The origin of the Hive as we know them. Oryx, the Taken King traces his origins to a gas giant named Fundament, where the proto-Hive eked out a harsh existence on floating "continents" comprised of the shards of their shattered homeworld. Oryx was born as Aurash, a proto-Hive female and one of three surviving daughters of the Osmium King, ruler of the continent called the Osmium Court. Aurash's sisters were Xi Ro and Sathona, who together made up the final brood sired by the Osmium King. When the Osmium King was ten years old, a lifetime to the proto-Hive, he succumbed to senility madness, fearing an event called the Syzygy wherein Fundament's fifty-two moons would align and create a massive tidal wave that would destroy all of Fundament's civilizations. Taox, a sterile mother who served as the teacher to the King's daughters, feared the royal heirs were too weak to succeed the King and invited a rival kingdom, the Helium Drinkers of the Helium Court, to invade the Osmium Court, kill the royal family, and allow Taox to rule the Osmium Court as their regent. The Helium Drinkers invaded and slew the Osmium King, but Aurash and her sisters, two years old at the time, escaped on a ship and vowed to return one day for their revenge. After a year of traveling the sea, the sisters salvaged an ancient, high-tech ship they called "the needle" from the Shvubi Maelstrom. Xi Ro wanted to sell it at the Kaharn Atoll, a gathering place of Fundament's many species, in order to raise enough money to hire a mercenary army, but Aurash wanted to take command of the ship. Sathona sided with Aurash, goaded on by a worm that their father had kept; the worm had washed up on the Osmium Court's shores and was seemingly dead, but Sathona could hear it speak. The sisters spent the next two years reactivating the ship, until Aurash decided to use it to fulfill its intended purpose: she wanted to dive to Fundament's core in the hopes of learning a secret that would prevent the Syzygy. As they descended, the sisters encountered a vast creature called the Leviathan, a disciple of the Traveler. The Leviathan warned the sisters against proceeding further, telling them that they faced a choice between the Sky and the Deep, the Light and the Darkness, the way of life and the way of death. The sisters rejected the Leviathan, unable to accept that allowing their people to suffer was the better way, and instead decided to follow the worm Sathona had saved, which urged them to continue diving. Deep within the Fundament Ocean, the sisters encountered the Worms, who drew their power from the Darkness itself: Yul, the Honest Worm, and Eir, Xol, Ur, and Akka, the Virtuous Worms. The Worm Gods claimed that they had lived and grown in Fundament's depths for millions of years, trapped by the Leviathan and the Traveler. They had called many species to Fundament, hoping one would be tenacious enough to find them. They offered Xi Ro, Sathona, and Aurash immortality if they would allow themselves to be hosts for the Worms' larvae, with the caveat that if the sisters ceased to obey their natures (Xi Ro's desire to test her strength, Sathona's cunning, Aurash's inquisitiveness), their Worms would consume them. Furthermore, the stronger the sisters became, the greater their Worms' appetites would be. The sisters accepted the pact. Xi Ro took the knight morph and became Xivu Arath; Sathona took the mother morph and became Savathûn; and Aurash took the king morph, transforming into a male and becoming Auryx, the king of the Hive. Over the following years, the siblings returned to their people and spread the Worms among them, creating the first Hive and enabling them to first liberate the Osmium Court, then drive Taox and the other fearful species of Fundament to Kaharn Atoll, and finally to build spaceships and break free of Fundament entirely. Acting in concert with the Worm Gods, they took more larvae back to the surface in order to offer the rest of their species the same bargain. Those who refused to accept were killed by the emergent Hive. The Worm Gods oversaw the Hive's conquest of Fundament, providing knowledge, orders, and censure to their leaders as necessary. When the war freed the Worm Gods from Fundament's core, they responded by opening a wormhole into geostationary orbit, allowing the Hive to invade Fundament's moons and the Ammonite civilization that dwelled there. The Hive eventually exterminated the Ammonite and slew the Leviathan. Eir and Yul consumed their captor's corpse. After this, the Worm Gods withdrew to the Ascendant Realm and generally left the Hive alone. Auryx would later seek out and slay Akka for the knowledge to commune directly with the Darkness. He returned as Oryx, the Taken King. However, Akka remained active in some fashion and battled Oryx following the events of the Golden Amputation. At some point Oryx recovered a fragment of Akka's shell and used it to craft his Dreadnaught. Sometime after the death of Akka, Yul began to contemplate taking the power from the weakest of the four remaining Worms, in order to withstand any future attacks by Oryx. Knowing himself to be vulnerable, Xol, Will of the Thousands made a pact with Oryx's abandoned son, Nokris, to flee Fundament and seek new worlds to conquer together. A long-standing Vex incursion in Oryx's throne world eventually drew the attention of the Worm Gods. Eir commanded him to "SET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER". Many years later, upon the frozen ice caps of Mars, Xol's physical form would perish at the hands of the Guardians, along with his herald. As with Akka before him, Xol survived his death in some form and would go on to present himself to a group of Taken on Io, who offered him worship and service. After the Guardian proved himself to Xol, he drew upon their power through the Sword Logic, transforming himself into the Whisper of the Worm.