I’m going to put my response here because this theory I have is too bizarre and unsubstantiated for me to put in a post of its own, but your last spoiler about cephalopods surprised me because I quite literally was thinking about them as it relates to this game. Crazy coincidence so I’ll put my crazy thoughts down here… Year one, I theorized that the darkness was space worms (before the Book of Sorrows). I was mostly wrong, but at least made some connections between the worms in the hive and its ties to the darkness. So now there is a second theme I’ve started wondering about: cephalopods. My short answer, is I think they are the Vex, and it could relate to their origin (much like the worms related to the hive origin) Pahanin, one of the members of Kabr’s team that entered the VoG, is obsessed with cephalopods. He has two hunter cloaks called “Squid Pro Quo” and “Octopus Cloak”. Both those being cephalopods, a type of marine animal. The description of that gear is “Yes, my love for cephalopods is well documented” and “If human extinction seems imminent, try to relax. You’re just giving the cephalopods a chance.” So we have Pahanin obsessed with cephalopods, which are marine animals. Now to the Vex. The actual organic part of the vex (the actual vex, not the metal shell), is the milky fluid in their torso (the white crit spot we all love shooting). Grimoire calls it “radiolarian” fluid. Radiolarian also being marine animals, single celled organisms with a bony skeleton. I think there is a connection there. Now onto the bizarre. There is another reference to cephalopods in Grimoire, the Ammonites in the book of sorrows, who are a marine based species described as “bony six armed cephalopods”. The Ammonites also just happen to be the first documented (at least to date) species to have had the traveler. *Puts tin foil hat on*. What if the milky vex fluid, is based on the Ammonites? The same fluid in the Vex being the same cellular material of the Ammonites? I mean, we humans created Exos (machine versions of ourselves) to put our minds in. What if in an attempt to avoid extinction by the hive, the Ammonites put their cellular information in machine body, aka the Vex? I don’t think that is quite the answer, but I am willing to bet that like the subtle year one “worm” clues were hints at the future story arc regarding the Worm gods, that the cephalopods will have some future role in the story. There is something there I bet.