You’ll hear a lot about the mysterious Axum when you arrive on the planet of Proteus in Subnautica 2. Whoever they are, they’ve built a lot of things, but nobody seems to know what they were or where they’ve all gone. Like many sci-fi games before it (like Halo and Mass Effect), the Axum represent a precursor race of aliens who had amazing technology, but are now no more.
Below, we’ll dive into everything we know about the Axum that we’ve gathered from in-game lore clues and beyond. The Axum are clearly going to be important to the Subnautica 2 adventure, during early access and long after, so let’s piece together every snippet of information and try to solve the mystery.
Spoilers for Subnautica 2 lurk below.
Who were the Axum in Subnautica 2?
The Axum were (or perhaps still are) a sentient and intelligent race of aliens that called Proteus home. Whether or not Proteus was their original home, or a planet they colonized is up for debate, but the Axum seem to have settled there and build numerous underwater structures, such as the Power Plant.
The game implies that Proetus was the native home of the Axum, but this could just mean the Axum who were there. For all we know, the Axum are a space-faring race and exist elsewhere in the galaxy. This is strongly implied by the fact that the species has an orrery under the ocean that maps out the star system and that the race have a deep knowledge of space and nearby planets.
The Axum are perfectly adapted to underwater life, which may be due to evolving on Proteus or selecting the world because it suited their biology. However, despite their efforts to live and thrive on the planet, something made them abandon it – or wiped them out.
Where are the Axum?
Whatever this calamity was, it effectively ended Axum life on Proteus. Of course, we don’t know if other Axum fled the planet and exist elsewhere, but those who remained died, and the survivors degenerated into a more primitive version of themselves.
The Axum seemed to hold another mysterious group known as the Architects in reverence. It’s implied these are other, more advanced aliens who helped the Axum, and it’s also implied that they might even be humanity.
We learn in the game that the Architects didn’t answer the Axum’s call for aid as they were busy dealing with their own crisis in the form of the Kharaa bacterium, and that this took place over 1000 years before Subnautica 2. This makes the Architects being human unlikely, as humanity hasn’t been a space-faring race for that long in the Subnautica universe.
However, at the end of the game, when the protagonist powers up the Axum Power Plant, they’re greeted by a recorded message from the Axum begging the Architects to save the World Tree, defeat an enemy who fears them, and thereby save the planet – and potentially, the Axum themselves.
Now, this may just be the protagonist getting lucky when they powered up the structure, or they could have a personal connection to the Architects, and the Axum knew a human would one day hear their message. The AI tells the protagonist that the Power Plant has been sealed for over 200 years, suggesting an 800-year gap between when the Axum lost contact with the Architects, and disappeared themselves.
As the Subnautica 2 early access story ended on a cliff-hanger, we’ll need to wait for another content drop to learn more about what’s going to happen, which will likely also clue us in more about what happened in the past. We still don’t know if the Kharaa bacterium and the “rotten roots” of the World Tree are connected, but it seems likely. Therefore, this could pose a major threat to the player when Subnautica 2 releases in full.
The Axum’s descendants are known as the Tailings, whose ancestors were corrupted by the World Tree. The Tailings have done battle with humanity to defend Proteus from the shady Alterra Corporation; however, none are left by the time the protagonist arrives. However, Noa does say that some mysterious aliens have been seen at the Axum Observatory in the past year, implying some form of the Axum or Tailings live on.
