Bite-sized Backstory 17: The End of an Age
Some 10,000 years after their defeat of the Ecumene empire, and more than 30,000 since the brave exiled sisters were betrayed and fled to the inner seas of Fundament, the Hive have finally reached what Oryx says is the edge of the Deep.
We first learned that Oryx was chasing after the Deep after he and his sisters eliminated the Qugu so many thousands of years ago. Back then it was Oryx’s astronomers who told him that he was conquering his way towards the Deep. And now he’s at its edge? Does that mean that the Deep has boundaries? Or that it is, or exists at, a physical location? Or could reaching the Deep be as much about reaching a certain power level or slaughtering enough alien races?
Regardless, there is one final obstacle between Oryx and the Deep, a powerful race called the Tai. Collectively, their people who likely control several star systems are known as the Taishibethi. Like most of the races the Hive destroyed, we only know a little about the Tai. Similar to the Dakaua and the Ecumene, they too built impressive space based megastructures. In their case we see that the Hive’s opening move is to ram the Tai’s “star-webs” and orbital (stations) with their war moons. It also seems that the Tai were a race that somehow resembled ravens, as their children as referred to as “sun ravens” and their Emperor is described as having talons and wings.
The rest of the Hive’s war against the Tai is told in time to Oryx pacing in his throne world. Over the course of ten paces we learn a little about key moments of the war. Obviously, this entire war didn’t take place over the short course of ten literal footsteps. Rather, we are seeing that Oryx’s ability to defeat even powerful races has become so routine it is not much different to him now than pacing back and forth.
The Hive’s defeat of the Tau is another one of those great if a little vague moments in the Grimoire that is fun to read and let your imagination run free. There is mention of Tai battleplates and arsenal ships. At one point, the Ascendant Hive knights Mengoor and Cra’adug (the knights you fight in the Court of Oryx who you have to lead close to each other to cancel out their invincible shield) spend a decade killing the Tai on what is referred to as the “Raven Bridge”. Is this another orbital megastructure or a Near Light Speed transit lane between star systems? Or is it a literal bridge? We just don’t know, so it can be anything we imagine!
Besides the two knights from the Court of Oryx, we also get to see Kraghoor (also known as Krughor) lead his accursed Thrall against the Tai. Kraghoor, if you recall, is the Ogre in the Court of Oryx that can only be killed by detonating Thrall near it to pop its shield. Oryx’s Warpriest, the same one we fought against in the King’s Fall raid, also makes an appearance and seems to be the member of the Hive that takes on and defeats the bulk of the Tai’s military.
After the Hive have been ravaging the Taishibethi for more than a decade, the Tai emperor returns and in a stunning show of force she attacks and apparently single handedly destroys one of the Hive’s war moons! Whatever the Tai actually are, it seems some of them were extremely powerful!
Unfortunately, Oryx is completely unfazed by the Tai Emperor Raven’s attacks. He, almost as a matter of course, pulls her into a wound in space. When she emerges from the wound, we find that she has been Taken and now serves Oryx and now assists the Hive in destroying her own people!
In their final moments (which may very well represent years, we don’t have a good sense of time here) the Tai turn to cursing the Hive. “We had a good thing. Our clothes were nice, our food was famous. With one of her feathers our Emperor could have tickled the gods,” they figuratively say to Oryx.
Oryx replies with by relating the Hive’s philosophy of the need to exist to the Tai, and in a showing of humor we’ll see from him from time to time, he wryly replies that the ability to dictate what will and will not exist is the Tai’s true god… and it is never ticklish, he tells them. And with that, the Hive’s conquest of the Taishibethi is complete.
With this final obstacle eliminated, Oryx goes into his Throne World to speak with the Deep directly. Meanwhile, his sisters make plans of their own!
Previous: 16: Oryx’s Pyramid Scheme
Next: 18: Majestic Battles and Waves
Bite-sized Backstory 16: Oryx's Pyramid Scheme
For a thousand years, Oryx and his sisters must have killed billions and maybe even trillions of thinking beings who were once members of the Ecumene. We know the numbers they slaughtered were so great two ways:
1. When the Dakaua War Council first met to address the Hive threat the Hive had only destroyed somewhere around 300 worlds, and only seventeen (17!) of those were part of the Ecumene. By the time our Guardian steals data from the World’s Grave that number has risen to “thousand of worlds” and there are not many foes left for the Hive. Or at least not many that we are told about.
2. When the Ecumene had forced the Hive to a standstill, Savathûn lamented that they would need to be killing Ecumene by the billions in order to feed their worms the destruction they hungered for. But they seem to have no more hunger pains that we know of during this 1,000 year period.
