This page details the entities corrupted by Oryx's dark powers.
The Taken
"These new enemies have been wholly consumed, possessed by the Darkness, bodies and mind twisted into service of their King. Now, they are bent to a singular purpose – our eradication."
A new enemy faction of sorts coming with The Taken King expansion. Not so much a new race, but rather an amalgamation of several enemies across all four enemy races that have been "taken" from our dimension by Oryx and so severely corrupted by the Darkness that there's barely a semblance of what they originally were.
Beware of unmarked spoilers.
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In General
- And I Must Scream: They have a tortured look to them as they twitch and jitter. But if you read their Grimoire entries, it turns out this is an inversion; according to Toland, the Taken are actually in ecstasy after being thoroughly Mind Raped by the Darkness, who strips away their doubts, fears, and burdens and replaces them with peace and singular purpose.
- Forsaken plays the trope straight. When the Techeuns are freed from Savathun's control, they reveal that every minute was absolute torture for them, being aware of what was going on and having no free will of their own. It's implied that being in ecstasy was just an indication of how far off the deep end Toland has gone.
- Arc Words: In the Grimoire entries for various Taken enemies, the phrase "Take your new shape" pops up at the end of every non-Vex entry. The Taken Vex get "Accept the changing blade."
- In addition to the above, the phrase "There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [x]" appears in every non-Vex entry, while Taken Vex entries all demand the Vex worship the environment they find themselves in, whatever that environment may be.
- And let's not forget the most important phrase of all: "You have been taken."
- Artificial Brilliance: The main threat of the Taken is not just their new found abilities, but the sheer efficiency they put into them.
- Taken Psion on his own? He'll run to cover and if left unchecked, he'll clone himself into being his own army and try to make you waste your time on him.
- Taking cover after a beating? Taken Thrall and Taken Minotaur warps somewhere close to get to you, Taken Wizard summons shadows, Taken Knight spews napalm, Taken Centurion throws up a seeker, and Taken Captain sends out a dark blinding orb to flush you out.
- Taken Minotaur taking a beating? He'll cloak the moment he gets time to breathe and will teleport away from where he did so, making you waste ammo on an empty space.
- Taken Captain about to eat a rocket? He warps the moment he sees it, or spams his orb to make you easy pickings for his posse.
- Somewhere with high vantage points? There's likely a Taken Hobgoblin occupying it, taking potshots at you while punishing you with its counter-bolts if you so much as hit it with a pebble.
- If not Taken Hogoblin, it might be Taken Vandal instead, and when you are tired of their Wire Rifle snipes? If you try to snipe it back, it will throw up a bubble shield to defend itself and its allies while also healing them.
- Using your jump ability to recover after a hit from a Taken Phalanx? If there's more than one they'll time their shots and juggle you off the nearest cliff or slam you into a wall before you can touch ground and recover.
- Major serving as your main target? Taken Goblin links to it so that it's invincible unless the Goblin dies, or Taken Vandals gather around it throwing up their bubble shields one after another to block off most of its body.
- Barrier Warrior: Taken Vandals can put up a small field that blocks all your attacks and heals their allies. You can walk right in and make 'em eat a shotgun shell, but usually these Vandals are snipers.
- Blinded By The Dark: Taken Captains sport the ability to throw an orb that travels through objects (so long as it isn't dead center in the way) and blinds you if you're hit, along with their signature teleportation.
- Break Them by Talking: When a hapless victim is taken to the other realm, it's not shown what happens to them. But the Grimoire makes it clear that a mysterious voice (almost certainly the Darkness Itself) begins by picking apart at their identities, telling them not to worry about their current struggles and to throw away all doubt and sense of self. The voice further entices them with power so that the victim willingly becomes a Taken.
- Breath Weapon: Taken Knights can spew a stream of fire that lingers where it lands.
- Came Back Strong: Being "taken" warps them into monstrous husks of their former selves, but it also gives them formidable new powers.
- The Corruption: They've been so warped by the Darkness that they're little more than puppets of Oryx.
- Counter-Attack: Taken Hobgoblins fire a trio of energy bolts at you when they take a hit, in place of their stasis mode.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Taken Vex enemies' weak spots are now located on their head instead of their abdomen. Minotaurs also share this weak point, after normally not having one.
- Dark Is Evil: As if it wasn't already clear with The Darkness itself, the Taken appear more to be walking shadows than what they were before.
- Discard and Draw: Many new powers the Taken gain (see Personality Powers below) come at the cost of a previous ability:
- Hobgoblins lose their regenerating stasis shield.
- Minotaurs lose their barriers.
- Red Legion Phalanxes can no longer extend their shields.
- Psions lose their knock-up ability.
