Ammonite

"The fifty-two moons of Fundament host a starfaring civilization far more sophisticated than anything you’ve encountered so far[....] where a species of bony six-armed cephalopods keeps their icy capital. Savathûn’s named them the Ammonite."

- Worm Gods

The Ammonites were an intelligent species who arose on one of the moons of the gas giant Fundament. They were destroyed by the early Hive.

Overview
The Ammonites were bony, six-armed cephalopods who evolved on an icy moon of Fundament. At some point, the Traveler arrived at the planet and became a patron of the Ammonites, who built an advanced spacefaring civilization with paracausal technology that spanned all of Fundament's fifty-two moons. The Traveler's disciple, the Leviathan who lived in Fundament's ocean layer and kept the Worms at bay, was revered by the Ammonites almost as much as the Traveler.

The Ammonite civilization was governed by the Ammonite Satellite Congress, and its military forces were under the command of Chroma-Admiral Rafriit at the time the Hive were created. They also had contact with the Ecumene.

History
The Ammonites prospered under the Traveler's patronage until the early Hive conquered the species of Fundament and gained the technology to build spaceships. The proto-Hive Taox, who the Hive's trio of leaders had sworn to kill, was granted asylum by the Ammonites. The Worms attempted to persuade them otherwise but failed. In their pursuit of Taox, the Hive waged war against the Ammonites, but their initial victories were reversed by the clever strategies of Chroma-Admiral Rafriit and Auryx's desire to reach a peaceful accommodation between their two races. Victory for the Ammonites seemed likely as the Hive were driven to the core of Fundament's sixth moon.

Auryx's sister Savathûn killed him for his weakness, however, and when the powers of the Worms and the Darkness returned Auryx to life, his resolve was strengthened and the Hive began an all-out offensive to crush the Ammonites. In the last, desperate days of the war, the Leviathan attempted to flee Fundament for the Ammonite capital moon. Rafriit and his personal guard accompanied the Leviathan on its journey, but the Hive defeated them. The Leviathan was slain and fed to the Worms, the Ammonites were wiped out, and Taox and the Traveler fled.

Adding insult to injury, the Hive colonized the Ammonites' moons and converted them into mobile fortresses, with which they continued their pursuit of Taox and the Traveler.

Trivia

 * The Ammonites' home moon bears slight resemblance to, where life is hypothesised to exist beneath the icy exterior.
 * One of the legends of the Nine states they come from a similar aquatic origin, either Europa or Titan.
 * Ammonites are a species of cephalopod in the real world, from earth. Io in Destiny 2 has fossil structures resembling real-world Ammonite shells. It is unknown if the Ammonites in Destiny are related to real-world earth Ammonites or resemble them in any way, or if these fossil structures are meant to represent them.

List of appearances

 * Destiny
 * The Taken King