In the grimoire card “Legend: Black Garden” someone named Pujari talks about his dream/journey through the Black Garden.“The Garden grows in both directions. It grows into tomorrow and yesterday. The red flowers bloom forever.There are gardeners now. They came into the garden in vessels of bronze and they move through the groves in rivers of thought.”t’s important to note that this shows that the Garden has intrinsic properties that allow it to circumvent the normal causality of time. Which also implies, as you’ll see in a moment, that the Vex’s ability to travel through time is not inherent to their species, and rather that it’s a power they’ve tapped into through the Black Garden. Anyone who controls the Black Garden controls the ability to travel through time.In Pujari’s dream, the “gardeners” who came in “vessels of bronze” are a pretty clear allusion to the Vex and their bronze armor. What’s important here is that the Vex are newcomers to the Black Garden. They did not create it and either they discovered it or were created inside of it.So, the Vex were not the first gardeners.For a crucial clue to who was, check out this grimoire card that has another reference to a gardener. It is written from the first person perspective of some powerful entity that presumably participated in the war between the Traveller and the Darkness. I suspect that it’s from the perspective of the Darkness, since the grimoire cards that deal with the Traveller are always written in second person perspective, not the first.Here’s the excerpt from “Ghost Fragment: Mysteries.”“IT is alone and IT is strong and IT won. Even over the gardener and she held power beyond me but the gardener did not shrug and make herself alone. IT always wins.”I feel this second reference to a gardener must refer back to the Black Garden, for obvious reasons. In this case the gardener fought and lost against the Traveler, and since she is referred to as a singular female, I think this clearly shows that “she” is not the Vex.Which means that long before the Vex arrived, there was a powerful entity that tended to the garden and had the power to traverse time, but then she was destroyed. Eventually the Vex discovered the garden and filled in the role of gardener that was left behind.Now, I don’t think that the original Gardener has disappeared completely. I believe that the “Heart” of the Black Garden is what is left of the original Gardener. The Vex are reaching back to a time when the Gardener was still alive, trying to resurrect Her and rebuild the powers of the Garden.Grimoire cards reference the possibility that the Vex are trying to remake themselves in the Heart’s image, but this does not have to mean “in her physical image” and it could instead mean “in her temporal image”. They’re trying to remake themselves so they exist in all time, just as the Gardener/Heart did/does.We see some early concepts of the Heart as having forking tentacles emanating out of its geodesic body. In the final game you see this idea survive in the Heart’s death animation. When you kill the Heart it explodes, and forking, branching tentacles of light stretch out from the dying body. I believe these forking lines represent (at least symbolically) the forking/alternate timelines made possible by the Black Garden’s power.The point is this: The Heart of the Black Garden is not an aspect of the Darkness nor of the Traveller. It is a separate entity altogether and was once the Gardener of this strange place. The Vex worship her and are trying to bring her back to life so she can resume tending the Garden and thus make the Vex exist throughout time and thus prevent their demise.So in an Exo card in the grimoire, an Exo is talking to some human. Here’s an excerpt.“That’s why the Exo mind is so human, you presume. Because all higher thought converges.My friend, you should meet the Vex. There is nothing human in them.”t’s easy to pass over this seemingly banal.After all, it’s really obvious. The Vex aren’t human, yeah, duh. But the obviousness kind of draws attention to the fact that the statement is actually significant. After all, the Exo doesn’t mention the Fallen or Hive, who also aren’t human. He’s singling out the Vex, which hints at how inhuman the Vex really are.Secondly, the Exo doesn’t say, “There is nothing human ABOUT them.” He says, “There is nothing human IN them.” I doubt that this is a mere syntactical happenstance. The Exo is saying that the real organism is INSIDE the robotic shells we see.This is collaborated by the statement of Pujari, that the Black Garden’s gardeners came in “vessels of bronze”. The gardeners themselves aren’t bronze. Their means of travel is built of bronze.Even in the single player, your ghost mentions that he detects biological life within the robotic shells. Then there’s text from various pieces of armor you collect in the Vault of Glass.There’s the text for the Cowl of the Hezen Lords:“The helm’s nerve interface incorporates Vex cells. They’re dead, of course. But not too dead to dream…”More proof that the actual Vex are a biological form of life composed of living cells.Robe of the Hezen Lords:“Slept in the armor last night. Woke to feel my heart stuttering to the pattern of an unknown signal.”We know that the Vex are all connected into one mental network, and here we see that when a Warlock sleeps with some armor made from Vex bodies that he gets tuned into this network. This implies that the Vex technology is designed to connect BIOLOGICAL minds into one large hive mind. And the text from the Mantic Zealot Helm:Forged from the cores of the Hezen Vex. If you feel a sense of revelation, remove immediately and inject antientheogens.An entheogen is a naturally derived chemical substance used in religious or spiritual rituals to alter one’s state of consciousness. An antientheogen would be something that counteracts these effects. If the Vex cores contain mind altering chemicals this implies that Vex minds are biological. I find it hard to imagine a computer mind being affected by drugs in the same way as a biological human brain, or at all.So, the Vex are not actually robots. The Vex are actually some sort of biological life form. The robots we see are basically their space suits, or maybe their ships (a synonym for vessel).They are an microscopic form of aquatic life. There’s logic to it, and then there’s confirmation from a Bungie employee.Here’s a bit of grimoire prose that I haven’t seen anyone make a big deal about, but it gives us a big clue as to what the Vex’s true form is.Hobgoblin:“Like the Goblin, the Hobgoblin contains a milky radiolorian fluid.”So, that is the white liquid that gushes from the Vex’s stomachs when we shoot them. That’s not the only mention of this stuff that we see. There are quest items and consumables whose descriptions and flavor text flesh out this idea some more: Cyclops Mind Core:“The mind core of a cyclops is substantial and contains a fluid apparently central to Vex functionality.”Vex Mind Core:“A sample of Vex cognitive medium, a fluid apparently central to their functionality.”Axiomatic Beads:''Iridescent glass baubles that seem to contain inscribed Vex logic.” Radiolaria:“Particles of Vex mind fluid. Potentially a source of insight into the Vex threat for your Vanguard mentor to study.”The picture for both Axiomatic Beads and for Radiolaria is this And this is what real world radiolaria look like