Vex

Vex is one of the most important characters in CONTRABAND: Edge of the Fold. When you meet her for the first time in the abandoned array at Keros-4, she is calm, prepared, and knows your name. This is not a coincidence. Every major branch of the Sacred Timeline passes through a decision about Vex — whether to trust her, fight her, refuse her, or eventually become her by accepting the gift she offers at the end of Chapter 2.

Vex exists across seventeen timelines simultaneously. The version you meet in the abandoned array is not one Vex — it is the aggregate of every version of her who survived in the other sixteen. She has memories of meeting you seventeen different ways, including versions where she killed you, and versions where you killed her. Her calm is not confidence: it is the kind of stillness that comes from already having tried every possible opening line in sixteen previous iterations.

First encounter at Keros-4

When the player arrives at the abandoned array in Chapter 1, Vex is waiting. She has been there for three standard days, sleeping in shifts with the station's automated defenses on standby. Her opening dialogue changes slightly depending on how long the player takes to reach her — if you come directly, she says "You're early, mostly." If you stop to trade first, she says "I thought you might stop for fuel. The others did."

She offers three paths at this encounter, and each sets up fundamentally different endings 20 hours of gameplay later:

• Listen and understand — She explains the Sacred Timeline and offers to teach you. This opens the Weaver alliance path in Chapter 2. Grants the allied_vex flag and +50 Vex reputation.
• Demand the power she has — She refuses to give it to you on your terms. Combat starts. If you defeat her, the killedVex flag is set and her body dissolves into golden threads, floating upward and scattering through the station's ventilation.
• Refuse the whole thing — She doesn't stop you from leaving. But the Fold finds you anyway in Chapter 2 regardless, because refusing her doesn't remove you from the timeline she was trying to stabilize.

A fourth, hidden path exists: if you already completed one run of the game and return to Keros-4 with the Oracle's Crystal equipped, Vex recognizes it. Her dialogue becomes a meta-acknowledgment of your previous playthrough, and she says simply, "So you came back. Good. I was hoping for someone who remembered." This unlocks New Game+ content and the Returning Pilot reputation boost.

What Vex actually is

In Chapter 2, if you take her package and ask who she is, she explains directly: "I am Vex. All of the Vexes. I am the sum of the ones who survived the other seventeen timelines. I came to help the pilot who has the best chance of ending this."

"In thirteen of those timelines, you died here. I'm trying to make this the fourteenth that survives."

This is the key to understanding the Vex character. She is not a single person across time — she is the convergence of multiple Vexes who have all funneled themselves into one instance in this timeline because it represents their best chance. The seventeen number is not arbitrary: it corresponds to the seventeen chambers of the original Weaver machine at the Keystone, each one a calibration point for timeline reconciliation.

If you killed her in Chapter 1

This is where the game gets clever. If you killed Vex in Chapter 1, you might assume she's gone for good. She isn't.

In Chapter 2 outside the Weaver sanctum, a different version of Vex will appear. She is "alive. Somehow. Missing an eye where you shot her." She speaks a single word — "Branched." — and hands over the Vex Prism package regardless. This version is the aggregate of every Vex you didn't kill across timelines, and she is noticeably colder. Her dialogue in later chapters includes subtle references to your betrayal ("I remember the shot, pilot. Not the one you fired — the one you almost didn't.")

You cannot permanently kill a character that exists across branches. You can only pick which branch you live in. This is one of the earliest lessons the game teaches about the nature of the Sacred Timeline.

The Vex Prism

If you accept her package in Chapter 2, you receive the Vex Prism — a crystalline object that shows your own reflection from seventeen different angles. One laughing. One crying. One dead. The prism is the physical representation of the multiverse branching, compressed into a pocket-sized object. It weighs surprisingly little, which Vex notes is the strangest thing about it: "It should weigh everything. It weighs nothing."

The prism can be kept as a unique quest item with several narrative uses, or sold in Chapter 3 to the Hooded Buyer NPC for 40,000 credits. Selling it has no immediate narrative consequence, but the Hooded Buyer's face (briefly visible in a close-up transition) is the same as the Oracle's — implying the prism ends up somewhere significant regardless of your choice. In later playthroughs, a cut dialogue line can be triggered if you visit the Oracle after selling the prism, in which she says "Interesting. You chose to let me have it twice."

Vex's motivations

Vex is not purely good or evil. She is a survivor. Her goal is to close the Fold permanently because in most timelines, the Fold opening leads to outcomes she finds unacceptable — outcomes that include the deaths of children, cities, and in at least three branches, the entire Verge region. The Weavers want the Fold closed too, but their methods differ in a crucial way. Vex is more willing to break timelines to prevent worse ones. The Weavers insist on pruning gracefully; Vex will sever a branch at its root if she thinks the outcome justifies the loss.

This is the source of the tension between Vex and the Weavers throughout the game. In Chapter 3, if you ally with the Weaver leadership, they ask you to report on Vex's movements. Doing so reduces your Vex reputation by -30 per report. Refusing or lying about her position reduces Weaver reputation by -20 but preserves Vex's trust — and ultimately enables a hidden Chapter 4 encounter where the two forces collaborate instead of clashing.

Reputation mechanics

The player has a separate reputation value with Vex ranging from -100 to +100. The starting value depends on the Chapter 1 encounter:

• Listen and understand at Keros-4 → +50 starting reputation
• Refuse her without combat → 0 (neutral)
• Kill her → -80 (the branched Vex in Ch2 still interacts, but coldly)

Vex reputation increases by:

• +10 each time you reject a Core Worlds mission that targets a Weaver vessel
• +20 for accepting her Chapter 2 gift (the Vex Prism)
• +15 for completing her Chapter 3 side mission ("The Seventeenth Mirror")
• +5 for each Scourge agent you defeat in Keros

At +80 reputation, Vex teaches you a hidden technique called the silent rewind, which allows you to reverse a combat round without triggering a timeline branch. This is the only way to defeat the Chapter 4 Fold Phantom without branching. At +100 reputation, a unique ending epilogue becomes available where Vex joins your crew permanently.

Vex's appearance and combat style

Vex's ASCII portrait in the game is deliberately minimal: four lines of angular characters rendered in gold. Players have noticed that her portrait shifts slightly between encounters — an extra tilde, a different dot — which is an Easter egg: each variation corresponds to one of the seventeen timelines she comes from. By Chapter 4, the portrait flickers between versions mid-conversation.

In combat (Chapter 1 hostile path), Vex pilots a custom ship designated Seventeen Mirrors. Its stats are: HP 220, Shield 180, Speed 1.2, Agility 1.4. She has five abilities, all of which relate to timeline manipulation: Rewind (undoes her last action), Echo Shot (fires from three versions of her ship simultaneously), Phase Shield (absorbs the next attack entirely), Split Course (creates a decoy), and Final Branch (an ultimate that, if unblocked, ends combat immediately).

Defeating her is possible but extremely difficult at the intended level. Most players who pick the combat path lose on their first attempt and retry after gaining a tier.