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 Darkness.

Overview
The Worms are servants of the Darkness and draw their power directly from it. 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; 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 at some point they became seduced by the Witness' philosophy, and began attacking and killing one another in order to achieve supremacy through the Sword Logic. As they warred amongst themselves, they called upon the Darkness and used it as a weapon against each other, 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, which figured prominently in the legends of the Krill, is presumably another survivor of the massacre, one which chose to remain aligned with the Light.

Through unknown means, others among the proto-Worms underwent a transformation, becoming the powerful Darkness-aligned beings known as the Worm Gods. Six of these beings - Yul, Eir, Akka, Xol, Ur, and their mother Xita - became trapped in the core of Fundament, where they remained for untold eons under the watchful eye of the Leviathan.

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".

Warmind
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 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.

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 their 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, and Xita, the Nurturing Worm being far bigger, spanning potentially miles in length and hundreds of feet in height. Fully grown Worms 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.

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

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.


 * 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 suggest inspiration was taken from the sandworms of Dune.
 * Given the sheer size of the Dreadnaught and the fact it was made from a "piece" of a Worm God, the most powerful Worms must be planet-like in size, as just a part of Akka is as large as a moon.
 * In the mission Utopia while the player was crawling through the vents to find the generator, worms could've been seen in the ventilation who had a red coloration and were much wider than the normal versions.

List of appearances

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