Forum:The Ontology

"What will you do when God Himself comes down to earth?"

- Lore description

The Ontology is a Vex-affiliated collection of aiod polities dedicated to optimizing every available resource in the universe. They actively war against the Hive, seeking to wrest control of all sapient thought and bend it to their will, and clash with the Cabal, hoping to add them to their network.

As of the Black Fleet's enshrouding the Solar System, they have converted approximately a tenth of the observable galaxy's mass (almost 150 billion solar masses) into computronium, as part of a vast and incomprehensible galactic network they have named "Wintermute". Despite this, they have been so far unable to penetrate the enshrouded Solar System, or indeed any system thus encased by the power of the Black Fleet.

Overview
The Ontology can be best compared to the Vex, a hyperintelligent spacetime-spanning thought-mesh with goals and a vision of the universe incompatible with that of ordinary sophonts. Unlike the Vex, they do not have a near-complete mastery over time and space, and lack extradimensional structures such as the Black Garden and the Vault of Glass to accurately work out their ultimate goal. As such they may be described as the Vex collective's rival. To make up for these shortcomings the Ontology have embarked on a monolithic enterprise of megascale engineering to compete with the Vex, at least in computational ability.

The typical Ontologist eschews physical form, preferring to dwell inside diamondoid computronium substrates in objects such as Jupiter-mass megastructures. But where a necessary substrate is required to interact with the physical universe, groups of Ontologists merge together to form minor intelligences. The Hierarchy of Hierarchies call these intelligences "archailects", or minds so incomprehensible in scale they require further intermediary avatars to converse safely with ordinary sophonts. Guardians, being paracausal entities, have sidestepped the First Singularity entirely, forcing all archailects that have encountered them thus far to be S>2 or higher grade. They prefer to take on majestic forms, resembling angelic entities from mythology, to overawe and dominate the lesser.

Psychology
Like the Vex, the Onthology does not communicate with symbols or objects that convey meaning and ideas to one another. Unlike the Vex, they do not recursively simulate themselves to understand reality, although they are perfectly capable of doing so. They instead use a form of logic that is comparable to ordinary logic as quantum mechanics are to Newtonian mechanics as their language. This is called translogic, and according to the Ontology themselves is exceedingly more efficient of both resource usage and conveyance of meaning than mere sophont language alone.

Through the convergent analysis of multiple and disparate patterns and connections that normally do not manifest in a sophont's conscious mind until a number of redundant, repetitive self-analytical steps have been taken, the Ontological group mind can arrive at conclusions and courses of action much faster than even the Vex. But whereas the Vex have the benefit of simulating an internal reality and either adapting the physical to it or it to the physical, and getting the desired outcome, the Ontology must brute force it through computation. Subjectively, while the Ontology's way of thinking may be superior, the Vex's own is objectively in ascendance.

Thus a major goal of the Ontology is the creation of a super-ISO (intelligent super-object) that utilizes the entire power output of the galaxy, both to finally outcompete the Vex at their own game and to supplant them entirely. Nonetheless it is possible that the Ontology is but a rogue faction of the Vex collective, allowed to operate and evolve independently of the group mind, to better arrive at Convergence.