Worm

"Take into your bodies our children, our newborn larvae. From them you shall obtain eternal life. From them you shall gain power over your own fragile flesh: the power to make of it as you will. And should you find an imperfection in the world, an injustice or an inconvenience — you will have the power to repair it. Let no mere law bind you."

- Yul

The Worms are an ancient, parasitic worm-like species aligned with the Witness.

Overview
The Worms are servants of the Witness and draw their Darkness powers directly from them. It is through a pact with the Worms that the proto-Hive or "Krill" became what they are today and launched their conquest of the universe. The Worms are worshipped and revered as the Hive's highest deities, beyond even Oryx, the Taken King and his sisters Savathûn, the Witch-Queen and Xivu Arath, God of War. All Hive are bound symbiotically with a larva farmed from a mother Worm, which drives them to feed off constant conquest and destruction lest the Worm grow unsatisfied and consume them instead.

The Ancient Past
While the ultimate origins of the Worms are unknown, the Lore Book Unveiling seems to indicate they may be as old as the universe itself. According to Unveiling, in the primordial state before time or the universe began, entities existed which derived sustenance from the gradient between "what was and what might be." When the Light and Darkness fought with one another and inadvertently created the universe, these entities escaped into the new reality. This may hint at the origins of the Worms, which continue to base their existence on the difference between actual and possible realities.

As revealed by Ahsa to Deputy Commander Sloane, the Worm Gods originated from a "proto-Worm" species that lived on the gas giant planet Fundament eons ago; it is unknown whether they were native to the planet, or whether, like the proto-Hive species known as the Krill, they arrived there from elsewhere. The proto-Worms led a peaceful existence, but over time they became seduced by the Witness and its death-fueled philosophy known as the Sword Logic. Cursed with lust over the Witness' logic, their kind gave into its temptations and began killing each other to achieve apotheosis. As they warred amongst themselves, they became paracausally bound to the Sword Logic and its forbidden magics of the Deep; an act once considered unthinkable among their kind.

Many of the proto-Worm species died in the planet-wide bloodbath that ensued, with Ahsa being the only individual known to have successfully escaped Fundament and traveled to a different star system. The being known as the Leviathan is presumably another survivor of the massacre, which would in turn become an acolyte of the Traveler and the Light.

Once the carnage had settled, six of the surviving proto-Worms - Yul, Eir, Akka, Xol, Ur, and their mother Xita - had evolved into powerful Darkness-aligned entities known as the Worm Gods. Those Worms that wielded the Darkness would be trapped by the Leviathan at the core of Fundament, where they remained for untold eons under its watchful eye.

Servitude to the Witness
During the Worm Gods' imprisonment, the Disciple known as Rhulk swam into the depths to find them, in the process meeting and grievously injuring the Leviathan. Rhulk convinced the Worm Gods to serve as pawns of the Witness by utilizing their parasitic nature to control and corrupt lesser beings, furthering the ultimate goals of the Darkness as understood by the Witness and its Disciples. To facilitate this, Rhulk engineered a strain of miniature versions of the Worm Gods, their so-called "larvae", which could be implanted into a host. Rhulk then left the Worm Gods alone to be found by prospective hosts, in the process abducting their sixth member and mother, Xita, as collateral and in order to breed more larvae.

One of their dead larvae eventually washed up on the shore of the Osmium Court, where it was found by the proto-Hive Osmium King and taken as his familiar. Following the Osmium King's murder by the Helium Drinkers, his daughter Sathona took it from him as she, Aurash, and Xi Ro fled the Court. The dead worm spoke to Sathona, and through her guided the three sisters in their quest for vengeance.

Eventually, the worm led the sisters into the depths of Fundament, to the domain of the Worm Gods, who tempted them with power and immortality in exchange for becoming parasitized by their larvae. The sisters accepted, taking on the names Auryx, Savathûn, and Xivu Arath. 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".

The Collapse
At least one of the Worm Gods, Xol, was present in the Sol System during the Collapse, having traveled to Mars alongside Nokris and his followers with the intent of conquering the planet for themselves. However, their plans were thwarted by the Warmind Rasputin, who invoked his SIBERIAN ENTROPY protocol and flash-froze Xol, Nokris and their entire army in a layer of ice.

Warmind
Centuries after the Collapse, Xol's physical form would perish on Mars at the hands of the Guardians, along with his herald. As with Akka before him, Xol transcended death and would go on to present himself to a group of Taken on Io, who offered him worship and service. After the Guardian proved themselves to Xol, he drew upon his power through the Sword Logic, transforming himself into the Whisper of the Worm.

The Witch Queen
During Rhulk's battle against a team of six Guardians who had invaded his Pyramid, he drew upon Xita's power to charge the Upended, seeking to activate the weapon and destroy Savathûn's Throne World. After he was defeated, Xita remained motionless underneath the Upended, seemingly dead or catatonic.

