Yesterday I posted concerning how I originally felt about a relationship between SIVA and the Vex. Link included below https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/206807141/0/0 Well, I'm back to denounce that theory, if nothing more than to just amuse the idea that maybe, just maybe I was completely wrong. Let's start out with the simple stuff, many people pointed out to me that Bungie did indeed confirm SIVA is "Golden Age nanotechnology". So let's take that and run and make some really quite baseless conjectures and see which ones stick. My preferred belief, with the mindset that SIVA is man-made during the golden age, is that we designed it to technologically augment ourselves so that [i]we[/i] could understand [i]the Vex[/i], not the other way around. We know from the Ghost Fragment: Vex grimoire cards that at least some attempt had been made to contact/understand the Vex and their infrastructure during the golden age. So we know this is not an unlikely claim that humans did want to understand the Vex during the golden age. Note: The Vex were in our system during the Golden Age? How else could we have discovered their ruins and found a Goblin to study? Interesting to note that because they would be the only non-human species in the system pre-collapse. Now, I'm just going to be throwing ideas out to the wind to see what you all can pick up on, see what you like and dislike, much like I did in the last post. Except this time I will note that most of these are 80% baseless. I'm simply putting thoughts together and seeing what links can be made. Maybe this way, as a group, we can decipher the plot of this Rise of Iron and SIVA mystery we have right now. For most of these theories, you should remember that the Vex can't alter causation within time travel. Meaning, if they go back in time, they cannot change something that would alter their present decision to go back in time in the first place. It's just how it works - If you are to believe that the Traveler created the Vex to tend to the Garden and that the Garden resides within the Traveler, you must also believe that Alpha Lupi [i]is[/i] the Traveler, and that the Dark Heart of the Black Garden was created by the Traveler's own self doubt. If you assume that to be true, you may also consider that because the Vex worshipped the Dark Heart as a god, they understood if the Traveler changed it's mindset, if the Traveler doubted the Vex - it's own creation - then the Vex may be erased from existence, thus enticing the Vex obsession with becoming essentially synonymous with existence. So the Traveler creates the Vex, and the Traveler promotes the Vex obsession with time, but what makes the Vex evil and dark? SIVA. This is going to get confusing, so I'll try to keep it very simple. Let's assume the Traveler creates the Vex as the Traveler is born. The Traveler contains the home of the Vex, the Garden. As the Traveler begins to lose its fight against the darkness over earth, it becomes doubtful, and the Vex become obsessed with preventing their own annihilation. Originally, the Vex had good intentions. They knew if they kept he Garden alive, that they would survive. But in the current state, the Black Garden would not survive without altering past events. Simultaneously, the Traveler knows that the Vex are trouble. They're too intent on surviving themselves, that they would inadvertently hurt the Traveler. So when the Traveler meets us, it gifts us the power to create an infectious nanotechnology. This nanotechnology would somehow come into contact with the Vex, leading the Vex to go full evil, abandoning their original purpose and serving the purpose of themselves. Now, it is tasked to us to destroy the Vex because the Traveler could not. ^In short, the Traveler lets us make infectious sentient nanotechnology so that we can make the Vex evil so that we can destroy them and free the Garden of its dark heart because the Vex wouldn't remove the heart. The rest of these won't be so lengthy - The Vex and SIVA share one common trait: assimilation. Kabr tells us that touching living vex armor will corrupt your mind. He tells us that wearing armor made from vex will assimilate you into their mind system. Touching Vex = bad news. It appears that the same is going on with SIVA - Does anyone else feel that Descendent Vex look substantially older than Precursor Vex? Because I do. Descendent Vex have a rustic look, flat heads while Precursor Vex look shinier, more uniform, newer. I can get from this that the first models of Vex that the Vex themselves produce exist far in the future. Perhaps they have a Benjamin Button complex and time is reversed to them? More likely, they simply come to exist in the future, then come back to our time. - SIVA totally has something going on with smart matter, the stuff that makes Truth rockets able to track you to hell and back and Red Death able to make you a beastin' war machine (pre-nerf, though it's still pretty solid) It's mostly baseless, except when you take into account that I'm 200% certain that Red Death is a modified version of SUROS Regime, and perhaps those modifications came the way of infection from smart-matter infused SIVA. Aside: look at the models for SUROS Regime, Red Death and various Pulse Rifles. Compare the perks of SUROS and Red Death. Red Death has one distinctive difference from all pulse rifles: Red Death's magazine is in front of the handle and trigger, not behind it as is the case with most pulse rifles I'll probably come back and tweak this post so that some of the conjectures contain firm evidence either proving or disproving them. These are simply ideas are aren't meant to be anything more, nothing here should be taken as fact or as definitive lore. Just ideas that I (and possibly) the community could entertain until Rise of Iron releases. Feedback is much appreciated, give me your thoughts on aspects of things I have said, play with ideas, [i][b][u]think.[/u][/b][/i] Turn over these thoughts and see what you can come up with