The Hive Are Farmers

One Guardian has come up with a pretty sound theory about how the Hive are basically just a race of farmers. While that might not be true of them all the time, such as when they’re murdering Guardians, it seems to be true of when they are in a dormant state.

A Guardian by the name of DontLetMeTalkPolitics on Reddit shared this theory, and it’s astoundingly solid. It revolves around the economy of the Hive, which is the circulation of Tribute. As far as we know, Tribute is all the Hive need to survive. They us Tribute to create everything they need, including weapons, armour, and magic, by forcing their Worm to do it for them.

This basically means that there is no supply and demand with Hive society. They get what they need, and they don’t need anything that they don’t have, as long as they have Tribute.

How Do The Hive Acquire Tribute?

The Hive gather Tribute by killing. The Worm that the Hive have will feast on the death of the kill, which was deemed too weak to defend itself. Regardless of the Hive that made the kill, some of the Tribute will be taken by their superior. This goes on all the way up to one of the Hive’s two gods, acting like a tithe.

Tribute is constantly being spent, consumed by Worms in exchange for what the Hive need. This means that the Hive always need to be putting more Tribute back into this economy. The Hive will often invade a world and kill an entire species in order to generate Tribute, but they aren’t constantly killing 100 percent of the time. Sometimes, they go into a dormant state.

On Luna both the Hidden Swarm and The Spawn Of Crota were hidden, dormant, for decades. When a dispute outside of the system cost Crota a big chunk of Tribute, they moved to the Moon and went dormant for centuries following the Great Disaster.

The Grasp of Nokris did a similar thing on Mars in the Hellas Basin, but how did they manage without killing?

This Guardian believes that the Hive harvest Thrall like pigs in their dormant times. This would work by Broodmothers creating new Thralls, many of which will be killed in order to create Tribute for the rest of the Hive. But this alone is not a sustainable process. Broodmothers need Tribute to create Thralls, and they can’t just keep on creating off the back of the Thralls they make being murdered.

The solution that the Guardian thinks they’ve identified is the mould that grows everywhere the Hive settle. You’ll always see small moths and bugs all over this mould, and these are what is being killed to create new Tribute. In Destiny 1 you’d quite often see Thralls scratching at the ground, eating something, and it seems now that they are probably eating these bugs.

Killing the bugs will generate Tibute, which will boost the economy even while the Hive are hiding and dormant. The mould will continue to grow and act as a place for these insects and moths to thrive, and the Thralls will keep on killing them, and the Hive will keep on killing the thralls.

To sum all of this up. The Hive can survive anywhere without going on murder sprees because they farm the mould that grows around them. This is how they can emerge as a bigger and better army from the depths of a Moon, or the icy crust of a frozen sea.

Let us know what you think of this theory in the comments.

Image Source: Destiny Tracker