Books of Sorrow

The Books of Sorrow are a compendium of the Hive's history, stretching back before the dawn of humanity, when the Founders of the Hive still lived as mortals on the Fundament. Excerpts of the book can be recovered by discovering Calcified Fragments aboard the Dreadnaught.

Calcified Fragments: Curiosity
This Verse isn't in the Books proper, and may be considered as a prologue.

It begins with the narrator writing to their sisters, telling them that after two years of its short life they have found the truth of the Fundament: they, and perhaps all of the races living on the gas giant, are immigrants. It describes many nearby known continents as fragments of an ancient world where they once had lived, how how the sea they float on and the atmosphere above them must be two layers of the same gas giant, a massive world.

The narrator then addresses one of their sisters by name, Sathona, and tells her that their philosophy of life—"the Timid Truth", it is called—is completely wrong, and that they were never meant to be prey, but something much more. Then the narrator asks Sathona to tell their father of this discovery, claiming it is the culmination of his whole life, and signs it as "with love[...] your first surviving sister, Aurash". The Verse mentions that this is Sathona's second birthday.

I: Predators
Verse I opens with an introduction, indicating Xi Ro had written this, and meant for it to last. It mentions she is the third surviving sister of a brood that was apparently killed or lost to misfortune. Her father is called the Osmium King.

In this Verse, true to its title, Xi Ro describes seven dangers her species face and her observation of it. She describes a stormjoy as "a living cloud", drifting along currents, with "feeding tentacles" tipped with "bait-stars". This bait-stars apparently use light to attract prey, as Xi Ro describes light as being dangerous. She then records that the aged can choose to be eaten, that a brave knight can cut off the bait-stars without getting killed, and that she herself has six of them.

She describes what happens when her father "uses the engines", that an unwary person can fall off the continent to their death. Then she describes how the currents of the Fundament ocean bring them to other continents, especially the Helium Drinkers of the Helium Court, members of their species. After describing their physical appearance Xi Ro says how they raid them each day, and that they are "bright/evil", and how she wants to become a knight and fight them. She also describes losing ten of her sisters to the Helium Drinker ambassador appetite, calling it "tribute", but resents it.

Xi Ro then describes Mothers, the females of their race. Like much of the Verse this has a happy quality to it. She describes their attributes, that they can fly, live for longer than ten years, and are extremely intelligent. She also warns what happens if anyone tries to harm their eggs, that the Mothers eat them. She then notes that her sister Sathona wants to become a Mother and live longer.

Then she tells of the storms of the Fundament. The rain is often poisonous and can even dissolve flesh, and if lightning strikes a person they are instantly obliterated. She mentions lightning farms, indicating they harness the storms for energy, then finishes by saying it is all deadly. Continuing in this vein Xi Ro then talks about the rest of Fundament, saying it is very large and they are small, and if they don't understand something it is likely to kill them. Her teacher, Taox, says that is why they live so briefly, and why they breed and adapt quickly.

Xi Ro finishes by mentioning "moon waves", saying it is something her sister Aurash is afraid of. Xi Ro doesn't know what they are, and when Aurash returns from a place called Tungsten Monoliths, she'll ask her.

II: The Hateful Verse
This Verse opens with an introduction to the Helium Court, mentioning that it was written both in secret and desperation. The writer introduces herself as Taox, the teacher of the Osmium King's three daughters. She claims she is sterile and a Mother; and because of these two qualities she rose above pettiness to see what she calls "the patterns of survival". Taox mentions having designed the engines used to move their continent, the Osmium Court. Both of these she says she did alone, and now she'll do so again.

Taox writes a plea to the King of the Helium Drinkers. Her King is old—nearing his tenth year—and approaching madness, senility already claimed him. She says he neglects his duties in favor of studying old books, observing "moons above the storm", and wandering his halls muttering about nonsense, talking to a "dead worm". This worm, she mentions, is sealed in glass when he isn't wandering and tends to it.