- Wizards lose their poison clouds.
- Dragon with an Agenda: An entire army of them. As Ikora Rey puts it, "the Taken serve Oryx. But I think those jaws lead elsewhere." With Oryx and Quria dead, the Taken immediately revert to the control of their true master: the Witness.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Fallen, Hive, Cabal, and Vex all work cheerfully together after being Taken, even though two of the four want to kill the others under normal circumstances and the other two want to kill everything. Even after their master Oryx dies, and before Savathûn takes control, they mostly remain a coherent force.
- Evil Counterpart: They are the dark shadow to the Guardians: beings remade by a vast, cosmic force, given new powers and abilities and then set loose upon their creators' enemies.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: They're described as being consumed from the inside. These are also their weak point.
- Freeze Ray: Taken Knights and higher-tier Acolytes gain the ability to fire slowing and eventually freezing Stasis shots from their Boomers in Season of the Lost.
- Humanoid Abomination: Despite being warped into horrid living shadows who poison the very land they walk on and tear reality a new sphincter every time they appear, they still retain their humanoid forms.
- Hidden Depths: The grimoire for the Taken Prison of Elder bosses shows that the Taken are more than just slaves to Oryx.
- Sylok thrives off pain and is using the Awoken to help him transcend to a new form to better serve Oryx.
- Keksis realizes Oryx is no longer there to guide him and betrays the Taken in order to take on a new shape.
- Noru'usk viewed Oryx as weak, seeing his campaign against the Vanguard as a selfish one. Like Malok, Noru'usk wants to take the throne for himself.
- Invisibility: What's worse than a Minotaur? A Minotaur you can't see.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Taken Goblins can apply this to their nearby allies, especially to any Majors. The only weakness in this is that the immunity lapses at steady intervals for less than a second, too short to take advantage of. Thankfully, the Gobs themselves aren't protected while doing so... unless another Goblin gets on that.
- It Can Think: To a certain degree, yes; if without a leader most Taken will swarm and act like a virulent plague with little regard for their own well-being. Higher ranking Taken, however, have proven to be capable of higher thought and consciousness outside of Oryx's commands, and can easily dictate the actions of their lessers towards an actual goal (such as Ir Arok attempting to break into and take the Vex Collective Mind on Io and Grask ordering his Taken to attack a strategic target rather than just swarm the whole area.)
- No Body Left Behind: When killed, they either disintegrate or get sucked into some kind of vortex.
- No Ontological Inertia: Averted; even with the Taken King dead, the Taken are still a threat and appear in Destiny 2, with Savathûn the Witch-Queen having usurped control over them via Quria, the Vex Mind given to her by Oryx. By the time of Season of the Lost however, with Quria gone, the Taken have fallen back under the control of the Witness, who has lent them to Xivu Arath in her pursuit of her sister.
- Our Wormholes Are Different: In the Shattered Throne, a place in the Ascendant Realm, Taken can spawn from holes in reality that are a part of the level's environment instead of their usually Taken Blights. The holes glow with a blinding light that refracts and distorts, contains a black void doted with stars, and Taken burst out of them in a shower of white fluid as if they had jumped out of water.
- Painfully Slow Projectile: Taken Centurions can shoot an orb of energy that homes in on a Guardian. You can dodge it or shoot it, but you better make your choice because getting hit with these things hurts. A lot. No seriously, shoot those things; because you get the extra bonus of having them set off any "on kill" style perks you or your current weapon has.
- Personality Powers: All Taken gain a power based on some fear or insecurity of theirs from when they were sentient. In a neat inversion, these powers all make up for this fear and alleviate it, playing into the Mind Rape that the Darkness pulls on them. To wit;
- Thralls are driven to swarm and overpower their foes with their numbers, but fear being too frail to do so before death. Thus, Taken Thralls gain a teleport that can let them close distance quickly or dodge incoming attacks.
- Acolytes strive for glory in service to the Darkness, but fear that their cowardice will make this an elusive dream. Thus, Taken Acolytes spawn an Acolyte's Eye to help them when their fear overtakes them.
- Knights are driven to show their strength in battle, but fear that one day they will be outmatched and defeated. Thus, Taken Knights gain a Solar ranged attack designed to cheat their superior opponents and give them the victory they desire.
- Wizards, like Thralls, fear their frailty despite the power they wield. Thus, Taken Wizards can call forth endless Shadow Thralls to distract their enemies while they rain down their magic on them.
- Psions relish the power they have to rend space, but fear their lack of numbers and the rarity that they present to the Cabal. Thus, Taken Psions can continuously create duplicates of themselves to bolster their numbers.