Speaking of those hunger pains, Savathûn asked about them once the last of the Ecumene were extinguished. “King Oryx, how will we feed our worms? Did you use my plan?” she asks. We don’t hear Oryx’s direct answer, but we do get to hear his announcement of a plan to end the Hive’s hunger pains once and for all.
Oryx commands that his Thrall and Acolytes are to take enough killing to feed their worms plus a little more to grow their own power. The rest of the destruction they cause is to be tithed up the chain. The Thrall will tithe to the Acolyte that commands them. The Acolytes will tithe to the Knights or Wizards that command them.
Oryx’s command to his Knights and Wizards is much the same, with one exception. They too are to take enough killing to feed their worms, and a little more to grow. But before they tithe the rest, they are expected to take another portion, as much as they dare, to use for their own purposes. They then tithe whatever is left to the Ascendant Hive that they server under. So, they are expected to forge their own paths with the catch being that if they get too far out of line or too devious then their fellow Hive will get jealous and kill them in order to take possession of the excess of destruction they are keeping for themselves.
Why do the Knights and Wizards get this exception, this command to branch out and do their own things as much as they are able? Probably, Oryx wants to make sure his Hive don’t fall into a rut of all fighting the same way. More than that, though, I think it has to do with Knights and the Wizards being the final adult form the Hive. Essentially, Thrall and Acolytes are children that have to do as they are told, but Knights and Wizards (and Kings presumably, but we never hear of any other Hive Kings) are free to achieve or squander their power and earnings as little or as much as they want. This, of course, also calls back to the the way Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro made their own journey of destruction from childhood to adulthood back on the seas of Fundament so long ago.
Next, the Knights and Wizards who manage to steal and hold on to enough power will become Ascendant Hive once they are able to create their own throne worlds. These Hive too are commanded to tithe upward, but they are the last link in the chain as the only ones above them are Oryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath. We also know that Ascendant Hive are still free to do their own thing, as we know of at least one, Alak-Hul (the Darkblade from the Sunless Cell Strike) who attempts to challenge Oryx for leadership of the Hive.
Finally, the three leaders of the Hive, the three royal siblings we know so well, will use the vast flow of tribute flowing up to them to feed their own worms, grow their own power, feed the Hive’s worm gods, and to study the powers of the Deep.
I think this plan, this pyramid scheme of destruction, was the plan Savathûn spoke of. There’s no real proof of this, but it feels a bit too clever for Oryx to have come up with it on his own. Either way, this is how the Hive operate from this point on. This plan is both their command structure and their supply line. Ultimately, it will be their greatest strength and, for at least one of the three murderous royal siblings, their greatest weakness… But we won’t see that second part for quite a while.
(Many of you have seen and exploited this weakness first hand, however!)
Previous: 15: War and Trickery
Next: 17: The End of an Age
Bite-sized Backstory 15: War and Trickery
For the next hundred years, Oryx fought the combined forces of the Ecumene. Where as before he and his Hive were unable to stand against these “lords of matter and physical law,” Oryx was now able to turn the Ecumene’s own units against them. We’ve seen some pretty devious Taken enemies as Guardians, and that’s with Oryx just subverting Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Cabal. I like to imagine that a Taken Ecumene War Angel must have been a beautifully terrifying sight!
After a century of pushing back the Ecumene, Oryx’s forces overran the Ecumene Council located on something called a Fractal Wreath. We don’t know exactly what this was, but I like to imagine the Ecumen’s center of government was located on some sorts of awe inspiring megastructure hanging in space that only an empire that had bent math and physics to its whim could even hope to build. Maybe this Fractal Wreath could have looked like a cross between a Halo and one of these:
As Oryx finally reached and destroyed the Ecumene Council he also did something just as impressive and frightening: He somehow brought Xivu Arath back to life even though he had killed her in his Throne World! She arose from the destruction of the Ecumene saying to Oryx: “I am war, and you have conjured me back with war.”
For the next forty years, Oryx and Xivu Arath continued their battle against the Ecumene until they neared the Dakaua Nest. Remember, it was the Dakaua Ministry of War that first tried to rally the client races of the Ecumene against the Hive. And it was the Dakaua whose mercenary explorers discovered and revived Taox from her long twenty thousand year stasis. Wiping out the Ecumene council may have been a major victory, but if the Dakaua were the lead race of the Ecumene, nearing their Nest may have been an even more significant event. Its likely that the Dakaua knew this and put up one heck of a fight!
