Savathûn’s Throne World is an indulgent, decadent place. Its neat privet hedges bookend meandering walkways that don’t seem in a rush to get anywhere, and much of the ground – bleached, polished stone – is obscured by a thick carpet of russet leaves and blood-red petals.
It’s beautiful here – a touch cold, maybe, but beautiful nonetheless – until your eyes drift up, and you notice that its gothic facades are topped with long, thin, deadly spikes, as friendly as the barbs our city councillors install on rooftops and in shop doorways to keep birds and homeless people at bay. The statutes – benign at first glance – are more menacing the longer you look. Palatial and extravagant – maybe even mildly repugnant, perhaps? – you start to realise that only someone purporting to be a Queen could live in a place like this. Not a benevolent monarch, of course, but the type that shrieks “Off with his head!”, and even before I noticed Bungie itself had called this place a “twisted wonderland”, the Queen of Hearts’ tyrannical reign had already loomed large in my mind. I half expected to find a quivering playing card or tardy white rabbit each time I rounded one of those perfectly sheared hedgerows.
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