Destiny 2: Savathun – a Queen’s Gambit

Last Updated on: 12th July 2021, 10:36 am

After the events of the Season of the Splicer unfolded into the end of the Endless Night, many issues and lingering questions resurfaced. Among all of them, there is a link, that connects everything and flew under the radar for a long amount of time. Savathûn (referred to as “Savathun” from now on), the Witch Queen, seems to have evolved her plan to the final phase. Following its path will be a long, labyrinthine journey.

Quria and the Sword Logic

A key element of the Endless Night event is tied to Quria, one of the most anticipated characters of the whole franchise.

First encountered in the long narrative of the Books of Sorrow, a well-known lore book from Destiny 1, we discussed the intertwined history of this character in this article, which is a must-read for understanding not only Quria’s initial motives but to have a glimpse of what it means to be a Vex.

After Quria has been taken by Oryx, she was given to Savathun, perhaps to put her in danger, to the amusement of the Taken King.

“I have a gift for you,” says Oryx. […]
“It’s a Vex I captured. Quria, Blade Transform. It made an attempt to puncture my throne. I thought you might enjoy studying it.” Oryx pauses, digesting — through the bond of lineage he can feel Crota killing, worlds and worlds away, and it tastes like sweet fat. “Quria contains a Vex attempt to simulate me. It might generate others — you, perhaps, or Xivu Arath. I’ve left it some will of its own, so it can surprise you.”

Books of Sorrow
Verse 5:22

Savathun feared she could lose control of this insidious Vex, but Oryx then answers that, if this will happen, she had brought it upon herself, by being weak. Interesting narrative conjunction, since this is the same lore in which Savathun starts to openly question the stark philosophy behind the Sword Logic.

“I don’t have a strict proof yet, you know.” Savathûn strokes the void with one long claw and space-time groans beneath her touch. “This thing we believe — that we’re liberating the universe by devouring it, that we’re cutting out the rot, that we’re on course to join the final shape — I haven’t found a strict, eternal proof. We might yet be wrong.”

Books of Sorrow
Verse 5:22

After his sister shares her doubts, the Taken King boldly answers that the obliteration of all the galaxy-spanning civilizations they met until now is the best case in favor of the Sword Logic. But Oryx locks the argument in both ways.

“Sister, it’s us. We’re the proof, we the Hive: if we last forever, we prove it, and if something more ruthless conquers us, then the proof is sealed.”

Books of Sorrow
Verse 5:22

This means that there is no escape from the Sword Logic: even being defeated proves its efficiency. Savathun thinks it is an elegant solution to a complex dilemma, but she will never be completely convinced, despite Oryx’s use of a perfectly functional syllogism.

The Curse of the Dreaming City

A pivotal moment in Quria’s and Savathun’s history is the curse of the Dreaming City. The sacred inner sanctum of the Awoken civilization, this city was shaken by the incursion of Oryx in “The Taken King”. The Hive leader took Riven in the process, the last Ahamkara, and the Techeuns.

After the king has fallen, there was a void of power for the Taken. When Savathun stepped in, Riven noticed her arrival in the system just when it was too late, and so they had a meeting.

“The [Techeuns] are poor company. Like me, they are [Taken]. But I am [Riven]. My thoughts are my own. They do not speak to me. When they open their mouths, they emit ugly sounds. Incomprehensible.
I am afflicted by tedious repetition.
But today I have a visitor. She reminds me of the [King]. Yet subtler. Nothing announces her arrival. Her will does not flow through the system in open challenge against her enemies.
Though there are many here she would call enemy.
And her will would not flow. It would crash.
I did not notice her. That means [the light] did not notice her.
She knows that though I am [Taken], I am beholden to no one. So I ask her if she wishes to take up those strings.
She does. And I take a new shape. My cage loses its purpose.
I can tell this is not a part of her grand design. This is an introduction. She is at play.
Through our new bond, I glimpse her intention.
And I hope she remains at play.
Most of those who [bargain] with me do not win.”

“Boots of the Great Hung”, armor.

Even though she is retaining her free will, Riven is a Taken, and we can assume that they are bound with imprinting to their master, and they are willingly seeking to be dominated by these powers. This is what happened with Quria as well, since every being with a superior intellect such Riven or Quria, and even the Techeuns, cannot be taken completely.

