Taken
From Destinypedia, the Destiny wiki
| Taken | |
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| Overview | |
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Goals: |
Serve the Witness and its followers |
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At war with: |
Most Cabal |
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Allied with: |
Dread |
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Average height: |
Varies |
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Average weight: |
Varies |
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Distinctions: |
Enslaved and corrupted version of other races |
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Average lifespan: |
Indefinite |
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Notable group(s): |
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Notable individual(s): |
Echoes of Oryx |
- "The process is simple: an aperture opens, like a jaw, and swallows a living thing. It passes into — another place. Later, it returns. What returns is… I try to use the word 'shadow' but Eris hisses at me […] insists that these Taken are more real, somehow. She uses words like inhabited, exalted, rendered final… […] My Hidden tell me that the Taken shine with seething, negative light. As if the universe is curling up around them. As if they radiate some pathology that decays into our world as nothingness… The Taken serve Oryx. But I think those jaws lead elsewhere."
- — Ikora Rey[1]
The Taken are Darkness-corrupted entities originating from multiple species, ripped out of the material realm into the Ascendant Realm and returned with Paracausal abilities to suit their given purpose.
The Taken were first encountered by humanity as the personal army of Oryx, the Taken King, who obtained the power to Take after slaying the Worm God Akka, the Worm of Secrets and inscribed the secret of Taking on the Tablets of Ruin.[2] However, the power to Take was secretly granted to Oryx by the Witness, who was able to utilize the power on a much grander scale to move entire worlds between realities.[3][4] Following Oryx's death, they have come under the sway of various other Darkness-aligned entities, including Savathûn, Quria, Xivu Arath, Riven, and Disciples of the Witness like Rhulk and Calus. Most recently, a new faction known as the Dire Taken has emerged within the remains of Oryx's Dreadnaught, where they seem to be heeding the call of a mysterious new power known as the Lord of Every Nothing, which has demonstrated the ability to create new Taken.
The Drifter, a rogue Lightbearer known for experimenting with the Darkness, has also managed to achieve a level of control over the Taken using Motes of Dark, while the Nine can create their own counterfeit Taken out of Dark matter.
Overview[edit]
The power to Take is derived from the Witness, and allows the wielder to move objects or individuals between different planes of reality.[4] It used this power on a massive scale, moving entire planets out of the "normal" universe and into a self-contained reality under its complete control.[5] On several occasions, the Witness granted a more limited version of this power to several of its servants, most notably Oryx, who used it with great dexterity to create his own personal army of Taken from members of various species he and his Hive had defeated.[6][7][8]
The lesser process of Taking involves summoning a portal or aperture that rips an individual out of the universe and transports them to the Ascendant Realm.[9] There, the victim is addressed by an unknown entity, who offers them a way to overcome their former weaknesses. Often, the victim willingly chooses to be Taken, out of loss, weakness, power or revenge.[10][11] The Taken being then returns to their original universe with new paracausal abilities and a compulsion to serve the one that Took them.[1][12]
Taken versions of enemies have radically different behaviors from their standard counterparts, including new abilities designed to counter Guardian abilities. Groups of Taken can be allied with members of different species. In Destiny, after their introduction, they appeared all over the Solar System as part of the Taken War. In Destiny 2, they appeared in force in the European Dead Zone, on Io, and in the Dreaming City. The common Taken encountered in The Pale Heart, supported by the Dread, sport an orange eye instead of their common white-blueish hue, possibly signifying their command by the Witness; during its occupation of the Pale Heart, the Witness remained able to deploy Taken throughout the Sol System.
According to Ikora Rey, when Taken are defeated in battle, they are sent back to the Ascendant Realm, where they start over and begin their journey again.[13] Some Taken like Kelgorath, Vestige of Failure have demonstrated that Taken can return from death to fight for their master once again.[14] Taking has also been used as a form of necromancy, resurrecting long dead creatures in service of the Darkness.[15][16]
Although she did not have the power to Take herself, after her brother's death, Savathûn used Quria, a Taken Vex Mind which was gifted to her by her brother, to paracausally simulate Oryx and thereby create and command her own Taken.[17] Xivu Arath relies on complex, lengthy rituals, sometimes using remnants of Oryx's power,[18] to create new Taken. Other, less immediate methods of Taking involve the use of Blights.[19]
History[edit]
The Ancient Past[edit]
- "The Hive entity Oryx/Aurash is deploying a paracausal ontopathogenic weapon that infects and subverts Ecumene forces. The weapon operates on individual targets. Targets are abducted and returned as compliant Hive slaves with inexplicable and physically illegal abilities. All Ecumene clients should IMMEDIATELY devote all economic and cognitive resources to a countermeasure.