She laments the King's three surviving daughters, each two years old. She describes Xi Ro, Sathona, and Aurash's qualities, listing their ages from youngest to eldest. She calls Xi Ro brave for wanting to be a knight, Sathona clever for wanting to be a Mother, and Aurash as simply the "navigator child". (Taox mentions that in the next day Aurash will return from the Tungsten Monoliths, spoken of in previous Verses.) All of these are good qualities, Taox says, but none of them are suitable to protect her home and people. Xi Ro cannot lead, Sathona cannot fight, and Aurash is often distracted by her curious nature. She fears for the survival of all future children.

Taox then begins to close by saying that the King will lock himself away in his Royal Orrery, and will neglect his kingdom again. She calls for the Helium Drinkers to invade, to kill the three heirs, and instal her as regents, offering her services as engine-builder to them. She finishes by saying if she failed, she invokes a curse to be eaten by the Leviathan.

She ends by saying this is a hateful request written in grief, and that she is "neutered to watch". She mentions being the Osmium-mother, indicating she may have birthed the Osmium King.

III: The Oath
The Verse begins with the narrator, Aurash, speaking to her sisters. She instructs them to place their left hands on a mast next to hers in order to swear an oath. She tells them how to do it, by piercing their hand and drawing a blood-line down the mast. After each oath is sworn Aurash intones: "in blood the oath is made".

Xi Ro, the youngest, swears on her left eye to take back the Osmium Court and kill the traitor Taox in vengeance. Sathona, the middle child, swears on her right eye to take back her home, eat the mother jelly, and raise her children on the corpse of the Helium King. This she promised to fulfill. The two sisters then offer to help with Aurash's oath.

Aurash, the eldest of her dead father, swears on her center eye to find out what drove her father into obsession, and what caused the moons to shift and understand if the world is ending. She then thanks her sisters. Saying they only have one ship, which represents freedom, she makes plans to go exploring, to find secrets and raise armies. Ordering the lightning sails raised Aurash and her sisters begin their travels.

IV: Syzygy
In this Verse Aurash reflects on all that has changed since they escaped. She tells of how Xi Ro and Sathona used their various tricks—the bait stars and cunning—enabled them to be free of the Drinkers, and laments the loss of her home. She mentions how Xi Ro hates Taox with a burning fury.

Aurash thinks back to her expedition to the Tungsten Monoliths, of how she first learned the truth. The Timid Truth, she again says, was their philosophy of life, that they are the bottom of the Darwinian chain, "the smallest, most fragile things alive", and are meant to be prey. She adds with contempt Taox's teachings that they came here to flee a cold universe. She then turns to her dead father, of how he died afraid. Not because of Taox or the Drinkers, she knew, but because of what he saw. He told her—"screaming"—that physical law was bent and the paths of the moons were different, indicating a syzygy.

She paints a picture of the Fundament's fifty-two moons—not all, she amended belatedly, but just enough—aligning together and exerting their gravity upon the seas of the gas giant. Her deepest fear, she recounts, is that this combined force would create a bulge that would pass over the world sea and annihilate civilization, and her species. She calls this a God-Wave.

Aurash resolves to find a way to stop it, but despairs of getting back home, to her father's Royal Orrery, of learning exactly when this would come to pass. Then she recounts how Xi Ro comforts her when her fears become too great to handle, and how their growing reliance on Sathona's wit seemingly brings them good luck. She notes Sathona's odd and sometimes erratic behavior, but dismisses it because of the good it brought them.

V: Needle and Worm
This Verse begins with Sathona recording her secrets, and why her behavior has changed so drastically as noted by Aurash. She mentions a code, meaning she is keeping this from her sisters.

Sathona recounts their journeys across Fundament, of how they sailed through great storms and beautiful days, exploring wrecks and fleeing from monsters. She calls these the happiest moments of her life. She reveals her desire to be a Mother, not so that she could raise children, but so she could live a longer life, to make a difference, to have a meaningful life. She mentions they have been out to sea for a year, marking them as three years old. Sathona mentions she is afraid of dying before they could fulfil their oaths. She then says she knows secrets, of where to find certain things, then mentions a "needle ship".

