Atheon, Time's Conflux

"PASSION AND PARADOX. \ AID THE VISION. \ SIMPLICITY REQUIRES COMPLEXITY. \ RESENT THE JOKE. \ GLIMPSE THE CHASM."

- Last recorded thoughts of Atheon, Time's Conflux

Atheon, Time's Conflux is a massive Vex Minotaur and the overseer of the Vault of Glass.

Overview
It is difficult to decipher what exactly Atheon is, whether it is the creator of the vault or its creation. What is clear is that Atheon has powerful control over time, able to send Guardians into the distant past or future at will. It is the center of the Vex Conflux network, which extends across space and time, as part of a larger project to try and give the Vex control over reality itself. Atheon is suggested to be the key to unlocking the Vex.

Gameplay
Atheon's encounter is the most difficult in the Vault of Glass. It is split up into 2 parts and requires multi-tasking, focus, and awareness.

Part 1: Awaken the Glass Throne
In order to start killing Atheon, it must first be lured out by awakening the Glass Throne. To start this process, the player should kill all enemies in sight, including a Gatekeeper, a Vex Hydra which lacks a shield, but compensates with its ability to teleport. Killing this Gatekeeper will begin the encounter. There will be 2 Vex Transfer Gates that must be opened by capturing their respective Sync Plates. Additional Vex will pour out of these gates when they open. Two people should stand on one plate and guard it. However, this will cause more Vex to spawn, including Praetorians, which should be the top priority target during this part as they have the ability to capture Sync Plates as well, giving control of them back to the Vex. If one ever gets captured, an Oracle will spawn above the gate. Failure to destroy it will cause the team to wipe. Maintaining control of these plates will open up a gate. The remaining team members will enter the gate and proceed to kill all enemies inside. There will be another Gatekeeper waiting at the end of the area. Killing it will drop the Aegis, but all players in the gate will then be marked by the Void. This can be counterracted by having the Aegis holder use the cleanse function of the relic. Failure to cleanse results in death. This debuff will keep being applied until everyone has exited the gate. A Conflux will then spawn in the middle of the arena, after which a group of Minotaurs will spawn and try to sacrifice themselves to it. Failure to defend it results in the entire team being expunged. After the conflux has been defended, the people who guarded the first plate should now go for the second plate and maintain a firm hold on it to unlock the next gate. As soon as the remaining Guardians enter it, they will be marked by the Void again. The relic holder must keep cleansing everyone to keep this debuff off. There will be one more Gatekeeper to kill, which will drop another Aegis for someone else to pick up. After both relics have been claimed, all Guardians must defend the central conflux from more Vex until the Glass Throne awakens.

Part 2: Destroy Atheon
With the throne open, Atheon will spawn and face the Guardians personally. It will walk forward and fire his Torch Hammer at all players in sight. Shortly after, he will open the Timestream and teleport 3 team members at random into either the distant future or past. Those teleported will again be marked by the Void and must be cleansed. Focus should be placed on killing all the enemies inside and destroying all the Oracles being summoned by Atheon. Failure to do so will result in Atheon immediately killing the inside team using the Prophecy of Doom. Destroying all the Oracles will result in a safe exit. Meanwhile, those on the outside with Atheon will be detained. Players must shoot their way out of these bubbles like how they did when facing the Templar. In addition, Supplicants, which are Harpies that act as kamikaze units, will flood the arena and move very erratically towards the player. If they get too close, it can result in serious damage being taken or an immediate death. These Supplicants will spawn until the inside team makes it back out, at which point the Aegis holder will have attained a buff called Time's Vengeance, which greatly boosts all damage to Atheon. This is where the damage phase begins. The buff lasts 30 seconds. Once the buff expires, the process resets. Note that the lower Atheon's health, the faster the fire rate and the bigger the blast radius of its Torch Hammer becomes. Repeating the process enough times will eventually result in Atheon's death.

Trivia

 * The name Atheon is derived from Atheos, which roughly means "atheist". This appears to be in conflict with the Vex's apparently religious nature.


 * An alternative hypothesis argues that the name of Atheon is actually a combination of the latin word Atheos, in addition to the word Eon, which measures the duration of 1,000,000,000 years. When paired together, this then creates the name of Atheon, in effect, translating as either that which does not believe in time, or that which is capable of removing itself from time altogether.


 * In Year 1 of Destiny, there was a particularly famous exploit in the Vault of Glass where the team facing Atheon could push him off the edge of the platform where he was standing. Doing this effectively meant the team doing the raid would complete the encounter and receive full rewards.


 * Atheon and Protheon, Modular Mind share many similarities.

Gallery
 

List of appearances

 * Destiny