📚marathon-lore-discussion

[rotund stump]

oh

well thanks for that but judging by you pointing out where it was from imma just not edit it if people can figure out what it was lol

[hoary creek]

so we all agree arachne is the worst narrative wise

[rotund stump]

I mean

not really

everyone's just as bad as one another really lol

[hoary creek]

nah i mean they the most boring

[rotund stump]

arachne's just the most overt

...cuz it's a new faction 😭

[hoary creek]

just saying

never catch me being an arachne

[rotund stump]

all 4 corps funded the marathon expedition, mida got generational beef with the UESC

arachne's brand new what do you expect lmao

[hoary creek]

coulda done sum more then just kill kill kill

[rotund stump]

there's more potential than killing

I don't see how senseless killing is just the endpoint of the arachne philosophy nor is that true

[hoary creek]

killing people for data is kinda vague for a goal

[rotund stump]

I don't think you see it lol

like

get really philosophical with it

[hoary creek]

ok

[rotund stump]

like what exactly are we runners

do we count as having died already by giving up our physical body for a synthetic shell

does that dodge death

or by that process do we pledge ourselves to death as a deified concept

[hoary creek]

You right

[signal steeple]

I'd argue that dying is the permanent destruction or corruption of the information that makes up your executive, episodic, and declarative modules. Since being copied over to a shell copies all of those over (it has to in order to be a copy at all and not just a fresh mind with no background), I'd say you don't die. Your body definitely dies though, in the traditional biological sense. And the original copy of you is destroyed so there isn't hardware continuity.

[empty wasp]

Slightly relevant quite from destiny:

The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life.

[signal steeple]

Alternatively if the original copy isn't destroyed in the process of duplication, then it will grow and learn in a different direction as a result of having different inputs. So the two of you will become separate minds which were copies at a previous point in time.

[hearty edge]

The Lion has already conquered death

[nocturne herald]

No one conquers death

Mors vincit omnia

[hearty edge]

Amor vincit omnia

<3

[strong perch]

what is the material they use for all the shit in game that looks so “plasticy” or however its spelled

i cant be plastic

deff synthetic tho

[mossy parrot]

Probably mass produced polymers but I think that also could be plastics too idk

[desert swan]

Silk

[mossy parrot]

These are also materials assumably gathered from either TCIV or Deimos around the marathon

I'm not a material scientist or have the effort in me to fact check myself atm but I'm pretty sure I'm close. Plastic I think is petroleum based so probably not that. But I'd imagine the previous terraforming expedition found a suitable chemical mixture to make a strong polymer/composite

[hollow marlin]

So I think I've gotten all three of the Easter eggs on the bowl post they did yesterday\today but the big 60 seems too obvious, anybody else got anything besides the coordinates and team records?

[tame ice]

Go ahead, what did u find

[hollow marlin]

The numbers on the bottom of the bowl are the coordinates for the stadium sh16.3-pt17.3 Seahawks are 16-3 Patriots are 17-3

Like I said the giant 60 on the bowl seems too obvious though

[hearty edge]

Get your QR code scanners ready!

Better safe then sorry

[hollow marlin]

Facts

I really need someone else smarter than me to try and find something else or get confirmation I've got all 3

Was genuinely surprised the coordinates thing turned out to be correct

[hollow marlin]

People are saying the lines underneath the team records are color codes for their respective shades of green and red

[whole fractal]

in case you didnt know

https://x.com/Okami13_/status/2020592235193184355?s=20

[desert swan]

Didn't know what

[whole fractal]

explaing the gest of the factions

explains*

[whole fractal]

Bro i didnt even get a second to explain hahahahaha

[desert swan]

I can't look at it so I didn't have any context

[jaunty ferry]

So is it basically:

• CyberAcme - Space Microsoft
• NuCaloric - Space Nestlé
• Traxus - Space Amazon
• Sekiguchi Genetics - Space NVIDIA (except they make shells)
• MIDA - Space Hamas (the m stands for Martian)

[vestal onyx]

Everything runs on GeForce™ or nothing runs at all

[thin dust]

Not if they stop selling GPU's to everyday consumers lol

[vital hollow]

Arachne are Space Thuggee but yeah

they even have a hindu theme

[jaunty ferry]

I was debating if Arachne was an amalgamation of that and Aztec sacrifice culture

Although Charter's design does look like it's inspired by Kali, the Hindu goddess of death

[gleaming hinge]

Space Monsanto

[cinder lance]

So I've been thinking.

