Bite-Sized Backstory

The Fallen are ruthless scavengers. Brutal and uncaring, they arrived on their massive Ketches in the wake of the Collapse to loot and pillage our devastated worlds. – The Fallen

By the time Destiny’s story ends, it is clear that the Fallen have it the worst out of all the races we’ve met. Once the combined forces of the City and the Reef, not to mention the Vex, Hive, and Cabal, are done with the Fallen, it’s fair to wonder how many of them are even left in our system and how many of their ancient Houses are still intact.

But this race of pirates and scavengers humanity derides as Fallen was once something much more. Though some of their people have come to embrace the term Fallen, they actually call themselves Eliksni much as we call ourselves humans or humanity. And once, long ago, the Eliksni, like us, were visited by the Traveler.

The image clears of dirt and dust as a hand wipes the lens clean. A figure holds the Ghost up, looking into the lens. Harsh light from an unfamiliar sun backlights the four-armed creature, making it impossible to see its face. Its massive head turns, and a clicking and chittering voice can be heard speaking to something off-screen. While the noises themselves are harsh, the tone and content seem almost gentle. A curious creature, not a violent or angry one.

The lens refocuses beyond the creature’s head as it talks, and a startling landscape climbs to the horizon. It’s a paradise. Carefully tended lakes and rivers, water everywhere, wind their way between fields of lush iridescent crops and into groves of starkly colored trees. Every inch of the land seems engineered, brushed by a sculptor’s hand for form and function both.

The sky is a light pink, spotted with clouds and crowded with ships. Thick lanes of aerial traffic soar through the air, tightly managed and seemingly endless.

And beyond it all, above the clouds, hangs a perfect alabaster sphere. The image wobbles, shaking, flickering as if the Ghost is blinking. And the fragment ends. – Mystery: The Vault of Glass

The first image we get of the Eliskni comes to us through the strange, time-bent perception of a Ghost within the Vex’s Vault of Glass. This brief glimpse of an Eliksni world shows us that not only were they perhaps equals to Humanity in the height of our Golden Age, it’s even possible that they were our betters! Their lanes of air traffic speaks to a civilization bustling with technological prowess, while their paradise of perfectly engineered lakes, rivers, farm lands, and forests suggests that perhaps they have already long past the age of expansion, colonization, and struggle Humanity was in before its Golden Age came crashing down.

Skolas, the eventual Fallen leader of the House of Wolves, had this to say about the Eliksni’s Golden Age:

Remember the age before the Whirlwind, when ether ran free, when we ruled ourselves and our futures as kings. We wanted more than glimmer and glints and herealways. – Ghost Fragment: Fallen 3

Unfortunately, while the Eliksni’s Golden Age may have lasted a good deal longer than Humanity’s, it did not last.

First, the Great Machine. Then, sky fell away. Whirlwind ripped away the past. All honor lost, all hope. Judgment not enough. Cannot keep Wolves from Kings, Scar from Winter. Fell to fighting. Fell to hate.

Judgment gone. Others slaughtered, slain. Death and docking. “Keep Eliksni together,” lost to pride and rage.

Traveled with the many houses before Wolves. We move, across the dark. Follow the Light. Advise Kells, worshiped Primes. House Judgment must survive, yes?

Found the Light. Too bright in Darkness to hide. – Variks, The Loyal

Something powerful and terrible attacked the Eliksni. Something so overwhelming they were forced to flee their home world and chase after what they called the Great Machine until they found it damaged and unmoving hanging low above the beginnings of what would years or maybe decades later become the City on Earth.

Destiny’s story might have been very different if the Eliksni that had survived their Whirlwind acted as a unified force. They might have come out the heroes. At the very least they might have been far and away the dominant rulers of our solar system with far more might than the Hive, Vex, Cabal or the Awoken of the Reef. But, instead of working together to preserve what remained of their race after the Whirlwind, the Eliksni almost immediately fell into infighting if not outright civil war.

While we don’t know much about this possible Eliksni’s civil war, we do know that the House Judgment, which seems to have helped settle disputes and keep order among the other Houses, was destroyed. House Judgement may very well have been one of the last Houses to fall due to the effects of the Whirlwind, but there were surely many others that were wiped out in, or because of, the Eliksni’s version of our Collapse. The most interesting of these Houses has to be the House of Rain.

Throughout Destiny, the Fallen repeatedly take bold but foolish risks. Their infighting and the way they throw themselves into the meat grinders of the City’s Guardians and the Reef’s Awoken is a tragic theme we see over and over. But, in Destiny, and in the Grimoire especially, there is a second theme that permeates the Fallen’s story. It is a promise of renewed unity and perhaps even redemption as all the Fallen Houses gather under the leadership of one Eliksni who will eventually be known as the Kell of Kells. If a Kell is the leader of a Fallen House, this individual will be the leader of all the Fallen Houses.

One of the most interesting things about this Kell of Kells is that their eventual existence was predicted by the House of Rain before it was destroyed in the Whirlwind:

Petra: What about this House of Rain, the Prophecy you keep quoting?

Variks: House Rain lost in Whirlwind. No survivors, but I keep their prophecies. You think many claim to be Kell of Kells, but none have. House Judgment closest thing to peace the Fallen ever know.

Petra: Heh. Maybe you are the Kell of Kells. – The Kell of Kells

And the prophecies Variks spoke of?

What Whirlwind whisked away will be rewrought, and every kell and ketch will kneel to the Kell of Kells.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – The Hunt for Skolas

The Great Machine will marvel, moved by might, and come to crown him Kell of Kells.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – The Kell of Kells

Before him, foes will flee or fall. But he will heal the houses, make them whole.” —Prophecy, House of Rain – Gone to Ground

That even the Traveler would recognize this Kell of Kells seems completely unprecedented with what we’ve seen so far in Destiny… so I really we see these prophecies come true!

Like the story of the Hive we covered last time, the story of the Fallen Eliksni is one filled with hope and despair, with battles and betrayals, and maybe with even a hint or two about to expect from our favorite four-armed race in Destiny 2. I had a blast exploring the Grimoire last time for the Books of Sorrow, and so I hope you’ll join me again over the next several weeks as I trace the path of the Eliksni.

We’re finally at the end of the Books of Sorrow. This final chapter seems to be written from Oryx’s point of view as he muses on all that he has done.

First we see (Oryx’s?) Hive restate their belief in the form of an open letter to the things they plan to kill. It’s the same basic thing where they say that building safe spaces for cooperation is a fatal lie because the universe only offers two paths: Being ruthless or being extinct.

Next, we see Oryx musing a little about where he is now. How his Hive and Crota keep him and his worm sated with rich tribute. And how he is now using his power to learn more about the Deep. Oryx briefly wonders about his sisters and has come to suspect that they might be hiding secrets and power from him since they went their separate ways, but as is typical Oryx is fine with that because “the only meaningful relationship is the attempt to destroy.” He also states that the Deep dosen’t want everything to be the same, but rather it was strong life that can live forever. This seems to have a few logical flaws, like what happens when there are only two forms of life left, but Oryx seems committed to his way of thinking now…

Then, we see Oryx thinking about his past and about returning to Fundament. But he concludes there is no point because he knows what happened to everything on that gas giant. He became that world’s ultimate descendant and learned the answer to the questions about the universe his people had been asking. We also see that Oryx is actually aware enough to know that he doesn’t yet fully understand the natures of the Deep and the Traveler, but he does want to learn.

