Exos and The Darkness

The Grimoire tells us:

Ask yourself: what threatened your Golden Age ancestors so much that they constructed the Exos to defend themselves?

Built for a long-forgotten struggle, Exos are self-aware war machines so advanced that nothing short of a Ghost can understand their inner functions. They remain ciphers, even to themselves: their origins and purpose lost to time. Whoever built the Exos fashioned them in humanity's image, gifting them with diversity of mind and body. Many of the City's Exo citizens live and work alongside their organic brethren. But others fight again, re-forged in the Light of the Traveler to serve as Guardians.

They came from the wild lands, gathering in secret enclaves, slipping through the howling ruins of shattered cities, hoping to find the coast, find a ship, pick up the trail of an impossible dream. From the deep black came the Awoken, their eyes haunted. Exos marched in the refugee columns, cloaked in moss and shattered memories. And among them came the Ghosts, beginning their search. It was a time of vast suffering and terrible evil. But there was one hope: the promise of a refuge beneath the Traveler.

As I said to TTL Demag0gue in the comments of my latest fanfics, The Exo:

They are called weapons of war, but I don’t think they are… or at least they aren’t in the sense that a tank or a fighter jet are weapons of war. You wouldn’t take the time to make individualized warbots with sentience if all they were for was to fight an enemy. You certainly wouldn’t make them as fragile as they are. In game Exos get no health bonus that we’re aware of. If they were true weapons of war they’d also have integrated weapons and armor plating and so on, which they apparently don’t.

But a thought occurred to me today... Aside from Hive mace landing craft and general decay, we haven't seen much actual destruction in Destiny so far. No signs of a devastating war that wiped out the majority of Humanity. On the Moon old Human accelerators and drilling platforms are still operational. We've seen plenty of concept art of relatively intact cities on Mars and Venus. In The Tower, one of the Exos mentions she was there when the Fallen burned London. London wasn't destroyed by The Darkness? Maybe the reason our Golden Age ancestors built self-aware war machines with a diversity of mind and body and the reason our cities and facilities seem largely intact are one and the same?

Could The Darkness primarily have used chemical or biological weapons to wipe out humanity prompting us to respond and fight back with immune versions of ourselves in the form of Exos?

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In The Tower, one of the Exos mentions she was there when the Fallen burned London. London wasn't destroyed by The Darkness?

Could The Darkness primarily have used chemical or biological weapons to wipe out humanity prompting us to respond and fight back with immune versions of ourselves in the form of Exos?

I think The Darkness is an enabling force that strengthens and guides The Four Races of The Apocalypse, using them to physically destroy the allies of The Traveler. I think The Darkness doesn't act against humanity directly, but as a puppet master, directing others to do its work.

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Ask yourself: what threatened your Golden Age ancestors so much that they constructed the Exos to defend themselves?

I like this line so damn much. :D

But a thought occurred to me today... Aside from Hive mace landing craft and general decay, we haven't seen much actual destruction in Destiny so far. No signs of a devastating war that wiped out the majority of Humanity. On the Moon old Human accelerators and drilling platforms are still operational. We've seen plenty of concept art of relatively intact cities on Mars and Venus. In The Tower, one of the Exos mentions she was there when the Fallen burned London. London wasn't destroyed by The Darkness? Maybe the reason our Golden Age ancestors built self-aware war machines with a diversity of mind and body and the reason our cities and facilities seem largely intact are one and the same?

Could The Darkness primarily have used chemical or biological weapons to wipe out humanity prompting us to respond and fight back with immune versions of ourselves in the form of Exos?

That's a very good point. Very intriguing.

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Could The Darkness primarily have used chemical or biological weapons to wipe out humanity prompting us to respond and fight back with immune versions of ourselves in the form of Exos?

I have long thought of the Exos as being similar to the ABC Warriors.

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Exos don't eat, they don't sleep, they can use the same weapons and gear as humans without modification. They are smart enough to act on their own for extended periods. Logistically that makes them very easy to support with a high operational tempo.

Exo's are a weapon for the long haul. A supplement to the limited number of humans you could conceivably throw at an enemy. Look at World War 1, there is a finite number of military age bodies a country can throw into war before it pretty much ceases to be. Sure, you can augment this with better guns, strategic weapons and equipment, but as soon as the casualty rate exceeds your a birth rate then you are racing to the bottom. Mass producing exos bends the curve back up.

Making them individuals, self aware units with a broad spectrum of design features is a risk. Self aware units are more effective, more flexible, but the risk of cybernetic revolt increases. By changing up the design you limit how many could be subverted by a weakness in any one specific design or the chance of revolt in a single model group. Given the level of flexible production systems in the golden age the individual customization was probably not as difficult as it would be today.