Maybe the Hive’s conquest of the Dakaua Nest was proceeding too slowly for Oryx’s liking or maybe he was just feeling devious one day, but for some reason Oryx contacted the Dakaua and asked for their support in killing his sister. He told the Dakaua he had become jealous of her. Oddly enough, the Dakaua agreed to help him!
It sounds a bit silly, but we have to conclude that Oryx request appeared genuine. It must have been more than him just sending a quick text message. We aren’t told exactly how he convinced the Dakaua to agree to help him, just that they were desperate enough to do so. Maybe he offered them a cease fire and actually ordered his forces to stop their advance? Or maybe he turned them away from attacking the Ecumene forces and instead had them attack his sister’s forces?
Whatever Oryx did to earn the trust of the Dakaua was apparently convincing enough that he and Xivu Arath were able to lure them into so cunning and deadly that soon the entire Dakaua race was erased from the galaxy! And again, something just as shocking happened: With the destruction of the Dakaua, Oryx was somehow able to bring his middle sister Savathûn back to life! “I am trickery, and you have conjured me back with trickery,” she told her brother. But she too had been killed in Oryx’s Throne World, so how is it possible she could be brought back? Shouldn’t both she and Xivu Arath be dead?
The best explanation I can come up with is this:
When Oryx was first killed by his sister during the war against the Ammonites the worm gods told him: “From this day forward, Auryx, you and your sisters will each survive death – so long as you aren’t killed in your own throne.”
Look carefully at the beginning of XXVI: star by star by star, the book where Auryx killed his sisters to gain Akka’s power to speak directly to the Deep. It specifically says: “Beneath a gree fire sky, in the throne-world of King Auryx, or lords embrace.” See that? Savathûn and Xivu Arath were not in their own throne, they were in their brother’s when he killed them.
At some point in the future Xivu Arath will have this to say about her death at the hands of her brother:
Once, I permitted Oryx to kill me so that he could gain the sword logic and overcome Akka our God. This left me trapped deep in my throne. But Oryx my brother made war upon the Ecumene and in that war he described me, for I too am war. Thus I was resurrected.
Many many hundreds or thousands of years later Ikora Rey will have this to say about Crota:
…is his world the apex of Hive power, or is it the youngest and most accessible of a string of netherworlds, each host to a more terrible Hive archentity?
So maybe killing an Ascendant Hive in the Ascendant Plane is not enough? Maybe they have to be killed in their specific throne world? Is this how Akka can be still alive even though Oryx killed it? Maybe it too was outside of its own throne-world? We killed both Crota and Oryx within their throne-worlds, but what about the War Priest, or Golgorth, or Oryx’s twin daughters?
In the end, what was left of the client races of the Ecumene knew the reappearance of Xivu Arath and Savathûn, along with the extinction of the Dakaua, was so unbelievably bad that they each fled into hiding only to be hunted down by Oryx and his sisters over the next thousand years. We’re told that the Hive exterminate the races of the Ecumene so completely that the only record of them at all is the Books of Sorrow… and curiously, within the mind of Taox.
Wait… Taox escaped again?!
Previous: 14: Oryx – The Taken King
Next: 16: Oryx’s Pyramid Scheme
Bite-sized Backstory 14: Oryx - The Taken King
The Hive were all but beaten. Thanks to Taox’s information, the Ecumene knew exactly where to strike and exactly who to target. Before long, Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath could not even emerge from their throne-worlds for fear of being killed again and again. Worse, hiding and waiting was not an option, either. Each of the siblings felt the gnawing of their worms inside them. Without a supply of destruction, the bargain offered to the Hive by their worm gods so long ago would soon destroy them from within.
After much debate and despair between the three ascendant siblings who had gathered within Auryx’s throne-world, it was Auryx who came up with a solution. What they needed to defeat the Ecumene was the power of the Deep that their worms gods had long kept from them. And the only way to get it was to become far more powerful himself by claiming the power held by his sisters.
By truly killing them.
So, Auryx took up his sword and gained great power by beheading his sister Xivu Arath who willingly allowed it. He then turned and killed his sister Savathûn who at the last second had tried to trick him by pretending to give up her life willingly but who actually was intending to kill him with a dagger she had in her hand hidden behind her back.
By killing his two sisters, each of whom had participated in the deaths of billions spread across well over three hundred worlds, Auryx gained enormous power. So much so that he was able to seek out Akka,one of his worm gods, and demand the secrets he needed to call upon the deep directly. Akka refused to give him those secret, so Auryx killed it and took the secrets for himself. He forged these secrets into what he called the Tablets of Ruin then returned to his Hive and proclaimed himself to be Oryx, The Taken King since he now had the power to take life and make it his own.
