So I have a theory that in future Destiny releases, we will at some point have Rasputin as an enemy (see link to post if interested) https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/184878146/0/0 This post isn’t necessarily about that, but could easily tie to it. TL;DR [spoiler]Rasputin took control of the Exos from Clovis Bray after he realized via the vision machine that all timelines lead to darkness, and he used the Exo’s as his army[/spoiler] I stumbled across an old vanilla card for the Buried City story mission, which says (my addition in parenthesis): “I wish I could walk the halls of Clovis Bray (the facility on Mars, named after the man who founded it). [i]Losing[/i] the Exos to Rasputin is unfortunate, but we still have access to so much we’d thought we lost. This is the dawn of a new era for us” – Master Rahool (the bitch) Losing the Exos to Rasputin is unfortunate?? What does that statement mean? Here is what I think happened. Clovis Bray was involved in both the creation of the Exos and the warminds. Cayde’s journal documents his birth as an Exo through Clovis Bray. The card Ghost Fragment: The Golden Age, is card showing a conversation between what I believe to be Clovis Bray and his son, Clovis Bray II, in which they enter a warmind bunker (grey building with diamond walls, shapes like in Rasputins bunker) and he is having his son set the passwordw for the access codes to the bunker. Based on the Ishtar Collective’s research into the vex on the venus, and ultimately requiring them to use a warmind to proxy remote mechanical bodies to keep their human bodies safely away from the vex, I believe Clovis Bray used the warminds to process the deep stone crypt routine that gave Exos their consciousness. If it required a warmind level of processing for remote proxy of human mind into a machine body, it is reasonable it took a similar level of processing to run deep stone crypt and actually grant consciousness to a mechanical body. All I am basically saying here is that it looks like Clovis Bray developed the warminds, then used the warminds to help develop the Exos. If you read about the Exos (recommend Ghost Fragment: Exo), you see conflicting reasons on why the Exos exist. On one hand, they are war machines, built to fight. On the other hand, they think someone “wanted to live forever”. Those are two different purposes. And I think it is truly both. Clovis Bray lived in the height of the golden age. No one was worried about a coming darkness, or even aware of it. I think Clovis Bray developed the Exo program originally to “live forever”. Put a human mind in a machine body and live forever. But something else happened. Rasputin took over. After Maya Sundaresh finished her Vex research (which was a precursor to the Exo technology), she started a new project, the Vision Machine. The device anyone who is in the FWC should be familiar with, which is a device that allows people who enter it to see alternate timelines. If you read the Vex 5 card, under record 03, you see Maya talking about her research and her “supervisory warmind”. She even states, the purpose of the research is to gather “intelligence”. People are being put in the machine to see alternate timelines. The warmind even creates some drugs for the people to use to help them survive the machine, but it isn’t working. So what would the warmind have learned from this Vision Machine? 1. Everyone who entered it saw a timeline in which the darkness won. The specifics of the vision maybe different, but in some form, the darkness always won. 2. The human mind was too fragile for the machine and subjects either died or suffered mental trauma/madness. Now read Ghost Fragment: Old Russia 3. The exo (and other machines) are now reporting to Rasputin. General Chen is flying around a cosmodrome colony ship while Rasputin is in the process of putting his orbital weapons in place preparing for…something. As the card says, the traveler showed up out of nowhere, what if something else does again? And what if next time whatever shows up isn’t as nice? Well, based on the vision machine research, Rasputin knows whatever is coming next isn’t nice. Bad days are ahead, and he’s gearing up for battle. I’m paraphrasing the card (Russia 3), but you can read the whole thing: “You expect violence?” Malahayati says (an Exo). “Something beyond our capability to preempt or contain?” “Isn’t that what we do Mala?” she says (she= General Chen, human). “Why we have soldiers? Why we made you? Expectation.” So let me tie it all together. Clovis Bray created the warminds. He then used the warminds to create the Exos. However, the warminds learned through the vision machine that all timelines are leading to darkness. So the warminds assume control of the Exos, and repurposes them for war. This is the “losing the exos to Rasputin” that Rahool is talking about. It doesn’t sound like this is something that humans voluntarily gave to Rasputin, it is something he took. I believe Rasputin’s repurposing of the Exos is the likely cause of the wipes that erases their memories (the number after their name). I don’t think it coincidence that Lakshmi, the leader of the FWC, now owner of the vision machine is the exo with the fewest known wipes (Lakshmi-2). I would be willing to bet she is the Exo Rasputin choose to repurpose first to help run the vision machine with Exos (instead of humans who couldn’t handle it) to help increase the success of his timeline research. In the end, it is almost a spin on the classic “Frankenstein”. Man betrayed by his own creation. Rasputin took the Exos for his own purpose. Thankfully the one thing the warmind can’t figure out is the traveler’s light or else he’d be able to control exo guardians. Who knows what Rasputin is going to do with this in the future….