Primeval

"Tearing soldiers of the Deep from another realm is crossin' a bridge too far as is. But those beasts? Those weren't normal Taken possessed and set to rage. They were born of that shadow realm and they were… angry. Worse. They were hungry for the Light. You could feel it. Even a ways off. Their aura and their rage weighed on me—cast a shadow I could feel in my core."

- Excerpt from a Renegade's observations of a Drifter

Primevals are a class of Taken that are featured in Gambit. According to the Drifter, they are among the oldest and most powerful Taken, hence their name. They can be summoned through the use of Motes of Darkness.

Overview
Primevals are exceptionally powerful and ancient Taken, summoned and controlled by the Drifter using Motes of Dark. Unlike other Taken, they are not transformed from physical reality to the Deep; they are born of Darkness, ever hungry for the Light and noticeably angry.

Primevals are fast and powerful enough to tear apart teams of Guardians, and are able to heal themselves through the deaths of their opponents. However, one weakness is that their methods of engagement are like rituals: taking out their Primeval Envoy attendants weakens them.

When the Drifter summoned a group of Primevals, their arrival was preluded by the sky turning a shade of fiery green and seemingly splitting in half. They towered over a group of Cabal who attempted to confront the Rogue Lightbearer when he traveled along the Coastline, emerging unscathed from the ensuing Cabal attack and bombardment by the Cabal warship flying overhead.

When The Guardian acquired the Heart of an Ascendant Primeval, it was delivered to the Drifter who would use it for later, unknown purposes.

Counterfeit Primevals
In addition to summoning Primevals from the Ascendant realm, the Drifter can also use his banks to create "counterfeit" Primevals using the powers of the Haul and sheer force of will. These can take on seemingly any shape the Drifter wishes, with some even mimicking the forms of Oryx, the Taken King and his son Nokris. These false Primevals differ in elemental composition from regular Taken, with a low Sterile Neutrino Count (SNC) and high ambient Lambda-CDM (ΛCDM).

Types

 * Ascendant Primeval Servitor
 * Deceived Likeness of Nokris
 * Primeval Captain
 * Hallowed Primeval Captain
 * Primeval Centurion
 * Hallowed Primeval Centurion
 * Primeval Hobgoblin
 * Primeval Knight
 * Hallowed Primeval Knight
 * Primeval Minotaur
 * Primeval Ogre
 * Hallowed Primeval Ogre

Gameplay
Once the mote bank is filled (previously with 75 motes in normal Gambit, 100 in Gambit Prime, currently 100 in post-The Witch Queen Gambit), a randomly selected Primeval will appear alongside large amounts of related Taken enemies. In Gambit, they play like any other Ultra of their kind, but with much more health and protected by an invulnerable shield. In order to kill a Primeval, players must kill Primeval Envoys lurking at Fronts to deprive the boss of its shield, allowing damage to begin. After a little more than a third of its health is lost, the Primeval will regain its invulnerability shield, with a new set of Envoys spawning in the next area, going clockwise from the last spawn point. Note that, however, any health the Primeval regains from being healed by Invader kills is not counted for this limit. One should also be wary of Taken Goblin blockers, as the Primeval will often be the only enemy close to them, prompting them to shield it with their powers.

The Primeval's way of fighting has gone through various iterations, formerly lacking an invulnerable shield and thus summoning enemies more often, or summoning the Envoys around itself. In Gambit Prime, the Hallowed Primeval's shield could only be broken by firing upon it from within a well of Light created by slaying the Envoys at Fronts.

Trivia

 * The ΛCDM is a reference to the Lambda-CDM model, which is the parametization of the Big Bang cosmological model in which the universe has three components:
 * A cosmological constant denoted by Lambda (Greek Λ) and associated with dark energy.
 * The postulated cold dark matter (abbreviated CDM).
 * Ordinary matter.
 * The SNC is a reference to Sterile Neutrino Count which are hypothetical particles (neutral leptons – neutrinos) that interact only via gravity and do not interact via any of the fundamental interactions of the Standard Model.

List of appearances

 * Destiny 2
 * Forsaken
 * Season of the Drifter