The role of Quria in these events is emerging from a convoluted, yet revelatory lore called “Truth to Power”.

“While Vex cannot normally account for the paracausal influence of Light and Darkness, I am no longer simply a Vex. And where no elegant analytical solution exists, we may apply massive computational power to generate a reasonable facsimile. This was the approach used against Saint-14.”

“react|choose|act”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

It is clear that Riven and Quria acted together in forging the curse of the Dreaming City – a time loop constrained by the Hive magic but enforced by the Vex computational power in simulation, and the ontological agency of an Ahamkara, a Wish-dragon that can alter reality to accommodate wishes, ultimately twisting them to draw power from the bargain, to feed upon it.

Savathun, Riven and the Last Wish

The lore behind the Ahamkara, Riven, the Dreaming City, and the Awoken is deep, long, and intricate. While the influence of the Wish-dragons can be traced throughout the history of some main events of the franchise, the events tied to Riven are the most profound. While the next season will probably focus on the return of Mara Sov and the resolution of the curse of the Dreaming City before it will be eventually vaulted, the role of Riven in Savathun’s plan is undeniable.

“I understand what’s happening here. Oryx Took the Ahamkara Riven, who then fell into Savathûn’s claws. She devised a scheme to use Riven as bait. By inviting Guardians into the Dreaming City, then focusing the will of a group of powerful Guardians upon Riven, she tricked you into making a wish—a desire to alter objective reality to conform with our subjective need to save the City. Riven fed on that wish in order to breach the Dreaming City’s defenses and invite Dûl Incaru inside. Dûl Incaru and her Taken are simply scouring the city for Awoken secrets; you don’t need to fret about any greater agenda. Remember that you face an agent of Savathûn. It’s to her advantage to make you see schemes and conspiracies everywhere you look.

The three-week loop must be a failsafe measure to keep Dûl Incaru safe as she pursues her mission. In a sense, this entire city has been rendered deterministic; only paracausal Guardians have any free will here. (The Awoken here have been touched by greater powers, so they are aware of their preordination, but they cannot alter it.) I’m certain that Quria is behind this loop; as a Taken Vex, it’s capable of pathological subversions of reality.”

“asudeM”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

While we cannot be sure about anything of this, due to the deliberately convoluted exposition of this lore and the not so linear evolution of the Dreaming City mechanics, the design of the curse seems to have a purpose: to break the system that Savathun always questioned.

A Murder Battery

Since the beginning, Savathun tried to break free from the tribute system that Oryx put in place to satisfy the Worm gods, and specifically the worms that every Hive have implanted on them to feed upon the power of the Darkness.

“[…] deep inside, stirred by that latest scrap of deception, I hear the oily growl of the Worm.
Even here, basted in deception both ample and rich, the Worm cries ravenously. It has grown grotesque, skin taut, overfed, and still, it howls for more. It commands me to keep it alive.
I look up, beyond the flickering net of darkness, and see what rests just beyond. Waiting for me.”

“VII – Ripe”, from the lore book “Beneath the Endless Night”.

Savathun, disguised in a human yet decaying body, is wandering in the City to observe its inhabitants and carry on with her schemes. She feels her Worm ripened, so fat from the power she feeds it, that he seems to not having enough. The time to deal with the issue of the infinite hunger of the Worms has come, even though she tried countless times to find a permanent solution, yet always failing.

With Quria and Riven, she tried to borrow time while sending her daughter, Dûl Incaru, to find access to the homeworld of the Awoken, the Distributary. The reason is complex but is tied to how a singularity influences time in space.

“Now I have tried to put an Ascendant in orbit of a black hole while its spawn gathers the tribute of an eon. But the worm is not satisfied, for it sees the trick. What I must do is amplify the speed at which tribute is gathered. A pocket world where time passes quickly would do well. Or a world where time is a torus and infinite violence might be gathered. With such a murder battery, I could become a being of supreme insight.”

“Thank you”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

Savathun is trying to alter the condition of the bargain with the Worms, without losing power, by tricking them into a time-altered loop. A gravitational singularity is an ideal place to look for this. While a black hole is a natural solution to explore, using the time differential in the event horizon region, a pocket universe with a completely different time continuum could be the most elegant expedient. That is why Savathun wants to access the Distributary.

