Destiny 2: A Descent into the Vault of Glass

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Cover

With the return of the Vault of Glass in the next Season, an old chapter of the franchise will be reopened. Aside from being a chance to relive a memorable event from the game mechanics perspective, the lore behind the Vault of Glass is cryptic, its meaning concealed between marketing choices, convoluted narrative, and uncertainty.
Follow us into the steps of legendary characters as Kabr, Praedyth, Quria, and others, descending into the mysteries of the Vault and its origins, to understand its importance.

Distant origins

To understand what the Vault of Glass is and why it is so important for the Vex, we need to understand how it could have possibly come into existence.

The Vex are old, extremely old: Potentially, they are the very first living being that appeared in our universe, spawned before the original conflict between Light and Darkness but evolved because of this very event.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Jesse Van Dijk (3)
Credit: Jesse Van Dijk (Bungie).

“In all their transformations, they retained that kernel of ultimate self-sufficiency that had made them victors in the flower game.
But they are not incontrovertibly destined to rule this cosmos. They were made before Light and Darkness, but the rules are different now, and even this pattern must adapt.”

“Patternfall”, from the lore book “Unveiling”.

In Winnower’s words, the Vex are not born out of Darkness or Light, but they are locked on a different path, outside the Flower Game that initially triggered the conflict between these forces and the existence of the whole universe.

Since the moment they were born, the Vex have sought their logic in the universe. They are following a pattern, to understand reality. As their cognitive processes are working differently from ours, the Vex refuses semiotics in favour of simulation. They need to visualize and reconstruct every principle, idea, element of their logic process, to understand.

READ MORE: Destiny 2: The Vault of Glass’ return and its significance

Simulation is pivotal to the Vex, and it drastically differs from our cognitive systems. Infecting the universe and transform it, via simulation or physically, is their way to interact with it and not an act of hostility. But simulation is a key to understand opponents as well. In the words of Clovis Bray “To be the enemy of the Vex is to be reproduced, experimented upon, and annihilated within their mindspace.”

The universe is a complex and chaotic reality, and it seems that the only logical solution for the Vex is its simplification – in the same way, we simplify numbers to make them more easily processable in equations. By reducing the universe entropy to a level of simplicity that will render everything understandable, they hope to simulate a version of the reality that is finally fathomable.

This is obstructed by many issues, and a seemingly insurmountable one is that they cannot simulate paracausal forces, such as the Light and the Darkness, due to their unpredictable breaking of the cause-effect chain.

The long-time struggle against paracausal elements for the Vex started in the old Garden where Light and Darkness fought against each other, but we can say that it is the meeting with the Hive that shaped them into the final resolve to find a solution.

Credit: Bungie

In the old aeons, before humanity came to life, Vex and Hive clashed together as Crota inadvertently allowed them to invade the High War – Oryx’s Ascendant Realm. This led to a war that Oryx himself feared, as the Vex were utterly different from their usual opponents.

Battle after battle, the Vex tried to gain the final understanding of the Hive through a special mind, a Hydra build to experimenting through the tribute system and the religious inferences the Ascendant Hive were exploiting to gain power and become gods. This mind was Quria, the Blade Transform.

As her name points out, she was something of a Sword Logic converter device, from Hive philosophy to Vex logic. A whole division of Vex used to adore her as a god, ultimately giving her more power in connection with the Darkness. We can argue that this is the Sol Divisive, the Vex that even Vex fears, which populate the Black Garden.

Quria tried many times to face Oryx, and in her last attempt, she ultimately simulates him. As we anticipated, the Vex cannot simulate paracausal forces, so she managed to access a previous version of Oryx, the krill-people version, the proto-hive that was still free from the worm and therefore from the Darkness power: Aurash. The confrontation is one of the most epic passages of the Books of Sorrow.

“‘Where are my sisters?’ Aurash shouts. ‘What have you done with my people? What have you done?’
But Oryx’s fist is full of black fire, and the next thing Quria sees is a light like stars.”

Books of Sorrow
Verse 5:1, “End of a Failed Timeline”.

In a heart-wrenching moment, the simulated Aurash realizes that her future self, Oryx, has permanently transformed the whole proto-hive civilization into something else, something dark. Then, Oryx takes Quria, but before she is bent to his willpower forever, the Vex mind manages to do a last, crucial operation.