Within the year, the Ecumene Crisis Council (and not the Dakaua Ministry of War? Was this bigger than just a war now?) met in an emergency session. Somehow the war that had been going so well had unexpectedly reversed itself. Where before the three leaders of the Hive had been forced into hiding, now the one they recognized as Aurash / Oryx had reemerged in possession of a staggeringly powerful new weapon. He somehow had the ability to abduct individual targets from the physical world then return them drastically changed. These “Taken” came back completely under Oryx’s control and possessed “physically illegal” abilities.
Oryx’s ability to “take” and alter individuals greatly concerned the Ecumene, and why wouldn’t it? He had found a way to do something that they, as “lords of matter and physical law,” could not even conceive of. With Oryx now able to turn their own forces against them, the Ecumene Crisis Council predicted that their civilizations would be extinct within 220 years unless some countermeasure to Oryx’s new power could be found.
The leaders of the Ecumene directed all of their client races to immediately dedicate all of their economic and technological resources to stopping Oryx, but in the end it would not be enough.
Previous: 13: The Amiable Ecumene
Next: 15: War and Trickery
Bite-sized Backstory 13: The Amiable Ecumene
With more than three hundred worlds in ashes behind him, Auryx should have felt mighty and powerful. Instead, he felt trapped and he felt afraid and he felt betrayed. He wasn’t sad or or ill at ease with the destruction he’d caused. This time, he called his sisters to him and cried out in grief because he’d finally proven something that had been nagging at him for some time: His worm’s hunger was growing faster than the power he could draw from it.
The more he and his sisters fed their worm with destruction the faster their worms hungered for it. Soon, Auryx admitted to his sisters, their worms would be so hungry that they would not be able to feed them even if they tried to do so with all of their considerable might! If things kept going as they had been, they and the entirety of the Hive would be consumed by the very worms that had given them so much power.
And then things got worse for the royal Hive siblings!
Far away from the Hive’s contingent of interstellar moons, the ministry of war of a race called the Dakaua came together to address a critical threat. The Dakaua, it seems, play a major leadership role in some sort of alliance of several species spread among the stars that collectively call themselves the Ecumene. (Note that ecumene means something like “the known world” in Greek.)
Over the last hundred years, and despite the efforts of the Ecumene Status Army’s perimeter fleets, seventeen of their client races had fallen to a previously unknown race calling itself the Hive. The Hive’s power had grown so great that the Dakaua were now looking at the possibility that the entire Ecumene faced extinction at the hands of the Hive. Fortunately, they had just gotten a big break.
Mercenary explorers had discovered an ancient interstellar ship fleeing from the Hive’s advance. An analysis of the ship put its construction at around 24,000 years prior… around the same time that the Ecumene had lost contact with the Ammonites in the Fundament system! It seems very possible that the Ammonites were in fact a client race of the Ecumene.
Inside this ancient ship the explorers found a member of a proto-Hive individual frozen in some sort of stasis. Once revived, she identified herself as Taox! Recall, that it was Taox who had betrayed the brave royal sisters of the Osmium Court and lead those sisters to swear an oath of revenge against her. One might even argue that she was (somewhat indirectly) responsible for the birth of the Hive and the death of hundreds of worlds…
Now though, during her debriefing, Taox provides the Ecumene with an account of the fall of the Ammonites and vitially important intel about the motives and biology of the Hive. She also tell them, who their leaders are. With this new information, the Dakaua are able to supply Ecumene forces with new orders and three high priority targets: The siblings who once called themselves Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro.
The Dakaua Ministry of War instructs its combined forces to target the Hive’s three leaders with “maximum theater overkill” and authorizes the use of Caedometric (possibly Light based or anti-matter based) weapons. Given what they now know, the Dakaua believe that the Hive will crumble once their leaders are destroyed. Soon, these new orders are put into action and finally, after the loss of seventeen worlds, the Ecumene seem to have the upper hand.
For Auryx and his sisters, this reversal of fortunes couldn’t have come at a worse time. Already they were reaching the limits of their power and now the Ecumene somehow knew to target them specifically. Take a moment to read just how desperate things had become:
”I am at my end,” Savathûn says. “I plot and plan. But I cannot gather enough bloodshed to feed my worm. And the harder I try, the hungrier it becomes.”
“I slaughter and kill,” Xivu Arath says, “but the harder I fight, the more my worm demands. I too am at my end.”
