Destiny's next expansion, The Witch Queen, is a few weeks away, and we know Savathun and her brood become Lightbearers. She sees the end of her immortality and the answer may be in the Light, and Bungie has steadily fed fans hints about where the story is heading. In a Bungie news update last year, a concept image of the upcoming expansion's new armor set showed the gear covered in alchemical symbols and descriptions of chemical compounds--prompting fans to pull out their periodic tables. Now, with the Witch Queen Collector’s Edition released, things are slowly starting to fall into place.

Alchemy in Destiny 2 is most likely a way to navigate the paracausal abilities in the universe. Our universe is bound by causality, but the Light and Dark, the strange energy sources that give players their in-game superpowers, break the rules of physics, so relying on a mystical science like alchemy to explain them makes sense. The Witch Queen Collector’s Edition gives us an in-depth look at Ikora’s secret intelligence group called the Hidden, and alchemy might just be their way of deciphering Savathun’s plans and the actions of the Darkness.

The hunt for alchemical answers started when Destiny fans on Reddit noticed that each class armor represented elements that happen to be prominent in modern alchemy. The atomic numbers on the Hunter set, like 80 and 20059, stand for mercury. The Titan set included NaCl, the chemical compound symbol for salt, and the atomic weight number for chlorine. Sulfur was designated by the atomic weight 32.066 appearing on the Warlock set. The armor also featured triangular alchemic symbols representing earth, fire, water, and air. The other geometric shapes look like the acid-base or the crystal structure of an element and a sacred Vesica Piscis symbol.