“Quria shuts down its weapons and puts all its spare resources into sending telemetry to the greater Vex. There will be points in space and time where this data is vital. There will be great projects undertaken in the study of this ontological power, this throne-space.”

Books of Sorrow
Verse 5:1, “End of a Failed Timeline”.

Where, in time and space, did Quria send the invaluable data about the throne worlds and Sword Logic? And for what purpose?

The answer is… the Vault of Glass.

A Vex Throne World

There are many examples of how the Vex can create what in sci-fi are known as “megastructures” – artificial objects with immense size (such as the Dyson-type ones). The Pyramidion, is one example, but Vex structures can be the result of the conversion, such as the whole Mercury – a planet converted in an immense prediction engine capable of simulating entire worlds.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Jesse Van Dijk (2)
Credit: Jesse Van Dijk (Bungie).

The Vault of Glass is a similar, vast structure, with an extensive level design surface and hulking architecture that is meant to dwarf the player and make him/her uncomfortable while carrying over the conversion-building concepts tied to the Vex.

When it was presented to the public, the Vault of Glass was a relatively obscure element in the game. Due to the nature of the Raid, this was both by design (to challenge the first player to attempt it) and because in those early days, Destiny was a quite different game, lore-wise.

Due to a reboot in the story, that caused the Supercut by Joe Staten to be ditched, the main campaign was re-written and deconstructed. This led to some elements becoming a loose end, and the Vault of Glass was one of these elements.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Raid (2)
Credit: Bungie

As the Books of Sorrow tries to tie the Vault to specific lore, to avoid having it as the only narrative-detached Raid, we can try some hard guess-making to fill the gaps.

As Quria sent a huge amount of data on the Sword Logic, the tribute system, and the throne world, it seems likely these data were used in a monumental project by the future Vex – an unprecedented endeavor to create a Vex throne world.

“The Vault whispers of a world beyond.”

“Glass Minuet”, jumpship.
Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Raid (5)
Credit: Bungie

The Vault of Glass, indeed, has this appeal: an eschatological tool to manipulate the reality through the alteration of the timelines, and so an attempt to unmake what is made – a true ontological machine, something that can impact and alter the nature of reality and the outcome of the cause-and-effect laws.

READ MORE: Destiny 2: More Vault of Glass Details Revealed

The powers we see in motion inside the Vault were never central to the Vex civilization, nor they expressed a will to use them so extensively. The Vex were more interested in understanding, rather than in interfering with what needs to be understood in a so direct way. The Vault, for the first time, changed this.

Cracking the Vault of Glass: The Fireteam Kabr

“His name was Kabr. He wasn’t my friend but I knew and respected him as a Guardian and a good man.
He fought the Vex alone. This destroyed him.”

Grimoire, “Vault of Glass”.

Even though the existence of the Vault seems to have been manifested after breaching into the Collective’s database, another fireteam already attempted to break into it in the past. This team was led by an intense Titan, named Kabr the Legionless, and the other two known members were the Hunter Pahanin and the Warlock Praedyth (whose story we will address in the future).

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Kabr
Credit: Bungie

These Guardians discovered access to the Vault on Venus, leading into a vast underground expanse, that defies orienting. They knew extraordinarily little about what they were going to face, and this ultimately proved to be the cause of their downfall.

“[I came] into the vault with two others. Kabr was intense sometimes. And Pahanin was always talking to himself [static] [but] they don’t deserve this. No one does.”

Praedyth, from the in-game dialogue of the mission “Paradox”.

The experience in the Vault resulted in the destruction of Kabr, the imprisonment of Praedyth, and the mental breakdown of Pahanin, the only survivor that escaped the place. We do not know exactly how deep they ventured into the Vault, but we can argue that they never went as far as the Templar encounter.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Well of Templar
Credit: Bungie

After getting inside the Raid area, the first real challenge is to protect some confluence by the assaults of a continuous flow of Vex. These confluences are in an area called “Well of the Templar”, and in the final attack, they are threatened by an entirely new Vex form: The Oracles.

“You will meet the Templar in a place that is a time before or after stars. The stars will move around you and mark you and sing to you. They will decide if you are real.”

Grimoire, “Vault of Glass”.

Described as “stars”, the Oracles are mysterious beings, and when in the right circumstances, they can effectively erase elements from the space and time continuum. This happens to be a very peculiar power available in the Vault only, and not just for the Oracles (as we will see later). Whenever something is marked and erased by an Oracle, it vanishes from our memories, from our reality.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - The Templar (2)
Credit: Bungie

The Templar, a Hydra, is capable of this power as well, through the Oracles maybe. It seems that the desperate attempt to overcome this impossible challenge costed the imprisonment of Praedyth (with his consequent wiping from our timeline) and the death of Kabr.

