V and VI voted against us as a weapon too! These two didn’t want Lodi or us.

V seems to not be interested in a weapon at all:

D O N O T C O W E R B E H I N D A W E A P O N

The Outers wanted to use the Conductor at this point for their goals, but both VII and VIII found this risky and dangerous and believed that they still need a weapon. All Outers voted against Lodi which is interesting, as they don’t seem to want to be forced to communicate through him or maybe they don’t want to communicate with the Inners. Or perhaps both. A line from VIII from this lore tab possibly hints at this:

inners will dislike this course of action = another will speak for us

“Another will” might be referring to the new Emissary, implying that the Outers, even those that want the weapon, don’t like the idea of “another will” involved. Lodi is also quite different from Orin (and Xur), at least for now, as he has retained his will.

VI voted against us as a weapon, but then went ahead and got Bael, which I believe was explained or hinted at, a little bit, in this lore. This is after their gambit with the Conductor failed, as it resulted in the death of III and then everything that went down on Kepler. VI ends this argument with:

I CLAIM ENOUGH CAUSALITY FOR THIS
IF OTHERS DO NOT ACT
I WILL

It shows that at this point VI took matters into his own hands which obviously resulted in Bael. VI is clearly using Bael as a puppet for his own goals; exploring what it’s like to be “free” in a way, bound to a vessel that makes the other Nine incapable of seeing what he’s doing. He also said:

NO ONE CAN AID MY FREEDOM BUT YOU CHOSEN WEAPON

Bael is just means to an end for VI, a way for him to escape. This is easier to do through Bael, instead of us, so we were not a suitable weapon for VI, as VI would’ve had to “share.” Bael is completely aligned with VI and would do anything for him, and also appears to be serving as a vessel for binding as well. VI basically has his own plans and his own goals, he is tired of waiting for others to do something and doesn’t want to rely on voting with 8 others all the time and sharing his plans and thoughts through an Emissary or with a shared weapon.

They’re bickering, though we’ve recently directly only heard from VII here and I talk about the lore tab that isn’t on Ishtar yet here. VII seems to be displeased and calls VI “arrogant” and “gambits for himself.”

V and VIII haven’t said anything new in Renegades and the last we know about their opinions is that they didn’t like where VI was going. VIII appeared to be fairly cautious and almost regretful, while V is simply looking for another way, which can be seen for example here (from the epic Desert Perpetual). I do wonder what they think about everything now. Hopefully they get to say something soon. I wonder if VIII may back up VII and if there will be more of a division between the Outer Orbits soon.

Yeah, we have no real confirmed pronouns for any other Nine. We kinda default to the generalised “they” or “it.” Really interested in VI being he/him. Might be Oryx, or might be depending on the vessel. So because Bael is he/him, so is VI. We’ll have to wait and see if this pattern continues.

But Theia is still only known about because this entity was part of the Solar system, so it’s very unclear if this sort of a thing exists anywhere else outside of Sol, even if they appear to have originally come from somewhere outside of Sol and got captured in the gravities of the forming planets (and the Sun). According to II, they weren’t able to find any other besides what was going on in this system, including the shambles that happened at the start. Although we definitely need more than one lore tab about Theia to make any judgements about that. It’s interesting also that another one failed to form in the asteroid belt.

I don’t think it’s ever been confirmed that the Vex have a chunk of the universe converted. Obviously we don’t know much about the wider universe in general, but whenever the Vex appear to exist elsewhere, they’re not described as ruling the universe in any way and it’s been that way since at least the time of the Witness’ species (who were aware of the Vex and used their technology, as best we can understand). Vex technology seems to be known to other species and others have encountered them or were aware of them (like the Hive and the Psions for example). So they’re around, but they don’t seem to really affect the world as much as you’d think, besides the occasional machine world here and there, which is honestly quite intriguing.

Speaking of machine worlds, the Nine do not die if something like this happens. We know this because of Mercury. The Nine related to it (I) is very much alive, around and speaking to us normally. Mercury is by far the most thoroughly Vex-converted planet we know about. The Nine associated with is also very aware of this but does not appear to be directly negatively affected. Probably the same reason for it not being affected by the planet being gone; its gravity is still around. That’s at least from what we know right now. There could be something going on here that hasn’t been revealed yet.