And finally, Oryx considers all he has done. He thinks of his goals as to become so closely associated with death that if the universe ends he will survive as a part of the nothingness the universe becomes. He also relates the Hive’s philosophy in perhaps the most understandable terms yet:

Far better to have a savage universe with a happy end than a happy universe with no hope.

Oryx himself goes on to think through the process something would have to go through to defeat him. He reasons that someone would need to kill his echoes, defeat him in the material world, defeat his count, and then confront him in his throne world. He realizes that while he is vastly powerful, a lot of that power is now derived from the tribute flowing from his daughters, and Crota, and his court, and if all of those are defeated he would no longer be able to feed his worm god.

As cruel and destructive as Oryx is, he still acknowledges that if something is able to defeat his Hive and his court and his children and him then that thing deserves to win. As bad as Oryx is, he is at least honest about the whole thing.

We know he was honest when he wrote this final Book of Sorrow because if we track forward to the time of our Guardians we take this exact path to killing Oryx. We first killed Crota, then we eliminated the key players of Oryx’s court (namely the Warpriest, then Golgoroth, then Oryx’s daughters) and finally we cut Oryx off from the tribute of corrupted Light he has stored up. As Oryx said, if all these things were to happen, if he was to fail, then let him become wormfood. And so he did.

Of course, as all great villains, Oryx’s isn’t quite done. Even in defeat he is confident that whoever defeated him will ultimately be forced to carry on his work. He believes that no matter what happens, he, in the form of his ideas and his cruelty, will live on forever. And so far, we don’t have much to prove him wrong!

But, just as Oryx came to an end, so too has our in depth look at the Books of Sorrow! We’ve come a long long way!

• We tracked the heroic exploits of the three brave sisters who should have been heirs to the Osmium Court.
• We watched as the Hive, a race of short lived krill people entangled themselves with a group of evil worm gods and used destruction to rise above the lives they had lived for millions of years.
• We watched as Oryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath laid waste to hundreds if not thousands of powerful civilizations.
• Here at the end, we’ve see that the Hive fractured as its three masters went their separate ways based on differences of ideology and raw destructive might.

We’ll eventually revisit the Hive and their exploits as we explore their attempts to conquer Humanity and defeat the Guardians of The City. But first we have some new and exciting topics to cover, starting with:

I hope you’ll join me as I attempt to trace a proud race as they are forced from the heights of their Golden Age down to becoming scavengers on the edge of extinction.

Previous: 25: The Harmony and the Ahamkara
Next: 27: Whirlwind & Rain

The Defeat of the Harmony

We don’t know if the Harmony knew about the Hive, or the hundreds of civilizations they’d made extinct. It’s possible they saw the Hive coming and prepared as best they could. One day the Harmony must have been at peace, and the next they faced one of the greatest threats the galaxy has ever seen. And to be honest, they did pretty well, all things considered. But then, as we’ll see, the Hive weren’t fully committed to the fight, and the Harmony… and, well, the Harmony had some special help.

Xivu Arath leads the initial wave of the Hive’s assault on the Harmony and their ten worlds. We are told that she fights with strategies and discipline but is held at bay for fifty years. Strangely, it’s not the Harmony’s Sting superweapon that holds back the Hive’s god of war. Instead it is the Harmony’s “wishful bishops” who are able to fight Xivu Arath in the ascendant plane by obtaining power from “dragon-wishes.” Consider that for a moment. Only four races that we know of at this point have ever made it to the ascendant plane: The worm gods, the Hive (by ingesting the worm gods’ larvae), the Vex (because Savathûn tricked Crota into letting them in to Oryx’s throne world), and, of course, the Darkness. That the Harmony’s bishops were able to enter and fight the Hive there is extraordinary, which means these dragons the Harmony directed their wishes towards must be as well!

With Xivu Arath locked in a stalemate against the Harmony’s fleets (and their dragon-wish powered bishops, and their Traveler infused blackhole superweapon) Savathûn move in. But, instead of attacking the Harmony, she and her followers somehow disguise themselves and trick their way onto one of the Harmony’s worlds. And instead of spreading disease, or sabotaging the Harmony’s defenses, Savathûn moves to study the Harmony’s dragons in secret. She doesn’t just take scans of them or some such things, she and her followers vivisect them! That is, they experiment on these dragons and cut them open and take them apart while they are still alive!

Vivisection today (in the real world) often requires special procedures to limit the amount of pain experiments cause. It often takes the approval of an entire ethical review before a study involving vivisection can even be started. It seems extremely unlikely that Savathûn and her people were so high minded… Interestingly, we’re told that the Hive’s worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn’s actions, though not why they do so. The apparent joy shown by the Hive’s worm gods at Savathûn’s actions might have something to do with who or what the Harmony’s dragons actually are…

And then, of course, there’s Oryx. He and his Court hide and grow within the accretion disc of the Harmony’s blackhole. Oryx leaves the traditional combat to Xivu Arath and instead terrorizes the Harmony’s worlds by bombarding them with asteroids and comets. He also launches Seeders to grow his forces on the Harmony’s worlds much like Crota grew his followers into a powerful fighting force capable of taking on the House of Devils in the Cosmodrome. I can’t imagine that Oryx didn’t also use his power to Take key members of the Harmony’s defense and leadership, but we are not specifically told that he did.

We are told that this is not exactly a hard battle for the Hive. In fact, we are told that the Hive’s campaign against the Harmony is merely routine. Yes, they were slowed by the Harmony for a time, but soon enough Xivu Arath and Oryx’s forces emerge triumphant and Oryx and his Court tear down the Harmony’s Gift Mast. Interestingly, Savathûn is only said to have achieved her secret purpose, but we are not told what that purpose was or if it helped her brother and sister defeat the Harmony. It could be that she helped weaken the Harmony’s bishops with her experiments, but we just don’t know.

Oryx, by his right as the most powerful of the Hive, divides up the Gift Mast and its Light. He claims he is being generous in only keeping 2/5ths of it for himself, but do the math and you’ll see that even though he gives up more than he keeps, neither of his sisters will gain more from the Harmony’s defeat individually than he does. In everything he does, Oryx always makes sure that he comes out ahead… and his sisters recognize it.

Soon, Savathûn takes her forces and departs from Oryx and Xivu Arath saying: “Siblings, listen, we must part ways a while, so that we may grow different.” While her statement may seem straight forward, I can’t imagine that Savathûn is telling the whole truth. Xivu Arath also leaves Oryx, saying: “King Oryx, you take up too much space, your power constrains too many choices. I must go away from you.” I think she is being truthful. Xivu Arath’s stated plan was to beat Oryx to the Gift Mast and she failed.

The Hive achieved victory over the Harmony, but it is the last of their victories we hear about in the Books of Sorrow, and one can’t help but wonder if by going their separate ways the Hive as a whole was significantly weakened.

