The top of Destiny 2’s Episode: Echoes Act 2 lastly reveals the identification of the Conductor, a brand new menace on Nessus who has taken management of the Vex on the planetoid for spooky and nefarious causes. The neighborhood has lengthy suspected precisely who the Conductor is likely to be, and with the cutscene that performed on the finish of this week’s story mission, we’ve our affirmation.
Spoilers for the Echoes Act 2 story mission to observe, so cease studying now in the event you nonetheless have not run by the mission.
As was a fairly straightforward guess at this level, this week’s cutscene revealed that sure, the Conductor is definitely Maya Sundaresh. It is a character who has been part of Destiny 2 lore for a lengthy time, though she has by no means really appeared on-screen in any actual capability till now. However Maya has been casting a shadow over Destiny 2 for the reason that vanilla days, and was a giant a part of a number of the greatest authentic Destiny lore from the sport’s very begin. Her look is a fairly large deal.
So Who Is Maya Sundaresh, Anyway?
Because the radio transmission accessible within the HELM this week notes, Sundaresh was a scientist manner again within the Golden Age, earlier than the Witness confirmed up with its fleet and triggered the Collapse that led to Destiny 2 as we all know it now. She was part of the scientific group generally known as the Ishtar Collective, which was positioned on Venus and first found the Vex there.
The primary little bit of lore that launched Sundaresh, in addition to her spouse, Chioma Esi, additionally launched the Vex. The unique Destiny Grimoire card about each topics launched Sundaresh’s analysis staff, and the way their examine of a Vex assemble led to them discovering it was simulating them finding out the Vex assemble. Sundaresh and her staff found that the simulation was so good, it was functionally an identical to actuality, and the simulations had been functionally an identical to the researchers. Following down that path of logic, the staff realized that they may very well be simulations–that the simulations had been so complicated and real looking that it was totally attainable that although they believed themselves actual, they had been really a part of the Vex simulation. Additionally they realized that the Vex may do something they wished to their simulations, together with torturing them endlessly simply to review what may occur.
The staff determined to contact the AI Warmind, Rasputin, one thing too complicated for the Vex to simulate, to find out in the event that they had been actual or not–and if not, to ask it to rescue them from the simulation. In the tip, Sundaresh and her staff pulled greater than 200 copies of themselves out of the Vex assemble. After being free of the Vex, nonetheless, all of the simulated copies of the researchers voted to undertake a courageous however dangerous mission: to discover the Vex info community. Later, it got here to gentle that almost all or all the copies had been recaptured by the Vex.
The Sundaresh Copies
No person actually is aware of what occurred to all these authentic Sundaresh copies that had been recaptured by the Vex–most or all of them had been in all probability destroyed. However we all know for positive the Vex made an entire lot extra, and ultimately discovered a minimum of one which was keen to serve them.
We have seen proof of the Sundaresh copies at work on the planet in a few locations. First, there’s the Inverted Spire Strike, the place a Psion from the Cabal Purple Legion makes an attempt to take management of the Vex community. On the finish of the mission, when the Psion, Kargan, is useless, Ghost talks about information logs wherein Kargen was attempting to assemble Vex details about Otzot, one other Psion Flayer, and a particular gadget that the Psions used to attempt to see the long run. Kargen’s makes an attempt had been blocked by one other consumer, MSund12–a Maya Sundaresh copy.
Billionaire industrialist Clovis Bray additionally employed Sundaresh to help his analysis staff on Europa in his try and create Exos, however he found later that there was no file that the true Sundaresh had ever labored for him, and different folks could not bear in mind ever seeing her on Europa although Clovis was positive he had labored together with her. It appears very possible that Clovis by no means really labored with Sundaresh in any respect, however was really being manipulated by the equipment maintaining him alive by one of many copies.
Clovis used Vex expertise, together with Radiolaria, to create his Exos, discovering solely too late that the Vex–likely with the Sundaresh copy’s help–had infiltrated every thing within the Europa facility. That included the machines meant to offer Clovis’ failing physique with donor organs. Throughout one process, the Sundaresh copy revealed herself through the use of the automated surgical procedure robotic to vivisect Clovis whereas he was nonetheless alive, after which wake him up in the course of the process. Sundaresh and the Vex wished info on Readability, the Darkness statue Clovis was utilizing in his creation of labor Exo our bodies, and the Vex attacked the Europa facility in an try and get it. The Sundaresh copy appeared to have infiltrated even into Clovis’s thoughts, almost taking up his consciousness simply earlier than he was uploaded into an Exo physique.