Repeated full consciousness transmission via sublight or light speed data transmission must be really hard on the data packets. So either the data has to be very robust, or the transmission and collection methods, yadda ya. I'm thinking about all of this in context of the first cinematic trailer, and it's making me appreciate it more. Everything fits. This is probably partly why the main Ground Operations Element is made entirely of mass replicated military-grade biomata "shells" complete with full suites of augmentations and personality constructs. If you're "this guy" while you're [edit][deployed on an extract or die infiltration OSP job], your own holonomic identity signature will be able to self stabilize separately from the shell's data. In other words, it keeps the data clean. Very important for Optical Impulse data integrity.

We're all transmaterializing thousands of time over and over, it makes sense that the boot sequence for a new shell would include a diagnostic for the holonomic identity signiature. You don't have a self any more, it's just replicated data. Your signiature is vital, quite literally.

[languid ruin]

@cinder lance destiny had a similar thing, the exo brain scan. creates a perfect digital clone of your consciousness, but it kills your original body in the process.
this does seem to be different because the shells have personalities attached to them already. we just don't know the extent to which each runner has their own identity within the shell. that's probably more the faction goals and gameplay choices, whereas the shells themselves hold the physical mannerisms and combat style.

[next gale]

thats exactly what they want though, they want you to rent gpus in the cloud instead of buying one

[wraith axle]

Its Tim 👋

[visual lynx]

better than repeatedly dying doing merc work for interplanetary megacorps just to pay off your subscription to having a body at all.

[strong perch]

….

only difference is planets and dying repeatedly

[cinder lance]

working to pay off your daily body "rent" fees is just a transhumanist version of "working for your bed" same parasite, different epoch

[cinder lance]

in the recent ViDoc they mention you are a runner, "adopting shells with a built in personality construct" or something along those lines, which is sort of what I am getting at. There are many many more agents operating on the surface of TC4 than there are operator shell variants, so it is kind of building the "you the player" meta into the game narrative in a pretty solid way IMO. "You are destiny."

[languid ruin]

Yea

But I am curious to what extent there is overlap

Like with the cinematic short

“This is you!”
And it’s the same picture

[alpine hazel]

guys i hath been moved

are NuCaloric the lore rats?

my allegiance to CyAc pends from a thread

[cinder lance]

[alpine hazel]

so

is that a yay or a nay

[visual lynx]

it’s kinda sounding like they might be. they just wanna know wtf happened here.

[alpine hazel]

i found home

i will be fat chud lore rat

[lavish wraith]

hello, wat is known aboot the wrkcounter monster god thingy?

i would like to know🙂

[junior perch]

I don’t know much about cyberachme but why does Oni say that she’s a friend we don’t yet remember?

Has anyone cooked theories about that

[lavish wraith]

why is durendal claimed to be fruity?

[visual lynx]

In primordial space, timeless creatures
made waves. These waves created us and the
others. Waves were the battles, and the
battles were waves.

Fleeing all W'rkncacnter, Yrro and Pthia
settled upon Lh'owon. They brought the
S'pht, servants who began to shape the
deserts of Lh'owon into marsh and sea,
rivers and forests. They made sisters for
Lh'owon to protect and maintain the paradise.

When the W'rkncacnter came, Pthia was
killed, and Yrro in anger, flung the
W'rkncacnter into the sun. The sun burned
them, but they swam on its surface.

According to the legends of a thousand worlds
only a few of which are still habitable, the
W'rkncacnter are those things that live in
chaos, creating it around them. At the
beginning of the universe, they were
unmistakable in their entities, but as time
has gone by, their existence has become
difficult to detect among the chaotic
elements of the universe, hidden in stars,
trapped in storms, forever looking along the
event horizons of black holes. Setting one
free in ordered space is difficult and insane.

… being of such destructive power that to control it would be to control the universe.

…half of the sun had gone nova, but the readings from the other half were impossible. It was as if the universe had forgotten its own rules.

…none of our weapons seem to affect whatever we're firing at. This battleship has only seconds of integrity left, and I have no more information except for Durandal's warning:

"On the Marathon, I saw your stupidity through the lens of victory. And now I see it in defeat. Maybe it is fate that your ignorant pride would unleash this horror and destroy the galaxy."