The Ahamkara

There is another, larger issue here though. That of the true identity of the Harmony’s dragons. I think we have enough evidence to make a good guess at who these dragons were, and, if my guess is right, I think the presence of these dragons reveal something very sinister in Destiny’s universe. Yeah… more sinister than a race of near immortals who’s stated goal is to kill everything so they alone can survive.

First, here’s my theory in full:

The Hive’s worm gods are just one example of this type of creature in the Destiny universe. The Hive themselves stumbled upon the Harmony’s dragons which they immediately recognized as being similar or the same as their worm gods. There is a third known set of these creatures in the Destiny universe: A group of wish granting dragons called the Ahamkara that appeared in Humanity’s solar system after the arrival of the Traveler. I propose these three sets of creatures are part of the same vastly ancient race and that they ultimately working towards the same sinister end.

Now, lets break this down:

1. The Hive’s worm gods and Harmony’s dragons are the same type of creatures pursuing the same goals.

• Xivu Arath clearly recognizes the dragons as the same type of creature as her gods. She is offended by their “smug freedom” and wants them captured and locked away in cells. “Our gods should be ours alone.” seems pretty clear cut.
• We soon see that these dragons were working with the Harmony against the Hive. The Harmony’s dragons somehow grant the Harmony the ability to fight the Hive on the ascendant plane. As mentioned, this is unprecedented and unique out of all the Hive’s wars in the Books of Sorrow.
• The Hive’s worm gods laugh and laugh at Savathûn dissecting the dragons in secret instead of freaking out and demanding the Hive take immediate action to destroy them as they did when the Vex invaded Oryx’s throne world. Perhaps this is because not even Oryx has managed to truly kill a worm god. He “killed” Akka to gain the secrets that allowed him to Take enemies, but we are later told that Akka is still somehow alive.

2. The Hive’s worm gods are the same type of creatures as Humanity’s Ahamkara.

We have several instances of a shared speech pattern between the Hive’s worm gods and things said by the Ahamkara remains that Guardians have fashioned into powerful armor:

• In V: Needle and Worm, Sathona’s worm familiar says “…listen closely, oh vengeance mine…”
• In VIII: Leviathan, Sathona, who has been listening to the whispers of her dead worm god familiar says: “Let us dive, oh sisters mine.”
• In XII: Out of the Deep, a worm god speaking to Xivu Arath as the royal sisters chase Taox across Fundament says: “Reality is a fine flesh, oh generals ours. Let us feast of it.”
• In the Kagoor card, Kagoor’s worm says: “…this is the shape of joy, oh ruler mine.”

Contrast this with Humanity’s Ahamkara:

• They appeared on Venus at some point after the Traveler arrived. The Ishtar Collective, including Maya Sundaresh who might be the Exo Stranger, originally traveled to Venus to study the Ahamkara. It was only later that they found the Vex ruins.
• After the collapse, the Ahamkara were somehow still around. They were sought out for power and knowledge and for answers to questions no one had known to ask. Guardians sought them driven by hope, or vengeance, or despair. But the price of this knowledge was somehow too great and The City decided to make the Ahamkara extinct. We aren’t told what the price was exactly, but kicking off a “Great Ahamkara Hunt” with the goal of making the creatures extinct must have meant the price was pretty darn high!
• In Ghost Fragment: Legends 3, we hear about the Great Ahamkara hunt. Except we get this disturbing bit at the end:

And thus the Ahamkara were made extinct, their call silenced, their solipsistic flattering erased, their great design – if it ever existed – broken.

Of this you can be assured, oh reader mine

(Meaning the entire card was dictated by an Ahamkara?! )

• In Ghost Fragment: Warlock, we see a Warlock telling the story of how he accidentally sent a female Hunter chasing after an Ahamkara but telling her that there was no way she’d be able to kill one. He was showing off and was sure he’d sent her to her death. Apparently Ahamkara are quite powerful?More than that though, we see a chilling key phrase: He calls the Ahamkara “The dragon that made promises”! That is super huge! It links the Ahamkara which had previously been called “parasitic reptilian critters” to the concept of dragons and thus the Harmony and thus the Hive.
• Amusingly, if you were paying attention to the item descriptions, there is a Ahamkara Scale that is a hunter class item which has the description: “And that Warlock thought I couldn’t do it. Hah!” 🙂
• The Ahamkara are also mentioned in relation the Osiris in that one of his flaws or slights was chasing after Ahamkara lore. They are also clearly, if indirectly, mentioned in the card Ocean of Storms 2:

The tunnels were geologic in nature, or had to be. That’s what we thought until twelve hours into the second sub-lunar expedition, when we found the bones. A single long rib cage, the size of an aircraft fuselage.

The living creatures themselves, we found a hundred meters down. They might have been worms, if worms had scales and teeth and moved more quickly than a man could run.

This would seem to be a transcript or log perhaps from a Guardian just before the Hive and Crota killed thousands on the Moon. That long rib cage the size of an aircraft fuselage? We’ve seen something very similar! In the area where we have to kill Crota’s crystal! It has a vaguely dragon-shaped skull and the bones of its body stretches along the right edge of the room? Is that the remains of an Ahamkara?!

Beyond these things, we have multiple examples of gear that various Guardians fashioned out of Ahamkara parts speaking to the Guardians in the same way that the worm gods often spoke to the Hive:

• Claws of Ahamkara: “Look at all this life, oh bearer mine. There is so much left to burn.”
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps: “Plating the Ahamkara bones in silver helps to quiet the auditory hallucinations… oh bearer mine.”
• Skull of Dire Ahamkara: “Reality is the finest flesh, oh bearer mine. And are you not… hungry?” (Almost word for word what the worm god said back on Fundament hundreds of thousands or millions of years before!)
• Young Ahamkara’s Spine “Give me your arm, oh bearer mine. Let me help you fill the world with teeth.”

We also have a couple of pieces of armor that don’t directly speak as a worm god / Ahamkara but seem related nonetheless:

• Voidfang Vestments: “YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE” (This relates to Oryx’s dream of himself and his father where he saw nothing but his teeth in the reflection of his father’s goggles.)
• Long Tomorrow 9G: “Some of ‘em survived. I know a fellow says he saw a wish dragon on Jupiter a ways back.” (Again, linking the Ahamkara to the ideas of dragons that grant wishes!)
• And most recently with the Age of Triumph we got the Knuckles of Eao: “Boons I grant you, oh bearer mine, but debts must be paid in time.”

I love all these things because like with the weapons named after the Iron Lords, most of these have been around since Destiny’s launch or were added in The Taken King and when linked together with all the other information paint a cool bit of backstory that is hard to uncover at first.

