XXX: a golden amputation
Wrath!
Behold the wrath of Oryx, coiled for ten thousand years. Behold the Golden Amputation: the fall of Taishibeth, the end of an age. We beat the worlds of Taishibeth like skull drums and we howl in joy for our black war moons as they ram silver orbitals and gleaming star-webs, where infant Taishibethi sun ravens curl and die unborn.
In his throne world Oryx paces ten times.
On the first pace, Kraghoor sends the accursed to blight the Taishibethi worlds.
On the second pace, the Tai unleash their battleplates and arsenal ships to fight our moons.
On the third pace, Oryx’s Warpriest meets them in battle, and he is victorious, he paints the void with fire, he salts the earth with ash.
On the fourth pace, Mengoor and Cra’adug, dyad knights, go to the Raven Bridge, and they stand on it and kill the Tai for ten years.
On the fifth pace, the Tai Emperor Raven comes home to her Bridge, and she cuts a moon with her talons, she cuts it open and kills its brood.
On the sixth pace, Oryx speaks, saying, listen to me, Emperor Raven, and I will describe to you the Last True Shape, which is written on my tablet. And he puts out his fist, full of black fire, and he swallows up the Emperor Raven with a wound.
Aiat! Only Oryx knows this power, the power to take.
On the seventh pace, the Perfect Raven comes out of Oryx’s wound, and she spreads her wings across Taishibeth. Never again is a Taishibethi child born. She is perfect, she enacts the will of Oryx.
On the eighth pace, the Tai say, listen, you are spoilers, you are sphincters and excreta, you rot, why do you kill? We made silver orbitals and golden star webs. We hatched eggs. 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.
On the ninth pace, Oryx says, this is the only god, this ability to dictate what will and will not exist, this power to go on existing. This is your god. It is never ticklish.
On the tenth pace the Taishibethi are extinct.
Then Oryx says, listen my siblings, do you know what we have done? We have conquered our way to the edge of the Deep. It whispers to me when I call on it, and it guides my flight. It says that we are at its threshold and that I should come inside.
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The Taishibethi are the third notable race within the Book of Sorrows that the Hive face who possessed an armada of ships able to be set against the war moons of the Hive. The text implies time can pass differently between Oryx's Throne World and the material world, as the entire conflict takes place while Oryx takes ten paces in his Throne World.
The Warpriest, Mengoor and Cra'adug, and Kraghoor are all members of Oryx's Court, his most powerful champions, and the Guardians fight all four of these named members at different points in time. Three of them are fought and killed within the Dreadnaught; the Warpriest is fought during the King's Fall Raid leading up to Oryx in the Ascendant Plane.
Kraghoor (also called Krughor) led the Taken to blight the worlds of the Taishibethi, Mengoor and Cra'adug are a pair of Hive Knight who fought against the Taishibethi on the Raven Bridge for a decade, and the Warpriest, starting from here to the Gift Mast later on, personally conquered five hundred and eighty-five worlds.
The Tai Emperor Raven was powerful enough to destroy a Hive war moon and all the Hive within it, and her people believed she was powerful enough to challenge the gods, but Oryx was able to take her and make her one of the Taken. The text implies that, with her power augmented as a Taken, she prevented any new Taishibethi from being born.
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XXXIV: More Beautiful to Know
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a nihilist.
I don’t do much except break things. That’s what they say about me: we could’ve had a great civilization, if it weren’t for that damn Oryx, that damn Hive. They don’t believe in anything but death.
The only way to make something good is to make something that can’t be broken. And the only way to do that is to try to break everything.
I’m glad I learned that the universe runs on death. It’s more beautiful to know.
But I’m lost somewhere strange.
I think that Savathûn and Xivu Arath are trying to steal the tablets from me. They must have cut off my tribute while I was away communing with the Deep. I love them so dearly. No one else is clever or strong enough to try to break me. No one else can give me this gift.
Once, long ago, I killed Xivu Arath on her war moon, and she blew up the whole moon to kill with me her. She was laughing in joy. I laughed too. A whole moon! A whole moon. It was a waste of a moon, but it taught me how to save myself from exploding worlds, which was necessary to fight the Ecumene.
I love mighty Xivu more than a moon loves the tide. I’ll kill her for this. Over and over, forever and ever.
When I get home from my wanderings in the Deep, and I take back my throne, I’m going to have children. That’s what I need.
Sons and daughters to love and kill.