“The Ecumene war angels have killed me so many times,” Auryx says, “that I dare not go out into the universe, lest I need my might to protect myself. My worm chews at my soul in hunger.”
As mighty as the Hive have become, they are forced to admit that the Ecumene are more powerful than they are. At one point, Xivu Arath even calls the Ecumene “lords of matter and physical law” all but admitting defeat! Savathûn, unable to plot and plan her way past the Ecumene’s superior tactics and firepower desperately suggests that they beg the worm gods to tell them what to do!
Auryx, however, rejects the weakness of his two sisters and tells them he knows a way that they might still be able to defeat the Ecumene. What Auryx does next to his sisters, and even to one of his gods, will change his position among the Hive forever!
Previous: 12: War on Life
Next: 14: Oryx – The Taken King
Bite-sized Backstory 12: War on Life
After their defeat of the Ammonites, the Hive hollow out some or maybe even all of Fundament’s 52 moons turning them into giant spaceships capable of traveling to distant star systems. I wonder if this process looked anything like what Crota was doing to our moon?
For a very long time, the Hive’s fleet of moons travels through the cold dark between the stars. Interestingly, even though they are more or less immortal, the three murderous siblings still have practical concerns. At one point during the journey, Auryx openly wonders how he and his people will eat and breath, among other science facts. Fortunately his sister Savathûn tells him that he should really just relax.
She has been studying both the way the worm gods use wounds to travel and the way her brother returned after she had killed him. She has figured out not only how to travel bridge great distances with wounds but also how her and her siblings can return to their throne worlds without having to die first. Now, instead of being scattered across their moons with limited ways to communicate or share food or resources, the Hive now have the means to quickly and easily come together as a society united in the cause of challenging and destroying all those weaker than themselves.
Over the next 20,000 years, the Hive journey towards new star systems. During this time, Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath wage constant war against each other, each discovering and teach the others new aspects of their power and new ways to kill. They must have killed each other hundred or thousands of times over as they grew in power.
Finally, near the end of their long journey, Auryx declares to his siblings and his people that he is establishing a court called the High War. And along with this court he creates a series of rules for the Hive beneath him to learn the sword logic that has given him and his sisters such power. He also sets up a way for lower Hive to challenge him and take his position as the leader if they are able to defeat him. This is the beginning of what we will eventually know as the Court of Orxy. We’ll hear a bit more about this Court soon.
Interestingly, Savathûn also creates a court called the High Coven which likely has a similar function of teaching cunning and killing to those Hive seeking to gain the power of the sword logic. Oddly, Xivu Arath does not create a court and instead claims that her court exist anywhere there is war.
At last, the Hive have come across new species and begin destroying them just as they destroyed the Ammonites. Over the next hundred years the Hive obliterate at least (and likely many more than) 18 separate races including one called the Qugu which are said to protect four different solar systems.
Auryx finds the Qugu interesting because in some small way they are like the Hive in that they exist in symbiosis with another organism. Apparently, the Qugu evolved in such a way that even though they are now space faring, they still offer their limbs to enormous sessile (stationary) jaw-beasts. It’s actually a virus living within the Qugu that compels them to do this possibly horrific thing, but the relationship between the Qugu and the jaw-beasts seems to be mutually beneficial.
The jaw-beasts, which are treated like gods by the Qugu, reproduce through this strange, violent process and in return they produce some sort of nectar that give the Qugu brilliant visions. We aren’t told if these are visions like being drugged out or actual visions of new ideas and technologies and glimpses into the future. I kinda suspect it was the former but kinda hope it was the latter… because a violently symbolic culture driven forward by reality defying visions just seems darn cool to me.
Unfortunately for the Qugu, Savathûn liberates them from their jaw-beasts and indeed from existence. As she does so, Auryx takes the opportunity to vaporize his sister and some of her underlings to remind her to guard her flank. Normal physical death to Auryx and his sisters is, at this point, a game or teaching opportunity and not an actual threat to their wellbeing. It might not be comfortable for them to be forcibly returned to their throne worlds, but they’ve become so powerful that it is no huge setback for them anymore.
As the Hive continue destroying civilizations, Auryx muses about how he and his people are helping the universe find its final shape free of parasite civilizations that are not worthy enough or powerful enough to continue existing. At this point he has long since moved past his timidness and horror at being asked to destroy lives and species. Now, he feeds the hungry worm within him with entire worlds without so much as a second though.
Except… what would happen if he and his Hive came upon a culture that they were not able to defeat?