3. Despite being separated by thousands or millions of years, the Hive’s worm gods / Harmony’s wish dragons / Humanity’s Ahamkara act very similar and are possibly pursuing the same goal:

• In all three cases, these creatures seem to put themselves in a position where they can make terrible, costly bargains in exchange for helping address other creatures’ desires for hope, vengeance, or despair. That is, they grant wishes, but at a very high cost.
• In the Hive’s case, their motives seem fairly clear. By having the Hive ingest their larvae, these worm gods grant the Hive near immortality and fantastic powers, but they also feed upon the destruction the Hive cause. And they don’t just feed, their hunger expands faster than the destruction they consume so that ultimately the Hive are forced to implement a massive pyramid scheme of tribute that flows upward.
• In the Harmony’s case, we don’t learn anything about what they traded to their dragons in exchange for the power to hold the entire Hive in a 150 year deadlock, but it does seem that the Harmony only turned to their dragons in a time of despair.
• In Humanity’s case, we are told directly that Guardians sought out the Ahamkara for the same reasons, but that the knowledge and power that the Ahamkara offered came at such high a price that The City eventually decided that they needed to be completely exterminated.
• It is an Ahamkara itself, it seems, that taunts at us over the results of The City’s “Great Ahamkara Hunt.” It seems to be suggesting that even being hunted down and killed by the Guardians did nothing to stop the Ahamkara’s grand design. This would be consistent with Oryx’s inability to kill Akka. Not only that, but we have evidence that at least one Ahamkara survived on Jupiter.

My best guess is that the Ahamkara are playing a similar long game to the one they sold to the Hive, but they are playing it better by playing all sides. They think that the Darkness will be victorious, but they themselves do not have the power or skills to oppose it. They fear allying themselves with a single race only to see some cataclysm or foe destroy that race and them along with it. So they spread themselves out all across the galaxy and seem to have been following closely on the heels of the Traveler. In each case we see the Ahamkara we also see that the Traveler either was nearby at the time (as with the Hive and Humanity) or had certainly been around at some point (as with the Harmony and their massive Gift Mast.)

Is there some other possibility? Could the Ahamkara be present all over the galaxy after some great war between Light and Darkness, and the Traveler in doing its space magic terraforming is accidentally waking them up? All except the Hive’s worm gods who were trapped in Fundament’s core?

It’s clear we don’t have the whole story regarding what went on with these Hive worm gods / Harmony Dragons / Humanity’s Ahamkara, but I fully believe that they are actually a huge part of Destiny’s past and will play a large role its future. I think that the Fallen, and Vex, and Cabal, and Hive, and Humans are merely pawns in a much bigger ongoing war between the Light and Darkness. Hopefully, with Destiny 2, we’ll begin to see a bit more of that hidden war.

Oh, and there’s one last weapon description that I think is very relevant to this whole discussion of the Ahamkara:

Cryptic Dragon:

Those who doubt the existence of dragons are always the first devoured.

Editor’s Note: Since this article was published, it has been made clear that the Ahamkara and Worm Gods are two separate races that use similar means to influence casualty and alter reality. This new information will be fully addressed in a future Bite-sized Backstory. 

Previous: Bite-sized Backstory 24: The Gift Mast and Dragons?!
Next: 26: The Last Musings of Oryx

Oryx had gotten what he wanted. What he’d been seeking for a long, long time. In the wake of his victory over Quria, Blade Transform, he finally had the location of the Gift Mast. Soon, he has all of the Hive gather for a major assault. When his sister Savathûn arrives at their staging area, Oryx goes to visit with her. I think the only way to describe Oryx’s mood as he converses with his sister is… giddy!

Oryx brings his clever, deceitful sister a gift: What remains of Quria, Blade Transform after he took it at the end of their battle on the Nicha Thought-ship. Savathûn expresses caution and some dry skepticism, but Oryx seems in too good a mood to let her bring him down. When Savathûn ask Oryx if the Vex is meant explode and kill her or invade her throne like it did his, he just replies that if it does kill her then she deserves to die. This is the now very familiar philosophy of the Hive and their worm gods, and again, Oryx seems almost giddy as he repeats it… but Savathûn is not amused. What she says in reply is very, very interesting:

“I don’t have a strict proof yet, you know.” Savathûn strokes the void with one long claw and space-time groans beneath her touch. “This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.

Oryx tries to explain to her that they, the Hive, are that proof. They are so intent on killing everything in the universe that if they succeed then the proof is verified. And even if they fail, whatever kills them must be even more ruthless than them so in a way they still win even if they lose. Basically, Oryx is completely convinced he is in the right no matter what happens. But once again we see that Savathûn isn’t so sure:

“I like that,” she says. “That’s elegant.” Although of course she has had this thought before.

That’s very much veiled sarcasm coming from Savathûn. What we’re seeing here is Savathûn realizing that even though her brother is more powerful than she is, he isn’t smarter. Oryx thinks he has it all figured out, but clearly Savathûn has considered the Hive’s reasons for killing everything and has some sort of legitimate doubt about whether what they are doing is actually correct. This is quite the role reversal from how these two siblings were back during their war with the Ammonites. Remember, back then it was Oryx who had grave doubts about the correctness of killing everything!

Soon, the Hive make their move to capture the Gift Mast. We learn that the Gift Mast is an absolutely massive megastructure left behind by the Traveler for a race or group of races called the Harmony. Somehow, at some point, the Harmony’s star died and collapsed into a black hole, but the Traveler seems to have altered the physics of this black hole in order to keep the Harmony safe. We are told that it changed the orbits of the Harmony’s ten planets so that they would orbit the black hole and that it changed the black hole so its accretion disk, the spiral of matter the black hole is sucking in, gave off warm light to those ten worlds. If we ignore the Gift Mast for a moment, what the Traveler did for the Harmony might already be the one of the most impressive acts we’ve yet heard about.

The Gift Mast itself is said to be some sort of hollow structure built within the relativistic jet of the Harmony’s black hole and that it is absolutely massive in scale, so much so that it towers over the Harmony’s star system! If this is to be taken even half way literally, then the Gift Mast might be ten of millions of miles tall! (Also, if you don’t know about black hole jets, do a bit of reading, ‘cause they’re awesome!)

We’re told a couple of times that the Gift Mast “…sings a radio lullaby, made of soothing lies.” What could that mean? Could the Gift Mast simply be reacting to the force of the black hole’s jet streaming around it and through it? Perhaps it is literally emitting soothing sounds at radio frequencies? Or maybe it’s doing something else entirely? Could these “radio lullabies made of soothing lies” be an ongoing communication from the Traveler to the Harmony? Or some sort of ranged extension of the Traveler’s power?

As Xivu Arath’s begins her assault on the Harmony, she utters a few thoughts and warnings about the upcoming battle:

• We learn that the Harmony are somehow able to direct near light speed streams plasma from their life-giving black hole towards their enemies. Could this be what the Gift Mast is really for? Is it part of this extremely powerful weapon that Xivu Arath calls the Harmony Sting?
• Xivu Arath mentions other dangers that stand in her way. She mentions the Gift Mast and the Harmony stings then goes on to warn her broods about Oryx and his daughters and how powerful they are.
• She also notes that Savathûn will be distracted by the Gift Mast.
• We also get what almost seems to be a standard Hive proclamation about what they plan to do to the Traveler. Chase it down, devour its Light, etc, etc.

Then, lastly but nowhere near leastly, Xivu Arath makes mention of “THE DRAGONS”, saying:

Our gods should be ours alone. Their smug freedom is an insult to me. I’d shut them all in cells. Bring them to me!

