Taken Knight
Grimoire Taken Knight.jpg
Biographical information

Species:

Taken

Rank:

Heavy Infantry

Class:

Knight

Combat information

Weapon(s):

Taken Boomer (common)
Taken Shredder (rare)
Taken Cleaver (specific variants)
Stasis Boomer (rare)

Abilities:

Burn Projectiles
Solar Absorption Shield (high difficulty)
High Durability
Rapid Movement
Teleportation
Hive Melee

 

"You are a Knight. Ancient warrior elite. Dreadful backbone of the Hive. You have scarred entire worlds. [...] You fear death. Even as you visit nothingness on your foes, even as you gather tribute from your acolytes, you know that one day your strength will be outmatched. And your centuries of slaughter will end. [...] You betray the sword logic. You compromise the totality of your violence. Why protect your ground when you could take the enemy's? You need to make your guard into a weapon. There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [no more fear]. Take up the knife. Hide no more. Take your new shape."
Grimoire description

The Taken Knight is a type of Taken Hive.

Gameplay

Taken Knights have lost the ability to create a Darkness Wall, but have gained a fiery Solar breath, which travels in and arc for a surprisingly long range and leaves flaming pools of fire on impact. They have also gained the ability to teleport short distances, which they use to evade attacks. They are commonly armed with a Void damage Boomer, which, unlike the Hive version, does not suffer from gravitational drop and its projectiles travel much faster, making it harder to evade long-range fire. However, their arsenal is much less varied, only rarely using Arc Shredders, and with only specific variants using Cleavers. Knight remain formidable foes that require high damage to be taken down.

Known Taken Knights

Variants

Trivia

  • Unusually, they are not armed with Cleavers, modified or otherwise, like their non-Taken counterparts or Grimoire card (which features an "un-Taken" Cleaver). This could be a stylistic choice or for gameplay reasons. Lorewise, this ties into with the Ascendant Sword Grimoire card, which reads:
    • "A Shredder or a Boomer is a powerful weapon, but it kills acyclically. You see? It sends out harm and it takes nothing back. The bolt passes away into nothing. A sword, though, a sword is like a bridge, a crossing-point. The sword binds wielder to victim. It binds life to death. And when the binding is done—the sword remembers. When the Boomer's fire has burnt away into axion and neutrino scatter, the sword goes on, hungrier and sharper."[1]
      • As of Forsaken and Season of Arrivals, there are now Taken Knights seen with Cleavers.
  • According to The Sword Logic (also known as "The Killing Logic") the one who kills proves their right to survive over their defeated enemy, and gains power from that act. Upon being Taken the Knight loses the ability to feed their worm and grow that power; instead, all of that goes to the Taker, Oryx, who receives it directly instead of through the hierarchy of Thrall > Acolyte > Knight/Wizard > Ascendant Hive > Hive God.
    • This is both a punishment and an honor,[2] as the Knight is forced to serve against his will, unable to think or act idependently from Oryx's will; on the other hand, it is a sort of apotheosis, the perfection of the Hive way of life: the perfect warrior, the Final True Shape.
  • Taken Knights were formerly named Ripper during production of The Taken King.

Gallery

List of appearances

References

  1. ^ Bungie (2014/12/9), Destiny: The Dark Below Playstation 4, Activision Blizzard, Grimoire: Ascendant Sword
  2. ^ Bungie (2015/9/15), Destiny: The Taken King Playstation 4, Activision Blizzard, Item Description, Take the Wanted