As an exo, I wonder about my creation. I Often have dreams of where I approach a tower and fight my way through an army of everyone I've ever met to reach it. I know I'm not alone in this, because all exos have experienced this. This dream is a product of the Deep Stone Crypt subroutine that exos have about their creation. I don't know if it was a training simulation, or some sort of metaphor, but it is clearly tied to our creation. [quote]We go to the tower in dreams but that doesn't mean it's not real. [...] You can ask others about Deep Stone and they'll tell you about the army. They might confess one truth, which is this: we have to kill the army to get to the tower. Usually this starts bare-handed, and somewhere along the way you take a weapon. [...] None of them will tell you that the army is made of everyone we meet. The people we work with and the people we see in the street and the people we tell about our dreams. We kill them all. I think because we were made to kill and this is the part of us that thinks about nothing else. (Ghost Fragment: Legends. Deep Stone Crypt)[/quote] [quote]A badge illustrating the infamous subroutine which seeded the first Exo consciousness. (Deep Stone Crypt item description)[/quote] [quote]"In memory of the Deep Stone Crypt, the tower where we were born." (Ring of Living Stone item description)[/quote] The part on seeding consciousness suggests that not all exos were once human, since humans already have consciousness. I'm not going to try to interpret the dream because it won't lead to anything concrete, but I do think the DSC subroutine is worth mentioning. It should also be noted that an icy outer world was the site where many exos were made based on Cayde's writings. He entered man, and left an exo ([url=https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/3kxclc/spoilers_inside_caydes_treasure_island_notes/]Cayde's notes[/url]). This world is likely Europa, a moon of Jupiter, based on the writings of another unknown exo. [quote]Up in the sky there is a hole in Jupiter and it tears at me when I look at it. (Ghost Fragment: Exo 2)[/quote] [b]Now that's out of the way, let's get to why we were created.[/b] Dr Shim, Maya Sundaresh, and the other researchers studying the Vex, used proxy bodies to hold their human minds to safely approach the Vex Citadel. They were far from perfect, but I believe these proxies were the precursors to the exos we know today. Rasputin was helping them. [quote]Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. [...] Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall. [...] These proxy bodies are limited— they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. (Ghost Fragment: Vex 4)[/quote] Maya Sundaresh's device (AKA the FWC device), a machine based on Vex gate network that lifts the veil of existence to reveal possible future timelines, is unsafe for human use. Maya concluded that a different "substrate" would be needed to handle the device. Exos have a different "substrate" than humans, and in one card, an exo discusses the equality of human and exo minds despite their differing substrates. [quote]I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this. (Ghost Fragment: Vex 5)[/quote] [quote]- which in the end is just a matter of substrate chauvinism. It doesn't matter if the system thinks with flesh or superconductor or topological braids in doped metallic hydrogen, as long as the logic is the same. And our logic is the same. Yours and mine. (Ghost Fragment: Exo)[/quote] Maya Sundaresh mentions that SxISR is on the hull the device. The research team is being aided by a warmind. This warmind is none other than Rasputin, as the SxISR appears again in one of Rasputin's logs about the Darkness. This means that Rasputin was a part of the project to use the device to see the future, and so he must have also known the limitations of using flesh-and-blood substrates (humans). [quote]The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably. Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us. (Ghost Fragment: Vex 5)[/quote] [quote]AI-COM/RSPN: SOLSECCENT//SxISR//DEEPSPACE. (Ghost Fragment: Darkness) [/quote] *RSPN = Rasputin. Maya Sundaresh eventually leaves the project, but her traditions and superstitions about the device leads to the Future War Cult's (FWC) creation. [quote]We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it. [...] I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log. Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult. (Ghost Fragment: Vex 5)[/quote] [quote]RECORD 343-CHASM-7889 the Device at 12:22 and immediately the Device reported displacement of his consciousness. Visions of war and the City in flames. Subject twenty-nine worked the supply channels on the Slip before he joined the War Cult. By 12:27 he was babbling and by END RECORD. (Ghost Fragment: Future War Cult)[/quote] *Proof that FWC now has the device. Rasputin later on encounters a time traveler stepping backward, forward, and across time who is not a guardian (THEM bracketed description), not of the Darkness (IT bracketed description), and not one of his (MINE bracketed description), but he states that at one time this entity must have been one of his. He also calls it a platform, suggesting it is machine. The time-traveling non-guardian machine is clearly the Exo Stranger. His remark that the exo was once one of his may imply that all exos were initially his. [quote]You stand here now and now and now many times and here I am awonder, all awonder, how you manage it. How do you step forward. How do you step back. Do you step ACROSS is there a world of worlds, a web, and you a spider upon it. Are you searching for that one thread you need? Is that thread named victory? You’re not one of THEM [long dead, alive again, their bodies grafted to powers they and I do not understand] and not one of IT [the flower eater, the queen of final shapes, that which also inhabits its petitioners] and you’re certainly not MINE [b]although once you must have been[/b] [I bear an old name. It cannot be killed. Not even here.] So whose are you, little platform. (Ghost Fragment: Rasputin 4)[/quote] Further connecting Rasputin to exos, Cayde-6, an exo, is said to be the vessel of Rasputin. Cayde was human once, but it's possible that his exo body also acted as a vessel for Rasputin. I don't know if I believe i, but worth noting. [quote]My old friend Andal—he used to stand here, right in this spot—he'd come up with these wild stories. He'd say, you know, Cayde, I've been examining the evidence, and personally I've come to think it's you. You're Rasputin, legendary Warmind, defender of Earth. And I wish you'd remember that, so you could reclaim your full power and save us all. (Ghost Fragment: Rasputin)[/quote] [b]To Sum UP[/b] - Rasputin was allied with the scientist investigating the Vex. He managed the proxy bodies used by the scientists for approaching the Vex Citadel. These proxy bodies would later be the starting point for exo development. - The scientists, or Rasputin built a device based on Vex gate networks to see the future (AKA the Future War Cult device). Using the device takes a very large toll on the user, and it is concluded that a different "substrate" is needed to use the device. - Maya Sundaresh abandoned the project, but the superstitions and record traditions she started was the seed from which the Future War Cult (FWC) was grown. - Rasputin created the exos, or he was heavily involved in their development. Exos are based on the existing proxy body technology and have a non-organic substrate allowing them to handle the FWC device. He used the exos to view possible futures with the device. Exos were also used as weapons of war. - By the time that exo are created to use the device, the FWC has already formed around the device, and many exos join. I don't think it's a coincidence that FWC is represented by an exo, just like I don't think it's a coincidence that Dead Orbit (who want to leave the Solar System) are represented by an Awoken (colonists who've tried leaving the Solar System). FWC is represented by an exo because exos are the one race that can best use the device. It's very fitting that I joined FWC. This is likely not the full story, but it is a starting point. [b]For more theories by me, I refer you to the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183288968/0/0]Collected Treatises of The Warlock KAGEHOSHI[/url].[/b]