XXXV: This love is war
Xivu upon Oryx —
Uttered by Xivu Arath —
Sibling of Oryx —
BETRAYAL. We have marooned Oryx within the Deep. This is our obligation as lords of the Hive, to make war upon each other, to eradicate weakness and make ourselves sharp.
OBLIGATIONS. 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.
RESURRECTION. Savathûn and I conspired to strand Oryx on his expedition. But I secretly believe that I will be stronger with Oryx to war against. Thus I describe him.
XXXVI: Eater of Hope
You are Crota, my son. Welcome.
I fought my way out of hell to make you. I fought my traitor siblings and I fought the swarming corpse of Akka and I cut my way back into my own court, the High War, which had been usurped. Once I had made war on Savathûn, and crippled her tribute so that she could never challenge me, and once I had tricked Xivu Arath, and poisoned her tribute so that she could never again try to take my tablets, and once I had arranged my own lineages so that I would be greatest among the Hive and secure on my throne — then I found a mother to make spawn.
One of those spawn was you.
Your life will be a battle too. You will have to win your place at the High War. I will give you nothing... except this, your first sword, and this name I have prepared for you.
We fight a war against false hope, Crota. We chase a god called the Traveler, a huckster god who baits young life into building houses for it. These houses are unsafe, for they cannot stand against my Hive. And these houses are a trap — for they lead young life away from the blade and the tooth, which are the tools of survival and the means of ascension.
Only when the Traveler is extinguished will the universe be free to arrange itself, and assume, by ruthless contest, its final perfect shape, a shape which depends on nothing but itself.
Thus I name you Crota, Eater of Hope.
There is an oath upon me, Crota my son, an oath against the wretched Taox. This I do not give to you. It is for me, your father, to bear.
Let’s go meet your aunts and uncles.
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In an attempt to usurp his power, Xivu Arath and Savathun conspired to trap Oryx in the Deep. However, Oryx fought his way back out of the Deep, including a confrontation with the dead Akka. Once he made his way out, he crippled his siblings so they could no longer challenge him, and the events are what lead Oryx to sire his four children - Crota, Ir Halak, Ir Anuk, and Nokris. For making a pact with the Worm God Xol and learning the secrets of resurrection, Nokris was disowned by Oryx and his memory wiped from the Hive. Only a lone statue in the Dreadnaught remained to hint at his existence before the
Warmind expansion of Destiny 2.
Xol's motivation for making the pact was to avoid being devoured by Yul, the Honest Worm, who sought the power to withstand Oryx, meaning Oryx had become powerful enough to threaten the Worm Gods themselves.
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XXXVII: shapes: points
Look at you!
Already you are grown, my daughter, already you are a wizard. Have I been away so long?
Now you are Ir Anûk, and Savathûn cackles and rages at your brilliance. You have written eleven axioms describing the ascendant places, our throne world. You have announced that you will kill one of these axioms, as Akka would kill the truth, and in mantling Akka you will become a God, as I am.
If you try it I may kill you, or I may applaud. Well done. I brought you this bitter acid for your celebrations.
And you, Ir Halak, you are a wizard too, as is the way of twins. I have been with Xivu Arath, who complains that you have made a song, and sung it in her throne world, and killed everyone who listened, quite irrevocably. Will we have songs instead of swords and boomers?
What have you made for me? It is a tooth shaped like death! I will keep it in my mouth. What have you written for me? It is the course of the Nicha Thought-ship! I will track it down.
I made you by cutting one larvae in half. It would not die. Each half grew into one of you. My sword is named Willbreaker, but it never broke you.
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There are at least eleven axioms that define the Ascendant Plane. While all eleven are not known, Ir Anuk had aspired to kill one of them and become a God herself. Meanwhile, Ir Halak invented the Deathsong, which is sung by Hive Wizards Deathsingers and can kill anyone who hears the song completed, as it happened in Xivu Arath's throne world.
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This next section details the encounters between the Hive and the Vex, an experience which had a heavy influence on the Vex race as a whole, and is the origin of Quria, whose Taken forces have made appearances throughout
Destiny 2.
XXXVIII: The Partition of Death
One day Oryx decided to grow new wings. While he wrestled with his worm, he came upon his twin daughters dying in a wound between places.
“What are you doing, my daughters?” he asked. He was afraid that Ir Halak and Ir Anûk were trying to go into the Deep, where only the Tablets of Ruin allowed Oryx to go.
“We are dying, father,” they said. “As many times as we can manage.”