Fight hard. We stop the Hive here, or see our galaxy devoured." - — Ecumene Crisis Council[6]
In the distant past, the Hive god Auryx sought to obtain the power to Take to help him defeat the Ecumene. He killed his two sisters to gain an audience with Akka, the Worm god of Secrets, whom he then slew in turn. Auryx stole the secrets from its flesh and wrote them upon a set of tablets he named the Tablets of Ruin. Having communed with the Deep itself, he returned with the power of Taking, mantled as Oryx, the Taken King.[20] With this new power, Oryx waged war upon the Ecumene and defeated them utterly for one thousand, one hundred and forty years and conjured back his two sisters in the same way he had killed them.[21][6]
During the Golden Amputation Oryx Took the Tai Emperor Raven and assured the defeat of the Taishibethi.[7] When the Vex invaded his Throne world Oryx Took and turned them against one another, eventually expelling the cybernetic machines from his domain.[8] Later, aboard the Nicha Thought-ship Oryx encountered and Took Quria,[22] the Vex mind which had orchestrated the organized invasion of his Throne, and later gifted it to his sister Savathûn as a present.[23]
The Taken War[edit]
Main article: Taken War
- "What Crota began, I complete. My will… conquers all!"
- — Oryx, the Taken King[24]
The Taken War was a major, system-wide conflict fought between the Hive, led by Oryx, and all other races in the system. The war began as a direct result of the Guardians slaying Oryx's son, Crota, to stop an attempted invasion of Earth.[25] Oryx brought his fleet to Saturn and made free use of the power to Take in his assault on the Solar System. He Took Fallen, Vex, and Cabal in enormous numbers, besides his own Hive, and began blighting the system with his Taken forces.[26] When he unleashed his Dreadnaught's superweapon against Queen Mara Sov's fleet, he also Took the Techeuns Sedia, Kalli, and Shuro Chi, and through them was able to spread his Taken forces into the Dreaming City.[27][28] There, he encountered the Ahamkara Riven, who tricked him into wishing she was Taken rather than using his own power, thus retaining a modicum of free will.[29]
The Taken Prince[edit]
- "Malok! Listen — I took you from your mother, my sister / Your shape is new / This shape is poison — the shape of secrets / I name you Malok, which means My Poison / A prize to taunt sister Savathûn / Steal now for me."
- — Oryx, the Taken King[30]
With Oryx's defeat, his surviving Taken were released from his control and rendered independent but directionless.[31] As such, many began calling out for a new hand to guide them, singing a song of waiting until an answer came as Oryx's absence was worse to them than the agony he inflicted.[32] Oryx was assumed to be the only known entity to date to have possessed the power to Take, but following the Taken War, others such as Malok, Pride of Oryx developed the ability to manipulate Taken and their blights.[33] In particular, with assistance from the Techeuns and Variks, the Reef was able to capture a large number of Taken within their Prison of Elders and developed a reliable method for infusing Taken energy into their arms and armor.[34]
Resurgence[edit]
- "The Taken King is dead. Yet his armies writhe and claw at our worlds."
- — Eris Morn[33]
Two years later, during the events of the Red War, the Taken were found in the European Dead Zone, having corrupted a forest outside of the Traveler's shard. Initially considered just wandering monsters attracted to the shard's Light, the Vanguard's opinion changed when a Red Legion commander was also somehow converted into a Taken, even though Oryx had been defeated before the invasion.[35]
At some point, Red Legion Psions used their psionic powers to successfully harness and infuse Taken energy into themselves and their superiors, empowering them with Taken-powered weapons and shielding. However, this effort was stopped by the Guardian.[36]
On Io, it was discovered by Ikora and Asher Mir, that the Taken had established a foothold on Echo Mesa after being drawn there by remnants of the Traveler's Light.[37] They had even attempted to open a portal into the Ascendant realm, but the Guardian intervened and closed said portal.[9]
The Taken began to appear in greater numbers and were noted to have "interacted" with the Vex. The Guardians discovered that Taken affiliated with Quria had been kidnapping local Vex in Blights to corrupt them as Taken and form a new army after their many losses in the Taken War. Quria would employ Ir Arok, Tongue of Quria to accomplish this plan, but would be foiled by the Guardian, who killed Elatiox and Erosus, Ir Arok's lieutenants, and dismantled the Taken's plans of corrupting the Vex.[38][19] Ir Arok would then lead one final assault into the Pyramidion with the intent to capture the Vex collective like Oryx had done before but would be intercepted and destroyed by the Guardian. Though many Vex had become corrupted, their efforts prevented the Taken from corrupting the Vex collective once more.[39]
Through this, it became apparent that Savathûn had assumed control of the Taken, due to Quria being under her control according to the Books of Sorrow.[17]
After his defeat on Mars, the spirit of the Worm God Xol, Will of the Thousands found asylum among the Taken of Io, who began to stir. Following the trail left by these, Guardians ventured into the depths of the moon to find where they came from, and after defeating hordes of Taken led by resurrected foes from their past, Xol gave himself to them as a weapon, the Whisper of the Worm.[15]
The Curse of the Dreaming City[edit]
- "The [King] despaired in his final moments. Rightly so. His vengeance denied."