The Titan, attempting to understand how to beat the outmatching power of the Vex in the Vault, drank the radiolarian fluid, triggering a mutation inside his body, in the same manner as that of Asher Mir.

“I have destroyed myself to do this. They have taken my Ghost. They are in my blood and brain. But now there is hope.
I have made a wound in the Vault. I have pierced it and let in the Light. Bathe in it, and be cleansed. Look to it, and understand:
From my own Light and from the thinking flesh of the Vex I made a shield. The shield is your deliverance. It will break the unbreakable. It will change your fate.
Bind yourself to the shield. Bind yourself to me. And if you abandon your purpose, let the Vault consume you, as it consumed me.
Now it is done. If I speak again, I am not Kabr.”

Grimoire, “Relic: The Aegis”.
Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Aegis 1
Credit: Bungie

Using the Light, Kabr hijacked the Vex technology and converted it into a sentient weapon, that can be summoned in the Well of the Templar and the final encounter. This Aegis, this shield, can cause a paracausal interference that excludes the powers in force inside the Vault, protecting the Guardians from being wiped from their timeline.

Armed with this weapon made out from the extreme sacrifice, the Guardians can defeat the Templar and the Oracles, and head to face the final enemy in the Vault of Glass, but not before passing through the last obstacle.

The Gorgons: A Relativistic Ontological Weapon

Warlock scholars are in awe while speaking about Gorgons, and for a good reason: simple cybernetic organisms like the Harpies never manifested such overwhelming power as the one Gorgons possess: an ontological weapon – something that can alter the course of reality.

“Like the Oracles and the Templar, the Gorgons reputedly possess the ability to define what is and is not real. Whatever they perceive becomes subject to erasure at their will.
[…]
The Gorgons’ ability must be tied to the nature of the Vault of Glass. We can take some solace in the clear fact that the Vex cannot manifest this power in the world outside.”

Grimoire, “The Gorgons”.

This passage reveals that only in the Vault of Glass such powers are available to the Vex, reiterating the concept that this is a special, experimental place for them, where they can tap into powers they do not possess outside or that they do not want to use – a closed system.

This latter reason is probably the most logical, as being able to control the flux of time never put the Vex into a position to abuse it but to surgically operate within the boundaries of their inner logic, which is most of the time unknowable to us. The Vault could be the very example of this cautionary behavior

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Light Cone
Credit: Wikipedia

As the Oracles, the Templar, and Atheon himself, The Gorgons are an excellent example of applied ontological power (the ability to alter reality): they can erase elements in time and space if their gaze rests upon them – a relativistic concept, which considers the development of time in two different directions starting from a point, based on of the light cone (Minkowski’s space-time).

The wiping in the present happens at the same time in the past and the future, in every time, in every moment. Think of an hourglass whose ends are not finite, but infinite. Each end turns to a different time, one to the past, one to the future. The center of the hourglass, where the two volumes meet, is the present. The power of the Vault of Glass is capable to erase the presence of something in the universe starting from that point, up to the “minus infinite” of the past and the “plus infinite” of the future.

Atheon, Time’s Conflux

Passing through the labyrinth of the Gorgons, the Vault finally opens to the final encounter: Atheon, the Time’s Conflux.

“To speak of Atheon is to accept certain limitations. We are ill-equipped to understand an entity that defies simple causality. Let us accept these limitations and proceed.”

Grimoire, “Atheon, Time’s Conflux”.

As for today, there is no clear answer about what Atheon was. The theories and the lore are most of the time in conflict with the results in-game. The cyclopic minotaur that emerges from the triangular gate of the Vault of Glass itself, is anything like we have seen before.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass Leonardo Da Vinci
Credit: Krapzapper

His aesthetics is similar to his surroundings (a mirrorlike maze of ascending crystals, converging in the vertex above the Vault), and this design based on shattered and glowing mirrors is perhaps reminding us of the law of reflection: The angle of reflection of an object is equal to the angle of incidence.

Assembling a hall of reflecting mirror, we can replicate the concept of infinite, just as Leonardo Da Vinci did with his Mirror Chamber optic experiment. Perhaps this is the concept of the Vault of Glass: A place where time can be observed from different angles and the infinite replicated in a controlled way.

