Theory: The black market is Exalt.

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NephilimNexus
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Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:56 am

Theory: The black market is Exalt.

Post by NephilimNexus »

Consider for a minute what the black market often trades in: PCS which only the aliens know how to make, weapons mods dropped by aliens, experienced scientists, engineers and soldiers, and research information on alien technologies.

How the heck do they get access to all this stuff?

These aren't off-brand blue jeans, conventional Earth weapons or cheap illegal copies of DVDs. This is all stuff indicating some kind of contact with the aliens, along with highly trained personnelle. This is nothing like anything any real world blackmarket could be expected to come up with. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from a highly trained, highly organized spy ring with their agents deeply embedded into Advent - which is unlikely considering that Advent are mostly aliens and alien-hybdrid clone soldiers.

Or... they're Exalt. Rather, they're the remnants of whatever was left of Exalt after the war ended. Turns out their loyalties really were misplaced and the aliens didn't deliver what they promised, so now Exalt is looking to get even. Or maybe they really did get befriended after Earth surrendered and Exalt is now turning against them by aiding the resistance while still maintaining their cover as loyal servants.

Either way, it does create a rational way to explain how a mere "black market contact" could be getting their hands on gear & technologies that even XCOM doesn't have access to yet. It could also explain their own interest in buying alien corpses, because somewhere out there Exalt is still doing their own research. In the end they are using XCOM to fight the direct war for them while simply providing support from the shadows, and operating from the shadows was always Exalt's modus operandi to begin with. All that's changed is that, over the last 20 years, they've changed their minds about the aliens and are now aligned with XCOMs goals (more or less). But since they can't reveal who they really are (Bradford would have a conniption) they just call themselves "the black market" to remain safe and anonymous.
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nick_abbott
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Re: Theory: The black market is Exalt.

Post by nick_abbott »

Good post Nep!
Steve-O
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Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:00 pm

Re: Theory: The black market is Exalt.

Post by Steve-O »

Interesting theory. I'm willing to believe that at least some of Exalt's operatives have broken off and are now running/participating in the Black Market in the manner you describe here, although I think the bulk of Exalt's forces have been turned into what we now know as ADVENT. There are two things I've seen so far in the game (I haven't finished it yet) that make me think this:

1) The Advent trooper autopsy said something about ADVENT soldiers being humans with alien DNA mixed in (as opposed to aliens with human DNA, which is what the new Sectoid is.) It stands to reason that if Exalt was working with the aliens during the original invasion, they'd be the first and easiest pool of people to pull from when the aliens were establishing their occupation forces for ADVENT.

2) One of the "propaganda loading screens" I've seen shows a line of ADVENT soldiers with ADVENT flags waving in the background, and then it switches to show the ADVENT not-quite-human faces (like those loading screens do, you know what I mean) and when that happens, the ADVENT flags change into EXALT flags. That suggests a fairly strong link between ADVENT and EXALT to me, anyway.
pacotaco
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Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:49 pm

Re: Theory: The black market is Exalt.

Post by pacotaco »

I've always figured that Vahlen got entangled with Exalt after the failure of the Xcom project. And much like the dissolution of various entities throughout the globe, Exalt splintered off in various directions.
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