- — Riven[40]
In the years following the Taken War, the Dreaming City was infested by leftover Taken and their Blights undisturbed until Oryx's sister reached out towards the Taken Riven and gave her a new purpose.[41] Now able to exert her influence from beyond her prison, Riven manipulated the partially Taken Uldren Sov into unleashing an agent of hers from the City, which the Guardian quickly killed.[42] Petra Venj, investigating the source of Uldren's corruption and the Taken within the city, surmised Riven as the cause after having made contact with Queen Mara Sov at the Oracle Engine. At the Queen's behest, Petra enlisted the support from the Vanguard to have Riven killed and her heart cleansed of her Taken essence.[28]
A Guardian Raid team was quickly formed and breached their way into the corrupted Keep of Voices, where they freed the Techeuns Kalli and Shuro Chi from their Taken corruption. While the Taken Riven baited the Guardians into killing her,[43] they inadvertently made a single collective wish, allowing Riven to alter the rules of ascendancy within the Dreaming City. In ending the Ahamkara, Riven's wish cursed the realm; warping it in-between physical reality and the Ascendant Plane, with Taken energies saturating and engulfing huge portions of the city.[citation needed]
As the curse continued to blight the Dreaming City for three weeks, Petra was able to identify the true source of the city's Taken curse: Dûl Incaru, a daughter of the Witch-Queen and the mastermind behind her mother's scheme to access the Distributary using the Awoken secrets found within the City,[44] commanding the curse from Mara's desecrated throne-world of Eleusinia. Upon the third week of the curse, the Guardians charged the dimensional rift generator of the Blind Well and opened a rift into Eleusinia, where they could confront the Witch and her Fatesmith bodyguards.[45]
However, upon the death of Dûl Incaru, the Dreaming City reverted to the state it was in when the curse was first unleashed. The curse then spread in the same manner it had previously, with it being revealed that the curse trapped the Dreaming City within a time loop that resets whenever Dûl Incaru is killed. Through messages left by an unknown sender, it is revealed that the loop was made possible through the wish Riven granted upon her "death", and modeled upon Vex simulations overseen by Quria, Blade Transform.[46]
In the closing acts of the Battle of the Forges, a small contingent of Taken would attempt to stop the Guardian from recovering Ada-1's memories but would be slain in the process.[47]
A Dangerous Gambit[edit]
- "Primevals are the oldest Taken my banks can find. How'd I pull this off? If you knew, you'd be running this thing instead o' me."
- — The Drifter[48]
Around the same time, a rogue Lightbearer with a modicum of control over the Taken emerged. This Drifter had managed to jury-rig his Ghost with parts salvaged from the Ghosts of his former crew, allowing it access to paracausal spectra beyond that of the Light, including the Darkness-aligned powers of the Taken.[49] With it, the Drifter could create Motes of Darkness and employ them as part of a game called "Gambit", pitting Guardians against foes he attracts from all over the system, as well as each other, in a bid to harvest these Motes for himself.[50] Gambit would even give Guardians the experience of being Taken as "Invaders" through portals infused with sterile neutrinos.[51] He was eventually gifted a subsection of Unknown Space from the Nine, which he dubbed The Haul, where he caged the leftover Taken from Oryx's army whilst building his own.[52][53] Among these Taken summoned during these Gambit matches are exceptionally powerful and ancient Taken known as Primevals, which he can summon using Motes of Darkness.[50]
The Drifter would continue perfecting his methods, eventually unveiling Gambit Prime and The Reckoning to the Guardians.[54] The Praxic Warlock Aunor Mahal, who had been studying him for some time, determined that he had obtained the ability to create "counterfeit" Taken and Primevals by coupling his banks to the Haul gifted to him by the Nine. These entities were modeled after what he feared the most, with the most powerful being a Likeness of Oryx.[55]
The Core of Io[edit]
- "Don't bother guessing the Taken's intentions. Ask instead what is sought by the hand that directs them."
- — Eris Morn[56]
Undeterred by the fall of the Hidden Swarm and the Guardians hunting Nightmares on Luna, Savathûn unleashed a Taken army upon a massive Vex computational array on Io, to corrupt and assume control over the supercomputer. However, the Vanguard detected a power surge beneath the Pyramidion, where the array is located, and sent in a fireteam to investigate. The Guardians soon discovered the feud between the Vex and Taken as they fought for control over the array, and promptly made it their mission to prevent the Taken from assuming command over the machine, refusing to give the Witch Queen another advantage. Fighting past the array's Vex defenders and the invading Taken, the Guardians made it to the center, where the Taken infestation was anchored, to remove the Blight. There, the Guardians confronted Baurisk, Envoy of Savathûn, slaying the Taken Incendior and clearing the array of blights, leaving to allow the Vex to finish off any lingering Taken.[56]