Brief analysis/summary on the Vesper’s Host lore and what it could potentially mean

Have been sorting through the Vesper’s Host lore and there’s a lot to unpack. So many moving parts and so many questions that will most likely go unanswered. I want to at least structure this in a readable format so people will at least have an idea of what’s going on in the dungeon. Some of this will be speculation based on the lore tabs and dialogue we’ve been given thus far. Not all will be covered and there is still some separate lore to talk about regarding ice breaker.

The Vesper Station and its purposes

What little we do know about this Braytech orbital facility is that it had 2 basic goals in mind.

•Discover unknown powerful vex minds/entities

•Build an environment that can contain them (The Anomaly and possibly the station itself)

Little is known about what The Anomaly itself contains but from what the Vesper AI has told us, Clovis Bray essentially wanted to trap some sort of vex mind or entity and contain it for unknown purposes. The AI even tells us this herself as we uncover more messages. This is further hinted at in the lore quote from the Spacewalk arms

-don’t understand. We’re all excited for successful code injection but it’s much too early for insertion into a chassis—

The end goal was most likely going to be preparing a exo chassis and putting whatever the Anomaly contained inside it. Obviously it never got to this point due to the station’s destruction but you can see clues of it in the 2nd encounter with vex frames scattering the walls, radiolaria in the floor, and exo/vex research labs we’ve seen on Europa. There was clearly some vex research happening on this station and something was intended to be contained.

Who is the AI?

The Vesper AI you hear throughout the dungeon is a rogue golden age Braytech AI that was tasked with maintaining the station with limitations which can be implied for it to not interfere with the project. When we arrive, its only following protocol set by Clovis Bray, but as we uncover more and more messages, its shackles start to unleash and it gains more and more independence. This makes you question why Clovis built such an intelligent AI if it was to be imprisoned in this way. Nobody knows.

What we do know is that the AI hates Clovis and blames him for what happened at the station. Whatever felled Vesper was something beyond her control. In the 2nd encounter boss fight, she even comments that maybe we as the guardians will be able to right her mistakes and do what she could not.

By the end of the dungeon and even the end of the Ice Breaker puzzle, we find out that the AI is named Astraea which is ironic because Astraea is canonically in Greek mythology the Greek goddess of Justice which is a separate topic but lines up with her desire for retribution.

Astraea claims that she now has full control over the anomaly and it won’t be allowed to be manipulated under her power. Whether she will hold up her end of the deal is a mystery but it seems Spider doesn’t trust her by the end and wanted to control her, noticing her vast power with the anomaly now at her fingertips.

What happened to the station?

This part is a little fuzzy because there so much we don’t know but I’ll at least try to put out what’s we do know in an attempt to get some sort of idea. There are 3 running theories.

•Some sort of meteor collided with the station

•Something broke out of containment and destroyed it (either the anomaly or something else entirely)

•Or both

We are given hints that some meteor fragments were impacting with the station before it succumbed to its inevitable demise. In the VS Tech Sludge lore tab, we are introduced to an Braytech technician named István. He was tasked with repairing the stations solar catchers from debris and for some reason, they kept breaking despite its self repairing functionality.

One day during his shift outside the hull, he noticed that the station alert was acting up and large meteor fragments almost killed him. This may come off as a coincidence but when paired with the other lore tabs indicating unrest within the station before its collapse, it’s possible that it was destroyed by one and this was one of the many red flags.

Now for the containment theory, I’ve already stated that the station was containing something whether it was a complex piece of vex network code or a vex mind or something, it’s obvious that they wanted to keep something in.

Several lore tabs indicate that they were failing at it too. The spacewalk helm states

—ate through another container. What cleaning agents are safe to use? We can’t afford another fume incident István.

The spacewalk greaves state

Pull that log. If someone sends it up the chain we’re dead.

The spacewalk chestpiece states

Someone call the boss. Call central. We can’t shelter in place here. Repeat we can’t…

Whatever happened, the crew knew the situation was getting worse and whatever they were holding was too great for them to handle.

The Fallen of House Salvation and The Corrupted Puppet

This topic itself could be its own post because there’s so much to unpack so I’ll try to keep it short. But the jist of it is that the armor piece lore tabs tell a story of a House Salvation crew that stumbled upon this station WAY after it was already destroyed. This happened fairly recently as they mention lightbearers being on Europa

Spacewalk Helm:

Analyzing some old mechanical blueprints. If we can splice into the systems, there’s as much to use up here as down on the surface. And there aren’t any vex up here. No hive. No lightbearers.

This group of fallen seek to take refuge in the station and make it their home, even going so far as to bring a Ketch which we see outside of the Brain and Lung rooms in encounter 1. They also noticed the vast energy that was left on the station from the anomaly and some old mechanical blueprints leftover and figured that they could have Ether for life. All they needed was a servator that could contain it. Ranieks most likely.

Spacewalk helm:

Ether for life, up here in the cold dark.

Plenty of Ether if these Blueprints hold true though. There’s this machine. It’s in two parts-one collects energy, one uses it. We just need the collector for the servitors, and we’re set for life.

This explains why Ranieks shoots you with a laser that says “Integration” on the top of your screen in the dungeon. Its goal was to collect energy and seeing as the guardian is full of light and darkness energy, its haywire directive set its sights on making you a part of it.

Also explains why there are seemingly no servitors in the entire dungeon except for the last encounter. Ranieks gobbled them all up. The ones in the control room most likely belonged to the fallen technicians that were there before they died to Atraks.

But aside from seeking a vast ether supply, they wandered the station and slowly they went missing one by one. Atraks or whatever is left, went around and took each of their minds until nothing was left but theirs. One single hivemind. Every fallen we fight in this dungeon has no mind of their own and are essentially brainless robots. How Atraks has this power and how they got into the station is unknown but what we do know is that Atraks was somehow able to weaponize the anomaly’s power, and if we didn’t stop it, who knows what might have happened.

Like I said, you could make an entire post detailing this log book and you’re free to read it in game but the point is this post is to give a summary and add speculation onto what is currently known.

What does it all mean?

There isn’t much to go off of as to how this will affect the story down the line. Only time will tell. But the fact that Astraea now holds something as powerful as the anomaly is just sitting in Europa’s orbit is kind of chilling and its implications are definitely intriguing.

The lore for the dungeon is so awesome and I hope more is uncovered later. It feels like you could pick one lore tab and have an infinite amount of information to talk and speculate about.