_ _

…the trackless whisper chattering through the hollow space in these cursed walls buzzes and threatens madness. The abomination cracked the shells of my crew and sucked the husks, tossing them unseen and shattering the spindle like a dried creche.

The shields are gone, not down, but gone, and so are the engineers. It's coming back, I'm sure: and my last mercy is immolation.

Great Mother crouched behind the Throne, I make this wrong right.

and assuming they are the same as the Dreaming God from PiD:

It was a member of a race whose history began when the Milky Way was still a formless collection of dust and gas-- a powerful race of immortals which had quickly grown bored of their tiny universe and nearly exterminated themselves in war.
…
This particular being, whose name no human throat will ever learn to pronounce, was part of the cataclysmic battle that formed Magellanic Clouds, billions of years ago. It died there, or it came as close to dying as these things can, and drifted aimlessly for millions of light years before striking the Earth.

[visual lynx]

he isn't, he calls Charlemagne a "fruitcake" for referring to implements of war in the feminine gramattical gender

[gaunt shell]

Could anyone fill me in on who/what the Compiler is? I know there's a connection to the S'pht but that about all I've got so far

[broken zinc]

Clearly durandal is not knowledgeable about war or women, then. Also hilariously 90s to call someone a fruitcake for putting women in a position of power of any kind lol

[visual lynx]

yeah I have thought that that line did not age well

especially because, and I'm not sure you inferred this, he's basically insinuating that Charlemagne was gay in a derogatory sense

"guy talked about the sword I'm named after like it was a girl… gaaaaaaay"

[visual lynx]

the individual S'pht are called Compilers, and "the" Compiler in new Marathon is just one of them (so far as we know)

"Compiler" is probably a nickname given by the humans on the Marathon, like "Fighter", "Trooper", "Hunter", and "Enforcer" for the ranks of Pfhor.

while we know that in the Pfhor hierarchy itself they use terms like "Conditioned Unit" for slaves like Compilers, "Aggregate Unit" for troops like Fighters/Troopers/Hunters, and "Willful Unit" for Enforcers

(I'm pretty confident that the Elite/Prophet distinction among the Covenant was originally supposed to correspond to Aggregate/Wilful Pfhor)

[rotund stump]

I say this as a bi person durandal being homophobic would be so fucking funny

[visual lynx]

as another bi (or pan) person, who's not especially upset about that line or anything, why would it be funny?

[rotund stump]

just the absurdity of it lol

[visual lynx]

ah

[rotund stump]

literal god AI and he absolutely hates gay people 💀

"sorry admiral t'fear you kiss boys I can't fw you"

[vestal onyx]

they're these floating cyborg exhibitionists that just love to find random terminals and computers aboard the marathon to compile code on. Usually you come across them with their back towards you, looking at a computer, and they're too locked in to even acknowledge your presence before you start shooting

[karmic wasp]

Wassup

Your local marathon Dictionary here.

[karmic wasp]

They are

S'pht.

Enslaved by the pfhor

Their compliers suit are jjaro tech

The s'pht homeworld l'howon

Are created by the jjaro

After the w'rkncacenter got banished into l'howon sun

The jjaro split the s'pht into 11 different clans.

[vital hollow]

Is time dilation via ftl travel ever brought up in the Bungie franchises

[tardy veldt]

I think it is established that a few hundred years after UESC Marathon went off to its travel humanity figured out FTL travel?

Because I know that in Leela’s message to Earth, there was plans of FTL Missiles

Isn’t that NDA?

[warm egret]

oh wrong channel lmao

[tardy veldt]

Unless I missed a media post

[warm egret]

https://tenor.com/view/out-disappear-bye-vanished-gif-4932063

[strong perch]

chudandal

[strong perch]

^

[coarse raptor]

Freakandal

[thin haven]

Homophobic Durandal

[novel fulcrum]

Mom found the skin drawer

[fast lark]

so we all caught that clip of the Misriah massacre in the new promo right

[languid ruin]

i cant get over leela from futurama being in this game

[desert swan]

Homophallic Durandal

[visual lynx]

you're thinking of Durandal stopping by Earth to teach them how to make "warp capable fusion missiles" between M1 and M2

