OK, now for the rituals and tech... and stuff.
The Hive are bony creatures. They normally have three eyes, but certain Hive either have them removed or remove them themselves. Alak-Hul, the Darkblade, was a Knight without eyes. Ogres have one singular eye with the ability to fire a purple beam. The Hive do not have lips, their teeth bared and exposed. They have flat nostrils. Hive also do not have hair.
There doesn't seem to be many differences between male and female Hive, other than voice. Certain Wizards, like Ir Yut and Omnigul, have breast plates, but it isn't known if that's just armor choice or not.
The Hive have armor made from a bone-like substance. It can be hardened through age, like a Knight's armor is. Depending on the brood, they have different levels of armor. Oryx's Hive Knights have limited armor while Savathun's have more armor, specifically in the back area.
Thrall are young Hive, feral and hungry. They have next to no armor and are considered female. They usually run at the enemy, clawing at them. When they aren't attacking, they feed off whatever it is they feed off of on the ground. Some Thrall have even been spotted around dead Fallen in the Plaguelands, "eating" them. Some Thrall are cursed, this is when they start to glow green. When cursed, they run up to the enemy and explode. This can kill other Hive, however.
Another breed of Thralls are the Ogres. Ogres are created through extensive modification brought on by Wizards. It's almost torturous, and it makes the Ogre extremely angry and hungry for the blood of anything it comes across.
Acolytes are when the Hive start to take their roles in society. They can use limited magic (like fire grenades) and are seen bowing to whatever artifact they have in front of them.
Knights are hulking beasts with heavy armor and the ability to royally -blam!- anything over. They can spawn a wall of Darkness, made out of some kind of hardened material. Knights also seem to have the best relationships with Wizards, as the latter can give them more abilities, like instant revives. Knights are normally male.
All Wizards are female and all of them seem hell-bent on doing the worst things to anything in front of them. From transforming Thralls into Ogres or ripping the Light out of a helpless Guardian, they show no mercy. They are greater users of magic, as they can fire arcbolts right from their hands. They also produce children.
Hive reproduction is either sexual or asexual. How this is truly done is unknown but all a Wizard needs is the "mother jelly" and bam, there's a cocoon with a newborn Thrall in it.
Once a Thrall hatches, it's first job is to consume a Worm larvae. They swallow it whole. The problem is that the mere act of doing this defies physics. The Worms are huge, about half the size of a human. Anyway, this is how they grow in power. The Worm links with the Hive symbiotically, whenever the Hive kills something, that energy feeds the worm, making the Hive more powerful in the process. This also makes the Worm grow even hungrier. It's a constant cycle of murder.
If Knights and Wizards become powerful enough, they turn into Ascendant Hive. Crota is Ascendant. Once this is achieved, they get immense power. Crota has an oversoul, the Warpriest has his own oversoul. Balwur can snuffle your light out.
I won't cover Hive rituals, but I will cover the Sword Logic, so here we go.
The Hive work through the "Sword Logic". What this is is pretty much a "survival of the fittest" idea taken to an incredible extreme. Those who cannot defend themselves from annihilation must be annihilated, they are weak. "If you die, you deserve it" the Hive say to each other. Through the act of killing and the tribute system (Thralls tithe Wormfood to Acolytes, the latter to Knights and Wizards, etc.) the concepts of love and hate were nigh indistinguishable. It was all about the crusade.
Sometimes, Ascendant Hive can be revived from permanent death. Oryx did this with Xivu Arath and Savathun through their respective nature, war and cunning. Oryx's nature is either navigation or understanding, which, if given to someone who knows him, may revive him. You might want to burn the Books of Sorrow while you can.
Hive technology is quite advanced, yet so primitive looking. Hive boomers are said to hold a shard of a dead celestial body, using it as fuel. Hive cleavers have the ability to rip the light out of a target. They have also mastered space travel. Their tomb ships use portals between dimensions to carry Hive in and out of locations.
Possibly the greatest things the Hive have ever made is their ships. Their ships are quite literally made out of dead things. Eris Morn, during the Darkblade strike, says that the Hive torture their prisoners before rendering them into chitin for their ships. ALL ships are made out of chitin, Warships and even the Dreadnaught. The Dreadnaught in particular is made from the corpse of the Worm God, Akka.
Hive ships can even make their way into Ascendant Worlds, with one hovering above Crota's Netherworld during his funeral. They can even be fused with the Ascendant Plane, Oryx did this to make the Dreadnaught in the first place. He put his Ascendant Realm into the Dreadnaught, releasing it by using the Dreadnaught's weapon. This process can absolutely decimate anything in its path. It also seems to create some kind of standing field, seeing as Saturn's rings haven't repaired itself yet.
Another great power is the ability to Take. Oryx is the only Hive being with this power, as it was given to him by the Darkness itself, who can also Take. However, it is unknown how the ability works with the Sword Logic. Malok got the ability after Oryx died, suggesting it works the same way, but there may be other ways to acquire it. Either way, someone else has the ability to Take now. The Taken are coordinated again, which isn't good.
The ability to die and return from the Ascendant Realm is similar to the way Guardians die and revive. As Cayde-6 once said, "we were made for each other"... I may have paraphrased that.
Comment if I got anything wrong.
Master Post: [url]https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/234171689[/url]
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I love seeing the lore of Destiny! However, my only comment is that I don't believe Hive have "armor" in the normal sense. They referred to themselves as Krill before they became the Hive. This leads me to believe they are somewhat crustacean in physiology which would mean their "armor" is actually part of an exo-skeleton that grows with them.