#I have thoughts about Neomuna and the campaign but I'm too tired to write them down yet

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

I thought it was pretty clear from the outset in the campaign that no one, Guardian or Neomuni, knows exactly what the Veil is or how it does what it does. I didn't get the impression at all that everyone knew what it was but just didn't feel like explaining it. Neomuna folk clearly know how to tap its energies to some degree, but Guardians have done that with the Traveler for centuries and still know next to nothing about it.

I don't think the Veil was studied at all during the Golden Age, and the reason why starts with an "R" and ends with a warsat strike. If the Veil is the "[H]" the Warmind Rasputin directs Soteria to get to safety, and I think it is, his notation suggests he considered it a paracausal object on the same tier as the Traveler, which he called "[O]". However he also talks like it's a thing, not a being, and he was well aware the Traveler was a being. So he thought the Veil was a paracausal artifact of Traveler-type power, but not a being with will or intent. And that would be enough for him to rule that no one was going to study it any further. Rasputin had no qualms about putting objects he deemed sufficient potential threats in (sometimes literal) boxes to keep anyone from playing around with them. He completely sequestered the Anomaly antenna on the Moon, for instance - no access for research, no experiments, no study beyond constant monitoring. He very much took a "better safe than sorry" approach with paracausal power. He would have locked the Veil up and thrown away the key - or planned to use it himself. When he tells Soteria to get it somewhere safe, he does so right after detecting paracausal anomalies that seem to be eliminating inhabited planets. He's thinking about it as a last-ditch weapon; for all he knows, those anomalies might even be other Travelers. Unfortunately it gets "lost" and for whatever reason (maybe the Veil's own shielding?) he can't recover it.

Although the Veil probably reached Neptune via Soteria's launch, the Ishtar Collective wasn't out there yet. Maya Sundaresh ended up in Neomuna, but assuming the writers haven't just decided to retcon the Spire of the Watchers lore already (I wouldn't put it past them), at the time of that launch she was still around to yell at Clovis about Pillorying Soteria. In the Winterbite lore about the IC aboard the Exodus Indigo proper, they're fleeing something nasty - it sounds like beasts of the Collapse - and run towards a Vex distress signal. If the Veil were onboard a ship that fell into Neptune, and the Vex tried to get at it and got messed up by the Veil, that would account for the distress signal, and account for how the Indigo found the old ship with presumably the Veil and maybe some very sad and confused Exos.

(Side note: this means my old theory about the colony ship founding Neomuna being the one Rasputin dispatched with a hold full of SIVA to Planet X might still pan out; the speaker in that loretab could be the Exodus Indigo.)

So most of the Ishtar Collective's study and later use of the Veil likely happened after the Collapse. It probably took them a while to figure out how to hide the city with it, which leaves time for Savathun to have been protecting it as well. If she followed the IC back to Neptune and observed the Veil (side note - was it Sav's own forces attacking the Indigo? that weird "exotic matter spike" sounds like something she'd build) she might have thought it wise to have an ace up her sleeve one day in case she decided to defy the Witness. So she hid the Veil and the lifesigns on the planet until the Traveler kicked everyone out of the system, and by the time the Fleet returned Neomuna had figured out how to hide itself. That accounts for her worm's statement that she deceived the Witness to protect the Traveler for her own ends: she denied it a tool it could have used to overcome the Traveler in order to perhaps one day use it herself.

Once on Neptune it seems like the IC managed to tap and crudely manipulate the Veil's energies, but that's all, and there hasn't been much work on it since. Nimbus knows the Veil's rough location and how important it is, but they aren't even sure how to get to where it itself is kept. When you get into the actual facility there's no sign anyone's been in there since the early days of the City's founding. Even the old Ishtar Collective logo is still around. So there's a very good chance no one in Neomuna knows much more than whatever the IC team was able to work out with a few decades of study, and after that the Veil was woven so tightly into the city's protection that nobody wanted to risk messing with it anymore. Neomuna's plan for Pyramid Fleet defense was for everyone to go into the Veil-maintained CloudArk, suggesting they thought this would keep the Fleet from noticing them. Staying safe from the Fleet would be the number one top priority of the city's founders, since they had no idea when it might return. So if the Veil was their main source of safety, no one was tampering with the Veil.

