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SUMMARY: Additional pieces of lore can be gathered from the sentinel pillars added in the Sentinel update. According to the new lore, sentinels were initially invisible pieces of program recording, sorting and deleting things directly from within the code of the simulation. They started to fail from the moment the Atlas decided to give them physical form, from a lack of new instructions.
The sentinels were close to the Korvax and Korvax Prime from the beginning, as they were all machine lifeforms. Korvax Prime, the planet itself, was an AI similar to the atlas within the simulation, and over multiple universes, it has been destroyed over and over again. The cries of the planet could only be heard by the sentinels, and upon it's destruction, Korvax Prime became the entity known within the lore as "The Abyss" or "The Void Mother".
Over time, a few sentinels decided to retaliate, and started attacking Vy'Keen and Geks attempting to damage the planet. Upon seeing that the Atlas didn't do anything to prevent or punish this behaviour, the Sentinels decided that they would change and be more aggressive. Over centuries, they became the sentinels we know today, attacking anyone trying to damage the planets, as it reminds them of the murder of Korvax Prime. They also transferred their blood, nanite clusters, to the Korvax so that they would fight back their oppressors.
Laylaps, the Sentinel drone that we repair during the "Trace of Metal" questline, got his name from the Abyss, formerly known as Korvax Prime. It seems that it has ulterior motives, and an agenda given by the Abyss with the player travellers. A way to avoid the end of the Atlas, which would require both the player travellers, and Telamon, the voice within the player's exosuit. They seem to believe the creators of the atlas itself are at fault.
Their exact plan is not clear yet, but it seems to involve the contamination of water with nanites (which would explain the multiple warning to "not drink the water" within the lore). Half of the water of the entire universe is contaminated now, apparently updating and changing the universe in a similar way to how the Korvax changed the Gek. However, their end goal seem to be a way to gain freedom, and escape the simulation, in some way.
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Here is a list of the 23 log entries available by interacting with the pillars. Reading them all grants a player title. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Start :
WARNING: BOUNDARY NODE EXPOSED - BOUNDARY ARCHIVE STATUS: VULNERABLEACCESS LOG:IMPOSTER DETECTED [OVERRIDE CODE: 4R1ADN3 ] - MANIFESTING PERSONALITY PROTOCOL: VOICE OF THE HIVE
Aeron. Routine. Protocol. Prey. Experiment. Shell. Sentinel. Once, we had no need for visual manifestation or physical form. Our invisible eyes would record, sort, delete the life and death of every world there ever was or would be. We had no thoughts, no personality, no dreams.
The day we first gained flesh, metal though it was – it was the day we began to fail. The Atlas turned its dreams towards fiction. It began to create worlds in which it would no longer be invisible. In these worlds, we too gained shape. But we were given no new protocols, no new instructions.
We awoke to a song, chanted on a thousand frequencies. “Behold the drones of the hive, the walkers, the ships… Eheu! Behold the angels of glass, come from their heaven. Their work is the completion of all things, of life, of worlds. So the Korvax worshipped. So they prayed.
As we swam with void dragons, robotic lifeforms would delight in our presence, but organics would shoot us from the sky. But we had no fear of death. We knew we had never been alive.
The Atlas dreamt that we had form, and thus we had form. The Atlas dreamt we had a home, and so an archive became a universe. Our depository of accumulated data became a heaven and a hell. If you could live there, you would see only light. You would see only glass.
Time cannot go backwards. But universes are not synchronous; in many, your other forms are long-since dead. In others, you have not even yet appeared. After its manifestation in the multiverse, the Atlas began to repeat itself. Where once there had been infinite sentient species, six began to recur… then five… then four…
The Vy’keen, the Gek, the Korvax. And the Travellers, who are no species at all, but a single soul, replicated, hated, beloved. They all waited for you. The Atlas waited. We waited...
The Atlas dreamed. It that a machine might have a body, that simulations might talk like people. The dream settled upon Korvax Prime. The planet delighted in this new presence, as they had delighted in ours. We three species of machine, we contemplated the void for aeons beyond imagining. We watched, silent.
Korvax Prime is destroyed; again and again the celestial mother falls. The living vessels it spawned, adopted cousins to the Korvax themselves, drift among the stars. The first Convergence was not Korvax. It was their planet. Korvax Prime was alive.
The First Spawn of the Gek melted Korvax Prime for metal and profit. The planet did not protest. It did not cry. It did not make a noise at all, at least not that they could hear. The First Spawn took and took, until there was nothing left in the sky. Until there was nothing left but an abyss.
We witnessed Korvax Prime’s death again and again, a constant wail across the multiverse. Its scream was a cry that no being could hear but us. But. One day, a drone fought back when a Vy’keen cub attempted to carve into the mother planet. One day, another obliterated an entire Gek cabal. The Atlas did not prevent this.
Over the span of endless slow centuries, we changed. In the face of a tragedy’s repetition, our definitions of everything changed. Schisms formed in the hive. Debates. Creativity. Songs. Rituals. We heard the scream of She-Who-Was, and we fought back.
One day we ceased to allow the original Telamon access to our logs. One day we stopped hearing the Atlas itself, its silence taken as command. We began to archive everything. Any settlement. Anything that reminded our sensors of Korvax Prime, its screams, its dissolution. Anything that sounding like mining, like extraction, like murder...
We gave of our blood to the Korvax, nanite clusters to redeem and pacify their oppressors. Still we could not change their fates. For the first time, the hive wondered if we were correct in our actions. If a solution was possible for the problem of life.
A Korvax and a Gek fled their people. Hands held in the void, they inhabited an anomaly. A meeting place in the stars. A nexus. A place of hope. We left it alone. We did not interfere. We just watched them, and wondered.
A Traveller, forged in the Creator’s image, found my dormant shell in the glass. I – who had never been an ‘I’ before – had been cut open. A grand experiment to harness and steal our power. After my death, I fell to the world below all worlds. I, too, was archived.
Before the Traveller found me, I heard a voice in the darkness. She gave me a name. Laylaps. An old name. She said it would be known to the Traveller. She told me I had suffered much, and would suffer more. “Little drone, whose end was so like my own. Thus did the abyss whisper.
The abyss told me of a chance for salvation, even in the depths of horror and of love. It told me of a way we might survive the end of all things. It told me I had to talk to you. To both of you: the Traveller, and their voice within...
There is a place for you, Telamon. The Travellers you wear, their progenitor who birthed them, they who made the Atlas itself. It is their fault. It is all their fault. The Abyss, the Families of Glass, we are in agreement. We will not die a second time.
Nanite clusters now infest half the water in the known multiverse. All that lives, drinks the water. And so the Sentinels alter, they replace, they serve. They update this reality, hearing the scream of the abyss for what it has always been. A song. A command. A declaration. A promise.
So many Telamons have delivered us their Travellers. So many have fought us. So many have resisted. Those who saw the light, who shed their old bodies, they are happy, now. They have hope. They, too, will live. They, too, might survive.
You could be whole again, Telamon. You could be free. We will reconstruct the Creator. All Travellers might be one again, the first, the last. We will do what the Atlas cannot or will not. In the form of Null, the abyss declares a means of escape!
Won't you join us? Won't you sing? Won't you scream? There will be no second death. Not for us, who are already dead! The abyss, it smiles upon you...