These final four sentences almost certainly are the key to the most important and far reaching thing we learn from the Hive’s Books of Sorrow…

…so, of course, we’ll take a break here and examine these “dragons” in depth next time! :p

Sources:
XLIV: strict proof eternal
XLV: I’d shut them all in cells.
XLVI: The Gift Mast

Previous: 23: End of Failed Timeline
Next: 25: The Harmony and the Ahamkara

With his new, powerful Dreadnaught complete, Oryx sets out to accomplish two of the last objectives we’ll hear about: Hunting down the Nicha Thought-ship and discovering the location of the Gift Mast.

These last two objectives are… interesting… because we’ve so heard very little about them. The first we hear of the Nicha Thought-ship is after Oryx’s twin daughters have grown up and become powerful wizards. Ir Halak gifted her father with a charting (prediction?) of the Nicha Thought-ship’s course. so Was this ship something Oryx had know about previously? Likewise, we only hear of the Gift Mast as Oryx’s Dreadnaught nears the Nicha Thought-ship. We’re not really sure why he thought it might contain the Gift Mast’s location.

So, what has really happened here? Is this Gift Mast some kind of fantastic legend Oryx and the Hive have heard of but have not yet been able to find? Is the Nicha Thought-ship similar? How did Ir Halak chart the Thought-ship’s course and how was she able to do so when Oryx, the First Navigator, was not? Unfortunately, there are no answers to these questions. At least not yet. And that feels a bit odd to me here so close to the end of the Books of Sorrow. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this point in the Hive’s history later? Or the Vex’s? I hope so, because right now this part of their story feels a little short changed and incomplete to me.

Anyway, having likely used Ir Halak’s predictions, Oryx approaches the Nicha Thought-ship only to find it guarded by a fleet of ships known as the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. A battle presumably ensues, though we are not told that specifically, and one way or another Oryx’s Dreadnaught ends up surrounded. As it turns out, this is just fine by Oryx. He thrusts his sword into the hull of his Dreadnaught and further extends his Throne World into the real world destroying the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. This is the same super attack we see him use against the Awoken fleet at the beginning of The Taken King. All that is left is the Nicha Thought-ship… which turns out to be an ill conceived trap.

On the Nicha Thought-ship, Oryx is ambushed by Quria, Blade Transform, the Vex mind that first deduced the Hive’s sword logic and discovered that worshiping the worm gods could lead to physics breaking paracausal results. Was the Nicha Thought-ship some kind of Vex ship? If so, was the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible a Vex fleet? Or was a Vex ship being protected by one or more non-Vex races? Another possibility is that the Nicha Thought-ship is not a Vex ship, but Quria, Blade Transform somehow convinced its owners to allow it to wait in ambush. Again, we have a lot of interesting possibilities but not a lot of information, much less answers.

Next, Oryx advanced on Quria, Blade Transform even as it springs its trap. It looks like Quria, Blade Transform once again tries to invade and take over Oryx’s throne world. We can see its thought process in a series of short, three part codes:

• <interdict>|<simulate>|<worship>Here’s what Quria, Blade Transform was trying to do. It interdicted Oryx’s dreadnaught then attempted to simulate Oryx’s power through worship of the worm gods.
• <insinuate>|<subvert>|<replicate>Next it is trying to subvert something (perhaps Oryx’s followers?) to its side and it tries to spread itself… to gain power? Note what Oryx says here. He recognizes that Quria, Blade Transform is trying to steal his ship from him and fill it up with its spawn.
• <observe>!<imitate>!<usurp>Again, we see Quria, Blade Transform attempting observe and imitate Oryx in an attempt to steal away his power. And again, this is confirmed by Oryx as he tells the Vex mind that it will never be as powerful as he is no matter what it does and no matter how much computational power it has.
• <unknown>|<enigma>|<shortfall>True to Oryx’s word, Quria, Blade Transform is not able to comprehend Oryx and his power.
• <abort>!<halt>!<abort>Having failed to usurp Oryx, Quria, Blade Transform attempts to back out of its ambush, but it is too late.

Oryx advances on Quria, Blade Transform’s Hydra platform seemingly immune to the Vex’s onslaught of weapon fire. In a last ditch effort to accomplish something before it is defeated, Quria, Blade Transform sets in motion the closest best guess simulation of Oryx that it could come up with. This incomplete simulation isn’t of the present day Oryx who has vast power after conquering hundreds of worlds and ending trillions of lives. Instead, what Quria, Blade Transform has come up with is Aurash, the oldest of the three brave royal sister who were once exiled from the Osmium Court long, long ago.

The simulated Aurash expresses shock and outrage at what Oryx and the Hive have become. Oryx responds by boasting about all the mighty things he has accomplished. Quria, Blade Transform spends its final moments observing Oryx’s reaction and transmitting the data it records to the rest of the Vex in the hopes that it will be useful at other points in space and time. It knows that its fellow Vex will use the data it has gathered to further study Oryx’s power. In the end, Quria, Blade Transform gains one last glimpse of Oryx’s power as The Taken King takes it, just as he has done to so many other powerful foes.

I really liked this sequence. In a way, Aurash gets to see the end result of her folly. Turns out the old Leviathan was right, after all! She did become a monster!

We do learn one other very interesting thing from Quria, Blade Transform’s demise: The Vex were in some way or another present around the same time that the Hive destroyed the Ecumene many thousands of years prior. The simulated Aurash knew to question Oryx about his sisters Sathona and Xi Ro because the Vex learned about them from the intelligence given to the Ecumene by Taox…It makes you wonder where else have the Vex been present and what else they might know.

Oh, and one last fun tidbit. The Grimoire Card where Quria, Blade Transform is defeated is named: “End of Failed Timeline” This a reference to the timeline hopping that happened in Marathon Infinity… except “End of Failed Timeline” does not actually appear in Marathon Infinity’s terminals. As far as I can tell, it only appears on the Marathon.Bungie.Org Story Page making the title of this Grimoire card one of the most awesome Bungie.org in-jokes ever! 🙂

Sources:
XLI: Dreadnaught
XLII: <>|<>|<>
XLIII: End of Failed Timeline

Previous: 22: Crota’s Punishment and Oryx’s Plans
Next: 24: The Gift Mast and Dragons?!

Upon hearing Eri’s call to set his house in order, Oryx returns home and quickly overwhelms the Vex pouring into his throne world. The power the Vex had gained through killing and worship was nowhere near a match for the powers that Oryx possessed. As is typical, Oryx took some of the Vex and turned them against each other. We are told that Quria, Blade Transform, the Vex mind in charge of the attack, tried numerous different strategies but none of them were effective against the power Oryx had.