- Phalanxes fear that they are seen simply as a shield for their better armed and swifter brethren, and cannot make any meaningful contributions to a fight. Thus, Taken Phalanxes have their shield converted into a weapon itself so that they may strike back alongside their comrades.
- Centurions are the brains behind a Cabal force, but they fear that all of their know-how and strategic thinking will fail them and their unit due to one thing that they missed. Thus, Taken Centurions can spawn a homing projectile designed to take care of the problems they didn't foresee.
- Vandals follow the orders they are given and share the loot as ordered, but they have nothing that is truly theirs and resent others for having things to call their own. Thus, Taken Vandals can spawn a domed shield designed to give them a safe haven and space to call theirs and theirs alone.
- Captains are the only thing keeping their bands of raiders from dying or running out of ether, but they fear the challengers that will come to take what little they have like thieves in the night. Thus, Taken Captains use a large projectile that blinds whatever it hits so that the enemies cannot see them to fight back effectively or see what they have to take.
- Goblins don't have a personality, but are programmed to construct the material things necessary for the Vex to expand and to protect the things they construct. Thus, Taken Goblins gain an energy shield protection beam that can make any of their allies completely invulnerable until the Goblin is killed.
- Hobgoblins are programmed to communicate with the greater Vex consensus and send reports on their progress, an act which makes them a valuable target. Thus, Taken Hobgoblins gain three rotating energy projectiles around themselves that home in on any being that tries to harm them so that they'll give the Hobogblin some space to heal or escape.
- Minotaurs are in charge of the folding of space-time that is required for the Vex's time based powers and technology to function, and to protect their designs so that others won't destroy or take them. Thus, Taken Minotaurs are rendered invisible so that they can gain an even greater advantage over those who would rob the Vex of their technology (although this comes at the cost of gaining a weak spot that they didn't previously have).
- Self-Duplication: Taken Psions now have the ability to do this. They seem to do it on a fixed timer and can take it up to Me's a Crowd levels if it goes unchecked for too long, and even more annoying, have a bad habit of splitting the exact moment they take a bullet to the face.
- Slave Mooks: With the possible exception of Hive Taken, none of them were willingly taken, that's for sure.
- May be subverted. The Grimiore entries for the various Taken enemies you encounter seem to consist of gaining the trust of whatever happened to be Taken and offering them a "knife" in the shape of their desires. Taken Vandals, for instance, are offered a knife in the shape of "this place is mine". They certainly didn't enter Oryx's dark dimension willingly, but they may have offered to serve Oryx of their own fruition.
- Shield Beam: Taken Phalanxes now can fire dark energy from their shields that sends their opponents flying from an even farther range, something normal Cabal Phalanxes were already infamous for.
- Teleport Spam: A few Taken units, particularly high ranking units and Thralls, have the ability to instantly warp short distances a la Slendy Style. This can make them frustrating to fight, as Captains and Centurions in particular like to warp just as you draw a bead on them. Taken Minotaurs crank this up a notch by also going invisible to teleport.
- The Turret Master: Taken Acolytes can place an orb that shoots a stream of dark energy at its target. More often than not, they become more of a threat than the Acolytes themselves because of the near constant stream of fire. Thankfully, they don't take as much damage as they dish out.
- The Undead: There are multiple and heavy implications throughout the lore involving the Taken that the process of becoming one is fatal for the victim, and that they are brought back as a monstrous Humanoid Abomination enslaved to the Darkness and its agents.
- Undercrank: All Taken, if left idle, will twitch and jitter in place as if they were glitching out in a game, and this effect can also be seen in the warping abilities of Taken Thralls and Captains and the duplication ability of Taken Psions; rather than a smooth transition to the spot one warps to like a Blink, they can just shunt themselves to the side or forward without breaking stride, and the duplication of the Psions looks like they're physically tearing themselves apart and juttering all the while. The Taken Shiver emote one gets upon getting a full set of Taken Armor replicates this effect on yourself.
- Undead Abomination: A twisted army of undead shadow-creatures that contort their bodies unnaturally, hail from another dimension and are the slaves of an even nastier bunch of eldritch horrors.
- Walking Wasteland: The Taken are anathema to the very landscape itself, and prolonged Taken presence will irreversibly poison an area. In the Lake Of Shadows strike, they actively weaponise this trait to poison the water supply of the Farm, although thankfully the cell responsible are eliminated before any lasting damage can be done.
- Weaksauce Weakness: A conversation between the Drifter and Eris Morn in Season of Arrivals reveals that they don't react well to methane of all things, illustrating just how desperate Savathun is if she's sending Taken to Titan.
Taken Champions of Oryx
Primus Ta'aun
Primus Ta'aun
"It's the mission I've been given. I will use what I have."
