Starting on October 1, Destiny 2 players are going to be going up against the Hive once more in a very familiar location to longtime players. The Shadowkeep expansion brings back the Moon as a playable destination and while portions of it may look familiar to those who played the original game, Bungie has made sure to evolve the destination and make it twice as large.

Alongside the Moon, the Hive are once again becoming the featured antagonists in this expansion. Since the last time players visited, the Hive have continued to change the landscape as well as build a massive fortress, prominently seen in the box art for the expansion. Previous trailers have shown off plenty of traps, long gothic hallways, and even some creepy secrets.

RELATED: Destiny 2 Plans Big Shadowkeep Reveals, Including Revamped PvP

In honor of the Moon and the Hive making a comeback in the Shadowkeep expansion, here are five strange and fascinating facts about the ancient and underground race of aliens.

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6 Origins

According to lore, this race is incredibly ancient and born out a pact between the Osmium Empire and the old Worm Gods like Xol. The Osmium Court, a proto-Hive like race originated from a gas giant planet called Fundament. The near constant lightning storms there required that the King wear a set of three-eyed goggles to shield his sight, something similar to what players see with the current race of Hive.

The Osmium King's reign was ended prematurely by a group of assassin's known as the Helium Drinkers, forcing the former king's children to flee and eventually seek vengeance. They continued their escape to the depths of the planet, coming across the domain of the Worm Gods who tempted them with limitless power and immortality in exchange for becoming a host for their newborn larvae.

Not only did the children accept this offer, they took it back to the surface of the planet to make the same offer to the people above. A war naturally broke out which helped many of the Worm Gods to escape. Over time, this new species of Hive to continued their expansion off of Fundament to its 52 moons and beyond. Unfortunately for some of the worms like Akka, the Hive eventually turned on them.

5 Titan vs The Moon

As Destiny 2 players already know, the Hive were originally encountered in the game on Saturn's moon, Titan. What the game doesn't reveal however, is that this group isn't actually the same faction that players fought against on the Moon in the first game. According to the lore, the HIve found on Titan are actually known as the Savathun Hive, a version of the faction that directly serve and worship Savathun, the Witch-Queen and one of the original children of the Osmium King.

In addition, many units have the Revenant title, which indicates that these units have been resurrected somehow. The only two known ways to pull this off is either the unit was Ascendant or through necromancy, a practice that has recently been employed by Nokris, Herald of the Worm God Xol and exiled son of Oryx, the former Taken King.

4 Live and Die by the Sword (Logic)

The defining belief by the Hive is what they call Sword Logic. Essentially, creatures that cannot defend or protect themselves should naturally be wiped out by a stronger and more powerful opponent. Basically, it can be likened to Darwinism and survival of the fittest. The entire Hive civilization is built off of this belief to not only defeat their enemies but utterly destroy them and take their power. The ultimate form of this power is access to the Ascendant Realm and creation of a Throne World, which allows the individual to escape death in the real world.

The Hive lives off of a tribute system as part of the Sword Logic, where certain behaviors and actions will cause the individual to evolve to the next stage of the Hive. Part of that need to continually grow stronger is to feed the worm embedded in each member of the Hive from their original pact. If the worm isn't fed enough, it'll eventually consume its host body.

While the Hive live off of this principle, there are those who believe the Sword Logic ruins the soul and integrity of those who follow it. In one example, the Hive have become unable to distinguish between certain emotions like love and hate or joy and sorrow over the course of generations and millennia following the Sword Logic.

3 The Might of Oryx

One of the original children to the Osmium King, the Hive God King was born Aurash, a female and sister to Xi Ro and Sathona. Upon their father's murder and transformation into the Hive, Aurash became a male and took on the mantle of Auryx, King of the Hive. From here Auryx and his sisters began spreading the Hive worms and destroying anyone who refused or opposed them. Eventually, the siblings went to war with one another due to the Sword Logic and attempts to prove who was the strongest. This need to feed their worms left untold death and destruction in their wake, until the trio realized that the Worm Gods had ultimately deceived them.

