The story of the three siblings of the Hive is one of the most exciting in the Destiny universe. We’ve already dealt with Oryx, the King of the Taken. What do Savathûn, Xivu Arath, and the Dreaming City have to do with it? A journey through the lore.
What does Oryx have to do with the Dreaming City? A little-noticed aspect of the story is that Oryx already conquered the Dreaming City during the Taken War. He transformed Riven of a Thousand Voices, one of the last Ahamkara, into a Taken.
With Oryx’s death, the Taken were directionless and without leadership, at least until Savathûn showed up. Learn all about the origins of Savathûn, her sister Xivu Arath, and their influences on the Dreaming City and the future of the Destiny franchise here.
Savathûn and her sisters – the origins
The beginnings of the Hive – Game of Thrones in space? Savathûn was not always called that. She was born as Sathona and had two sisters – Xi Ro and Aurash. The three sisters are daughters of a king, the Osmium King, who ruled over a continent on a distant planet – Fundament.
The drama began when the king, already very old, found a dead worm on the beach. Soon, he began to murmur about a disaster that would soon befall them. Taox, a close confidante of the king and somewhat of a caretaker to the three sisters, suspected that the king was becoming senile and was no longer able to lead the kingdom.
According to Taox, the daughters were not yet ready to rule the realm. To secure her own position of power, Taox allied with a hostile kingdom and betrayed her own confidants. The king and his daughters were to be murdered – and in return, Taox would rule the realm.
But the assassination attempt failed; only the king was killed. The three sisters escaped with their father’s dead worm and swore revenge. Over the course of the following year, the sisters sailed on Aurash’s ship across the oceans of Fundament. Meanwhile, the supposedly dead worm spoke to Sathona repeatedly and warned her of dangers.
Eventually, the three sisters came across a ship, which they named “The Needle.” Under the influence of the worm, the sisters repaired the ship and set out for the core of the planet.
The Worm Gods, the Hive, and Immortality
What did the sisters find in the core of the planet? In the midst of the planet, Sathona, Xi Ro, and Aurash encountered the Worm Gods: Akka, Eir, Ur, Xol, and Yul. With these, the princesses made a pact. The Worm Gods offered the sisters a chance to escape Fundament and attain immortality. In return, they were to take the worms as symbionts into themselves and spread their seed across the galaxy.
The sisters agreed to the pact and became the first of the Hive:
- Xi Ro took in the Knight Worm and transformed into Xivu Arath, who should always test her strength,
- Sathona took the Mother Worm and transformed into Savathûn, who should always be cunning,
- Aurash took the King Worm and became Auryx, the King of the Hive, who should always strive to gain a profound understanding of things. In the course of the transformation, gender was changed.
With the worms inside them, the siblings began to plan their revenge against Taox. But things went awry.
Savathûn and her siblings – the genocide
The siblings and their hunt for the traitor: Taox had taken refuge on a moon of Fundament. Auryx wanted to negotiate with the race living there, but Savathûn wanted bloody revenge. As punishment, she killed Auryx, who, being immortal, transitioned into his Throne World in the Ascendant Realm, where his soul resided as long as he had not regained his body.
Since the siblings were immortal, a bloody war followed against various species across the galaxy. Meanwhile, the siblings kept killing each other to follow the Sword Logic.
The Sword Logic
The Sword Logic is similar to a religious doctrine that seeks strength. Every death of an enemy makes the perpetrator stronger, according to the logic. Only the strong have a right to survive. Those who are weak deserve nothing but death.
The vengeful campaign against Taox turned into a bloody genocide with billions of victims. Gradually, the once allied siblings realized what the Worm Gods had done to them: puppets, tools created solely to satisfy the hunger of the worms for death.
Thus, Auryx, the King of the Hive, became Oryx, the King of the Taken
This is how the siblings tried to free themselves from the influence of the Worm Gods: Savathûn, Xivu Arath, and Auryx met in his Throne World and devised a plan to protect themselves from the Worm Gods. Savathûn and Xivu Arath allowed themselves to be killed by Auryx to empower him to challenge his own symbiont.
A successful endeavor. Auryx confronted his own Worm God, Akka, and defeated him. Through the death of the worm, Auryx gained the ability to interact with the Darkness itself. He created the Tablets of Ruin and became capable of turning living beings into Taken.
And so Auryx, the King of the Hive, became Oryx, the King of the Taken. After his transformation, Oryx resurrected Savathûn and Xivu Arath, followed by a reign of terror over the Hive and their enemies.
Savathûn and the betrayal of Oryx
Oryx and his audience with the Darkness: Out of fear of the influence of her brother, Xivu Arath and Savathûn concocted a plan to trap Oryx in his Throne World and sever the connection to the life essence of the Worm Gods.
However, this plan failed. Also, an attempt to breach Oryx’s Throne World using Oryx’s son Crota to destroy the king with the Vex was unsuccessful. But Oryx realized that his Throne World had become vulnerable to external attacks and created a new weapon of destruction from the remains of the Worm God Akka: the Dreadnaught.