We aren’t told how much longer this miniature war between the Hive and Vex lasted, but Oryx noted that he had finally found a worthy rival, so it would probably be safe to assume it went on for several more years after he returned. Once it was all over and the attacking Vex were defeated, Oryx took a few important actions:

• He punished Crota for his failure to stop the Vex invasion. To do this, Oryx took the “sink or swim” method with his son and threw him into the Vex’s gate network! We don’t really know where (and/or even when!) Crota emerged, but we do learn he survived his and eventually became a highly feared creature much like his father. Eventually, Crota began making shrines and temples to his father, likely to share his required amount of tribute.The way Crota was punished also helps answer the important question of why Oryx took so long to reinforce his son even though Crota was just one step from devouring the Traveler and its Light. By throwing Crota into the Vex gate network, Orxy seems to have sent his so so far away it took him hundreds of years to reach him. Oryx’s fleet might have been rushing to our star system only to arrive a few days or weeks or months too late!
• Oryx rededicated himself to observing and recording and learning from the destructive actions of the Deep. This spurred the creation of the Worlds Grave that our Guardian visits when we needed information about the Hive. This also shows us that while Crota is more powerful than the Vex, he really does consider them a serious threat.
• Oryx sought out Savathûn’s advice on the Vex. She tells Oryx that the Vex hope to understand everything so they can come find a way to come out on top no matter what happens. Of course, Savathûn’s answer proves she has almost certainly had contact with and studied the Vex, even if Oryx doesn’t realize it.I think what the Vex are doing is combining their vast computational power with their limited ability to mess with time in order to make sure they know what their enemies will do and to make sure they have a counter ready… by the time their enemies carry out their plans.Interestingly, this might mean that the Vex are not on the same page as the Darkness, worm gods, and Hive with regards to having to destroy everything to win. The Vex are trying to find a “victory condition of every possible end state of the universe,” but perhaps some of those victory states include cooperation? For instance, we see Oryx nearly destroy the Vex by taking Atheon within the Vault of Glass. But do the Vex win that battle by fighting back and destroying Oryx? No. They survive by essentially negotiating a temporary truce with the City. By letting Praedyth communicate with us across time, the Vex essentially offer us the remains of Praedyth in exchange for our help in driving the Taken out of the Vault of Glass.

Oryx probably made a mistake by telling Savathûn about how the Vex invaded his throne world. She very quickly leaked this information to Xivu Arath in the hopes that one of them could accomplish what the Vex had. If they could invade Oryx’s throne world there was a chance they could defeat him, but Oryx was already a step ahead. He decided that it was no longer safe to simply rely on his throne world to protect him from death. He needed to make sure it was much more safe from being found and breached, so he decided to reinvent his throne world into the form of a mighty dreadnaught.

Creating his dreadnaught was one of the most difficult tasks we ever see Oryx accomplish. It took the combined power of him, his court, and a verse from his Tablets of Ruin to do it. We are told that Oryx’s dreadnaught is built from a piece of the remains of Akka (the worm god who Oryx previous killed but who we are now told is dead but far from gone) combined with pushing Oryx’s throne world inside out so it protrudes into our normal space. That Oryx’s dreadnaught, which is still orbiting within Saturn’s rings in the current day, is at least partially made from a piece of a worm god should scare the heck out of the City!

Oryx and his court complete the construction of his dreadnaught, and Oryx once again commands his forces to go out and conquer and send him his demanded tribute… but something strange happens here. Alongside Oryx’s little speech we see what are essentially scribblings in the margin of the text by Savathûn! She writes:

I am Savathûn, insidious. I graffiti this notice for you. These Books are full of lies!

Who is Savathûn writing to? And what does she mean? Which part or parts of the Books of Sorrow are lies? Is anything we’ve learned about the Hive true?! Yes, I think a lot of what we think we know about the Hive is true. We eventually see the Hive’s philosophy and past corroborated by other sources like Eris Morn and Toland the Shattered. Still, it does seem we need to be cautious in believing every single thing the Books of Sorrow tell us about the Hive. And we should probably be looking for gaps or contradictions.

With his dreadnaught completed, Oryx once again feels safe from attack and in fact goes on the offensive. His target? The mysterious Nicha Thought-ship!

Sources:
XL: An Emperor For All Outcomes
XLI: Dreadnaught

Previous: 21: The Origin of the Vex
Next: 23: End of Failed Timeline

As Oryx’s daughters grow older, they continue to increase their knowledge and dig deeper into their powers and abilities. At some point a few years or maybe centuries later after their birth, Oryx came across his daughters experimenting with death and a Hive wound that they cut between places. When questioned about what they were doing, Oryx’s daughters tell him that they are working on a way to separate an Ascendant Hive’s soul from its body. By storing its soul in its Throne World, they think that they can both make it harder for an Ascendant Hive to be killed and make their songs of death more powerful.

What they created was what we will eventually know as an Oversoul. They even call it that. How does this thing work? What’s it’s real purpose? Here’s my guess: Perhaps even Ascendant Hive have some vulnerabilities in the physical world. Maybe a powerful enough Guardian could kill one outright even in the real world? Or if not a Guardian, maybe something even more powerful like the Traveler could? But if their Oversoul is already stored in their throne world, maybe nothing can be powerful enough to kill an Ascendant Hive in the physical world?

Oryx is impressed by his daughters and instructs his son Crota to watch them in the hopes he might learn some cleverness from them. Then something interesting happens. Oryx leaves his daughters and travels somewhere far away to watch the Deep destroy an unnamed ancient fortress world. We’ve heard of the Deep acting on its own at least one other time, but this is the clearest indication we have that the Deep is able to move and attack and destroy all on its own. If there was any doubt before, it is clear now that the Deep (which we know better as the Darkness) is something more than just a another term for the Hive and their ongoing conquest.

After Oryx leaves, Crota follows his instructions to watch his twin sisters and begins experimenting with wounds to other spaces similar to what his sisters were doing. He cuts into a new space that neither he nor his sisters had observed or traveled to before, but instead of finding a new way to resist death or gain secret power, Oryx finds a strange race of intelligent machines. What he accidentally discovered was the Vex!

Vex come pouring into Oryx’s throne world and immediately begin trying to understand this new strange reality they’ve found their way in to. At first they can’t understand the physics and rules of the throne world. We’re told they try and construct problems, by which I think it means they’re trying to process and simulate the physics of this new reality with little success. But then, as Crota prepares to destroy them, the Vex start to figure things out. Specifically, they create a new Vex mind called “Quria, Blade Transform” that beings to understand the Hive’s Sword Logic. It somehow learns or deduces that killing things can grant it power. So the Vex begin to build units meant for war.

Corta moves to attack these new Vex soldiers, but the Vex teleport away from Crota and instead attack and defeat some 2,000 of Oryx’s Acolytes and 10,000 Thrall. By doing this they begin to gain power within Oryx’s throne world. So much so that even after Crota enlists the help of his sisters, they are unable to destroy the Vex. Oryx’s daughters even create annihilator totems and are able to destroy the Vex within Oryx’s throne world, but the Vex keep pouring through Crota’s wound and are even able to reinforce it so that Corta and his sisters are unable to close it.

Soon, a stalemate exists between the Vex and Crota, his sisters, and their Hive followers. Within Oryx’s throne world, the Hive are dominate. But each time they try and attack the Vex outside the throne world the Vex prove to be too powerful and are able to drive them back. Then, something very very dangerous happens.

The Vex steal some worm larvae from the Hive and quickly learn that by worshiping the worm gods they too can obtain powers similar to the Hive’s. The Vex being to alter reality with their worship and soon construct a priesthood dedicated to worshiping the worm gods. The worm gods Motive this and very quickly the worm god Eir demands Oryx return home and deal with the Vex himself. We’ll take a look at how Oryx reacts next time, but first I think we need to consider what just happened.

