XXXVI: Eater of Hope

You are Crota, my son. Welcome.

I fought my way out of hell to make you. I fought my traitor siblings and I fought the swarming corpse of Akka and I cut my way back into my own court, the High War, which had been usurped. Once I had made war on Savathûn, and crippled her tribute so that she could never challenge me, and once I had tricked Xivu Arath, and poisoned her tribute so that she could never again try to take my tablets, and once I had arranged my own lineages so that I would be greatest among the Hive and secure on my throne — then I found a mother to make spawn.

One of those spawn was you.

Your life will be a battle too. You will have to win your place at the High War. I will give you nothing... except this, your first sword, and this name I have prepared for you.

We fight a war against false hope, Crota. We chase a god called the Traveler, a huckster god who baits young life into building houses for it. These houses are unsafe, for they cannot stand against my Hive. And these houses are a trap — for they lead young life away from the blade and the tooth, which are the tools of survival and the means of ascension.

Only when the Traveler is extinguished will the universe be free to arrange itself, and assume, by ruthless contest, its final perfect shape, a shape which depends on nothing but itself.

Thus I name you Crota, Eater of Hope.

There is an oath upon me, Crota my son, an oath against the wretched Taox. This I do not give to you. It is for me, your father, to bear.

Let’s go meet your aunts and uncles.