Another recounting of their travels begins. Sathona triumphantly says of how they rescued the needle ship from a "Shvubri Maelstrom", and that she knew it would be there. She describes the needle ship, calling it long and slender like hope, older than death, unbreakable, and gray. She records it is not a sea-ship like Aurash's but a thing of advanced technology. Sathona says, chillingly, that she knew what happened to the crew, and the ship's purpose.

Sathona tells of how Xi Ro wanted to sell the ship at a place called "Kaharn Atoll" where others gathered to raise money, money to hire mercenaries and take back their home and obliterate the Helium Drinkers. Cunningly, she told her youngest sister that the ship was worthless. Aurash then decided to figure out how to open the ship and captain it. Sathona approves, for she says her worm told her "it was the right thing to do".

In the third and final entry written by Sathona, she describes this worm as a segmented creature, the very worm her father kept and talked to, which she grabbed as her sisters fled. It was dead but somehow was able to influence her. "[L]isten closely, oh vengeance mine..."

VI: Sisters
The Verse begins with a record of the end of the sisters' carefree life.

Aurash urges Xi Ro to come and take her mind off of her duties, which was moving bodies of the former crew from a place called the "birthing room". She encourages her sister to pilot the needle for a time, and this Xi Ro does, her mind at ease. The needle's wake could be seen upon the surface of the metallic ocean.

As Xi Ro steers the ship Sathona tempts Aurash with stories she acquired from the Kaharn Atoll, likely during a resupply trip. Sitting in a place called the "flesh garden", among "mummified flesh fans", Aurash listened in silence to her sister, her own mind quiteted. She reflects for a moment upon her brief life, of how eager she is to know and learn of the world.

Afterward Xi Ro pulls Sathona from her stillness to play a game — swords and lanterns — but this fails to succeed as her sister only goes through the motions. At last she tells her sisters that they are five years old, middle-aged by their reckoning. They spent about a third of that life repairing the needle, and not working toward revenge: Sathona will soon be unable to become a Mother and Xi Ro will be unable to kill those which killed their father, age claiming them. Lastly she laments Aurash being unable to discover the truth of her father's madness. Taox the traitor would outlive them all and they would die in exile.

Xi Ro comments that she wished Sathona weren't so honest, while Aurash privately thinks her middle sister had never been wrong. She then proposes that they utilize the needle to its intended purpose: to dive beneath the waves, toward the center of the Fundament, to find a secret to change the world. This is in part because of her voracious nature to discover everything; the other is out of desperation.

Her younger sister protests, saying that was where the bodies she'd pulled from the birthing room had died, and a mysterious horror born.

Sathona supports her elder sister, prompted by her dead worm. The Verse ends with her hoping they'd find what they needed most — long life.

VII: The Dive
This Verse begins with the three sisters diving. Sathona dove for life; Xi Ro for vengeance; and Aurash for knowledge. As the needle dove Aurash searched through its recorded maps — there is mention of "high angelic cloud decks" and "oceans and plates of floating world" — to map their course to the Jovian's core.

During their dive they met predators which sought to ensnare them for food. One such group of creatures were anemones, "continental in scope", using glowing tentacles much like bait stars to lure them. Xi Ro ignored and pierced them through with the needle, leaving behind frosty blood to mingle with the metallic water.

At last they came to a place that was mysteriously still. Aurash turned on the sensors and they listened to the Fundament above them. Continents crashing against one another, helium-neon rain storming, monsters struggling — and the beginnings of the Syzygy. Sathona expresses horrified amazement, that Aurash was right.

Xi Ro remembered the birthing room, wherein they had found a dead horror born from unfortunate explorers. There is made mention of a chrysalis and a caul, indicating this something was perhaps an invertebrate. Something found in the darkness of the Fundament. Then, as she spoke, revelation coming upon her, the Leviathan overshadowed the needle.

The Leviathan is described in monstrous terms: its brow is as large as a continent, and has great, crackling array-fins of electricity. Its voice is described as a "microwave", indicating the Leviathan spoke telepathically; and it warned them to turn back, to save themselves.