This is a pocket universe formed from a kugelblitz – when the Traveler and the Darkness battled together during the Collapse. Time in the Distributary is out of sync with our universe: The years in this singularity pass faster, so that if an Ascendant were to be placed in that plane his tributes would go to the Worms with an extremely fast way – in the order of hundreds of years compared to a fraction of this time for us. This would allow the Savathun to deeply alter the cycle of tributes, to the point to be almost free of the constraints they come with, but also to accumulate an incredible power of agency on reality.

This is the “murder battery”, a “time-phased tribute accumulator”, that delves into physical and philosophical concepts. We have a glimpse of the concept of a toroidal time in the theory of the eternal return of Nietzsche, for example – a circular cycle in time, where events are fated to repeat over and over again. The title that Dûl Incaru sports in the “Shattered Throne” dungeon is none other than “The Eternal Return” for this specific reason.

There are models of universes based on the toroidal shapes too and, in general, the ouroboros snake is an early representation of this concept in philosophy, especially about the recurring cycles in time.

Getting rid of the limitations of the tribute system allows Savathun to focus on the next objective in her agenda: to lay the foundation of an alternative to the Sword Logic.

Metarealism

“In the beginning, Yul said to me, ‘Savathûn, you may never abandon cunning. If you do, your worm shall devour you.’ Cunning is the use of thought to predict the function of a system. Therefore, wherever a being should attempt to understand me and fail—has my cunning not defeated theirs? Wherever a falsehood is repeated about me, have I not displayed cunning? I shall gather tribute from every false prediction, misguided theory, fearful rumor, and ominous supposition which derives from the thought of me. And in time, I shall pin my quiddity upon these rumors. I shall discorporate, so that I exist wherever my schemes and conspiracies also exist. And so, I will be immortal as long as anyone seeks to understand me and fails. Do you see?”

“Thank you”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

When the Worms revealed that the Sword Logic can be attained with different powers, Savathun found her own, exclusive path. She is a trickster god (as we will see later), one that feeds on misconceptions, half-truths, lies, and deceptions. Breaking the fourth wall as few other characters in Destiny can do, Savathun can read into reality on a different level, and so to alter it to gain power from this act through her cunning.

While she is creating a deep and extended web of deception in Destiny’s virtual world, what Savathun is referring to in particular is our reality. Invading our reality, every time we speculate on her, by creating a Reddit post, by discussing in a video, or an article much like this one, we feed her more power.

 As players, the Guardians are hungry for news, for meanings, for proof. Victims of fake news, pattern recognition, and pareidolia as social and physiological constructs, we look for meanings in everything: We see shapes in the clouds, even divinities on toast burns. We assume that everything makes sense and that the universe exists for us and us alone – one of the core principles of religion, for example.

The more senseless data is thrown at us, the more we try to dig, to datamine, get a sense of it, or even just a crumb of useful, understandable information. Savathun sensed the nature of the player who exists behind the screen, inside the virtual skin of his Guardian. Since the Ahamkara already know they live in a fictional universe, after being taken, Riven could have revealed this reality-shattering truth to Savathûn.

“Reality is the finest flesh. […] I came to find you, only you, because you’re special. You’re from somewhere real. And together we can burn our way back there. Can’t we, o player mine?”

“Skull of Dire Ahamkara”, armor.

This could be the profound message behind complex lore such as “Truth to Power”, which will feed on our uncertainties by giving a chaotic informative process, with specs of truth among lies and deceptions. Our dispassionate desire to create theories and stories even where there are none drives us toward the lore of this game, and Savathun is the predator that feeds on this, revelling in hiding the fabric of the real inside the fiction, forcing us to theorize.

Truth, reality, or the world that we humans and Destiny players inhabit, is the real power in the fictional world we decide to visit by turning on our consoles or PCs.

This is somewhat reinforced by a subtle message Quria (or Savathun through her proxy) left us in the final runs of the Expunge mission. Using a non-diegetic form, the message is triggered in our “current objective” part of the HUD – a section of the game that the NPCs should not be able to see, available only to the players. This is an ominous way to inform the player that Savathûn has finally reached out to our real selves, making her way through the fiction to reality.

“I see you.
Crawling around my domain like insects.
This realm answers only to one master.
You are nothing.
You know nothing of power.
Thrashing around like a wounded animal.
Unaware that you are already dead.
Your failure is written in time.
I have seen your grave.
I see you.
Rent asunder…
Broken…
Taken.
You think you have power here?
Your victories are hollow things.”