The commander of the Sky Burners legion, Ta'aun was the last legion commander at the time of Oryx's invasion of the solar system. After warning the Empire, Primus Ta'aun was tasked with capturing the Dreadnaught, an act which saw him taken and transformed into Ta'aun, Hand of Oryx.
- A Father to His Men: His Grimoire cards clearly indicate that he genuinely cared about the men under his command and he ordered his troops to stay behind while he personally went to the Dreadnaught because he didn't want them to die needlessly.
- Band of Brothers: He had undergone the "shield brothers rite" with Mau'aul and Tlu'urn. He specifically ordered them to not accompany him on the mission to capture the Dreadnaught because he didn't want them to die. Cayde-6 half suspects that Mau'aul and Tlu'urn's attempt to blow up the Dreadnaught is an attempt to rescue Ta'aun.
- Fate Worse than Death: Considered defeat and dishonor to be one. Him being Taken counts as this as well.
- Four-Star Badass: The Darkness Itself acknowledged that Ta'aun was once the mightiest Cabal warrior in the solar system.
- Frontline General: He led his soldiers against the Vex on the frontlines of Mars. During the assault on Oryx's Dreadnaught he continued this trend by personally commanding the lead assault meant to locate and kill Oryx.
- Gatling Good: Uses a Heavy Slug Thrower.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted. He ordered his troops to stay behind and boarded the Dreadnaught alone in an attempt to prevent them from being sent to their deaths. It didn't go well.
- Honor Before Reason: Received orders from the Emperor Himself to board and capture the Dreadnaught. Despite urging from Tlu'urn to mutiny, Ta'aun considered defeat and failure to be the worse options.
- King Mook: A Super Colossus.
- Large and in Charge: Per Cabal standard. He's about as big as Valus Ta'aurc.
- Noble Demon: Of the various Cabal bosses confronted so far, he seems to have been one of the most noble and well-meaning ones. When you do fight him, it's mainly because he's been Taken and there's no way anyone can be saved after being Taken, so one could almost see it as a Mercy Kill.
- Spikes of Villainy: Which he was sporting before he was Taken.
- Undying Loyalty: Although he did not want to die and the temptation to mutiny was strong after receiving orders to assault the Dreadnaught, Ta'aun's loyalty to the Emperor was absolute.
- Villain Respect: The Darkness itself admits that Primus Ta'aun was once the mightiest Cabal warrior in the entire solar system.
Baxx
Baxx, Hand of Oryx
An Ogre charged with guarding the site where Crota's wakening was thwarted, Baxx, the Gravekeeper was defeated by the Guardian and Taken by Oryx, turning him into Baxx, Hand of Oryx.
- Bash Brothers: After being Taken, Baxx is paired with the Taken Primus Ta'aun as the Hands of Oryx.
- Dissonant Serenity: According to Baxx's Grimoire Card, most Ogres are in constant agony which fuels their rage, but because he failed to protect Crota's Grave, Oryx changed this when he took him in an attempt to eliminate weakness. Instead of pain, Baxx is in a constant state of joy. Yes, joy, meaning he is calm in comparison to his comrades...that's a calm Ogre?!
- Dual Boss: He is fought alongside Primus Ta'aun.
- Gate Guardian: He and Primus Ta'aun are tasked with guarding the portal leading to Oryx's location aboard the Dreadnaught.
- Praetorian Guard: Charged with guarding the site where you banished Crota's soul back to his Ascendant Realm. He failed.
- Unstoppable Rage: Eris notes that even Oryx couldn't control an Ogre unless it was Taken.
- You Have Failed Me: For failing to guard Crota's crystal, he was Taken by Oryx.
Bracus Horu'usk
Bracus Horu'usk
A Taken Centurion, noted by Oryx for having the strength of the knight and the might of the lord. For this, Oryx has granted Bracus Horu'usk a place on his own court.
- Barrier Warrior: He is protected by an invincible barrier, the only way to hurt Bracus Horu'usk is to kill all the other enemies that spawn in with him.
- Flunky Boss: His barrier only goes down when the other enemies in the court have been killed, which also causes Horu'usk to freeze in place and unable to fire, leaving him completely vulnerable. However, his barrier returns when the next round of Taken spawn, requiring them to all be killed again.
- Worthy Opponent: Oryx saw potential as a warrior and leader in Horu'usk, so he decided to Take him and make him a member of his court.
Noru'usk
Noru'usk, Servant of Oryx
"A king is dead. Good riddance. A king will rise."
A Taken Centurion, captured and imprisoned in the Prison of Elders.
- Dragon Ascendant: He is one of several Taken who is making plans to bid for Oryx's Throne. Of course, he has to escape from the Prison of Elders first.
