[quote]An underground lode seeded by ancient machines.[/quote] Glimmer is enigmatic - programmable matter with a difficult-to-determine origin. Allegedly, it was seeded in lodes underground by ancient machines. Since the Grimoire described this there has been no mention of these machines; what could have planted veins of glimmer under the ground and never have been discovered by humanity, the Fallen, or anyone in Sol? No ruined machines unearthed in post-Collapse graveyards like the EDZ or the Cosmodrome, nothing, no mention outside of the old Grimoire. Products of the Golden Age, it is also a mystery how these machines managed to seed glimmer as far as the Tangled Shore. With the capabilities of uncoded glimmer programming, provided there is an energy source, tensile and yet able to transmute amidst the natural material in the crust (silicon, pyroxenes, etc.). Its transmuting capabilities would be able to transmute individual particles into other particles. An atom in a vacuum could be converted by glimmer into another. On a massive scale, this could represent something akin to terraforming, such as the work of the Traveller. I've been considering the idea that the glimmer machines themselves were nanotechnology. Microrods, 4.3 µm long, can be set into motion autonomously in living cells by resonant ultrasound. A magnetic field can propel these in synchronised motion, and the potential of nanites/molecular devices being the "machines" entering the crust, self-replicating and assembling themselves into cubic glimmer. Glimmer, resembling nanotechnology in many ways, has long been compared with SIVA, which is a self-replicating technology. In addition, an idea which, keep in mind, is [i]disproven[/i] by the inherent nature of Glimmer, is interesting to imagine nonetheless; that, based on a few parameters of Glimmer; the machines, it’s “terraforming” capabilities, and less importantly it’s cubic appearance, Glimmer, if not for it’s described Golden Age origin, [i]could[/i] have been a Vex creation. It would have been interesting for the ancient machines to be the Vex, seeding the Glimmer veins to terraform their worlds. But, as I said, that is already disproven.