So yes, they are not much better physically then a human, but that isn't the problem they are meant to solve. We have tanks, planes, walkers and such to fight with. We need people to fight in them, to man the walls, to fill in the gaps while we train the next generation to fight, a generation that knows only war. Exos, supremely flexible replacements for any human in any role, fit that bill perfectly.

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True, except I imagine it goes further. Even if you needed to fill the gaps with self aware robots why would you give them a diversity of mind and body? Why would you make them, as far as we can tell, fully male and female? A few models for specialized roles? Sure. But a diversity of mind and body says to me that we were either mass producing full AIs only to send them into war (which seem unethical) or we were turning people, voluntarily or not, into soldiers. (Which might have its own problems)

Or, could we during our Golden Age have had a power to revive the dead similar to but no equal to a Ghost's?

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The name "Exo" makes me think of "exo-suit" or "exo-skeleton" so I've been wondering if they're mechanical bodies with human minds in them. Maybe used during the whole colonization/terraforming/war bits.

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Yep. I think the fact that they are playable implies a full mind of some kind in there.

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Yep. I think the fact that they are playable implies a full mind of some kind in there.

That's effectively my theory, as well. We know from the Grimoire that the Awoken were once humans that were changed by whatever happened to the Traveler. We also know that Ghosts are used to find and preserve the souls of the Guardians they are bonded to. It's not a huge leap from there to surmise that the Exos were created from the souls of humans that were transferred into mechanical bodies, probably using a technology similar to what the Ghosts use to revive fallen Guardians. If that's the case, that would explain the need for gender types. We've seen nongendered bots posted in various places around the Tower -- one even serves as the Vanguard Quartermaster -- so we know there's not necessarily a need to push all mechanical beings into a specific gender. The only reason I can think of to divide Exos into distinctly male and female forms is because there's a living, thinking person inside there, one that was probably human and, possibly more importantly, one with a soul. I suspect spirituality, at least in limited terms, is going to be an important part of Destiny's lore.

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Agreed.

And part of the Lore for all races, not just Humans. The Fallen certainly have souls. Staten talked about that back at GDC2013. We see them most times we get a headshot. Hive seem to know how to kill a soul as judged by us finding a Guardian dead on the Moon without even any light left. I would almost bet money that the Vex's glow-y bits in their stomachs are their organic pieces which hold their souls. The Cabal strike me as standard lifeforms (similar to Humans in many ways) who happen to be big and have an aggressive expansionist military. And souls.

I think that maybe there's even a slight chance that planets have souls of sorts and The Traveler's restoration of our solar system wasn't so different from a Ghost rebuilding us... Not a theory I can lend much support to at this time but it seems vaguely plausible...

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I have no doubt Exo's are AI's, perhaps not at the level of a Warmind but at human levels at minimum. If the FWC leader is to be believed Exo's can retain memories from the Golden Age. It is possible they are uploaded human minds, but that doesn't seem to fit with the information we have currently. The are called out as built for war, but have suffered numerous reboots and corrupted sectors since the golden age and no longer retain any of it's secrets.

On a non fluff note, Bungie stated that Exos are inspired by the Master Chief, undead and the Terminator. This gives them an air of ruthlessness and a cold hard edge of a weapon primed and sent to battle. That they have diversity of mind and body could just be diversity of models and options. Are their not customized guns in the world right now that have a diversity of appearance and capability? Are they not weapons like the Chief or the Terminator? Exo's working are a mystery, and there may be an unknown reason for all this other then to house the souls of the dead. Wouldn't that make the Ghost's resurrection of Exos double redundant?

I agree there are ethical issues in creating self aware war machines, but we already have Warminds and the patrol bots in the City. It is not inconceivable that in their desperate days the Golden Age Humans forged the Exo because they felt they had no other choice. Escape failed, victory eluded them, only grinding attrition remained.

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Could The Darkness primarily have used chemical or biological weapons to wipe out humanity prompting us to respond and fight back with immune versions of ourselves in the form of Exos?

I bet it used 7 giant rings to blanket our galaxy with a pulse which destroyed anything with sufficient mass and cognitive capability to sustain ~~The Flood~~ the Traveler.

I was thinking something along those lines myself. Seems likely to me that the Exos are vessels for minds/souls which were previously human, and placed in those bodies for protection, or simply to extend their lives.

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I was thinking something along those lines myself. Seems likely to me that the Exos are vessels for minds/souls which were previously human, and placed in those bodies for protection, or simply to extend their lives.

Sounds a lot like the Prometheans from Halo 4. But I like the idea that the Exo were partially wiped, maybe with only vestigial memories left. Otherwise, why would Ghosts resurrect them if they were only husks? There's got to be something left of long-dead warriors in them for the Ghosts to find them of use as Guardians.

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Exos and The Darkness (Destiny)