- Four-Star Badass: Like all Cabal Centurions he is extremely tough; being Taken makes him even more dangerous.
- King Mook: Unlike just about any other boss in the Challenge of Elders, Noru'usk doesn't have any special abilities. Rather, the only special about him is that he's the only Centurion while everyone else is a Phalanx or a Psion. He does seem to use his Axiom Dart with greater frequency, though.
- Small Name, Big Ego: He is just a recently Taken Centurion who thinks he has what it takes to replace Oryx. Given that he was captured and imprisoned in the Prison of Elders, that seems highly unlikely.
- The Strategist: Thinks this is what separates him from Oryx. Oryx came to the system not to conquer but avenge his dead son, and so he failed. Noru'usk has no son or lineage to avenge and intends to wage a war of strategic conquest against the Guardians.
Morphon
Morphon, Blighted Mind
A strange Taken variant of the Templar sent by Oryx to infiltrate the Vault of Glass and usurp all of its power. It is encountered during the Paradox story mission. While not as threatening as the latter in combat, its most prominent and disturbing trait is that it has the ability to summon Taken Oracles, darkness-infused versions of the tools the Vex use to control reality and time. Thankfully, it is encountered acting as a mere signal jammer and is stopped before it can consume the Vault wholesale.
- Curbstomp Battle: Wipes the floor with the Vex inside the Vault so hard they call for a Guardian to come and save them out of desperation.
- Reality Warper: Implied. Morphon can Take and use Oracles to serve Oryx's bidding. That is not a good thing. Gameplay-wise, these Taken Oracles grant Morphon a shield until they are destroyed, but anyone who knows what the Oracles can do can tell that Morphon could do far worse...
- Time Master: Also implied. The Oracles are essentially tools that the Vex use to manipulate reality and spacetime. With Morphon's existence proving Oracles can be Taken, this pretty much means that had Oryx finished the raid on the Vault of Glass, he would have gained an even tighter control over reality and be granted access to new time-based powers, and may be part of the reason the Vex face their own Bad Future at the hands of the Taken.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Eerily enough, your Ghost makes no mention of the fact that Morphon is Taking Oracles, despite the fact that since The Taken King, the House of Wolves campaign is mandatory, which features Variks reeling in horror when the Wolves tried to tap into the Oracles, and for good reason.
Malok
Malok, Pride of Oryx
A child of Savathûn, Malok was sent to infiltrate Oryx's ranks and tithe some of the king's power back to his mother. That plan ended when Oryx took him, rendering him utterly loyal to the Taken King. However, with Oryx slain, Malok is now taking steps to assure his own ascendance.
- Arc Villain: He's the main antagonist for the April Update of 2016, being one of the potential successors to Oryx while the Taken War still rages on.
- All Your Powers Combined: He uses at least two Taken powers: the Knight's flamethrower and the Centurion's homing projectiles.
- Double Agent: Started out as one for Savathûn; now he's genuinely on Oryx's side.
- Dragon Ascendant: One of many candidates for the new Taken King. As with Alak-Hul, he's been targeted specifically to keep that from happening.
- Enemy Summoner: He's learned how to manipulate Taken blights all on his own, which translates to him dumping Taken adds on top of you near-constantly.
- Evil Sorceror: After he takes enough damage, he "changes his tactics", abandoning his gun in favor of hurling Taken magic at you.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Before he was Taken by Oryx, he used to be a mere Thrall spawned from Savathûn.
- Long-Lived: Eris notes that for a Taken, Malok has existed for an unusually long time and his body is thus altered significantly more than most Taken, including hardened skin and whatever is going on with his head.
- King Mook: He starts out as a giant Knight, armed with a Boomer.
Sylok
Sylok, the Defiled
"Give me the pain. Take away all but agony. Through it, I transcend."
A Taken Hive Knight that has been captured in the Prison of Elders.
- Combat Sadomasochist: A look at his Grimoire Card reveals a wonderful and lovely tidbit of information about Sylok: He absolutely "loves" pain. He thrives off of it, lives for it and seems to grow in strength when it is inflicted upon him, especially when probing his mindscape. Presumably, this is how he gained his enhanced Flamethrower attack.
- Mind Rape: Inflicts this upon the two Reef scientists experimenting on him, tricking them into inflicting more pain which seems to expand his mental abilities. He then makes them forget the entire experience and do it all over again.
- Playing with Fire: Like all Taken Knights, he has a flamethrower attack; this one being much more powerful and having a larger area of effect.
Keksis
Keksis, the Betrayed
"My guiding shadow has become formless, my directive is gone."
