One thing that has been grabbing my attention is how often the Fallen run Glimmer Extraction missions. Obviously, with as many Eliknsi as there are in the system, of course the Fallen would have a need for something as universal as programable matter. But more often than not, Fallen mining operations conducted in high traffic areas tend not to unfold very well, usually with Guardians destroying their extraction equipment and main collection rigs. The obvious solution to this is to move operations to a less populated area, but a big problem with moving an operation like Glimmer Extraction is that glimmer isn’t available everywhere. If you were ever to start a glimmer mining business yourself, you’d find that glimmer occurs in veins within the planet, somewhat like how metal ore clusters form in nature. However, unlike metal ores, glimmer that’s extracted from the ground is not a naturally occurring resource, and was “seeded [there] by ancient machines”, according to the old Grimoire. The first question that this raises is what sort of machine could produce glimmer and why hasn’t something like this been recovered by either the City of Fallen Scavengers? And secondly, how is there glimmer that’s able to be extracted on planetoids like Nessus or the Tangled Shore, that were absent from the Golden Age’s expansion, and as such shouldn’t have been exposed to these ancient machines? For the second point, based on the phrasing of “seeded” in it’s description as well as how glimmer has been compared to Siva (phrased in the context of Siva being “capable of breaking down any existing matter very similar to Glimmer”), I think it’s reasonable to believe that glimmer will spread naturally in any environment its placed in, given a long enough time and somewhat usable energizers. Since glimmer likely had a role to play in the Golden Age (likely with Engram technology), that would mean that the Exodus Black would’ve had some on board, bringing it to Nessus. Now set free after the crash, the glimmer works its way through the centaur, using the surrounding soil as a minimal energy source, making it functional just enough to carve out a few thousand deposits of glimmer into Nessus’ outer layer over the next five hundred or so years. That’s one idea explained, but that still leaves the question of why somewhere like the Tangled Shore, specifically Four-Horn Gulch, would have Glimmer Extraction events there. There wasn’t any Golden Age activity there (to our knowledge) or any accidental seedings like what potentially happened on Nessus. So why is there glimmer there? And again, why hasn’t there been any discovery of the ancient machines that originally produced glimmer to begin with? This is where we drift into heavy speculation territory, but perhaps the reason these machines haven’t been rediscovered is because they were never lost to begin with. Perhaps these machines were used quite recently, and that’s what seeded the Tangled Shore, making glimmer appear there. Perhaps there weren’t multiple machines that created the glimmer, and is rather just one big Great Machine… you get what I’m hinting at. In essence, the theory is that Glimmer is the remanent of the Traveler’s terraformation process. Obviously, if the Traveler was responsible for glimmer’s appearance, then the idea of no one finding any ancient glimmer machines all this time would make sense, however this line of thought might need a little more explanation in regards to the Tangled Shore aspect of it. So something that not everyone realized has been happening is the changes that’ve been happening since the Traveler broke free from Ghaul’s cage. The massive God Wave of Light that it emitted was said to have altered everything it touched, and it certainly touched a lot. But saying everything was altered is a rather vague statement, although the melting of the Martian ice caps which Ikora directly correlated to the Traveler’s wave, giving a good insight to how exactly what it touched was altered. Habitability towards life, i.e. Terraformation. I’ve talked about this before, but I believe that this Wave is responsible for the plant growth in the Tangled Shore, and that was how the string of asteroids were altered. And wouldn’t you know, one of the greenest and likely most wave-altered place on the Shore is the Lost Sector Trapper’s Cave, which happens to be located in Four-Horned Gulch, the only location where Fallen extract Glimmer. Coincidence? Maybe. But the narrative seems to be holding up well enough so far. In this case, the Traveler’s Wave hit the Tangled Shore, causing major pockets of glimmer to form in the asteroids and causing minor terraformation in the area. Now, getting into the technical aspects of how this would work in conjunction to the Traveler’s terraforming processes, we look at glimmer itself. Glimmer is a programmable matter that can be transmuted into nearly anything with an input and an energy source. Its a malleable substance on top of being able to alter existing matter. So if you have a node of glimmer in a vacuum environment, and you gave the input for it to transmute into oxygen and provided a sufficient amount of energy for it to do so, assumable it could fill the void in the environment. In the same notion, if you placed another node of glimmer into a sealed environment filled with carbon dioxide, gave it the input of converting the carbon dioxide into oxygen and an energy source, it would assumably transmute the CO2 particles in the environment into O2 (assuming the interpretation of the Siva comparison is correct). Essentially, if you have enough glimmer, you could theoretically terraform an entire planet, given you have enough energy and can provide the continuous input, both of which the Traveler can do. Io was the last location the Traveler was terraforming at the time of the Collapse, and the moon is absolutely riddled with it’s energy. The obvious observation with this is that energy is a major component with the terraformation process. Light is also a part of it, but clearly not as big as energy. In this theory, Light would just handle the input aspect of the process. Light has been observed to be able to retain information, seen in the missions where Guardians attain new supers. There are small pockets of Light that recite stories and quotes of major figure heads and legends for the Guardians, displaying that it can relay information verbally and (assumably) in whatever way glimmer receives instructions. So the Traveler arrives at a planet and decides to start terraforming. It produces the glimmer to start the processes (likely through basic synthesis via the Light), releases massive amounts of energy to charge it and another wave of Light tuned to instruct the glimmer’s transfiguration, and the process begins. Then, once the planet is finished being terraformed, trace pockets of glimmer still exist beneath the surface left over/as a byproduct of the process. The God Wave the Traveler expelled to break Ghaul’s cage would’ve been a combination of both Light and Energy, which is why places like Mars and the Tangled Shore experienced minor terraforming. And while yes, the Traveler never terraformed Earth, seeing as it already had an atmosphere on it’s arrival, I’m willing to bet that something was done about the existing pollution and atmospheric damage. Something like a refortification of Earth’s existing atmosphere, rather than the formation of an entirely new one. All in all, I think this a reasonable theory. Glimmer was never explained, or even mentioned all too much in recovered Golden Age records, so I doubt it was a human invention. It also gives a neat possible look into how the Traveler can alter an entire world so easily. There are some holes, and some assumptions, but otherwise everything fits rather nicely. I’d love to hear some other people’s thoughts on it.