“Atheon has a function. We hazard that it regulates and oversees the Vex conflux system. What are these confluxes? How do they relate to the physical Vex network that has devoured so much of Mercury and Venus? We might guess that the Vex confluxes represent the extension of this network across space and time.”

Grimoire, “Atheon, Time’s Conflux”.
Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Atheon
Credit: Bungie

Atheon as the overseer of the Vex conflux system is another function we need to explore. The confluxes are nodes made out for non-baryonic streams, which serve as an access point to the entire Vex network. It is unlikely that Atheon could have been an overseer of such a vast array of nodes – a counterintuitive notion since his downfall should have brought down the whole access system, which did not happen.

We can then argue that Atheon had a functionality tied to the enhancement of the Vex Conflux system, possibly to make it work not only through space but through different timelines as well. We know that the best use of a time-bending device is not just to send physical being through time, but something far more valuable and feasible: information.

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Confluence
Credit: Bungie

Confluxes are most of the time data only, communicating between past, present, and future. Furthermore, if this is the case, the Atheon of the past is very alive still, and maybe he is managing the Conflux system and overseeing every movement in time and space of the Vex, in disregard of his future demise.

“In the Vault time frays and a needle moves through it. The needle is the will of Atheon. I do not know the name of the shape that comes after the needle.”

Grimoire, “Vault of Glass”.

The early lore of Atheon is wild guessing that he is the pivotal part of the Vex’s attempt to infiltrate the universe’s reality. This could match with the “throne world” notion, as the main purpose of this haven for the Hive is to tamper with the causality chain, and we know from the same lore that Atheon is an “entity that defies simple causality.”

“If physics is a set of rules that the cosmos uses to calculate itself, perhaps the Vex seek to worm their way into these calculations: to become a law of reality, inseparable from existence. A virus in the system. Perhaps Atheon was the centerpiece of this project, a command nexus that unified efforts across time.”

Grimoire, “Atheon, Time’s Conflux”.

This concept is reinforced by the name of this Vex mind itself. Coming from the Greek “atheos”, the same root of the term “atheist”, which means “godless”, the name Atheon is possibly hinting to the Vex’s approach to the apotropaic beliefs tied to the Sword Logic: a mathematic dominion over a theocratic power.

READ MORE: Destiny 2: Unraveling the secrets of “Presage”

The Concept of Non-linear Time

As the Guardians face Atheon, he is sending them back and forward in time, in two different moments of the same space – the Vault. In these two different times, the Oracles attempt to wipe the Guardians from the timeline, but the Aegis is found – further proof that it is present in the past and the future as well. Everything created inside the Vault seems to have this power of transcending linearity, and thus the relic as well.

Perhaps, the Aegis managed to conceal itself from the everlasting gaze of Atheon, while moving in the timelines, but in general, we could be in the presence of the non-linearity concept of time.

In the moment of birth of the universe, there was a singularity, the Big Bang – an explosion and expansion present in every point of space. This singularity not only was the origin point of the space we know now as the universe but of the time too.

“We must continue to move forward, even if it means aiming backward. – Osiris”

“Arrow of time”, jumpship.

Time was born and its direction with it: the time’s arrow is a thermodynamic, psychological, and cosmological concept, which forms our linear existence, bound with a single direction of the movement in time. This direction is forward, the future. As time progresses, the concept of entropy will be introduced.

Entropy is the quantity of disorder, uncertainty, and randomness present in a system (in this case, our system is the universe). Whenever time progresses, entropy tends to become bigger and bigger, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics states.

As the Vex created a solid way to move in time and space, is it possible the concept of linearity has been lost eons ago to them. While for humankind is almost impossible to fathom a living experience where the entropy is inverted (as Tenet by Christopher Nolan brilliantly showed), maybe for the Vex past, present, and future are the same, intertwined in a single unity – which direction is not relevant.

While the time’s arrow behavior is bound by thermodynamics and cosmological laws, many situations ignore its status or revert its direction in mathematics. This is certainly applicable to the Vex as well. A good example is the Vex Precursors: While being technologically more advanced, these different specimens are coming from the past; While Vex Descendant, more ancient, they are coming from the future. Nothing is linear for the Vex.

“Those who delve deep into the Vault of Glass have seen time itself torn asunder. Awestruck Ghosts report encounters with ancient Vex, their casings built long before the age of humanity.
It would be easy to assume these Vex are the ancestors of those we face today – but with the Vex it is never so simple.