Unfortunately, the worms appetites were growing faster than they could kill, which pushed the three siblings to meet in their throne worlds to discuss a plan. The sisters offered Auryx their power to help him find a way to save them. As Auryx killed Xivu Arath, he became mightier and then killing Savathun made him more cunning. Ultimately, Auryx used that new found power to confront his worm patron Akka, killing him to become Oryx, the Taken King. From Akka's remained, Oryx created the Dreadnaught, revived his sisters, and created the tribute system by which all Hive can ascend. He also learned the ability to Take, a process that corrupts other species with Darkness to become Oryx's personal army.

Auryx the First Navigator set upon his god with his sword and his words, and cut Akka to pieces, and took from those pieces the secret of calling upon the Deep. He wrote this secret on a set of tablets, which he called the Tablets of Ruin. And he wore them about his waist.

Oryx went on to have four children, all who became notorious in their own ways: Crota, Nokris, and the Deathsinger twins, Ir Anûk and Ir Halak.

Following his ultimate defeat by the player's Guardian, his ravenous heart was used to create the Touch of Malace exotic weapon. Not only that, by the Sword Logic, the Guardian was technically now the successor to the Osmium Throne, a fact that the Guardian refused.

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2 Necromancy Gets the Banhammer

Speaking of Nokris, his upbringing was less than ideal. The second son to Oryx and younger brother to Crota, Nokris wasn't popular due to his physical weakness, which went against the Hive's Sword Logic where weaker individuals should be destroyed by those more powerful.

In an effort to prove himself to his father, Nokris focused on improving his intelligence and magic ability. Armed with knowledge, he hatched a plan to commune with the old Worm Gods to impress Oryx. Unfortunately, all of the Worms save for one were less than interested to work with the disfavored son. Xol, Will of the Thousands was the only one to remain and made a pact with the Hive wizard. Xol would agree to give a small portion of his power and the secret of Necromancy in exchange for Nokris' heart.

Naturally, once Oryx found out, he was furious as the practice of necromancy was sacrilege and a violation of Sword Logic by disrupting the idea of survival of the fittest. Nokris was exiled and removed from Hive historical records like the Books of Sorrow.

It was unforgivable. Oryx had communed with, consumed the worm. He was king. For Nokris to perform such a ritual was sacrilege. And to defy the Sword Logic? Heresy.

The banishment didn't deter Nokris, however, as he decided to show off his newly gained power by conquering Mars for his new master, Xol. The Warmind Rasputin had other ideas in mind, fighting back the Hive and trapping them in ice where they remained until the events of the Warmind expansion and the strike Strange Terrain.

1 Hiraks, The Mindbender

Hiraks, originally a Fallen House of Exiles dreg, found himself in a situation that mirrored the tale of former guardian and current Hidden agent, Eris Morn. While raiding the Moon to find Glimmer, Hiraks and his crew fell into the Hellmouth and were quickly wiped out one by one. However, Hiraks was somehow left alive and became lost in the dark depths alongside the Hive for an undocumented amount of time. Somehow, the once small and timid Hiraks escaped the pit though he emerged as a different entity with his mind changed by everything he had seen and experienced in the World's Grave below.

Hiraks, the Twisted. Hiraks, Ascendant. The mindbender whose tongue is a weapon, whose experiments seek to unravel sanity and reshape imagination that his subjects may become other—tools of his vile bidding.

He was now obsessed with the Hive, going as far as to study them, adopt their language, and became the first Fallen to mastered the power of the Ascendant realm and create his own throne world. His knowledge of the Hive became so great that he was able to command the Hive as well as unravel the minds of his enemies. To make himself look like the Hive, he fashioned Hive horns onto his helmet.

Prior to his imprisonment in the Prison of Elders, Hiraks was able to make In Anânh, the Brood Queen, his consort as well as taking in a Hive Knight as his familiar. Players know Hiraks as one of the Scorn Barons who helped Uldren Sov kill the Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6 during their prison escape.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep launches on October 1, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

MORE: Destiny 2: 5 Interesting Facts About the Moon

Source: DestinypediaGrimoire