A former captain for the House of Devils, he has been Taken and later on imprisoned in the Prison of Elders.
- Eye Lights Out: Is missing the distinctive glowing monoeye that all taken have, leaving his face to be a pitch black void.
- Having a Blast: Whenever Keksis is on the line-up of bosses for the Challenge of Elders Score Attack mode, he gains the power to summon large bombs similar in functionality to Corrupted Light Bombs in the King's Fall Raid, except these damage you and they drain your Super Energy unless you stand in their radius, ala King's Fall, but here doing so disarms them.
Nixis
Nixis, Hunger of Oryx
A Taken Captain who replaces Aksor as the boss of the Winter's Run strike after the April Update.
- Shockwave Stomp: Unlike most Taken Captains/Kell-Type Bosses, who lack this, Nixis has the "Ultra Smash" melee that Aksor and, basically any Kell or Archon worth their salt uses to dispose of overly aggressive Guardians.
Taken Champions of Savathûn
Quria
Quria, Blade Transform
"The Dreaming Mind"
An Axis Mind Hydra mentioned in the Book of Sorrows. It was created by the Vex network to understand and conquer Oryx's Ascendant Realm when Crota accidentally allowed the Vex into it.
- Arc Villain: As revealed in Week 6 of Season of the Splicer, Quria is responsible for the Vex Simulation of the Endless Night. That being said, it's acting on Savathûn's orders.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: By deducing the sword logic that defines the Ascendant Realms, Quria was able to fight Crota and his sisters to a stalemate for over a century. Toland heavily implies that Quria is how Savathûn has the power to Take, as it learned how to simulate Oryx and thus his Taken powers for Savathûn's use.
- Cessation of Existence: Is (seemingly) deleted from existence after being dismantled inside the Nexus during Expunge: Delphi. It can also inflict this itself by hurling walls of deletion protocols that, judging by the name for it in the death screen, disintegrate everything they touch from spacetime. Osiris also states that those same walls can destroy all matter they touch; it's unknown if he meant that non-literally, or if they really do destroy matter, which overturns a fundamental law of the universe that matter cannot be destroyed. Knowing the Vex, and the Taken, the latter might be possible.
- Demonic Possession: Quria was Taken by Oryx and given over to Savathûn. Scannable objects in Destiny 2 indicate that Quria is now being used to coordinate the Taken under Savathûn's command.
- Final-Exam Boss: In Season of the Splicer, not only does the "Expunge: Delphi" mission plunges you into sections of past Expunge missions, but Quria's fighting style once challenged in person gives it traits of all three Oppressive Minds: like Fantis, its arena utilizes deployable cover and gravity cannons; its protection must be broken using the authentication key mechanic from Dikast's fight in Styx; and like Dimio, it throws deletion walls at you during its final damage phase.
- Fling a Light into the Future: During its disastrous final encounter with Oryx, Quria knew it was screwed, so it sent all available information it gathered on the Hive god to the Vex network in hopes that they would further study the Ascendant Realm.
- Godhood Seeker: Its ultimate goal: take advantage of the sword logic and bootstrap itself to godhood by killing everything. In Truth to Power, Quria (maybe) outright proclaims it has won in this regard once it explains that it had discovered a way to simulate Light.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: Declares themselves allied with the Young Wolf's cause in Truth to Power. However, given the book's nature, this has to be taken with a grain of salt.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to the Guardian in Season of the Splicer during the Corrupted Expunge missions.I see you. Crawling around my domain like insects. This realm answers to only one master. You are nothing. You know nothing of power. Thrashing around like a wounded animal. Unaware you are already dead. Your failure is written in time. I have seen your grave. I see you. Rent asunder. Broken... Taken.
- Red Baron: Known as "the Dreaming Mind" starting in Season of Arrivals.
- Robot Religion: It's under its recommendations after analyzing the Hive and the Worms, that the Vex adopted religious behaviours in order to try and gain the favour of the Darkness.
- Shielded Core Boss: Quria begins its fight with two sets of counter-rotating Hydra shields, one Vex and one Taken, giving it incredibly small damage windows in the beginning, but they each disappear when you destroy the respective guardian Minotaur. Of course, once it loses its shields, that's when it brings out the Deletion Fields.
- Suddenly Voiced: Downplayed, because its lines aren't voice acted, but in Season of the Splicer it hijacks your HUD to deliver a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Guardians, marking the first time any Vex has directly communicated with a human in a straightforward way.
- Time Master: Has a very powerful grasp on time itself and Vex simulations due to being Taken. There is evidence that they are responsible for the timeloop on the Dreaming City.
Grask
Grask, the Consumed
A Taken Phalanx of the Red Legion and boss of the Lake of Shadows strike.