Previous: 11: Rampant Speculation 1
Next: 13: The Amiable Ecumene
Bite-sized Backstory 11: Rampant Speculation 1
There are a few interesting questions I’ve put off until we could reach a good stopping point in the Hive’s timeline. A lot of little nuggets that don’t really have directly supported answers but are ripe for a little good ole fashioned Rampant Speculation. No sources this time (Calcified Fragments: Curiosity – XX: Hive if you must) as I’m trying to draw some fun possibilities from that which isn’t entirely there. Perhaps you’d care to join me? 
1. The worm gods say that:
For millions of years We have been [trapped|growing] in the Deep.
Ok. So who trapped them there. Well, the Leviathan, apparently:
For millions of years the Leviathan caged us here. It is a pawn of the Sky, a philosophy of cosmic slavery.
A little later the worm gods say that
the war rages on.
Could these worms have lost a battle millions of years ago and been held prisoner ever since? And if so, why hold them prisoner instead of killing them? Could it be because killing them isn’t all that effective? Sathona’s familiar communicated with her and her father even though it is described as being dead…
2. Who were the creators / previous owners of the needle ship? They are at one point referred to as explorers, but clearly they were more than that. They didn’t just map Fundament, they dove into its core and brought back a chrysalis to a room dedicated specifically to birthing it. They seem to have succeeded but were then all slaughtered for their efforts… If they were allied with the worm gods why didn’t the worms escape millions of years ago?
I propose this: The explorers on the needle ship were deceived into retrieving a unborn worm or possibly worm larvae and were offered the same choice Aurash and her sisters were, but they rejected the worms’ offer.
I think the worms could not leave Fundament’s core on their own but rather had to spread into the three royal sisters and later their followers in order to gain enough power from directly participating in the slaughter of the races of Fundament. Only then did they finally gain enough power to tear wounds to orbit. Perhaps when the needle ship explorers refused to do this they were killed so the worms could use their ship to lead the next potential hosts to them even though it took millions of years to do so?
My guess is Sathona’s familiar was what the needle ship explorers brought back, but it killing the small number of explorers wasn’t anywhere near the number of deaths the worms needed to take direct part in to escape their prison.
3. The Osmium King and Aurash independently verified the changed orbits of Fundament’s moons. The three sisters used the needle ship’s sensors to hear the distant approach of the god wave. I think its safe to assume the moons really were rearranged and a civilization destroying wave really was on its way… but who really caused it?
The worm gods, upon reaching orbit, say:
Our organs detect a fifty-third moon in orbit of Fundament. A Traveler. Divine presence of the Sky. Now we know what arranged the syzygy.
But, the Leviathan talked of how the Sky creates safe places and when the Leviathan flees Fundament it says:
—Sisters of Aurash, open your eyes++
++Who made you monsters? Who summoned the wave?—
—Make peace. Join with me in golden renewal.++
Clearly it is referring to the worm gods as the ones who summoned the god wave. Which would mean it is saying that it was the worm gods, and not the Traveler, who rearranged the moons. Who is right here?!
I think the Leviathan is right. For two reasons:
First, it didn’t sugar coat the way the universe works when it told the sisters that struggle and death is sometimes part of living, and it also was exactly right about the worms and their motives. Looking through everything the Leviathan says I don’t think it even comes close to telling a lie. It relates unhappy truths, yes, but never a lie.
Second, the worm gods come very close to directly admitting they have the power to move planets:
From across the stars We have called life to Fundament, so that it might contend against extinction. For millennia We have awaited you… our beloved hosts.
What happened millennia ago? Aurash told his sisters he had proof that:
The plate of stone we live on, our Osmium Court, is one fragment of a rocky planet that crashed into the Fundament and broke apart. All the other nearby continents — the Helium Drinkers, the Bone Plaza, the Starcutters — came from the same world.
Perhaps the other races of the Fundament are migrants too.
If the worm gods really had the power to crash entire planets into Fundament surely they had the power to rearrange its moons. So why lie about it? Well… give it a bit and we’ll find out that the worm gods’ bargain with the three royal sisters wasn’t exactly entirely truthful either. As a brief preview, here’s what Auryx had to say when he found out the entirety of the bargain he and his sisters had agreed to:
NO
Savathûn! Xivu Arath! My siblings
We are betrayed. We will never live eternal.
I think the worm gods grant power and knowledge through bargains. They seem to know the answers to questions no one had known to ask. But I also think in the end, time and time again, their price is ultimately revealed to be too high as we’ll soon see, oh speculators mine.
Previous: 10: The Birth of the Hive
Next: 12: War on Life
Bite-sized Backstory 10: The Birth of the Hive
Auryx was dead. Murdered by his sister Savathûn along with all the members of the Ammonite Satellite Congress…
Except, he wasn’t dead!