“That’s adorably precocious.” Oryx shook out his new wings. “But why?”
“We propose a method by which Ascendant souls can be detached and integrated into a tautological and autonomous thanatosphere, which we tentatively term an oversoul. Oversouls can be stored in a throne world as a mechanism of enhanced death resilience. As a side effect, new refinements to our Deathsong may be achieved, moving us closer to a generally effective paracausal death impulse.”
Oryx brandished his sword. “Speak the Royal Tongue, or I’ll pin you up for Eir to eat.”
“If we can separate our deaths from ourselves, and hide them, we will be hard to kill.”
Oryx went to his son, Crota. “Go keep an eye on your sisters,” he said. “'You can learn cunning from them.”
But while Oryx traveled to observe the Deep destroy an ancient fortress world, Crota conspired with his sisters to learn their secrets. “I too will experiment with a wound,” he said. With his sword Crota cut open a new wound, into a new space. In here he thought he might obtain a secret power.
Out of this wound came machines called Vex. They invaded Oryx’s throne world.
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The Oversoul, invented by Ir Halak and Ir Anuk together, is a construct Ascendant Hive can use to separate their souls from their physical bodies and hide it within the Ascendant Realm, making them even more resistant to death than before. In effect, Oryx's own Oversoul is his Dreadnaught, and his superweapon the paracausal death impulse it generates. Other notable Hive who have Oversouls are Crota and the Warpriest, both of which are able to use these death impulses as well.
Crota demonstrates the ability to open a wound into another world, which is what leads to the Hive's first encounter with the Vex.
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XXXIX: Open your eye: go into it
The Vex clattered around, constructing large problems. At first their constructions were deranged, because they didn’t understand the sword logic, which defined all rules in Oryx’s throne world. The geometry perplexed them.
“I’ll cut them apart,” Crota said. But just then, the Vex ritual-of-better-thoughts manifested a Mind called Quria, Blade Transform. Quria deduced the sword logic.
I have to kill everything, Quria resolved. Then I will be powerful.
Crota’s gate began to emit warrior Vex, huge and brassy. He leapt forward to fight them, but they blinked away. After they fled from Crota, they killed two thousand of Oryx’s Acolytes and ten thousand of his Thrall. Soon they had established themselves as powers in this world, by right of slaughter.
“Come forth, sister wizards,” called Ir Halak. “We need you.” Ir Anûk pulled a sword star out of the sky. Together the wizards charged it with killing power and made an annihilator totem, which they used to smash the Vex.
“Close the wound, brother Crota,” Anûk ordered. “We will find a cunning way to destroy them, but only after they stop constructing problems on us.”
But Quria had instanced itself to the other side of the gate, and built a holdfast to keep the way open. Quria’s objective was to exploit the paracausal physics of Oryx’s throne to become divine. It organized a series of test invasions.
For a hundred years of local time the siblings fought the Vex. When the Vex came into the sword world, they were inevitably annihilated, but when the Hive went into the Vex world, they lost too much of their power to win.
“Father’s going to eat our souls,” Halak sighed.
Quria captured some worm larvae and began experimenting with them. Soon Quria, Blade Transform manifested religious tactics. By directing worship at the worms, Quria learned it could alter reality with mild ontopathogenic effects. Being an efficient machine, Quria manufactured a priesthood and ordered all its subminds to believe in worship. Then it set about abducting and killing dangerous organisms so it could bootstrap itself to Hive godhood. For some Vex reason, Quria never attempted to introduce worm larvae into its mind fluid.
Savathûn was laughing, because she had tricked Crota into cutting that place.
This drew the attention of the Worm our God. ORYX, called Eir. SET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER.
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In order to better understand the laws governing the Ascendant Plane that Crota accidentally gave them an opening into, the Vex created Quria, Blade Transform, a Vex Mind Hydra to comprehend and understand the physics of the new dimension. When Crota tries to strike them, the Vex are fast enough to react to his strikes and dodge them, even though he is already a powerful Hive God at this time.
The two sisters demonstrated the ability to pull a sword-star out of the sky (the Ascendant Plane is home to green-black stars) and convert it into a weapon to destroy the Vex invading the throne. However, the match is a one hundred year stalemate.
Quria's discoveries are likely the reason behind a number of the worship-like behaviors the Vex demonstrate, and the worship-like architecture they build, including their worship of the Black Heart in the first
Destiny game. Quria is even able to figure out how to mildly alter reality through directing worship at the Worms.
