Well the Pantopes we defeated was the real one. They might bring him back with a restorative mind or maybe try to sim him. Osiris did make a root mind like that, so may be possible. Oryx and the Hive are very different then the Vex on a fundamental level, comparing one to the other just doesn’t work. Although I did ponder it. Oryx can’t be rezzed as he was for now, Vex can’t sim him well enough. What they could do is sim Aurash and infect her with Worm larvae and make her into Auryx. Auryx would then need to reclaim her powers to become Oryx. Technically, possible. Likelihood of happening? Slim. There are two other Hive Gods to fill in for him. As to your bonus question: They can. The whole timeline thing regarding the Vex was mostly assumed to be real timelines and their sims were just computer data. The Forest shows us the “timelines” are just their quasi-real sims. They are “real” because the Forest (and the Vault of Glass) uses the power of throneworlds, the ontological power to make the rules of a [i]created[/i] pocket universe. Like Oryx and Crotas throneworlds. These are bubbles within our universe. In the Book of Sorrows they said the throneworld power would be important later to their research and we see how. They were able to partially sim paracausal power with it. We also see in the BoS that things made in these worlds are real and can come out. The annihilator totem for instance. So yes things ought to be able to come out but they don’t control them like puppets unless they [i]make[/i] them like puppets. So when Skolas pulled Fallen out of the Vet Network, he was pulling simulated Fallen. Interestingly it also explains the Exo Stranger and her rifle. It would explain how she knew where to pop up all those times over the years that the rumors of her came from. It also explains why when she was traveling while watching us she didn’t know exactly what was going on in the moon. The sims aren’t perfect and the Vex haven’t been there to know how to sim the Hive activity 100%. Finally x2. The Vex always lost to the Darkness because they couldn’t sim them to plot a way to victory, presumably. There is also the causal vs paracausal issue, that gives the Darkness a major advantage. However it was assumed that to get the power of the Light it had to be gifted or the Darkness had to be gained through the Worm Pact. The need to feed the worm may be avoided by taking a Worm by force but we haven’t seen that in action, may or may not be true, could just be a trick. D2 shows that Light can be taken by force. So it may be true for the Dark as well. So in our saving the Vex from the Darkness in 1, we enabled them to figure out a way to win and that is the Dark Future we see. So somehow they found a way to defeat the Dark and the Light, which is amazing since they couldn’t even beat just one before. Something [i]major[/i] has been set in motion, which is what Osiris was hinting at when he said a living Traveler changes things for good and bad. That’s why we see the black ships coming back. They caused the Collapse and then left. Leaving us and our enemies to duke it out. So this hints to the greater cosmic conflict of the Dark vs Light. Also with the mention of powers greater than the Light? Oh yeah, something [i]big[/i] is coming. I have high expectations for the Rasputin dlc. As the Warmind who controlled the solar defenses during the Collapse, he may be able to shed light on those black ships and what attacked us.