In-game text, from the “Expunge” mission.

READ MORE: Destiny 2: A Descent into the Vault of Glass

Savathun, a Trickster God

In Sudanese, the word “Imbaru”, quoted in the previous passages of “Truth to Power”, means “reformer”. As well as “Incaru” means “carrier“. This is the semantic proof that Savathun wants to “reform” the survival economy of the Hive by changing its currency (from the logic of the sword to the one of cunning), and that Dûl Incaru is the carrier of this orders. 

The kind of god Savathun wants to become (or already is) belongs to the trickster category, the same as Loki from the Norse sagas, Anansi from the African cults, Manannan from the Celtic myths, and Iktomi (or Coyote) from the Native American cults. We have already faced similar divinities in our culture, and Savathun is aware of this.

“Who am I?
Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother’s-stomach. Call me the grandmaster of semiosis, the jeweler’s hammer which gilds the signal, a purposeful mob none of whose members know its purpose, the infinite regress of enigmas, a self-questioning answer, the word not spoken, black ice, cataract of mimes, the ache and fever of overthought while bedridden with illness, the intolerable thorn of frustrated inquisition, gray regret at the end of a fruitless day, the thing which is unlike your beloved but arbitrarily recalls your beloved to agonizing effect, architrave of the no-window, needle driven in flush with skin so that desperate fingers cannot pull it out, sweet petal, unmemorable, crystal death, the provably improvable.
I know your people well, and so I know all your names for me.”

“Thank you”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

A trickster god is a feared entity in all the history of myths, in all the related cultures – his domain is the deceit, the lies are his language, the illusions are his way to communicate. Such deities are often connected to the twilight of the gods and the eschatological events that follow – to underestimate them is to follow a catastrophic path, the end of the world as we know it.

When many players in the world followed what “Truth to Power” indicated as the solution of the Curse of the Dreaming City (beating Dûl Incaru with 999 of Power in a Fireteam of one), the expectations were high. However, the result was another trick. Bungie answered this with a specific TWAB, to address the issues in following Savathun lore by the book.

That being said, the structure of “Truth to Power” is a mix of interesting breaches of the fourth wall. In some of its parts, the layout is coming from the “Choose your own adventure” books, mixed with some coding commands such as “GOTO” from the Basic operating systems, that forces the reader to follow a preordered path. Similar to the infamous “would you kindly?” from the Bioshock series, and following a Cartesian principle, Savathun is feeding on our free will, by exploiting the limited actions we can undergo in a video game, a constrained and controlled environment.

During the events of the Season of the Splicer, Savathun is seeding chaos amidst our ranks. She is infiltrating the City using proxy bodies, and she has been inside the Future War Cult network for a while, influencing the opinions of its members and its leaders. She anticipated this a long time ago, telling us we would inevitably fuel her power through our beliefs.

“I am, of course, especially interested in you. You saw me in the stone laid on your plotting table, and in the shining eyes of the admiral at her dying helm. You hunted me between the lines of your texts. Wherever there was space to fit me in, there you found me. You created me and gave me a part of your thoughts, and in presenting those thoughts to others round the campfires and networks of your little world, you expanded that space.”

“Thank you”, from the lore book “Truth to Power”.

The Witch Queen is telling us the truth, for once. We believed that Eris was the evil (“You saw me in the stone laid on your plotting table”, back in “The Taken King” cutscene with the Vanguard). We forced the figure of Savathun in every plot imaginable, in each season we believed to saw her shadow (“Wherever there was space to fit me in, there you found me”). We pushed our theories in articles like this, in videos, in podcasts, and loremasters talked incessantly about her (“You created me and gave me a part of your thoughts, and in presenting those thoughts to others around the campfires and networks of your little world, you expanded that space”).

Now she is here, and she managed to hide right in front of us, ironically, despite our efforts to put her on the surface on every occasion. But what does she want? What is her final play, her endgame?

READ MORE: Destiny 2: The Hidden Truth of Lakshmi

An Unexpected Alliance with Savathun?

While Savathun is moving through the streets of the City, whether she wants it or not, she is connecting more to our culture and our way to process the reality, at the point that she could have planned something entirely different from her initial idea of infiltrating behind the enemy lines to weaken us.

