The name Savathûn is everywhere, both inside Destiny 2 and out of it. Following Bungie's The Witch Queen expansion reveal back in August (Hive Guardians, what?!) and Season of the Lost bringing the Destiny 2 community to the best place it has been since launch, there is a lot of lore Guardians are catching up on. It's no exaggeration to say that Savathûn has been a driving force of the events of Destiny fiction for years, acting as the trigger or catalyst for many of our Guardian's most involved strikes, raids, and other missions. Because of that, some may need a little refresher on the lore surrounding the central character of the upcoming expansion. With so many returning and new players, here is the biggest deep dive you'll find on who the Witch Queen truly is.
Who is Savathûn?
Savathûn didn't always go by this name. The Witch Queen, before she came to power, was originally called Sathona. Her siblings joined her in a search for a new future for the Hive, a species known for their incredibly short lifespans on a planet called Fundament, a world that's very existence poses an extreme danger to those that visit it. Millions of years before her birth, the Hive homeworld crashed into Fundament, a crash that resulted in a formation of continents, one being the Osmium Court. Sathona's father ruled Osmium, and she was the middle child to her older sister Xi Ro and her younger sister Aurash. Sathona was meant to become a Mother, a title meant to describe a proto-Hive being able to procreate and lengthen their short lives by eating the "Mother-jelly" when they reach adulthood. She was on track to become a Mother herself to buy herself time to find true meaning in life, and what she got instead was an eternity of intrigue, power, and a fragile empire built on lies.
Making a deal with the proverbial devil
The birth of the Hive, the curse of the Worm Gods, and the rise of Savathûn and her siblings.
When Sathona's father reached the age of ten in Fundament years, he stumbled upon a dead Worm just outside his court and instantly became enthralled with it. Eventually, he began prophesizing a disaster that would wipe out life as they knew it. Aurash took her father's warning seriously, while Taox, the siblings' tutor, brushed his ravings off as just a softening of the king's mind due to "old age." While Taox had faith in Sathona's intellect, she did not see any of the three siblings as worthy rulers following the king's demise. Declaring the three sisters not fit to take over for the king, the tutor sent a message out to a rival kingdom known as the Helium Court and offered to assassinate the entire royal bloodline if Taox could become their regent. The problem was, the Helium army couldn't quite get the job done, failing to take out the three hive sisters, causing Sathona to steal her father's Worm to escape with her remaining family. Sathona, already on the path to become a Mother, promised to take all of the power that comes with that title, alongside her siblings, to punish those that slew her father and that of her father's kingdom.
The three siblings sailed the dangerously toxic waters of Fundament aboard Aurash's ship, and it was during that year abroad that she began to hear from her father's Worm much in the way he did. It urged her to take specific action to save herself and her sisters, which eventually led them to another vessel called the Needle. The previous passengers of this particular ship were killed when an egg aboard hatched a deadly foe, but the three hive sisters could claim it for their own. Now that the ship was theirs, it was time to decide on a destination. Xi Ro wanted to travel to the Kaharn Atoll, a location that housed a gathering of Fundament citizens, to procure resources to take out the Helium Court. Aurash wanted to repair the ship, a suggestion that - when prompted by the Worm - Sathona agreed to.
It took the siblings a few years to repair the Needle, but time was not on their side when a species has a short lifespan like the Hive. That was when Aurash posed a dangerous plan, one that would see the ship dive into the very depths of Fundament to its core. Despite Xi Ro's warnings, the Worm urged Sathona to agree, which led the three to travel to the very center of this world, and it was there that they realized the danger of the Syzygy, the prophecy their father wanted them about, was real and that everything was already set up for this planet to fall. Luckily for them, or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, they encountered ancient beings once thought to be a myth: the Leviathan. The Leviathan offered the three sisters a warning to turn back, lest they accidentally unleash an irreversible danger upon the world. That was where the choice was given: do they side with the Light, which promised a thriving society and hope? Or Darkness, which promised only death and the art of conquering. At the Worm's behest, the trio ignored the Leviathan's warnings and continued to the depths of Fundament. At its core, the siblings found the Worm Gods, and uncovered an offer of survival and vengeance through them.
- Akka - The Worm of Secrets
- Eir - The Keeper of Order
- Ur - The Ever-Hunger
- Xol - The Will of the Thousands
- Yul - The Honest Worm
With a promise of immortality and a safe escape from Fundament, the three siblings accepted the Gods' offer to take their larvae into them in order to spread their influence. With the offering, there was also a promise never to turn away from their true nature. For Xi Ro, she took the Knight and transformed into Xivu Arath, a name you're going to hear a lot in Season of the Lost. Aurash took the offering and chose a male form, becoming the King of the Hive known as Auryx (later to be known as Oryx, whom we defeated during Destiny 1's The Taken King expansion). Sathona took in the Mother and became Savathûn. The rest of history was written in blood.
Live to die, but dying to live
Doing whatever it takes to break the lifecycle of the Hive.
Savathûn, Auryx, and Xivu Arath dispersed through the universe, with Auryx taking to Fundament's moons to go after those that provided asylum to Taox, the Ammonites that allied with the Traveler of the Light. Where Auryx was initially going to speak with the Ammonites to negotiate, Savathun, urged by her Worm, killed him. Instead of dying, Auryx passed into an alternate dimension called the Ascendant Realm, where he created his own pocket universe, or Throne World, in which he held absolute power. When he returned to the living, Auryx changed. Gone was his love and respect for his siblings, instead choosing the path of Sword-Logic, aiming to kill his sisters and any who opposed him. Sword-Logic is the belief that power cannot be given, it must be taken, and to become the ultimate weapon, one must be the strongest weapon. Eventually, vengeance gainst Taox was exacted but the blood didn't stop there. War was a constant, with Auryx and his sisters killing one another and anything that stood in their path.
Eventually, Auryx realized that the Worm Gods used the siblings. Upon this revelation, he called a meeting with the two sisters in his Throne World, resulting in their offer of power. But by Sword-Logic, power cannot be offered, it must be taken. Therefore, Auryx killed his sisters to take on their power, using it to face off against Akka, the Worm of Secrets. By harnessing the power of Sword-Logic, he then killed Akka so that he could use the Deep power to create the Tablets of Ruin, effectively giving him the power to Take. That ability, as you may have guessed, led to the Taken. Once he fully became Oryx, the Taken King, he brought back to life his sister Xivu Arath as an "act of war" while Savathûn's resurrection was rooted in an "act of cunning." From there, a new way of ruling commenced, driving the Hive to kill any that opposed them, taking some of those conquered to feed their Worm while giving the rest of the offerings to their Superiors.
Tithes
Thralls > Acolytes > Knights/Wizards > Ascendant Hive
The Ascendant Hive are those that can take control of entire legions, a power that is recognized and rewarded with the ability to traverse the Ascendant Realms. The cycle of violence and death fed into the Hive Gods' power, becoming a self-eating snake that has no end. That is, until Oryx's sisters began to conspire against him.