VIII: Leviathan
This Verse is unusual in that it records five discourses between the Leviathan and two of the sisters, but the third sister not addressing the beast or being addressed.

The Leviathan proclaims that they were on the verge of a titanic war between two philosophies called the Formless and the Form, or, as it later became more commonly known, the Deep and the Sky. Speaking of its great vision the Leviathan tells of what each philosophy does: the Sky builds up while the Deep destroys, illustrated with the analogy of a fire being drowned in water. In conclusion the Fundament is extolled as a refuge and a home for trillions, the jewel and triumph of the Sky.

Aurash responds with a plea. The world is harsh for the proto-Hive, the small krill, full of monsters and stormjoys; it is no home. They lived and died in the dark, lives soon snuffed out. And eventually even the Syzygy would destroy them all. She entreats the Leviathan to let them go so that they may continue upon their quest.

The Leviathan counter-argues that their very struggle is what gives him hope. After asking them what drew them to the deepness of the Fundament, he then tells of how he watched them live and die and live again in their constant survival against the planet's harshness, "balanced between the Deep and the Sky". He warns them again that when life becomes too hard to bear this life turns to the Deep for survival, and urges them to reject it, maintaining that the hard way is better.

Xi Ro protests the fact that he has no right to tell them what they should do — he is old, massive, and will continue to exist long after they have died. If that is how the world works, she vowed, then she would change it. Taox would not get away, nor would anyone like her; Xi Ro would kill them all.

The Leviathan seemingly ignores this impassioned defiance, telling them that what they seek will lead them to death, for the Deep is all about the extermination of life. He contrasts this with the Sky, saying that it works against death, creating toward a place of eventual peace and utopia. He ends with a final warning: they will live as death and destruction if they do not return, for once they start down this road they will never come back. The Sky, he contends, is harder indeed but it becomes easier.

Sathona, meanwhile, takes advantage of the Leviathan's silence to reveal to her sisters their father's familiar, claiming it led them to the needle, that it speaks plainly rather than riddles. She asks them what will they trust: the Leviathan and its empty promises, after all they have fought and suffered for, or "the plain, honest worm"?

She commands they dive deeper, inciting Aurash's curiosity, and Xi Ro's sense of adventure, "oh, sisters of mine..."

IX: The Bargain
The Verse opens with the narrator describing Aurash standing upon the needle. It tells her she should be dead, crushed by immense pressure and heat, except that it sustained her.

The narrator then reveals itself to be Yul, the Honest Worm, one of the five Worm Gods. These others he calls Virtuous. Yul describes himself as vast and ponderous, full of strength, and immense. He describes himself as having great jaws and folded wings, and all of the colonies of creatures living upon him in symbiosis. He finishes by calling himself "fecund", able to produce life and sustain it. The others are presumably similar in size.

Yul then describes their history, that the Fundament is actually a prison. The wording is unclear but while they remained imprisoned they grew also; calling other species to roost upon the planet, to test them and see if they were worthy. He finishes by saying they have waited millennia for Aurash and her sisters to find them.

Then he offers them a bargain. The Leviathan, he claims, would destroy them in fear, and that it has conspired to drown them with the Syzygy. To combat this he says the Worm Gods could help them. First they must take into each of their bodies a larva, in order to become eternal, and be free of their "fragile flesh". The larva, Yul claims, would allow them to remake their bodies and the world in their image. for whatever is imperfect they would destroy — no law would bind them, save one.

Aurash would forever obey her inquisitiveness, Sathona her cunning, and Xi Ro her strength. They would never cease to obey the defining traits lest they be consumed by their worm. But if they succeed both they and the worm will grow stronger. Yul promises this is a small price to pay for eternity, that they would benefit the most out of it.

He concludes by inviting Aurash to accept his offer.

Trivia

 * According to the Thorn Grimoire card, there are seven Books of Sorrow, while only five (?) have been seen.

List of appearances

 * Destiny
 * The Taken King