Fundament

"That's what Fundament must be. A titanic gas planet. The endless storm above us must be one layer of the atmosphere. And the sea we float on... there's more down beneath it. So much more!"

- Aurash

Fundament is a gas giant planet in an unknown star system that gave rise to the Hive billions of years ago.

Birth of the Worm Gods
According to Ahsa, Fundament was once home to a species of serpentine, paracausally-empowered creatures, who led a largely peaceful existence until they became seduced by the Witness' philosophy. Seeking to achieve ascendancy through the Sword Logic, members of the species began attacking and killing one another, calling upon the Darkness as a weapon as they did so. Most of the species died in the planet-wide bloodbath that followed, with Ahsa being one of the few survivors. Others underwent a transformation, becoming the powerful Darkness-aligned beings that would become known as the Worm Gods. Six of these entities - Yul, Xol, Eir, Ur, Akka, and their mother Xita - would become trapped within the core of the planet, where they remained for eons under the watchful eye of the creature known as the Leviathan, one of the disciples of the Traveler.

Rise of the Hive
"Dearest sisters [....] We aren't native to the Fundament. Our ancient ancestors came here to hide."

- Aurash

Long ago, the rocky planet that was the original homeworld of the Krill crashed into Fundament and shattered. The shards of the planet came to float upon a vast sea that made up one of Fundament's layers, and became "continents" upon which the Krill eked out a meager existence. Five hundred and eleven other intelligent species also inhabited Fundament's sea, presumably having arrived through similar circumstances. Fudament's fifty-two moons also harbored intelligent life in the form of the spacefaring Ammonite civilization, which benefited from an alliance with the Traveler.

Life was quick and harsh for the Krill. Their natural lifespan rarely exceeded ten Fundament-years, though Krill who ate "mother jelly" became able to spawn and live longer. In terms of environmental hazards, Fundament was hostile to the point of being almost uninhabitable. The Fundament ocean was toxic, freak lightning storms constantly ravaged the skies, the rain was poisonous and sometimes corrosive, lightning had enough energy to vaporize anyone it struck, "living clouds" called Stormjoys would prey on the populace, and the Krill were frequently in conflict.

One Krill polity on the Fundament Ocean was the Osmium Court, ruled by the Osmium King. When the King went mad out of fear of an impending syzygy, a catastrophic alignment of Fundament's moons that would create a devastating global tidal wave, Taox, the teacher of the King's three daughters, invited the rival Helium Drinkers of the Helium Court to invade and install her on the Osmium Throne. The Helium Drinkers did so, but failed to kill the King's three daughters: Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro. The sisters escaped on a ship, swearing an oath to avenge their father by overthrowing the Helium Drinkers and hunting down Taox.

Eventually the sisters salvaged and reactivated "the needle", a derelict, high-tech ship designed to explore Fundament's deepest depths. Deep below the sea, the sisters encountered the Leviathan, who warned them away, but they continued on and encountered the Worms and made a pact with them to gain immortality and power, taking on the Worms' parasitic larvae and spreading them among the other Krill; thus the first true Hive were created, and Xi Ro became Xivu Arath, Sathona became Savathûn, and Aurash became Auryx.

In a few short years the Hive conquered a swathe of Fundament's surface, reclaiming the Osmium Court and harrying Taox off-world. After building their first starships, the Hive followed Taox and encountered the Ammonite civilization that lived among the moons, as well as the Traveler. The Ammonite were far more advanced than anything on Fundament's surface and were initially able to repulse the Hive advance, especially as Auryx held the Hive back in the hope of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Decrying Auryx's weakness, Savathûn killed her sister. The Worms then vested Auryx and her sisters with the power to defy death so long as they continued their conquest and fed their worms. Auryx returned to life and together her and his sisters defeated the Ammonite, killed the Leviathan as it tried to reach safety on the Ammonite home moon, and forced the Traveler to flee.

The Hive transformed Fundament's fifty-two moons into mobile colonies and set out to conquer the universe in the name of the Darkness, and also to find Taox, who still eluded them. Fundament's fate afterwards is unknown, though the syzygy had already taken place before the Hive had begun to war against the Ammonite. It is likely the global tidal wave had wiped out what remained of Fundament's surface civilizations, or the majority of those who survived the Hive.

Billions of years after the rise of the Hive, Ikora Rey used the Relic on Mars to experience a memory associated with Savathûn's calcified Worm familiar, which the Guardian had retrieved from Savathûn's Throne World. In the vision she received, it was revealed that the Krill sisters had been lied to by the Witness, who had wanted to claim the Krill as its servants before the Traveler could uplift them. It is thus unclear whether the syzygy and the God-Wave ever actually took place, or what its true cause was. The Leviathan claimed that the Worms were behind the event in its final plea to the Hive, whereas the Worm Gods claimed that the alignment of the moons was caused by the Traveler in an effort to prevent the surface civilizations from finding them.

Fundament's surface

 * Bone Plaza—a Krill nation
 * Helium Court—a Krill nation, land of the Helium King and the Helium Drinkers
 * Hydrogen Fountain—a Krill nation
 * Kaharn Atoll—a gathering place for Fundament's many species
 * Osmium Court—a Krill nation, home of the Osmium King, the teacher Taox, and the royal heirs Xi Ro, Sathona, and Aurash
 * Shvubi Maelstrom
 * Star-surgery—a Krill nation, land of the Starcutters
 * Tungsten Monoliths—contained detailed information about Fundament

Fundament's orbit

 * Fifty-two moons
 * Large icy moon, capital of the Ammonite civilization
 * Dry moon

List of appearances

 * Destiny
 * The Taken King
 * Cabal Booklet
 * Destiny 2
 * Curse of Osiris
 * Shadowkeep
 * The Witch Queen
 * Season of the Deep