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XL: An Emperor for All Outcomes
Oryx rushed home and read from the Tablets of Ruin. He put some of the Vex into wounds, to be taken by the power of the Deep. Thus he turned the Vex against each other. Quria manifested a range of tactics, but none of them were adaptive. Oryx crushed all the Vex in his throne.
Oryx thought that he should study geometry, like the Vex. It was the map of perfect shapes. But first he had to punish imperfection.
“My son,” he said, “this is your punishment. Come home glorious, or die forgotten!” He picked up Crota by the legs and threw him into the Vex gate network.
Crota battled through history, becoming a legendary demon. In his early centuries he often spared a few victims to hear oaths and protests against his father. Later, he came to understand Oryx, and he made temples and monuments wherever he went.
Meanwhile, Oryx brooded on the Vex. “I’ve met a worthy rival,” he said. “They want to exist forever, just as I do. But I don’t understand them.”
At this his worm began to chew on him, for he was bound to understand.
He called Savathûn to meet in the material world. She told him that the Vex worked tirelessly to understand everything, so that they could build a victory condition for every possible end state of the universe.
“Then I must be a better king,” Oryx said. “If they want to build an emperor for all outcomes, then I will be the king of only one. I will follow the Deep wherever it goes, and document its power. Let us create a catalog of the grave of worlds, which will be our map to victory.”
Oryx knew that all life could be described as cellular automata, except for that life which understood the Deep or the Sky, and thus escaped causality.
Out of love for her brother, which was the same as the desire to kill him, Savathûn leaked a secret to Xivu Arath — ‘listen, Xivu, Oryx’s throne world has been compromised. You can cut your way in from here.’ Xivu Arath used this to plan an ambush.
But Oryx was too canny. The Taken King said to his Court, the High War, “My throne world is vulnerable. I am going to move it.”
‘Where?’ asked Kagoor, World-Render.
“Into a mighty dreadnaught,” said Oryx. “I shall keep my glorious mind cosmos inside a titanic warship.”
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Oryx is able to drive off and suppress the Vex invasion on his own, using the Tablets of Ruin to take Vex and turn them against each other. He punishes Crota by throwing him into the Vex Gate Network, and he successfully wages conflict throughout the centuries he is in the Gate Network, which spans past, present and future.
It is the incident with the Vex and Savathun's scheming that prompts Oryx to move his Throne World into the Dreadnaught, which he makes from a piece of Akka.
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XLI: The Dreadnaught
To make his ship, Oryx scrimshawed one piece of Akka, who was dead but far from gone. He stole the Hammer of Xivu Arath and the Scalpel of Savathûn and he armored his ship in baneful armor.
When Oryx had built his Dreadnaught, he pushed his throne world inside out, so that it bled into the material space of the Dreadnaught. They were coterminous and allied, his ship and his sin. The Dreadnaught was within the throne of Oryx, but the throne of Oryx was the Dreadnaught. Aiat!
This required a verse from the Tablets of Ruin. The whole Court worked together to push Oryx’s throne inside out. This was a day of joyous violence, and all of Oryx’s broods mark this holiday as Eversion Day, which is celebrated by turning things inside out.
Sayeth Oryx,
Go out into the universe, my court
Gather tribute for me. Send it home to my ship.
When I call you, walk up that tribute to my court.
I will prepare for long voyages — [I am Savathûn, insidious]
Into the war — [I graffiti this notice for you]
Into the Deep — [These Books are full of lies!]
Now Oryx’s throne was safe from incursion, because it moved so nimbly.
Oryx attacked the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible, who guarded the Nicha Thought-ship. When the Flotilla surrounded his Dreadnaught, Oryx put his sword into the hull, and he used the power of the Deep (and the clever systems his daughters built) to push his throne-world out into mere reality.
By wrath and confidence he filled space with an egg of his throne. It swelled up like a ghost star to smash the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible. Oryx broke the last word off their name.
In the Nicha Thought-ship, Oryx hoped to find the location of the Gift Mast, which had been left behind by the Traveler. Oryx wanted to eat it.
-But the Thought-ship was a trap. Upon it was Quria, Blade Transform.
XLII: <>|<>|<>
<interdict>|<simulate>|<worship>
I am going to kill you. I am going to salt my meat with your briny little thoughts. I am going to cook flesh on your broken, molten hull.
<insinuate>|<subvert>|<replicate>
This ship is my throne. You want to take it from me. You want to fill it up with your own spawn and use it for your abstract purposes. But I defy you.