Afterwards, the siblings scattered across the galaxy:
- Oryx went to Saturn to challenge the Guardians during the Taken War.
- Xivu Arath fled from her brother’s influence, as he had restricted her too much.
Savathûn pursued a very different tactic. She hid in a black hole. As time behaves differently in a black hole, she hoped for a greater increase in her power using fewer resources.
This plan, however, failed as the Worm God residing in her increased its hunger, thus requiring more resources. Two years later, Oryx was defeated and destroyed by the Guardians. What Savathûn was up to in the meantime was unknown – until the launch of Destiny 2.
Mysterious Hive rituals in the Arcology on Titan
A new Hive brood rises: As part of the story of Destiny 2, the Guardians must investigate the Arcology on the Saturn moon Titan. There, they encounter several powerful representatives of the Hive, all of whom are somehow related to Savathûn. Several scannable objects reinforce the impression that Savathûn is now actively interfering in the story.
This becomes particularly clear in the Strike “Savathûn’s Song,” where the Guardians must track down a missing strike team. There, the Guardians learn that the team was transformed into crystals emitting Void Light.
This serves the purpose of feeding a specific Hive ritual centered around a gigantic Screamer named Savathûn’s Song. With the help of Warlock Taeko-3, we succeed in defeating the Screamer and interrupting the ritual.
New Taken emerge: Further clashes in the solar system also suggest that Savathûn has gained the ability to transform beings into Taken. Thus, we encounter a Commander of the Red Legion who has been taken (Grask, the Consumed). Since the Red Legion only appeared in the solar system after Oryx’s death, another source must be the origin.
During the Warmind expansion, the Guardians learn about messages that the Hive sends to Savathûn to awaken her from the Darkness and experience her true power.
Forsaken as the trigger for the next great collapse?
Savathûn and her influence on the Dreaming City: After Oryx’s fall, Savathûn gained a powerful ally in Riven, one of the last Ahamkara. Although Riven was taken by Oryx, she retained her free will.
With the “puppet” Uldren and his barons, Riven was able to open the portals of the Dreaming City to threats from outside. Thanks to the intervention of the Guardians during the last story mission of Forsaken, Riven remained vulnerable and did not gain immortality.
During the raid “Last Wish” Riven was finally defeated and destroyed. Before her death, however, a final wish was granted: The takeover of the Dreaming City by the Taken.
Since then, a curse has lain on the home of the Awoken people. Savathûn’s daughter, Dûl Incaru, was commissioned by her mother to ensure the complete takeover of the Dreaming City by the Taken and to penetrate into the Most Holy of the Awoken, as Savathûn expected this to bring her further increases in power.
The help from the Guardians, which is no help: The queen of the Awoken, Mara Sov, asks the Guardians for help to end the spreading corruption by the Taken and to stop Dûl Incaru. At the peak of the corruption (always Week 3 of the curse cycle), the Guardians manage to defeat Dûl Incaru and break the curse. Unfortunately, this was exactly Savathûn’s plan.
Savathûn’s devilish plan to attain true power
Black holes, the Awoken, and Savathûn’s plan: Savathûn waits patiently in a black hole, where time flows differently than outside. This was a tactic to trick the Worm residing in her and gain more power. This plan failed. Now, Savathûn is trying to achieve the same effect in the Most Holy of the Awoken with the help of her daughter.
Since the curse was broken, the Dreaming City has been trapped in a time loop. With the aid of the Taken Vex Hydra Quria, Savathûn has succeeded in creating a time loop that forces the three weeks of corruption to be relived over and over again. A vicious cycle for the Guardians:
- With every victory over Dûl Incaru, Savathûn comes closer to her goal of finding the Most Holy of the Awoken.
- However, if the Guardians allow Dûl Incaru to remain, the corruption would progress further and ultimately destroy the Awoken.
What is actually driving Xivu Arath? Whether Savathûn knows her sister’s plans is unknown. However, it is evident that Xivu Arath is attempting to exert influence over the Taken and the Hive in the solar system. This is evidenced by powerful representatives of the Taken seeking to steal dangerous relics from the Dreaming City and seeming to belong to the “Hive God of War”.
How might the story of the Hive gods continue?
One thing is certain: Savathûn, Quria, and Xivu Arath will cross our paths again in the future. But in what form?
- What do the omnipresent tetrahedral ships have to do with it? Is it Savathûn’s attack fleet, directed by an unknown race?
- What will happen after the curse is broken in the Dreaming City? Will Savathûn ultimately gain the power to destroy us all?
- Will we forge new alliances in the process? The Fallen and the Awoken seem predestined for this.
- What role does the Gambit vendor and his encounter with Darkness play in this story?
- What role will the Traveler play in the story?
One way or another – the odds are good that it will become uncomfortable for the Guardians.
What do you think of the story about Savathûn? What role will she play in the future?