Instead of being no more, he finds himself, minus his physical body, inside what the worm gods described to him as a cyst universe created by his own might. A “Throne World” they called it. All three royal siblings, the worm gods told him, now had this power to survive death… as long as they were not killed in their own Throne World.
From his new found Throne World, Auryx watched as his sisters pressed their advantage against the (now leaderless?) Ammonites. Their strategy of digging into the available moons and breeding their armies back to strength seem to have worked.
At some point, as the battle turned in favor of Savathûn and Xivu Arath, the Leviathan emerged from Fundament’s depths and made for the safety of what was left of the Ammonites’ fleets. We aren’t told why it decided to break cover. Was it no longer safe? Was it trying to protect the Ammonites? We just don’t know.
The worm gods continue to poke and prod at Auryx in every way they can in the hopes of getting him to return to the fight. They again try and contrast their plain, honest “truths” against the Leviathan’s harsh realities. They point out that Taox was not killed alongside Auryx and the Ammonite’s Satellite Congress and is still out there somewhere. And, of course, they point out that Auryx is in effect immortal now thanks to their power. Unfortunately for the Ammonites, the worms’ constant manipulations and gifts (of immortality and dark magic) end up convincing Auryx to make peace with his sisters and rejoin the battle.
The Ammonite’s fleets that once danced circles around Xivu Arath warriors and warships were now burdened with defending their remaining moons and the Leviathan. Soon, Chroma-Admiral Rafriit, the Ammonites’ greatest military leader, is killed and not long after that their forces are completely defeated and Savathûn is busy poisoning the seas of their homemoon. And that’s the last we hear of the Ammonites…
Ever.
In the aftermath, the worms feed upon the corpse of the Leviathan and we also find out that the Traveler fled the Fundament system rather than, say, sacrificing itself. Curious that.
Under the worms’ direction, Auryx and his sisters hollow out some or all of Fundament’s 52 moons into giant ships capable of journeying to new stars. Here we also see Auryx’s followers take on the name “the Hive” and we get a glimpse at how they organize themselves:
A mother Wizard gets fertility from a mate, or from herself. From the Wizard the spawn, from the spawn our Thrall, from the survivors our Acolytes who contend. If they contend well, their worm is fed, and from the well fed worm come Knights and Wizards and Princes.
Interesting that little to nothing is mentioned about being curious or clever anymore. If anything, all the hive and their worm gods are focused on now is strenght and destruction. As happens, this will become more important soon.
And, with the destruction of the Ammonites and the exodus of the Hive, we’ve reached our first major end in Destiny’s backstory. We learned the tragic tale of three smart, talented royal sisters of a very short lived race trapped on the inner seas of a gas giant who were forced into exile and then corrupted into monsters by strange, powerful worm gods. We saw Aurash, Sathona and Xi Ro, become the xenocidial Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath, the three leaders of what we now know for sure is the Hive.
The worst part? The end of the Ammonites’ civilization is just the beginning of the devastation the Hive will wreck on the galaxy!
Previous: 9: Auryx’s Sadness
Next: 11: Rampant Speculation 1
Bite-sized Backstory 9: Auryx's Sadness
Auryx had done it! He had managed to get himself, his sisters, and a large number of his people off of their inhospitable, unforgiving world. They had traded the Stormjoys, and burning seas, and lightning storms, and the ever enveloping pitch black they’d been forced to live in for the serene beauty of space. As a navigator and astronomer, one would think Auryx would be ecstatic, but he was anything but.
Instead, Auryx knew he was only where he was because he had lead a war that started with the slaughter of people from his own country. A war that had expanded across continents and across races and had laid waste to everything he had ever know. And then there were the worms… his gods. Not only had they urged and insisted upon the war. Not only were they now demanding he and his sisters attack the Ammonites who lived on Fundament’s moons. All the while the philosophy they espoused time and time again went against almost everything he believed…
Over and over the worms tried to explain how the Sky built civilizations and safe places, but those rules and right actions that prevented war and lead to harmony were, in reality, a great lie. How life was nothing more than a wasteful engine that burns up energy and produces rot and decay. And that the only rule that actually is right and good is that the worth of a thing can be determined only by that thing’s ability to exist and go on existing at the expense of everything and everyone else around it.
Is it any surprise, then, that Auryx now shirked away from war with the Ammonites? After all, he was the royal sibling who had hesitated to swear an oath of revenge against Taox. He was the sibling who had, at times, sat frozen in fear in the cabin of his ship as his sisters sailed away from their overthrown kingdom. And he was the one who needed his sisters to read him stories in new languages to keep his mind off of everything that had happened in the years since their exile.