- All Your Powers Combined: He combines both the Axiom Bolt and the shield shockwave blast of Taken Centurions and Phalanxes. He can also Flash Step like Taken Captains.
- Flunky Boss: He continuously summons Taken troops to assist him in battle.
- Geo Effects:
- During his boss fight, the outer edge of the reservoir is filled with Blight-infected waters which he will periodically summon up to flood the middle parts of the arena, leaving only the central paltform and few high points around it safe to stand on.
- Noticing this is what started the strike in the first place; Devrim and Hawthorne noticed the waters of the EDZ being poisoned by Taken Blights and sent the Guardians in to investigate. The Guardians track him down to a water reservoir in the dam outside of Trostland, where he's poisoning the water at its source.
- King Mook: Of the Taken Phalanxes. Appropriately, his shield pulses are much stronger.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Normally the Taken, without direct leadership, act like a swarming infestation, and even when properly led they fight like a scourge or plague, rapidly spreading over an area. Ghost notices early on that these Taken are fighting with military tactics and attacking a strategic target in the form of the water supply, and from that he realizes that these Taken have a skilled leader commanding them instead of the other mindless infestations rampaging across the European Dead Zone.
- He's also the first example of a Red Legion Taken recorded, indicating that the Taken are not limited to just being created by Oryx anymore.
Ir Arok
Ir Arok, Tongue of Quria
A Taken Knight who is active on Io, doing reasearch on the Vex.
- Flunky Boss: Every time he's encountered he comes with a host of Taken as his vanguard. Interestingly, the player can sometimes influence how many Taken he has in any given encounter; if they preemptively destroy some of the Vex he will take before the fight, he'll have fewer Taken to back himself up with.
- Frontline General: He always fights alongside his Taken, even if he flees before the fights finished, and having Ir in his name would imply that he was a very high-ranking (possibly Exalted or Ascendent) Knight before being taken, like Ir Anûk and Ir Halak were for Hive Wizards.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Much like Grask, Ir Arok isn't a dumb brute, even compared to typical Hive Knights the player has encountered. He sends the Young Wolf all across Io trying to track him down and had the bright idea of attempting to take Vex so as to learn how to break into their Collective Mind.
The Odynom
The Odynom
A Taken Captain who, despite having near-max power level (585), is little more than a literal Troll.
- Cosmetic Award: Fitting in with its Troll nature, defeating it does not result in anything functionally unique happening; it will only drop an Engram containing a random Dreaming City weapon. However, it's needed for 100% Completion since three Dreaming City triumphs require killing it in each weekly mission.
- Optional Boss: A miniboss that can be challenged as early as power level 535 (the lowest point at which the power level delta will still allow you to damage it), and is needed for 100% Completion.
- Power Nullifier: Attacking it immediately turns on restricted respawning, regardless of whether or not the surrounding area is a Restricted Zone. Defeating it will remove the restriction if the area was not a Restricted Zone already.
- Recurring Boss: You get to encounter it in all three weeks of a curse cycle in the Dreaming City (specifically, the "Broken Courier", "The Oracle Engine" and "Dark Monastery" story missions), and it is always located out of the way of the normal path.
- Significant Anagram: "Odynom" is an anagram of "monody," a poetry term used to describe poems that lament one's death (sound familiar?) The word itself also literally means "one's pain," and that's exactly what the Odynom wants to gauge.
- Stealth Pun: It's a very powerful Taken Captain who exists solely to get a rise of out players encountering it, and hides underneath a bridge or in very discreet locations. In other words, it's a bridge troll.
- Troll: Exists solely to get a rise out of players who spot it and inevitably go to try and kill it. The game even refuses to take it seriously, using goofy names for its related triumphs such as "Troll Under the Bridge," and "Aggro No."
Morgeth
Morgeth, The Spirekeeper
A massive Taken Ogre that draws directly from the essence powering the Taken to create devastating weapons. As his name implies, he guards the entrance to the spire in the Dreaming City. Not that even the Guardians should be able to even cross the gap leading to it...
- Attack Its Weak Point: He's coated in pustules that serve as his weak points.
- Charged Attack: Morgeth spends most of the fight passively sending out mooks and eye-beaming anyone within his line of sight, but that's because he's gathering Taken Strength necessary to invoke your death, causing a Total Party Wipe. The battle consists of your team rushing to deprive him of that Taken Strength, then kill him while he is vulnerable.
- King Mook: Without his weapon, Morgeth is just a larger and more muscular Ogre who has the misfortune of having his entire backside coated in weakspots. Like all of the Taken Ogres introduced in Destiny 2, his Eye Beams have a considerable knockback effect.