<observe>!<imitate>!<usurp>
You will never be what I am. Simulate me, wretch. Calculate the permutations of my divinity. Compute the death in the shape of my throne. Render my shadow on the stone of ten thousand graveyard worlds! It will never be enough. I hold the Tablets of Ruin. I speak to the Deep. Not with a galaxy of thinking matter could you encompass me. Behold!
<unknown>|<enigma>|<shortfall>
<abort>!<halt>!<abort>
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In the first use of Oryx's super-weapon, the result of forcing his throne-world into the material world completely obliterates the Harmonious Flotilla Invincible of the Harmony race, the last major race recorded in the Book of Sorrows that the Hive defeated.
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XLIII: End of Failed Timeline
By now, Quria knows it can’t win.
There’s something pathological about the world inside Oryx’s ship. It resists analysis with hot, dead spite. And Oryx himself, he’s irreducible — he refuses to obey Quria’s simulations, he crashes around sowing chaos, he grabs subminds and compromises them with some kind of ontological weapon. Paracausal systems. Very problematic.
Quria’s trying the religious tactics it evolved in the Hive manifold. But even on those terms, Oryx is strong, so strong. Quria won’t be able to protect its gates much longer.
The closest Quria’s got to a simulation of Oryx is a best-guess bootstrap. It’s wrong — Quria’s sure of that, it’s Oryx minus the symbiote organism, minus the wings and morphs, minus the weapon, minus the power. No good for anything.
Quria manifests that simulation anyway. Just to see what happens.
The Taken King marches on Quria’s Hydra-hull, armed with blade and magic, cloaked in ancient cloth, and the universe wails in horror around him. Quria’s physics models and toy worlds choke and crash.
Quria observes, alert and attentive, as a single quark splits on the tip of Oryx’s sword.
From within the Hydra-hull, Quria’s tiny not-Oryx speaks. “What are you?” it says. It’s manifesting terror and awe.
Oryx’s eyes blaze with a curiosity that is entirely isomorphic with hate, with voracious hunger. “Aurash,” he says, in his Hive language. “You’ve made me as I was. You’ve made a tiny Aurash. Ha!”
Quria updates the simulation’s name. Aurash is curious: “You’re me? You’re me as I become?”
Oryx kneels. His blade is on his left shoulder. Quria is firing every available weapon at him, but his wards don’t break. He looks into Quria’s sensors through the hammering fire and he says, “Child, I have everything you wanted. I am immortal. I know the great secrets of the universe. I have scouted the edges of the Darkness and I have chased the lying god down galactic arms in a howling pack of moons. In my fist I carry the secret power that will rule eternity. In my worm I bear the tribute of my Court and of my children, the Hope-Eater, the Weaver, and the Unraveler; and with this tribute I smash my foes. I am Oryx, the Taken King. I am almighty.”
Quria samples the Taox intelligence retrieved from the Ecumene gate. There are useful names. It feeds them to the simulation.
“What about your sisters?” Aurash asks his future self. “Sathona? Xi Ro? Are they with you?”
The Taken King’s fangs glint. That sound might be a laugh, or a hiss.
Quria shuts down its weapons and puts all its spare resources into sending telemetry to the greater Vex. There will be points in space and time where this data is vital. There will be great projects undertaken in the study of this ontological power, this throne-space.
“Where are my sisters?” Aurash shouts. “What have you done with my people? What have you done?”
But Oryx’s fist is full of black fire, and the next thing Quria sees is a light like stars.
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Due to Oryx's immense paracausal power, Quria is incapable of accurately simulating him.
To put this into perspective, a single Vex Goblin's processing is capable of creating an internal simulation with perfect fidelity and accuracy of itself and its surroundings, and nesting those simulations up to two-hundred and twenty-seven times. It took the processing power of a Warmind to be brought in to disrupt the simulation.
As a feat for both Quria's processing capabilities and Oryx's power at this point, Quria is able to observe a
quark splitting on the tip of Oryx's sword, Willbreaker. I have no words to describe that.
This moment is implied to be the origin of the Vault of Glass and the ontological weapons the Vex developed within it, as Quria beamed all information she had on the throne-space to the rest of the Vex before it is Taken.
As a result of being Taken, on the other hand, Quria finally gained the ability to successfully simulate Oryx over time, and through that power attain the power to Take for itself. It is also potentially what gave Quria the ability to set up a three-week time-loop within the Dreaming City.