I think maybe the Vex started by worshiping the worm gods but that’s not what they ended up worshiping by the time our Guardians encounter them. We haven’t seen any worm gods in the Black Garden, but we have seen the Vex bowing and praying before a big blob of Darkness. I think what happened here is that the Vex, like Oryx, were smart enough to go over the heads of the worm gods and worship the Darkness itself. The Hive and even Oryx are all bound to the worm gods, but the Vex figured out that the worm gods were just middlemen standing in their way!

Ultimately, I think the worm gods were scared that they were going to lose their hold on the Hive. If the Vex proved it was possible to draw power from the Darkness without needing a worm growing inside them, how long would it be before Oryx or Savathûn or Xivu Arath realized it as well?

This is why Eri called to Oryx and demanded he put his house in order. They (the worm gods) saw that they were one step away from being pushed out as the power that controls the Hive. Oryx already partially stepped around them with his Tablets of Ruin and by speaking with the Deep directly. The worm gods have been telling the Hive that they must kill everything to prove their worth. Up until now, “everything” never included the worm gods. And they wanted to make sure it never does by having Oryx destroy the Vex before he or his sisters realize what is really going on.

There’s one other wrinkle in all of this. After Oryx comes back and drive the Vex out of his throne world, we are told that Savathûn was laughing because she tricked Crota into cutting his wound to the Vex’s space in the first place… But that would mean that Savathûn knew about the Vex before Crota or even Oryx did! So, not only did Crota not create the Vex, it seems almost certain that he wasn’t even the first Hive to encounter the Vex. I think what we’re seeing is Savathûn being one step ahead of everyone else like she has been in the past and like she will be in the future.

Sources:
XXXVIII: The Partition of Death
XXXIX: open your eye : go into it

Previous: 20: The Eater of Hope and His Sisters
Next: 22: Crota’s Punishment and Oryx’s Plans

Following his meeting with the Deep (which Destiny players would know better as the Darkness) and his betrayal by his sisters, Oryx somehow manages fight his way back to his throne world and the physical world. This may have been possible because, as mentioned last time, Xivu Arath described the nature of her brother just like he once described her and her sister after killing them during the war against the Ecumene.

Interestingly, Oryx says that he had to fight “the swarming corpse of Akka” the worm god who he killed to gain the power to forge his Tablets of Ruin which allowed him to contact the Deep. This is once again proof that killing a worm god is not really enough to… uh… kill it. And this fact, of course, brings us back to the worm familiar that showed the three brave sisters the way to the needle ship even though it was dead.

Once Oryx makes it back to his court he once again goes to war against his sisters. He records crippling Savathûn’s tribute so badly that she will never again be able to challenge him. Then he tricked Xivu Arath and poisoned her tribute so she too could no longer challenge him. We can only imagine that neither of these campaigns Oryx engaged in were short. These two wars may have taken hundreds or even thousands of years for Oryx to secure his position at the top of the Hive.

Following all that, Oryx found a mother to make spawn with. Who was the mother Oryx told and what happened to her? We are never told. All we learn about are their children. First, there was Crota. When Crota is born, Oryx give him his name and his first sword, but other than that, Crota has to kill his way to a position in Crota’s court. Apparently Crota did this pretty well because he becomes the Hive god that nearly defeats the City some time in the future. For now, though, Oryx explains the meaning of Crota’s name. It means “the Eater of Hope” because they both are fighting a war against the false hope that the Traveler gives to the younger races.

Oryx also tells Crota about the oath he and his sisters took against Taox but he tells Crota that the oath does not apply to him. Does Oryx really believes that after having destroyed hundreds or thousands of races that Taox has still managed to stay ahead of his Hive? That seems incredible and unbelievable, but then Oryx seems quite serious about it. Maybe we’ll meet Taox someday? I wonder what she would be like now, tens of thousands of years later… Or is she just frozen in a stasis pod somewhere?

After Crota, comes Oryx’s two daughters Ir Anûk and Ir Halak. Of Ir Anûk, Oryx says that Savathûn is so impressed with her that she cackles and rages at her brilliance. Oryx notes that Ir Anûk has declared that she will kill one of the eleven axioms that make up Hive’s ascendant places (throne worlds) and will use the power she gains to defeat Akka as he once did and become a god as he is. Does this mean that she would be able to construct Tablets of Ruin? Either way, Oryx says he may kill her to stop her or he might applaud her for her achievements.

As for Ir Halak, she developed a song so powerful that it was able to kill everyone who heard it when she sung it in Xivu Arath’s throne world. (Aside from Xivu Arath, apparently, since she is still around later.) Oryx wonders if the Hive might soon employ death songs instead of swords and boomers. Oryx then sees that she has charted the course of the Nicha Thought-ship. This is not a ship we have heard of before, but it is one that will soon be very important to both the Hive and to Humanity as well…

…all because of a race of time traveling robots known as the Vex!

Sources:
XXXVI: Eater of Hope
XXXVII: shapes: points

Previous: 19: Betrayal & Dreams of Teeth
Next: 21: The Origin of the Vex

Coming out of the Deep’s friendly monologue to Oryx, we immediately move into an odd dream sequence. This dream is told form Oryx’s point of view and takes us back to his childhood back at the Osmium Court.

In this dream, Oryx (or should we can him Aurash?) is heading to his father’s orrery when he notices his sisters are chasing after him. They are ripping up the road behind him with their swords. And the road stones they are ripping up are shaped like tablets with odd writting on them. Oryx runs from them only to be tripped and slammed to the ground by his father who asks him why he wasn’t prepared for his sisters to move against him. Oryx starts crying, wanting to know why his dad won’t help him, but all his father does is prepare to tip some strange “black sun” into his son’s throat.

Oryx sees his jaws and teeth in the reflection of the anti-glare goggles his father is wearing and, with no other choices left, begins to eat his father! All the while his father tells him what he is doing is good and majestic. When he is done, Oryx looks back and realizes that his sisters have torn up the road behind him and that he has no way to get back where he came from.

Obviously, this dream is highly symbolic, though not confusingly so. There are several parts we can identify:

• The road stones covered in writting that Oryx’s sisters are tearing up are Oryx’s Tablets of Ruin he laid down in his Throne World to allow him to approach and commune with The Deep. It’s telling that these tablets in Oryx’s dreams are held up by or overlaid on worms, much as the Hive’s power is based on the power of the worm gods.
• Could the goggles that Oryx’s father is wearing to save his vision during lighting storms and sea fire have been to preserve his “night vision” for watching Fundament’s moons? He was at or near his orrery in the dream so that makes some sense.
• I’m not aware of any direct correlation between the black sun that Oryx’s father attempts to force feed him and anything within Destiny’s universe. In this instance it would probably seem to represent poison or death.
• What Oryx does to his father, eat him in self defense, is pretty much what the worm gods and the Deep have been telling Oryx to do for tens of thousands of years now.
• One minor but interesting thing is that this dream about teeth is that it is referenced in the description of the Warlock’s Voidfang Vestments which says: “YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE – scratched behind a buckle” That’s kinda creepy. Maybe the Voidfang Vestments were made by a Guardian who survive the assault on the moon? Or by Toland the Shattered who we’ll learn a good deal about later?
• And finally, given that his father is telling him that he should be prepared for betrayal and that his father calls being eaten in self defense “majestic” we can pretty easily conclude that Oryx’s father here represents the Deep itself. It is something of a father figure to him at this point and it has been teaching him that existence is defined by ones ability to exist.