Sundaresh’s identify has often come up in different circumstances in relation to the Vex and their plans, however we do not know what they have been as much as prior to now. We do have some concept of what the true Sundaresh was doing, although.
Cayde And The Veil
As a famed researcher, Sundaresh took half in different endeavors exterior of Vex analysis. She would later examine the Ahamkara, using the unique Exo model of Cayde-6 as a bodyguard. Earlier than the Europa occasions, she additionally labored with Clovis Bray on an AI venture that mixed Vex and Warmind expertise to create Soteria, the AI that is the main focus of the Spire of the Watcher dungeon. And she or he helped develop the future-seeing gadget that led to the formation of the Future Battle Cult.
Maya, Chioma, and their researcher mates had been aboard a colony ship, the Exodus Indigo, in the course of the Collapse, however managed to keep away from being destroyed when the ship fled to Neptune. There, they waited out the apocalypse that ravaged the remainder of the photo voltaic system. The survivors created the town of Neomuna and regarded Sundaresh to be their founder, and ultimately, the Ishtar researchers there found a Darkness…factor, generally known as the Veil.
The Veil killed or negatively affected the primary folks to return into contact with it, and that included fully wiping the minds of all of the Exos in that first group. Regardless of the horror, Sundaresh heard the Veil speaking together with her and believed it was the Neptune survivors’ “salvation.” Learning it grew to become an obsession. Sundaresh and Chioma created an interface that may permit folks to make contact with the Veil to be able to examine and perceive it–a gadget that may ultimately grow to be Neomuna’s Cloud Ark system.
However these early experiments proved deadly, killing any regular people linked to the Veil. Chioma wished to cease the experiments, however Sundaresh continued anyway, utilizing the mind useless Exos to attempt a brand new manner of understanding the Veil. In the method, Sundaresh additionally created a duplicate of her personal thoughts and uploaded it into one of many useless Exo take a look at subjects–a girl named Lakshmi-2–and the experiment triggered Lakshmi-2 to reawaken, now a minimum of a partial copy of Sundaresh with a few of her reminiscences.
Chioma would ultimately uncover Sundaresh useless within the “conductor” chair that was a part of their equipment for speaking with the Veil. She did not know precisely what occurred to Sundaresh, however for the sake of Neomuna, she lined up how obsessive and unethical Sundaresh had grow to be. The ins and outs of what occurred to Lakshmi-2 Exo aren’t fully identified, however she should have left Neomuna in some unspecified time in the future, residing by the Darkish Age on Earth to ultimately grow to be the chief of the Future Battle Cult; she was later killed in the course of the occasions of the Season of the Splicer.
The Conductor
That brings us to now. As defined within the radio transmission on the finish of Echoes Act 2, the individual answerable for the Vex on Nessus is Maya Sundaresh. The Conductor model is both one of many copies that survived within the Vex community, a mix of all copies, or probably even the unique Sundaresh who appeared to have died on Neptune, having by some means uploaded herself to the Vex community. It additionally appears to be like like she’s utilizing both the unique Lakshmi-2 Exo physique from Earth or a duplicate of it, however both manner, that might have implications for what is going on on on this new model of Maya Sundaresh.
There was a interval when Sundaresh was an excellent individual and a superb scientist, however the many variations of her have been twisted by quite a lot of completely different terrible issues, like her time spent with and dealing for the Vex, and getting her thoughts messed with by the psychic emanations of the Veil. The cutscene from the tip of Act 2 provides a way of this–the Conductor says she needs to make use of the Vex Radiolaria she controls to usher in a brand new Golden Age for humanity, nevertheless it positive seems like she means to assimilate everybody into her community and management them to be able to do it. Sundaresh needs to create a superbly peaceable and affluent world wherein everyone seems to be beneath her management.
How that shakes out in Act 3 goes to be enjoyable to see, particularly due to a number of hints at issues we have seen thus far. When Saint-14 interacted with the Conductor, she was capable of place doubts in his thoughts and compelled him to his knees from a distance, possible as a result of Exos had been all created utilizing each a mix of the Darkness and Vex Radiolaria, permitting her to take management of it to a point. So it may not simply be Vex machines that may come beneath the Conductor’s management, however Exos as effectively, and that might have some main implications for the place the story is headed sooner or later.
In the meantime, although, Destiny 2 is lastly paying off all these Maya Sundaresh references and lore entries which were floating round for 10 years, and that is fairly thrilling.