Black Garden’s Heart & The Exo Stranger [b]DISCLAIMER[/b]: This is literally me trying to take an hour rambling on word about the connection between the Black Garden’s heart and the Exo Stranger. My thinking process is honestly like getting a bowl of spaghetti and trying to straighten out each noodle. A mess. But I’ve tried to organize it the best way I can. Anything that says it's from rambling is from a word document where I literally just sat and typed out everything my brain spouted that felt connected to the subject. The Black Garden’s heart was able to the Vex vessels. Eschaton Mind. [ Eschaton: A dramatic transformation of reality from what we know or imagine it to be. Literally, the end of the world. ] Imminent Mind. [Imminent: about to happen.] Primeval Mind. [Primeval: very old or ancient, basic and powerful.] In other words, the future mind, the present mind, and the past mind. Each vessel from different times because the Vex don’t understand the Heart, they don’t know how it’s power truly works, though they do have knowledge that an untapped, simply coded vessel could be filled with this indescribably power. The Heart, when it “dies”, I believe doesn’t actually die, but moves itself to another time, another dimension. It wasn’t up to it utmost strength when fighting the guardians on Venus, and departed on it’s own volition after the “fight” was over. So I think that heart will return. From a piece of exploratory rambling: [spoiler]Change in plant life after the death of the heart. Was it an immediate change, or a skip in dimension? The heart of the garden may have been a proxy to the Traveler or an agent of the darkness, a pool of power that could be used by the darkness. , an unfathomable power that seemed to be a part of the darkness, but a separate entity of its own. Maybe similar to Crota. [/spoiler] Crota, as Toland once says, is not in the dimension we know of, but his own created by his will. Which is why his will, his heart, and his hand, are all tangible entities in the world we know. That power manifested in the real world, Crota chose, to make it of that variety.I think the heart may be the same for the darkness. It is not the darkness itself, but a piece of it, like Crota’s heart, it is the darkness’ heart. More excerpts from rambling: [spoiler]The heart of the black garden could very well be the heart of the darkness. The darkness fell to the traveler and vice versa, both ends suffering great loss. Both heal again for confrontation. The Traveler has his speaker, and the Darkness, its heart. They are connected, the heart and the Stranger. That like the Traveler and the Darkness. Where the darkness has no vessel to share its thoughts like the speaker (though Toland may have met this entity and talked with this figure not the actual darkness itself) the traveler has it’s speaker. The heart of the darkness fled to a time a dimension of safety from its counterpart. Stranger.[/spoiler] Now, how is Stranger the heart of the traveler? [spoiler]Stranger, back at the collapse was sent to rid of this agent, an unfathomable power that seemed to be a part of the darkness, but a separate entity of its own. Then at the collapse the squadron she was a part of was sent to destroy it.[/spoiler] I think that the heart, at the time when the Darkness struck, the heart was key to this. That the battle between the Darkness and the Traveler was a full on war and the heart was a known enemy then. The assault on the heart I believe was carried out by an all exo Brigade, separated into different squadrons, and each squadron had a task. Stranger, herself, was in the squadron that made it through to the heart, but upon arrival it was a massacre. Bodies dropping around her, everyone is dying and she ends up being the last one standing before the heart. If it was a cut scene there would probably be a whole 1 on 1 exposition between her and the heart just before she dies because even the heart can see something different than her than the other dead exos around her. And at the same time the Traveler is about to play it’s last hand, and knows this confrontation is happening and in an effort to battle the heart on its next fight with the darkness and severs a piece of its own true power into Stranger to make her his heart. Of course, because nothing happens perfectly, the heart of the darkness has already poisoned her with a tainted Vex code, because the Vex were already doing the hearts bidding, worshiping it. The travelers actions save Stranger, but the Tainted and altered Vex code is permanent, and she isn’t forged in light, but is something more than that. She is light, a piece of a god. But she doesn’t know. Thee whole ordeal leaves her severely injured but alive, and her memory is shot, reduced to short bursts of flashbacks. Mind you, this is several decades (I’m guessing) before she ever meets you, the guardian. In these decades time, the effects of not only the Traveler’s choice of her as a heart, but the darkness tainted code in her start to make themselves apparent. Her ability to teleport, the manner of her teleportation says it all. It’s not Vex, or guardian, or even fallen in nature. When you play the Black garden mission, the way the heart leaves is the exact same manner Stranger teleports. Something like that would corrode her, eat away at her systems, because the code is like a virus, foreign to her own, but it’s the piece f the Traveler that protects her from that. It is literally an internal battle of light and dark inside of her. She posses the power of the heart & Vex to move between time and space safely. This would give good reason as to why Stranger sends you to stop the heart and not go herself and why she says her path is her own. When she finally know how to work with the tainted code, she returns to the Gate, to the Valley of Kings to watch her own fall. To see what happened that day. She knows the heart should have killed her and she knows something saved her ( I don’t think she has knowledge of hat the Traveler did to her ). So she never goes back to the Black Garden, Never confronts the heart again until it’s the right time for her to follower her path, to eradicate the heart for good. More from rambling: [spoiler]The traveler does not communicate through her, though, they share the beat of one heart. The thoughts of one, but are separate. She senses the light taken. The shard on the moon, she knew it’s location, knew it wished to be freed of the darkness’ grip represented by hive. Freeing the shard, which in turn, fueled the heart, made it clear of its location.The place she stands and returns to is that of the Valley of kings, the gate. Where it all began for her, where the traveler deemed her worthy, and wiped the truth of her existence from her. Ignorance is bliss. Stranger follows the natural call of a shared heart and her intentions remain pure, her questions remain few. A sort of trusting deception. A contradiction I know, but the Traveler is smart, knows the way of man and machine and machines past and machines yet to rise. Machines always eternal, but man— So she travels with the codes of old, the codes of vex encrypted in her by the heart itself to poison her, and saved by the light meant to protect all. And she sees them when time unravels itself. The dead from the valley, the ones she fought side by side with. She sees the dead. She should have been dead. She knows, but never knows why. Why she returns, why the gate, the valley. Why she understands but does not understand. Why she sees the future, the past, in blinks, in moments. Cursed by vex code, by darkness in her own codes, but saved by something more than light. Not forged in it. But is. No ghost, no light. Just existence, influence. But then I pause and ask, why her, an exo? Maybe the mortality of man had a source of distaste. A change of speakers grew older than time itself. Words change, words rise and falter, but a heart, it must continue to beat and never stop. The machines. Immortal. Absolute.[/spoiler] Exo Stranger is the Traveler’s heart., and it’s not until she realizes this that the traveler may be whole again. That’s it. That’s all I got.