[SPOILER ALERT]

At this point, we know that Osiris is influenced if not taken by Savathun herself. A series of leaks and datamined material suggested that this happened when Sagira was conveniently killed in the Season of the Hunt. Replicating Sagira would have been impossible for Savathûn as well as giving a good impression of Light-infused powers.

That’s why Sagira was quickly put out of the scene, and Osiris came back alone. The following dialogue is at the end of another incursion in the Vex Network when Ikora points out that together with the Eliksni, Guardians, and humanity can accomplish a great deal. Then Mithrax says that more species can follow this example, including the Hive, and Osiris jumps into the conversation with this one-liner:

“Would you join hands with Savathun?”

The Witch Queen already expressed her interest in the interactions she experienced while walking around disguised in the City. It is not clear if using a proxy body makes her feel like it would have felt, but it is noteworthy that Savathun could be more open-minded about our species and our culture than we ever thought.

“Their naiveté was beyond description, and I feasted until my eyes welled with black tears.
Now I reach as often as they do, and when they reach back, I am thankful.
I speak with them. I seek their company. Their companionship.
This is not pity, for I know pity. What is this—“

“VII – Ripe”, from the lore book “Beneath the Endless Night”.

The hypothesis of an alliance could either be the final trick of Savathun on our expenses: what could be the greatest deceit of them all if not the one that makes you allies with your worse enemy? On the other hand, Savathun’s desire to break free from the tyranny of the Worms’ hunger for power is well known. Maybe she is trying to find another way out and her relationship with the Deep (or the force behind the Pyramids, the Darkness) seems to be strained and not so profound as it was between it and her brother.

The events of the Season of the Arrivals exposed a fracture between the Darkness and Savathun. In a possible scenario where the Queen will take arms against it, she could want to have the one force that wiped out her brother and countless gods and powerful opponents: the Guardians.

While being the cause of the titular “Interference”, Savathun is using Nokris to meddle with the Darkness while the latter is trying to reach out for us. For a long time, it was believed that she feared the bond we were building with the Darkness – a bond that eventually led to obtaining the Stasis and beyond.
This could have been a misconception, listening to the messages that Savathun had Nokris delivered to us.

You are a child reaching toward a flame. The Taken Queen would not have you burnt. Pledge your allegiance and be reborn.
Light and Dark are locked blades. A logic simple and narrow. A bridge with only one path.
Life and death are liar’s tools. Weave your own lie.

Nokris, in-game dialogue for the “Interference” weekly mission.

These words are very similar to the cryptic messages that Quria delivered to us in the “Expunge” mission. Savathun could be trying to stop us from communing with the Darkness for other reasons, not only her own interests. Something else could be lurking in the shadows of this plot, and we could be the key to forge a new alliance and resist it.

This sums up with a recent leak that suggests we will never face Savathun in the upcoming DLC “The Witch Queen”, nor in the campaign, not even in the raid. As it is for tradition from Bungie, we are to expect the unexpected in this regard, since our enemies are not always what they seem and our ideas of what would be the next opponent are often diverted to another surprising outcome (Taniks is one of the fresher examples about this, but pretty much all the Leviathan’s raids were on this line of principle and the coming of the Pyramid ships too).

Surely enough, something good must be left inside the Hive, reconnecting them to their humble origins, as proto-Hive creatures on the planet of Fundament, billions of years ago, before being corrupted by the Worms. The Leviathan, the Traveler harbinger of that time, was proud of how this fragile species was not touched by the Darkness even when their survival was at stake

If the Queen will play her last gambit in an unexpected alliance with us, or the final deception, only the future will tell. Whenever the time will come, we will more likely be in the same darkness as we are now, but the marketing phrasing for the upcoming reveal of “The Witch Queen” states:

“Survive the Truth”

This phrase resonated with something Nokris said during “Interference”, about the danger of the truth, of a revelation… or maybe a flux of information that could alter reality and throw the balance of the forces at play in one direction or the other.

“Savathûn shields from dire truths.“

Nokris, in-game dialogue for the “Interference” weekly mission.

Whether it is something related to our alliances or Savathun revealing herself… the play in these words is still there: the next war will be fought on the edge of the perception of reality and the ripples that a grand revelation could leave in its fabric.