We should also consider the Veil itself might have had some say in all this. Red thought it wasn't a person, but an artifact tied into a universal web of consciousness must have SOME awareness, at least of the emotions around it. Everyone in Neomuna wants to be safe, and it's spent centuries being thought of as the city's defense. That must have made an imprint on it by now. Maybe even the unified will of all those citizens in a shared mindspace, all focusing on wanting to help us, shaped its emergence. I think we could see Strand because on some level the Veil knew it was under attack and was trying to empower us to defend it. That's why Strand breaches show up right where and when we need them to, and why they didn't before - up until now secrecy plus the Cloud Striders were enough, but now that Neomuna's cover is blown it needs more powerful defenses. The Veil deliberately pulls the weave closer to material awareness, already empowered by the thinning of the line between digital and real created by the VexNet/Neomuna cyberspace, just close enough for us to grasp those first threads.

Ok so I’m gonna give my Take(tm) about Lightfall here. Where the entire internet can roast me I guess.

Full spoilers.

Disclaimers: it’s all my opinion, is clearly not very close to the opinion of various Big Destiny Content Creators, so I’m probably wrong. I could also be giving the team too much credit by inferring some things, sue me I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt and say some of it was intentional.

Listen, was Lightfall flawed? Absolutely, I will not try to say it was perfect or even that some of its plot points were done well.

But…

Look, I can’t help but think about people asking questions that I feel like have answers in either the story itself or the past lore.

The most… detestable thread (haha strand joke) I wanna pull at is the Veil. Now, yes, the fact that everyone seems to know what it is without expounding on it is deeply frustrating. I feel like not enough was said in the story itself. But. We do get some answers. The Black Heart from D1 is a failed copy of it, which likely points to the veil equating to The Pale Heart mentioned at the end of Witch Queen. That by itself isn’t much, but it is a start. Additionally it very much feels like a question intentionally left not fully answered.

Next, the Radial Mast, much like the Veil is something of a MacGuffin, but I think there are drops of info given. One, Ghost detects a strong Light signature when we enter the Typhon Imperator, yet it radiates the orange energy we associate with Darkness in the mission where Rohan dies. I think this points to a blending of the two, which was needed to “convince” the Veil to connect to the Traveler. Which leads to the Witness.

Much like Nimbus, the Witness is one of the few unequivocally good things about the expansion, in my opinion. The Witness is subtle, and I think influences things in a way not really appreciated. Firstly, the Witness remains confident that their plan will succeed despite clearly looking down on Calus’ lack of progress. This entity is omnipresent, powerful to an extent we haven’t really seen, and has constantly possessed our ghosts for various reasons. So I personally believe that most of the plan as we see it was a ploy. That said I think the Radial Mask could have worked but that it wasn’t load bearing towards the Witness’s plans.

We see the Witness egging Calus on, only resorting to threats what their motives are questioned. They have a deep tunnel vision as to achieving whatever it wants—something characters are trying to investigate, another question being gradually answered. And we know it doesn’t care about its Disciples. Eramis is just a tool, and Salvation is quickly made into more obedient soldiers. Rhulk was left to rot in a losing turf war in Savathun’s Throne World. Calus is no different. The Radial Mast was a focused of Dark and Light—which I believe is proved by the twin energy signatures. And so when it’s destroyed, the Witness instead has Calus go down there himself, likely aware that the Guardian would head down there as well. What does this lead to? Dark and Light unleashed in great quantities during the final battle. Which allows the Witness to possess the Ghost and establish the connection.

I think the Witness, as we’ve seen it is manipulative and powerful enough to concoct this scheme, to use both Calus and us as puppets.

Finally, Strand suddenly appearing makes enough sense to not bother me because two things were mentioned. Nimbus stated that they can’t normally see strand. Not like we do, the lines floating around. Additionally, the energy of strand was stated to come from the Veil (a paracausal thing that reminds Ghost of the traveler yet offers darkness energy. Another guess as to why dark and light were needed). I do not have direct sources but I have played the campaign twice, I’m sure I could find these instances. Therefore, only Neomuni were near Strand and its source and there was no paracausal being (especially no Guardians) that could see it or manipulate it.

All told, I think there are subtleties that went unnoticed in Lightfall. I don’t think it excuses the entirety of the expansion, but I think it offers more that was people see on the surface. I’m not trying to defend all of Lightfall, merely pointing out things that I liked that I haven’t seen being discussed by anyone.