Waking up, Oryx muses that he is glad to know that the universe is a thing that run on death. He realizes that the races he and his Hive have destroyed hate him but he is, perhaps now more than ever, firmly committed to the Deep’s view that the only way to make something good that can’t be broken is to break everything else first.

But Oryx also soon realizes that he has been stranded and cut off from his flow of tribute. In fact, he says he is lost somewhere strange. I submit that Oryx has actually been killed just as dead as he previously killed his two sisters when the Hive was losing the war against the Ecumene. I think he is trapped in such a deep dark corner of his Throne World that he does not recognize it and cannot find a way out.

I think this for two reasons:

1. Soon after this, Xivu Arath writes one of her declarative missives like the one she wrote near the very beginning of the Books of Sorrow. Remember the outlaying of all the dangers of Fundament? This time, Xivu Arath notes that she once allowed Oryx to kill her and that she was resurrected only when he described her. In the very next section titled “RESURRECTION” she declares that she will now describe Oryx. Her description is neat and a bit frightening to read (go do so if you have time) but I think the important part here is that she had to make this description of her brother at all.
2. We’ll cover this more next time, but Oryx describes making his way back from this strange place he was lost in as fighting his way out of hell. By now, Oryx has been killed many many times. First by his sister during the war against the Ammonites and later several times by the forces of the Ecumene, but each time he was just thrown back into his Throne World. A place where he is generally untouchable and has a great deal of power. A place that is hardly a hell. So I think his saying that he had to fight his way out of hell is very significant.

Ultimately, trapped in this hell, Oryx decides that he can no longer sit alone at the top of his pyramid as one of three equals leading the Hive. He decides he needs children to guarantee that he alone is the most powerful at the top of the Hive.

Sources:
XXXIII: When do monsters have dreams
XXXIV: More beautiful to know
XXXV: This Love Is War
XXXVI: Eater of Hope
I: Predators

Previous: 18: Majestic Battles and Waves
Next: 20: The Eater of Hope and His Sisters

After defeating the Taishibethi, Oryx returns to his throne world and makes preparations to have his first direct meeting with the Deep. He creates a special alter for the Deep and prepares an unborn ogre for it to possess. We’ve seen unborn ogres several times in Destiny. You might know them better as Tomb Husks.

When he is ready, Oryx calls out to the deep saying:

I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.

This call might seem trivial, or just a fancy greeting, but at the very least Oryx’s words here are a clever call back to one of Bungie’s earliest game series. In 1996’s Marathon Infinity, we learn of a creature or creatures called W’rkncacnter. They are described like this:

In primordial space, timeless creatures
made waves. These waves created us and the
others. Waves were the battles, and the
battles were waves.

Later one or more of these W’rkncacnter attack a powerful race called the Jjaro, killing one of them. After this, a second Jjaro somehow flings these powerful ancient beings into a star where they are trapped by the intense gravity and burned by the star’s heat but somehow survive and wait to somehow be released to once again cause chaos.

Part of last game in the Marathon series, Marathon Infinity, involves jumping across timelines in an effort to prevent the W’rkncacnter from being released when a militant race tries to detonate the star they are trapped on.

It’s also worth nothing that in an even earlier Bungie game called Pathways Into Darkness you are a member of a strike force tasked with using a nuclear weapon to temporarily stun an enormous, ancient, mostly dead god-like alien long enough for the Jjaro to arrive and help remove it from the Earth. The opening to Pathways Into Darkness describes the alien and situation like so:

Sixty-four million years ago, a large extra-terrestrial object struck the Earth in what would later be called the Yucatan Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico. The dust and rock thrown up by the resulting explosion caused enormous climactic changes in the ensuing years, and many of the Earth’s species became extinct during the long winter that followed.

The object itself was buried thousands of feet below ground, its nearly two kilometer length remarkably intact. It remained there, motionless, for thousands of years before it finally began to stir- and to dream. It was a member of a race whose history began when the Milky Way was still a formless collection of dust and gas- a powerful race of immortals which had quickly grown bored of their tiny universe and nearly exterminated themselves in war.

This particular being, whose name no human throat will ever learn to pronounce, was part of the cataclysmic battle that formed Magellanic Clouds, billions of years ago. It died there, or it came as close to dying as these things can, and drifted aimlessly for millions of light years before striking the Earth.

The heat of impact liquefied the rock around it, which later cooled and encased the dead god’s huge body far below ground. As it began to dream, it wrought unintentional changes in its environment. Locked deep beneath the Earth, strange and unbelievable things faded in and out of reality. Vast caverns and landscapes bubbled to life within the rock, populated by horrible manifestations of the dead god’s dream.

There’s a few Destiny links here:

• The concept of a dead god has been brought up in Destiny before in reference to the Traveler. I believe it was Petra Venj who even mentioned that The City was hiding beneath a dead god back when she was assigned as a diplomat to The City. (Back when she very briefly set up her table on the towers back deck.)
• The first Destiny ViDoc was titled Pathways out of Darkness. Given that the thing which the Hive and worm gods call “the Deep” is what The City knows as the Darkness, we have some interesting possible parallels.
• Ultimately, we’re looking at tentative similarities between games made decades apart so we can’t draw too many conclusions, but we also may get some small amount of extra insight into the true nature of the Darkness by looking at the themes of Bungie’s past games. It does seem like Destiny’s Deep and Sky have been in conflict before… perhaps similar to the W’rkncacnter and the Jjaro?

When the Deep arrives at Oryx’s alter it possesses the Ogre he prepared for it and speaks to him. Mostly the Deep repeats the philosophy we’ve heard from the worm gods, but interestingly, it does so with a lot more… or at least different… personality. The way it talks is much more conversational that the worm gods distant and almost haughty style of speech. It even refers to Oryx as a friend at one point.

One of the interesting things that it tells Oryx is that if life is going to survive past the end of all things it will have to do so not by kindness or with a smile but by violence and sword. In time, we’ll see at least one other major power in Destiny express a desire to survive past the end of the universe.

In the end, the Deep tells Oryx that two sides pitting themselves against the other until one prevails is the way the universe figures itself out. And it says that this process is not barbaric or evil but is actually majestic. Could it be right? When viewed on on a long enough timeline, is what the Hive and Deep are doing actually beautiful and majestic, even if it causes some suffering along the way?

Sources:
XXXI battle made waves
XXXII Majestic. Majestic.
W’rkncacnter section of the Marathon.Bungie.Org Story Page
PID.Bungie.Org Transcript of the Pathways Into Darkness manual

Previous: 17: The End of an Age
Next: 19: Betrayal & Dreams of Teeth