When it comes to Xur, honestly everything is up in the air. I understand grasping at straws and I support you.

For me personally it makes the most sense that what we’ve seen in that cutscene, and Lodi telling us about VI speaking to Xur which lead to him being changed, is essentially an explanation. Obviously there could be more to it than simply that, but to me, purely visually and how the whole thing was framed, it feels like Xur was somehow chosen as the first Emissary and through his exposure to VI, he was eventually changed into what he is now. This possibly lead to him becoming the first (?) of the Jovians.

Though a couple of old voice lines from Xur do seems to imply that the Jovians kinda … chose to move out into space and become changed. However, really old voice lines are not something I can take at face value at this point. There is zero chance that the story of Xur remained unchanged all these years. Maybe the scene in Renegades was a way to re-establish why he is the way he is.

But as of now, there really isn’t a direct confirmation either way. And it would be nice if they told us in a little more understandable way what’s up with Xur and the Jovians.

The Outer Orbits are definitely up to something, but they’re also arguing among each other and the others don’t seem to be in agreement with VI at all. We know for a fact VII (Uranus) isn’t and also V (Jupiter) had some opinions it didn’t share with VI as well. I believe there’s some minor information about VIII (Neptune) too. V and VI are the only ones who voted “no” for both Lodi as the Emissary and us as a weapon, but even then they still disagree on the methods. VI seems to be acting entirely alone. It’s unclear for how long has that been going on. Possibly since Oryx, but maybe even earlier. Since Oryx and the Taken for sure.

Many things to think about.

Yeah, the Nine were caught in Sol’s gravity during the formation of the system. They’re ancient, and they further got more connected to the system when it developed life.

No idea about what the Traveler could do about the Earth falling apart though. Maybe it could help, but unfortunately it’s not capable of doing stuff like terraforming right now. It’s a shame that the Traveler is not in a position to at least give it a try.

I do doubt that it could do something about this though, because it’s very specific and weird. I think we’ll have to figure out something new to fix Earth. It might have something to do with the first binding and IV telling Lodi to “bring III” to whatever is under Chicago.

It would play nicely into one of the voice lines from Xur:

Well, the biggest issue is getting too ahead of ourselves. We know more or less nothing about Eclipse energy right now, including where it comes from and how it’s being used exactly.

The assumption is that it has to be connected to the Nine somehow, but it’s entirely unclear if this is something they can just blast naturally or not. I sincerely doubt it, because of the nature of the Nine being that they’re in a higher dimension and in order for them to interact with us, they have to make themselves vulnerable. Is this power even something they can use directly, or is it only possible in this circumstance where one of them is bound to a person and has a vessel to transfer this power and then this power also has to somehow be put into a weapon and can’t be used directly? Like, maybe this is only usable when channeled through a huge machine and any other way is impossible to make it work. We have no idea.

The Nine are kinda like… They seem to have immense powers that are largely incomprehensible to us, but they also have severe limitations because they exist outside of our dimension. This is also why they’ve been trying to escape it for a long time because it’s kinda like what’s the point of having these powers when you’re contained to a higher dimension. So a lot of answers to “why hasn’t this just been used before?” are simply “The Nine can’t use this on their own and not without risking themselves.” And also, ofc, their motivation. They have zero reason to fight our enemies for us, and as a matter of fact, they probably had plans to direct us into the role of a weapon that we don’t fully understand. That’s actually the biggest thing in question since Edge of Fate: how much of our path has been directed from the background of a higher dimension by the Nine? I don’t think it’s all of it, but they’ve definitely been setting things up to suit themselves.

There is also an option that the Nine are vulnerable to Eclipse energy too. So exposing it to us earlier wouldn’t have been very wise. Hell, most other Nine don’t agree with VI at all, so maybe the others didn’t want us to know about Eclipse at all. That is, if Eclipse IS at all something that is exclusive to the Nine. There’s simply way too many unknowns right now.

I do think it’s meant to make us feel uncomfortable and a little exposed to the wider universe, including giving us insight into the fact that the universe is a big place with much more going on that we still don’t understand.

But the most important thing right now is to not jump to conclusions. It’s the start of a new saga, we likely won’t have answers to many of these questions for a while, and things are being set up for future plotlines. Most of the new stuff is about things we are just being exposed to for the first time so it’ll take a bit to understand them fully!