just a cool bit of lore

A bit of lore: https://i.imgur.com/tSujngo.png Gorgons are basically highly advanced quantum supercomputers that have the ability to use a special power within the area of the Vault of Glass. Since past, present, and future all meet in the Vault of Glass, the Gorgons have the ability to alter reality within this area. As the card says, they have the ability to determine what is real and what is not real. The Gorgons fearsome power comes from their ability to process a weaponized equation to determine that you no longer exist. When they process this equation, you are removed from existence. You don't die per se, but instead the Gorgons have made it so that you never existed in the first place. Something very similar happens with the Oracles, whose ability to predict the future and able to make alterations to reality. When you succumb to the Oracles, they have basically made revisions to reality so that you never came into being or that you died long before you ever made it to the Vault of Glass. This is why you must avoid the Gorgons at all cost and what Kabr (the guardian who lead the team that reported the existence and threat the Vault of Glass posed. He also created the armor the Titans receive and wear.) sought to prevent. Kabr destroyed a Gorgon, by himself, and took its shell. He then hammered the light into it and forged it into a fearsome relic to protect the guardians that would come after him. The relic uses the power of the Gorgons against its creators; it creates a bubble of stable space and time, essentially forcing the Vex to realize your existence and make it impossible to remove you from reality. This is why they have the ability to cleanse the powers of the oracles and the Templar; they negate their ability to remove you from existence. The reason we raid the Vault of Glass and why the Guardians throw their lives at it is because the Vex are essentially attempting to rewrite the Universe; they are attempting to throw themselves so far back into time that they can essentially control the big bang and implant themselves into the very fabric of reality. A computer virus of reality so to speak. The Vex are attempting to remake the universe in their image so that every law, creature, and even matter itself is created by their laws, desires, and wishes. They essentially wish to make themselves gods and why the Guardians enter the Vault of Glass to destroy the evil at its core. That and phat lewts. This is also why time travel is required to kill Atheon and why he also uses it against you. He is attempting to throw you so far into the future or past (desert is the past, jungle is the future. I may have that mixed up, but its all Venus, not Mars for desert) that you do not pose any threat. However by using the relic, which they are trying their hardest to separate you from, you are able to create a stable reality and kill the oracles, which have immense consequences that reverberate through time which cause enormous complications for Atheon. This is why when you defeat the oracles, Time's Vengeance activates and why Atheon takes so much damage during this time. Atheon is essentially a processor chip for the whole operation and handles all the calculations and processing power for the Vault of Glass, so when you kill him, you essentially shut down the ability of the Vex to operate in the Vault of Glass. You would think with all that immense processing power and technology far beyond anything of human comprehension that he would understand that walking off a cliff is a bad idea. On a side note, A (and I mean that in a singular sense) Gorgon can be killed, which is how you receive the Grimoire card by the way. Use all your supers and heavy ammo, it shouldn't be an issue. Same HP on both hard and normal. However once you kill one, the rest become invulnerable and more aggressive, which is why you can't just kill your way through the maze. Super Good Advice, which is an exotic weapon bounty, is actually created by a member of Kabr's failed expedition. A friend of Kabr who relayed his warning to the Guardians witnessed what had happened to Kabr and forever went paranoid and haunted by the experiences inside the Vault. For this reason, he could never be alone ever again and started creation on Super Good Advice. He implanted an AI chip into Super Good Advice so that it would essentially be a gun with a personality of its own, forever permitting him to never be alone. The Gatekeeper encounter is an attempt by the Vex to place the Relic in a place far beyond the reaches of the Guardians; the dark corners of time essentially. The Gatekeepers also prove to be the main line of defense for Atheon's realm. The Guardians must enter both the past and future to collect the Relic and merge the two relics into a single relic that exist in normal time. You will also note that during the last part of the fight where the entire team is in the middle with both relics, you will start seeing precursor minotaurs and descendant minotaurs. The Vex are attempting to stop you and are sending Vex from both the distant past and future to stop you. Once the Gatekeepers are dead, the threat to Atheon becomes very real, which forces him to come and deal with you. This grants you the opportunity to finish him off. The Precursors: "Those who delve deep into the Vault of Glass have seen time itself torn asunder. Awestruck Ghosts report encounters with ancient Vex, their casings built long before the age of humanity. It would be easy to assume these Vex are the ancestors of those we face today - but with the Vex it is never so simple." The Descendants: "Survivors of the Vault of Glass report sightings of ancient Vex - ancient in the sense that they have endured for eons. Convergent analysis from multiple Ghosts suggests that these Vex exist in our future. If the Vex exist in our future - or in a possible future - should we take this as evidence that their defeat is impractical or unattainable? The Guardian Vanguard is quick to point out that time travel remains a mystery, and that the continued existence of the Vex is not remotely a sure indication of humanity's extinction" Atheon: "To speak of Atheon is to accept certain limitations. We are ill-equipped to understand an entity that defies simple causality. Let us accept these limitations and proceed. Atheon waits in the Vault of Glass. Just as Atheon sidesteps 'past' and 'future', it is impossible to say whether Atheon created the Vault or the Vault created Atheon. Causal pathways converge on Atheon from every axis in the space-time bulk. Atheon has a function. We hazard that it regulates and oversees the Vex conflux system. What are these confluxes? How do they relate to the physical Vex network that has devoured so much of Mercury and Venus? We might guess that the Vex confluxes represent the extension of this network across space and time. Perhaps the Vex use closed timelike curves to solve unfathomable computations. Or the Vex may seek to transcend a physical substrate, and move their thoughts directly into the fundament of the universe. If physics is a set of rules that the cosmos uses to calculate itself, perhaps the Vex seek to worm their way into these calculations: to become a law of reality, inseparable from existence. A virus in the system. Perhaps Atheon was the centerpiece of this project, a command nexus that unified efforts across time. But we must accept that all of this is speculation." The Relic: Aegis - "These are the last words of Kabr, the Legionless: I have destroyed myself to do this. They have taken my Ghost. They are in my blood and brain. But now there is hope. I have made a wound in the Vault. I have pierced it and let in the Light. Bathe in it, and be cleansed. Look to it, and understand: From my own Light and from the thinking flesh of the Vex I made a shield. The shield is your deliverance. It will break the unbreakable. It will change your fate. Bind yourself to the shield. Bind yourself to me. And if you abandon your purpose, let the Vault consume you, as it consumed me. Now it is done. If I speak again, I am not Kabr"