Without Auryx’s leadership and strength, his people were driven back by the Ammonites and were forced to burrow deep into some of Fundament’s moons in order to survive. Even though his sisters were doing their best, they were slowly losing their new war all while their brother remained detached and, at times, catatonic because of everything he had done.
Then something new happened. As his sisters spread and grew their forces among the interiors Fundament’s moons, the Ammonites began deploying paracausal weapons. That is, they began using weapons that did not make sense with regards to the ordinary flow of time or rules of physics. It probably means they began using weapons based on the concepts of Light, since the worms tell Auryx that these new weapons were given to the Ammonites by the Traveler.
Auryx in his curiosity and his need to explore and understand is drawn back by the novelty of these new weapons deployed first by the Ammonites and then by his sisters as the worm gods teach them to arm themselves in a similar fashion. But he is also forced by the hunger of his worm as it begins to eat away at him. His pact with his gods was, after all, that he either explore and understand or be consumed…
But then, two completely unexpected things occurred:
- Auryx betrays his sisters and meets with the Ammonites on neutral ground to try to broker a peace between them and his people.
- Savathûn, always one step ahead, somehow manages to breach the Ammonite’s defenses and strike at the peace conference.
By the time the dust settles and Savathûn’s forces make their escape, both the Ammonite Satellite Congress and her own beloved brother are very very intentionally dead!
Sources:
III: The Oath
IV: Syzygy
VI: Sisters
XIII: Into the Sky
XIV: 52 and One
XV: Born As Prey
XVI: The Sword Logic
XVII: The Weakness Verse
Previous: 8: The Conquest of Fundament
Next: 10: The Birth of the Hive
Bite-sized Backstory 8: The Conquest of Fundament
With the help of the worm gods, Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath load their deep diving needle ship with worm larvae and return to their Osmium Court. They begin to offer the worms’ larvae to any and all of their kind who will accept it. Those that refuse are killed or forced to flee!
With the new might of worm-enhanced followers, the royal siblings lead an army against Taox. They push her invading Helium Drinkers, and any of their own people who refused the worm larvae, out of the Osmium Court and surrounding territories. They don’t manage to kill Taox, but after more than three years in exile they have finally retaken their home.
At this point, it seems that Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath probably slowed or stopped their conquest, but their new gods are not content with this. They insist that Taox, and the Leviathan, and all the forces of the Sky will still oppose them, and that the only way to be truly free of suffering and injustice is to defeat their enemies. And so, the war continues and soon Taox and her forces are driven all the way back to Kaharn Atoll.
We know from a bit of conversation back when the sisters were repairing the needle ship that Kaharn Atoll is probably some sort of cross-species port or trade destination. This is a place that the vengeful siblings used to regard warmly. For instance, Sathona used to buy Aurash stories written in other races’ languages and read them to her. It was something that they both enjoyed and found relaxing… but now Kaharn is a place where their sworn enemy has begun rallying all the races of Fundament against them.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan and whatever contacts it has within Fundament’s races begin destroying any kind of ship or rocket or spacecraft that might be able to help the worms and their newfound hosts leave the gas giant. This effort is successful enough that the worms come up with a new plan. They tell the vengeful siblings to attack and slaughter everyone at Kaharn! By doing so, they will gain the power to cut wounds in the fabric of space that will let them achieve orbit. They instruct Xivu Arath to lead the attack, saying:
Reality is a fine flesh, oh general ours. Let us feast of it.
Again, we see the “oh ______ mine” type phrasing, this time coming directly from the worm gods. This will be important later…
Very few of the holdouts at Kaharn survive the battle. We are never told how large a port Kaharn is, but we can imagine that it was not a small place since some five hundred races interacted there. Perhaps thousands or millions, military and civilian alike, were slaughtered in the battle. Those that do somehow manage to survive flee into orbit, but the worm gods are true to their word and help the murderous siblings build ships and use their ever growing powers to cut their way into orbit.
We see Hive Tombships use this type of travel all the time in Destiny, but this is the first time it was ever used, it seems.
Once in orbit, the worms spot Taox, and the few survivors of Kaharn, fleeing into the welcoming arms of the Ammonites, a highly advanced spacefaring race of cephalopods that live among the oceans of Fundament’s fifty-two moons. They also spot a fifty-third moon, a Traveler, which they say is a divine presence of the Sky!
Previous: 7: The Go[o]d Worms
Next: 9: Auryx’s Sadness