- Macross Missile Massacre: When he is prevented from gathering the Strength necessary to charge his attack and he is rendered vulnerable, your party has only a few seconds to damage him before he tries to gather the Strength anyway, and he will try to disrupt your attack by sending tons of homing Axion Darts at you. You either have to shoot them all down, bring a defensive Super, or just get mauled to death by them.
- Mana Burn: His fight revolves around you taking advantage of this trope, constantly absorbing Taken Strength lying around the battlefield to prevent him from charging his attack.
- Puzzle Boss: Taking more than two Taken Strengths will instantly kill the player, requiring the fireteam to distribute them across themselves.
Vorgeth
Vorgeth, The Boundless Hunger
Another Taken Ogre. Is essentially a parallel universe equivalent to Morgeth, instead guarding the entrance to the building you are attempting to breach in Eleusinia in Shattered Throne.
- Alternate Universe: Functionally serves as Eleusinia's version of Morgeth, including a Mana Burn-themed mechanic and him guarding the entrance to a significant location.
- Mana Burn: Like his material world counterpart, his mechanic involves depriving him of the magic powering him, leaving him vulnerable to damage.
- Puzzle Boss: To lower Vorgeth's shield, the Petitioner Wizards backing him up must be killed and the charges they leave behind must be deposited in one bank to extinguish a rune. Doing this in one phase will award a Triumph.
The Dreaming (spoilers)
Querim, Xavoth, and Eriviks, The Dreaming
Three Taken champions that Sjur Eido slew in her lifetime. At the peak of the Dreaming City's corruption, it is revealed that they are all Not Quite Dead and are attempting to infect locations related to Eido's legacy.
- Evil Is Petty: In comparison to the rest of the Taken. Are the Dreaming here to perpetuate the curse? Help Dul find the Distributary? Hunt down the Awoken? No, they're here to pillage the equivalent of a memorial.
- Noble Demon: Implied with Eriviks, who is the only member of the trio that goes out of their way to set up a spot specifically so he and the Young Wolf can fight each other, using Mooks mostly just to level the playing field. Querim just doesn't care, being a Vex Minotaur, and Xavoth, being a Hive Ogre, tries to jump in during Vorgeth's fight to get a cheap kill.
- Not Quite Dead: They feign death twice. First, when you kill them the first time, their token reveal that Sjur Eido already killed them once. Then, after completing ???, they escape into the Ascendant Realm and go into hiding.
- Terrible Trio: Three very angry Taken champions aiming to ruin Eido's legacy by claiming it for the Taken. Querim is a Minotaur, Xavoth is an Ogre, and Eriviks is a Captain who's in charge. Subverted in Eleusinia, however, as they scatter and go their separate ways, throwing the Young Wolf off their trail.
- Revenge: They're not here to perpetuate the curse, but rather as payback for what Sjur Eido did to them. Interestingly, in terms of power level, putting the beginning of Forsaken at the start and the counterattack against the Dreaming at the end results in a thematic bookend about revenge.
- Walking Spoiler: As the very last encounter of the Shattered Throne, provided one does the quest Sjur Eido gives to them, their various exploits and the exact way of killing them is difficult to explain without spoiling anything.
Taken Champions of the Nine
In General
- Expendable Alternate Universe: The Taken in Dares of Eternity are enslaved from the multiversal studio audience watching the Starhorse's game show.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: The Taken encountered in the Reckoning and related spaces aren't actually the real deal, but figments of the Nine's imagination as they work with their various contacts.
Taken Likenesses
Copies of Nokris and Oryx recreated from the originals to test the player's might.
- The Beastmaster: Nokris's Likeness summons shadow Warbeasts instead of Thralls.
- Cat Scare: The Vanguard thought the two Hive gods had somehow been resurrected through the Drifter's antics. Nope - just an elaborate but shoddy intimidation scheme the Nine worked out for him. You see, despite his impressions, the Guardians have been through worse than just those two...
Taken Echoes
Living, breathing omens of the future encountered in the Prophecy dungeon. They are part of the Nine's message that the differences between Light and Darkness are irrelevant in terms of morality.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Kell Echo can only be damaged during a segment where it has to be chased down a long platforming sequence. Its Darkness Blasts send the player back instead of blinding them, and getting too far away applies a stacking debuff that kills the victim if maxed out.
- Foreshadowing: The Phalanx and Centurion Echoes foreshadow Caiatl's appearance in Season of the Worthy, and the Kell Echo foreshadows Eramis as the main antagonist of Beyond Light.
- Weakened by the Light: A variant; the Light motes used to shut off their defenses are acquired by standing in literal light.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: They all need to be made vulnerable by applying the correct dosage of Light and Darkness in tandem using motes.