Grimoire, “Precursors”.
Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Precursors
Credit: Bungie

Other examples of non-linearity are the many paradoxes that a time-traveling canon can generate. The one that comes into mind is the casual loop, a cycle of time-altered events that breaks the causal-effect chain. This is one version of the predestined paradox: A time traveler is forced to travel in the past because of the same event he caused while traveling.

We have directly witnessed this paradox when we used the Sundial to save Saint-14, causing a causal loop that created the inspiration for the character of Saint-14, who in turn had inspired us in the past.

“To me, you represent everything a Guardian can become. Yours is a thriving City. So different from mine. My whole fourteenth life I fought to make my City yours. I never finished.
All I have left is this weapon. The Cryptarchs say you crafted it yourself, built it out of scraps and Light and sheer will, inside the Infinite Forge. I’ll make sure it finds its way back to you. When you gave it to me, I swore I would make it my duty to follow your example.
I’m still trying. – Saint-14.”

“Perfect Paradox”, weapon.
Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Perfect Paradox
Credit: Bungie

Back into the Vault of Glass

As the Vault is returning in the next season, we do not know in which capacity aside from the Raid perspective. Access to the Vault is one of the matters of discussion. As Bungie confirmed that they will not “unvault” the whole Venus destination, there are several hypotheses on how the Vault will be accessed. One of them is the simplest: a destination on the map.
There are others, though…

Destiny 2 Vault of Glass - Whispers (2)
Credit: Bungie

We know that the Vex gate network can lead to different places in space and time – moreover, we know that at least two other different gates led to the Vault of Glass: the one in the secret area of the “Whisper” mission, and one scannable gate near Terrabase Charon, on Io.

Having a Vex gate on Nessus that leads to the Vault, for example, would be simple, but the lore behind would be extremely interesting. In the past, the Fallen and the Taken had raided the Vault to unraveling and mastering its secrets. This leaves the field open to other similar scenarios – for example, something that follows up the Cabal secret conspirators, the Conclave – which already tried to exploit the Vex structures in many times, during their incursions with the Sundial, in the Corridors of Time, and with the recent Psions attempt to create a predicting engine.

READ MORE: Destiny 2: Why is Armor Synthesis so controversial?

Aside from that, let us not forget that the next season will be the last before the coming of the DLC “The Witch Queen”, a reckoning with Savathûn. There will be something tying the Vault, the Vex, and the Hive in the next season, and we think it could be Quria.

As the origin of the Vault of Glass project, Quria could be the key for the Hive to harness its power as well, and thus allowing Savathûn to extend her power in time – something she already tried with the curse of the Dreaming City.

In the meantime, Quria could be our best chance to find a weak spot into Savathûn defenses, and what could tie all this together is, precisely, the Vault of Glass. Let us not forget the sound of the Oracles spawning inside the “Last Wish” Raid, last year… an interesting crossover, that definitely locks the Hive and the Vex in a strange relationship.

We want to point out another pivotal element: The story of Praedyth. This important character could tie a lot of loose ends together in the coming war with the Hive and the Vex, and we will explore this lore narrative in the future, as it deserves its own space.

The last and the most unhappy scenario for the return of this Raid, is maybe hiding behind the wording Bungie used in the last TWAB: The Vault will be back as it was, and possibly without tidings, as it was for the Fallen S.A.B.E.R and the Devil’s Lair strikes – just an unvaulted content.

Whatever the outcome will be, the importance of the Vault of Glass will always impact the game, as the ongoing threat of the Vex and their hidden and independent agenda, creeping into the Light and Darkness war as an unknowable and dangerous foreign element.

Credit: Bungie

Kabr, the reason why we were able to crack the Vault in the first place, left a posthumous message for us, despite being clear before dying that we should not trust further communication from him.

“[…]
case Past:
return( i m p o s s i b l e )
// grazing, rocked, major, distilled.
case Present:
return( v e s t i g i a l )
// vault, aegis, awakened, infinite.
case Future:
// return( i n e v i t a b l e )
[…]”

“Kabr’s Glass Aegis”, jumpship.

We believe this is a glimpse of things to come as, wherever Kabr in the universe is now, and in whichever form, he sees his return to the future as inevitable. Maybe the Vault of Glass’ story will never be a closed but an open-loop – a continuous paradox that will never be a finished tale.

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