[SPOILERS] Was Uldren affected by an Ahamkara? And did the DLC answer what an ahamkara is?

Lore
#1

[IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS FOR FORSAKEN DO NOT READ]

So here’s something to think on, when you go into the watchtower and transport to and from the ascendant realm you hear Hallucination Mara Sov say “oh brother mine…” and we all know by this point that that means an Ahamkara is amidst. So number 1, was uldren affected by the Ahamkara?
Up next is the final boss who the mission describes as a Chimera and is called the Voice of Riven so is the Chimera a separate race or is it a Amamkara? Is Riven THE Ahamkara, A ahamkara, or the HOME of the ahamkara? I don’t really have evidence of this theory but right now that’s not my place since most lore cards haven’t been found in Forsaken yet, that I know of. Terribly sorry for no evidence…

#2

Riven is one of the names of one of Mara’s Counsilers, the cloaked women from the Taken King scene and well as the three taken weomen you saw when you first arrived into the Dreaming city. Riven is most likely the strongest ones who is both taken as well as under the influence of the Ahamkara, maybe some sort of herald or vessel.

#3

Yeah but didn’t it say that they were all being corrupted by the taken? If that’s the case then don’t you think the rest of them followed suit of corruption by ahamkara?

#4

Riven IS an Ahamkara. Shuro Chi, Sedia and Kalli are Awoken, and were the Queen’s Techeuns, before being Taken.

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#5

Is riven one of the Techeuns?

#6

No. Techeuns are exclusively Awoken. Riven is an Ahamkara. She is basically just the pet of Mara Sov.

#7

Riven was the name of the first Ahamkara brought to the Awoken by Uldren Sov. This is detailed in Telic I & Telic II:

So Uldren went out voyaging among the worlds, swift as a blueshift ghost. In time, he returned to the Reef with a creature not larger than his hand, saying, “Behold, Sister, the lie that makes itself true. This is an Ahamkara.”

It was Mara alone who established a covenant with that young Ahamkara, which chose the use-name Riven, in honor of its host.

It seems that Riven manipulated Uldren into opening the Dreaming City by posing as Mara and claiming she was trapped within.

“Admit it! Admit that you trapped my sister in the Dreaming City!”

“I did not,” Illyn says. “She is not trapped, Uldren. She is dead.”

It’s also implied that Riven may be connected with Savathûn:

This creature is all teeth and broken promises, transformed by the expectations of another scheming, secretive sister.

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#8

Could be, although Uldren was kind of an arse before hand too.

#9

Riven isn’t connected with Savathun. At least, not anymore. In the final mission, we fight a lot of bosses. Some of them are “Taken by the Voices of Riven.” The final boss is a Voice of Riven. Riven herself is known as “Riven of a Thousand Voices” in the Last Wish. So we can assume that Riven has taken these Voices, and the Voices have taken other formidable foes.
From the Taken King, there was a card in the Books of Sorrow where Oryx describes how something is taken. You meet with the Darkness, and it determines whether it is worthy or not. The Taken then return, if worthy, with a gift (I.e. Psions splitting into two, Acolytes summoning their “Eyes”). Following the same logic, Riven must be communing with the Darkness in order to take others.

#10

Yup, Riven is the raid boss, a giant Ahamkara

#11

Giant is an underexaggeration.

#12

Connected in the sense that they interacted, and that what we did to Riven may come up when Savathûn appears down the line.

We know that Savathûn visited Riven, and as a result Riven “takes a new shape”:

She knows that though I am [Taken], I am beholden to no one. So I ask her if she wishes to take up those strings.

She does. And I take a new shape. My cage loses its purpose.

I can tell this is not a part of her grand design. This is an introduction. She is at play.

This “new shape” is presumably what Mara was talking about in the Reverie Dawn lore:

This creature is all teeth and broken promises, transformed by the expectations of another scheming, secretive sister.

Additionally, a Taken can have free will while simultaneously being under the control or influence of someone else. Like Quria, Riven was both Taken and had some measure of free will:

I am [Taken], and I am beholden to no one. Nothing.

And Quria supposedly gained a great amount of power post-Taking, as Toland says:

“Quria is the key. The mind simulates Oryx and thereby masters the power to take, but of course Quria is no power onto itself.”

So, even if Riven is Taking other enemies herself, that doesn’t completely strike out the chance that she’s connected to Savathûn, Xivu Arath, etc.

I’m not sure what card you’re referring to. Oryx says this in XLVIII:

When I make my Taken I make them closer to perfect, I heal their wounds and enhance their strengths.

And Ikora speculated on the origins of the Taken in TTK:

The process is simple: an aperture opens, like a jaw, and swallows a living thing. It passes into — another place. Later, it returns. […] Are the victims devoured, and replaced by simulacra? Husked out and filled up? Is some mathematical operation conducted on them, translating them from one shape to another?

But I can’t find a BOS card that has Oryx explicitly explaining the process required to Take.

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#13

It might not be from BOS, I’ll try and find the card.

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#14

I had just assumed that everybody knew that Mara had a pet ahamkara before the DLC even released. I also assumed that people would have noticed that Uldren was influenced by Riven.

#15

From what I know, Riven is an Ahamkara, which are mystical dragons that used to roam the world thousands of years ago, until they were all killed off to extinction by orders of The Last City?

#16

More recently than that. The great hunt was about a century ago at the most. Riven was the last wish dragon