From what I understand you have to kill the siva pod that spawns in the dome and then kill another one outside of the dome to trigger the "impressive" feature that gives you the axes.

That might be true - but the one that spwans in the first dome (the one that opens when the event starts) is ALWAYS killed by someone, so I don't think I've ever had a run that didn't meet the second criterion, just by default.

In any case, since we're talking about stuff folks might or might not know about Archon Forge, here's something I've told two people about in the last couple of days - since neither of them knew it, maybe it's not as well-known as I thought:

The axes start off with a flaming blade - the flame will eventually burn out. (Usually when you're somewhere between 50 and 60 power, but I'm not sure there aren't other things involved; if I melee with it enough, I can lose the flame while it's still in the high 70s, so there might be a timer, too.) While it is flaming, you can use it to kill exploding shanks; they will melt. Once it has burned out, hitting an exploding shank with it will cause the shank (and most likely you) to explode. This is SUPER-useful when it's fresh, and there are a billion shanks floating around.

(The other minor thing, which I'm pretty sure EVERYONE knows, but which we might as well write out, is that if you melee with it, you do a fraction of the damage that the full trigger-pull does... but as long as you're hitting things, you build power in it. This seems obvious, and most of us SHOULD have learned it when we were introduced to axes in the story mode... but I'll see players grab an axe when we're still at, say, 70% to the final dome, use it trigger-only on the enemies they're fighting, and have it completely run out before the final boss spawns. So either they just don't give a damn, or they don't know. I've done AF alone, and had the axes spawn at 30%, and still had 70 power on it by the time the boss spawns. Plus, the melee attack (on bosses that don't OHK you up close, like Perfected Servitors) moves the boss back instead of bouncing him way up into the air, which means you can push him underneath a ledge, and then just pound on him until he's dead. If you use the trigger-pull attack, he's really hard to control.)

Or I'm accidentally the best player in history and kill both at the exact same time.

Unless it has changed very recently, as I haven't played in a week.

Edit: If the one that spawns immediately counts (despite it appearing eons before the you will be tested prompt) then maybe.

And it seems pretty certain that the only two that you need to kill are the very first one that spawns in the middle orb, and then the one that spawns in one of the two side orbs. Once you kill those two, the third side orb will be where the hammers spawn.

The small clusters that spawn around the map seem to have no effect on whether or not you get the hammers.

But given the disappointment, I guess we never mentioned it again. Morpheus must've missed it by chance.

The only skill involved is actually noticing that the target is available. Once you know it's there, it's not at all difficult to destroy. I kind of feel like it should be something that's only up for a split second.

It's especially easy to know if you're like me and camp around the high side dome. Plenty of cover there except when the dome opens, so I kill that pod as soon as I can. With a decent sniper you can solo all the encounters from that spot.

The quarantine patrol icon gives a patrol that will ask you to kill a Priest. Once you kill him, the axe and the dropship show up. The ax & dropship usually (always?) spawn at the same place on each zone, but the Priest can spawn in a few different places.

I don't think you have to shoot the SIVA node at all for the rest of the event to trigger.