec to an unknown extent, but enough for them to share psionic/psychic abilities, an affinity to void, helmets that reflect his head shape and possibly more we don't know about. It's also worth noting that Nezarec was the one who was transporting the Veil on his Pyramid ship and lamented how Neomuni were not using it to its full potential. Nezarec may have used the Veil to influence the Psions.

This is important because these devices aren't exact, and the Observatory seems to share the same caveat. It shows possibilities, not certainties. Different users might see different things, painted by their own desires and experiences. However, there's something in all of these prediction machines that can lead to a real prediction of the future. The invididual RS mentions several visions, most of which are not specific enough to identify, but sound plausible given the sheer size of the universe; they must've happened somewhere at some point. There's one specific that we know: "great waves drowning worlds." And there's one mentioned by RS that also happened; the destruction of the "garden" made by HNW. This is mentioned in the beginning of the CE. HNW terraformed a planet, but that planet was later completely destroyed.

Even more interesting, the way the Witness' species used the Observatory seems to imply that they employed the Vex directly to help them manage this machine. RS explains that the "glass-minds" are capable of "trimming excess branches" and allowing only the "strongest paths" to be explored. Perhaps this was their way of not falling into the trap that the people using the OXA or the Device could fall into; by having the Vex monitor and manage this prediction machine, it stops the user from inserting too many personal variables. And yes, as Eido noted as well, "glass-minds" is a phrase that indeed shares similarity with the Vex and is almost certainly referring to the Vex.

This is incredibly interesting for a lot of reasons. First, as I've already mentioned, these sort of prediction machines are common throughout the universe and keep being mentioned. Different species at different times have been capable of creating similar machines for similar purposes. Inspiral also goes deeper into how species could use the Darkness to access memory and history through it; the Ecumene and the Qugu had these abilities and used them as part of their civilisation. Through Psions, we get a mix of these two things; the Psions have both tangled with prediction machines like the OXA, but they also posses seemingly inate Darkness abilities that function similarly. They can project futures and possibilities to others, they can merge their minds (and bodies!), and their old religion was based on ancestor worship. Emotions, memories, consciousness itself: these are part of Darkness and governed by the paracausal entity we know as the Veil. It seems like machines capable of giving insight into the past and future are connected to the consciousness of the universe.

Second, these things somehow always come back to the Vex. We don't know how the OXA was built, but the Vex could access it. The Device was build from Vex technology and so was the Sundial. The Observatory is very closely linked to the Vex as well; either built by them or simply being close enough to be accessible for the Vex to manage it. The Vex are more or less known for their manipulation of time, their ability to move through it and use it as a tool, as well as for their prediction and simulation machines and constructs.

And of course, this year revealed to us that the Vex, or at least a part of the Vex, have tried recreating the Veil in the form of Black Heart, but failed due to their inability to understand paracausality. However, it seems like the Vex are drawn to the Veil even outside of just the Sol Divisive, as can be seen from Neomuna. The Vex were a constant threat to Neomuna throughout its existence and the Vex have been trying to access the CloudArk, an alternate reality engine built on the energy of the Veil.

This season in particular has been fairly suspicious with the Vex as well, showing us a concerning evolution of the Sol Divisive and the Vex in general; their radiolaria emitting Darkness energy, Oracles appearing outside of the Vault of Glass and also resonating Darkness, their attempts to "merge with the Witness" and a strange message that seems to be implying they're still not done with reaching out to the Veil in the form of the Black Heart. I talked about this more here.

Are the Vex drawn to the Veil for a particular reason? Perhaps they unknowingly tap into something the Veil is responsible for, like prediction, through the simple fact that the Veil is the paracausal entity responsible for Darkness which is memory? For the Vex, memory could work outside of time; perhaps their prediction abilities are simply them being able to "remember" the future, because they can exist through and outside time.

There is also the even more mysterious possibility here that revolves around a few hints in regards to the Veil and the Traveler being a single entity at some point in time. If the Veil and the Traveler used to be one before becoming separated, this may be what Unveiling talked about through metaphor; the mythical Garden before the universe existed could've been this singularity that was just the Veil and the Traveler together as one. And as Unveiling also noted, in one of those parts of Unveiling that seem to be closer to the truth than others, the Vex already existed then. The reason they're so out of place in a universe of paracausality is because they appear to have come into existence before paracausality so it is foreign to them. They might remember the time when the two were one, therefore they still have an instinctual draw to the Veil; and honestly, to the Traveler too, given how close to it they've settled in our system. As the lore on Scatter Signal notes, someone told us that all Vex agree that "Sol is Salvation." It's where both the Veil and the Traveler are.

This is beyond speculative, but it's been on my mind since that first post well over a year ago because of how closely linked Darkness, the Vex and these peculiar prediction devices have been throughout the history of the universe; now added with one more, the Observatory, most likely the first one ever made (or found), by the species that would later become the Witness. I could be off on the exact nature of this connection, but I feel like there is some sort of a connection all the same. I also feel like they wouldn't have mentioned this in TFS CE for no reason, especially because we're clearly not going to deal with the Vex until after TFS.

Either way, the Observatory mention and description really got me spiralling into unhinged territory. It added such a specific little detail about something I've speculated about before and made it fit perfectly. I wonder if this will remain just like a little curiosity and background worldbuilding or if there's a more direct reason for including it; namely if this is more hints about post-TFS stuff regarding the Vex.

Until we know for sure, I will continue to believe that all prediction abilities and prediction machines are tapping into a single source; the consciousness/memory of the universe, produced by the Veil as a part of the inherent propery of Darkness. The Vex are key to this because they may be doing it in a very specific way given their relationship to time, the possibility that they existed in the universe before anyone else, and possibly because of their memory of a time when the Veil and the Traveler were one.

It could be also something simpler and not entirely interconnected. But I was very pleased to see yet another Vex-based prediction machine being introduced into the universe, adding to the existing ones that have been fairly relevant this year and mentioned several times like the OXA and the Device. Can't wait for TFS and post-TFS content to see if this is something we'll be exploring in more detail, especially as we start dealing with the Vex!

All this about a half of a single page of TFS CE. Girl help.