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Bite-Sized Backstory 11: Rampant Speculation 1 (Destiny)

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 00:25 (2924 days ago)

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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

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It's weird

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 02:43 (2923 days ago) @ Ragashingo

If the worms indeed have the power to manipulate entire planetoids into world-ending syzygies, why are they so dependent on the Hive in the first place? If they can wreak havoc in a ship as technologically advanced as the needle ship, why play dead?

Did they use to have powerful hosts before, in a way to explain these supposed incongruities? If so, what happened to them? Also, if the Hive aren't the first, what makes them so special? (Hell, what makes us so special? But that's for another discussion ;D )

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It's weird

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 03:10 (2923 days ago) @ ZackDark

If the worms indeed have the power to manipulate entire planetoids into world-ending syzygies, why are they so dependent on the Hive in the first place? If they can wreak havoc in a ship as technologically advanced as the needle ship, why play dead?

A few thoughts:
- Maybe the worms have some power to affect the world around them but even though they might be able to arrange moons and planetary collisions they are still trapped in the depths of a gas giant? Crashing a few hundred planets or altering the orbits of moons wouldn't get them free...
- The needle ship was advanced but that doesn't mean the people inside it were any less squishy than we are...
- Maybe nobody was playing dead? Perhaps the worm the needle ship crew hatched attacked and killed them but was at the same time "killed" itself?
- Could there be other worms elsewhere in the galaxy, oh question asker mine? Maybe they aimed inhabited planets at Fundament and altered the orbits of the 52 moons?


Did they use to have powerful hosts before, in a way to explain these supposed incongruities? If so, what happened to them? Also, if the Hive aren't the first, what makes them so special? (Hell, what makes us so special? But that's for another discussion ;D )

- It would stand to reason that there were past worm hosts if they really lost a war millions of years ago.
- My guess is that the only special thing about the Hive was they were nearby and willing to ingest and bond with the worms.

And the lesson here?

by Oholiab @, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 12:38 (2923 days ago) @ Ragashingo

- My guess is that the only special thing about the Hive was they were nearby and willing to ingest and bond with the worms.

NEVER ingest a worm.

And the lesson here?

by Claude Errera @, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 17:04 (2923 days ago) @ Oholiab

- My guess is that the only special thing about the Hive was they were nearby and willing to ingest and bond with the worms.


NEVER ingest a worm.

brb, gotta go redo my tequila-drinking youth

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It's weird

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 13:11 (2923 days ago) @ Ragashingo

- The needle ship was advanced but that doesn't mean the people inside it were any less squishy than we are...

Squishy, but I'm sure they'd have their own version of Alien movies and have developed sufficiently effective containment protocols, no? ;p

- Maybe nobody was playing dead? Perhaps the worm the needle ship crew hatched attacked and killed them but was at the same time "killed" itself?

You mean crippled "dead" like the familiar? Could be, good point.

- Could there be other worms elsewhere in the galaxy, oh question asker mine? Maybe they aimed inhabited planets at Fundament and altered the orbits of the 52 moons?

This one links with next question, about what makes the Hive so special. If there are other worms taking people elsewhere, why do we only hear about the Hive being so destructive? And I don't mean from the Book of Sorrows, which narrative is obviously Hive-centric, but from 3rd parties.

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It's weird

by SteelGaribaldi @, Sol system, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 14:36 (2923 days ago) @ ZackDark

If there are other worms taking people elsewhere, why do we only hear about the Hive being so destructive? And I don't mean from the Book of Sorrows, which narrative is obviously Hive-centric, but from 3rd parties.

Because Bungie hasn't decided who they are yet. :)

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It's weird

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 16:20 (2923 days ago) @ ZackDark

This one links with next question, about what makes the Hive so special. If there are other worms taking people elsewhere, why do we only hear about the Hive being so destructive? And I don't mean from the Book of Sorrows, which narrative is obviously Hive-centric, but from 3rd parties.

Well, there's the Vex. They take over entire planets and change them into machines to help them calculate a winning move for every situation. They aren't allied with the worms but they do worship the Darkness. It's possible they have achieved similar levels of destruction.

As for other groups of worms? Maybe not all of these worm gods are after the same goal? Or maybe they are using less directly violent means? The ones the Hive found had been trapped for millions of years. Maybe they were more desperate for immediate power or had grown closer to the Deep than other worm gods that might be out there?

Or maybe they only need one super destructive race sweeping across the galaxy and other potential worms are weakening their own client races from within in anticipation of the arrival of the Hive?

Or maybe there were other worm-Hive type symbiosis races causing destruction but each was defeated until now? Our worms did make it sound like they lost a previous war, after all.

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The Hive are not special per se

by Durandal, Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 11:07 (2915 days ago) @ ZackDark

They are just the latest in a long line to fall into the trap.
The Darkness operates under Highlander rules, "There can be only one". The Hive, the Worms, they are it's minions, its petitioners (according to Rasputin). They are like symbionts, given some measure of power in exchange for carrying out it's task of slaughter.

The worms are manipulators, like our local star dragons, they seem to avoid direct contests of strength, opting for deals and bargains. Why? They obscure the actual physics that the Darkness uses from the Hive under ritual in order to keep the Hive subservient, but again why, when their larva are in the Hive?

I would suspect that is part of their own deal with the Darkness. The Akahambra, the worms, both have a pact with the Darkness that precludes their own military might. So they can have secrets, knowledge above and beyond, but they cannot actively use it themselves. They need proxies, puppets, suckers in order to do anything. They need that tribute of slaughter, to fuel it as well.

Anyone can pledge themselves to the Darkness. The Hive, Vex, Dregden Yor, it does not seem to care. Given all the species on Fundament, I would assume that all were tempted at some point. The Hive were just the final link in the chain to allow the worms to escape from the core of the planet.

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The Hive are not special per se

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 11:56 (2915 days ago) @ Durandal

The Darkness operates under Highlander rules, "There can be only one".

And they are very clear about that. A thing's worth is based solely on its ability to exist, the worms say over and over. So what do the Hive think is going to happen once it's down to themselves and their Worm "allies"?

So they can have secrets, knowledge above and beyond, but they cannot actively use it themselves.

Which seems very odd but not completely unprecedented. The wars between the Vorlons and the Shadows in Babylon 5 comes to mind. While those two races did sometimes actively involves themselves in the fighting, they more often tried to convince the younger races of each period that their side, Light (order) vs Darkness (chaos), was the correct choice.

Maybe something similar is going on here. The worms, while seemingly very powerful, do not seem interested in directly carrying out their philosophy. At the same time, the Traveler seems to raise up and arm races but leaves the area when the when the going gets tough.

The Akahambra, the worms, both...

I can't wait to get to the Hive's war against the Harmony. As the Borg Queen once said:

You imply disparity where (I believe) none exist.

But that's jumping a little too far ahead, oh explainer mine. ;)

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I loved B5

by Durandal, Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 13:30 (2915 days ago) @ Ragashingo

The Vorlon/Shadow divide is different, in that both were divergences from the initial message. My thought is that the "Smug freedom" of the dragons and worms is the key. We have no indication that they ever outright kill anything, it's all Faustian bargains.

What is freedom to Oryx, slave to his worm's hunger, to his nature?

* Oh inquirer, mine?

by EffortlessFury @, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 15:21 (2923 days ago) @ Ragashingo

- No text -

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Why does the serpent crawl along the ground and eat dust?

by Pyromancy @, discovering fire every week, Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 04:54 (2915 days ago) @ ZackDark

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