After it was removed from her body, Savathûn's Worm symbiote was kept by Mara Sov, who promised it a new host in exchange for information about Savathûn's role in the Collapse. The Worm assumed Mara herself would become its new host, but instead Mara placed the Worm inside a weapon that would keep it alive and allow it to feast on the destruction generated by the Guardian.

Season of the Deep
Following Titan's reappearance after previously having been Taken by the Witness, the Vanguard made contact with Ahsa, an ancient proto-Worm who had been hiding on Titan since the Golden Age.

Biology
Worms exist in two forms: massive, serpentine beings known as Worm Gods, and smaller parasitic "larvae" that can live within the bodies of other beings. It is not clear whether Worm larvae are in fact immature Worms, with Worm Gods being the adult form, or if they are wholly separate from the Worm Gods' life cycle; Xita, the Nurturing Worm states that "larvae" is a term used by Rhulk, and describes her larvae as "segments" of herself.

The Worms are a parasitic species, entering into symbiotic relationships with other sentient races in order to amass greater power for themselves. Their larvae can inhabit the bodies of other beings, such as those of their servant race the Hive, and feed off the power acquired by their hosts through following the Sword-Logic. If a larva is separated from its host, it can become volatile and can potentially detonate if it is not continually fed. Worm larvae are pale and about a meter in length, with rounded heads, six short spines on their back, and two spines at the end of their tail. Larger variants of Worm larvae can be found within the Worm breeding facility located within Savathûn's Throne World, possibly a result of experimentation by Rhulk.

Worm Gods are vastly larger in size than larvae and live outside of a host. They appear to vary greatly in size, with Xol, the first of the five Worm Gods encountered by the Guardians, being hundreds of meters in length, Xita, the Nurturing Worm being kilometers in length and hundreds of meters in height, and Akka having seemingly been the size of a small celestial body based on the size of the Dreadnaught Oryx made from a piece of his body. All Worm Gods seen thus far are covered with segmented plates and numerous spines and have heads with six barbed mandibles surrounding glowing eye-like structures. Notably, the Worm God Yul describes himself as having wings, while Xol and Xita were not seen to possess wings.

Ahsa, a "proto-Worm" encountered on Titan, differs greatly in appearance from the Worm Gods, having smooth bluish-grey skin rather than armor plates, and normal-looking eyes on the side of her head as opposed to the glowing green "eyes" within the mouths of the Worm Gods. These differences are likely accounted for by the transformation undergone by the Worm Gods after they became seduced by the Witness.

Known Worms

 * "Proto-Worm"
 * Ahsa
 * Worm larvae
 * Savathûn's Worm
 * Worm Gods
 * Xita, the Nurturing Worm
 * Akka, the Worm of Secrets
 * Eir, the Keeper of Order
 * Ur, the Ever-Hunger
 * Xol, Will of the Thousands
 * Yul, the Honest Worm

Potential Worms
Descriptions of the Leviathan of Fundament are similar to that of Ahsa’s, implying it may have also belonged to the species that later became the Worms.

Trivia

 * The Worms have very similar speech patterns to the Ahamkara. As a result, it was theorized that Ahamkara are closely related to, if not the same species as, the Worm Gods, given the similar language used to describe the two, and the use of the phrase "O [subject] mine". The craftmind Medusa (who may in fact be Eris Morn) suggested in a lore entry that this theory was not true, instead hypothesizing that both species separately evolved to harness the underlying power within the phrase. The similarities in the phrases used by the two species can be noted in the table below.


 * Based on Xita's sentences (such as "Akka yearned for nurture. It did so through secrets."), it is possible that the Worm Gods gain tribute and nourishment through particular metaphysical domains such as "secrets" or "order", in the same way, that the Hive Gods gain it from discovery, war or deception.
 * In Destiny 2, worms occasionally fall out of the bodies of dead Hive when killed with a precision shot.
 * In the lore of the A Thousand Wings Jumpship in Destiny 2, the Worm gods are called the Hive's demiurge.
 * The term Demiurge in Gnosticism and other theological systems is a heavenly being, subordinate to the Supreme Being, that is considered to be the controller of the material world and antagonistic to all that is purely spiritual.
 * Artwork of the Worm gods suggests inspiration was taken from the sandworms of Dune.
 * In the mission Utopia while the player was crawling through the vents to find the generator, worms could be seen in the ventilation which had a red coloration and was much wider than the normal versions.

List of appearances

 * Destiny
 * The Taken King
 * Destiny 2
 * Curse of Osiris
 * Warmind
 * Forsaken
 * Shadowkeep
 * The Witch Queen