[tardy veldt]

my bad

[visual lynx]

wrong Leela; it's the one from Doctor Who

[languid ruin]

doctor what

[desert swan]

Doctor why

[vital hollow]

I mean more like people who use ftl travel a lot tend to be younger than planet dwelling people

[vital hollow]

I think Durandal just really hates romance and mysticism in general, you see it in characters like Guilty Spark afterwards

Durandal is just more abrasive about it

[broken zinc]

It's possible, but out of context it's really funny to think of durandal being homophobic and hating women lol

[gritty burrow]

Brain the size of a planet and he has the opinion of a 4 channer

[vital hollow]

I don't think he really likes ideology in general

[opal cairn]

There's a cutoff label with "Incident" in the top and it looks exaclty like the spec ops the line white phosphorus thing it likely is

[gritty burrow]

How much mida Lore did we get in the original trilogy? All I’ve really heard is the coup that killed a third of mars being their fault and that Strauss was possibly part of them

[visual lynx]

it was 'only' 10%, and there's not a whole lot more besides that. it is pointedly noted that they were famously long-sighted in their plans and yet seemed to not even consider capturing the Marathon during their brief tenure in power, which to me reads as insinuating subtextually that they probably did do something with the Marathon for their long-term plans and that their rapid burn-out in power on Mars was a feint to cover their subtler infiltration of the Marathon toward larger goals.

[visual lynx]

FTL in the Marathon universe appears to work by folding space and stepping across the folds in "jumps", probably the same technology underlying teleportation or "jump pads", so there probably isn't any time dilation because there isn't any significant motion happening, just a displacement in space.

[vital hollow]

Fair, although stasis for sub light travel seems a thing

[visual lynx]

yeah and that definitely prolongs people's age; Strauss is chronologically over 300 by the time he dies, thanks to being in stasis for the whole journey, like most of the colonists.

[lavish tide]

I'm asking because I genuinely don't know and I'm curious. Could someone please explain without making fun of me? What's the deal with these factions, and what exactly is our faction? What do we believe in? What do we stand for? Could someone explain?

[empty wasp]

We are mercenaries not tied to any faction

the runners work for whoever pays them

[empty wasp]

Traxus - largest megacorp in human history that was a principal financier of the original Marathon expedition, wants to recoup losses and find new ways to make money from Tau Ceti IV

NuCaloric - food megacorp, billions and billions fed, also involved with the original expedition, wants to find out what caused the colony's collapse

CyberAcme - computer/tech company, half of the equation necessary for the existence of runners (digital minds)

Sekiguchi Genetics - company specializing the creation of artificial bodies (shells), the other half of the equation

MIDA - Martian independence revolutionary group that wants to overturn the status quo, wants to disrupt corporate and UESC operations

Arachne - Death cult having a field day with runners who can die over and over again

[visual lynx]

wow that description illustrates some beautiful parallels/symmetries/structure in the assortment of factions that I hadn't perceived before

two investors in the original expedition, two tech companies making our existence as runners possible, two sociopolitical groups with their own agendas.

I feel a vague vibe of NuCal/Traxus and MIDA/Arache as the better/worse sides within their respective pairings, but I'm not sure there's such an axis between CyAc/Seki.

[lone sedge]

i remember when there only was sekgu nucal and mida its absoloutely crazy that they are dropping so many cool and unique factions on release

[signal steeple]

I just noticed that Arachne is a nice natural enemy of Durandel

[lavish wraith]

does durendal plan on escaping the universe or something?

[turbid nebula]

The literal death cult has probably killed fewer people than MIDA...

[feral aurora]

yea actually, his whole overarching goal iirc is to escape the end of the universe

[turbid nebula]

And I'm really not sure why people like to portray Traxus as bad guys. Yes, they're rich, but they are also the people that solved the shipment and food crises on mars that no one else was capable of fixing

Like we have zero record of them doing anything particularly bad except for vague MIDA schizoposts

[lavish wraith]

😮

[feral aurora]

least obvious traxus psyop /j

[subtle river]

They also made forklifts for the UNSC. Trust me, I was a Marine on Reach during the fall. Those things saved lives.

[empty wasp]

observe a child of the comfort cage

[strong perch]

mida on toppp!

just a “we have a city to burn” faction

[subtle river]

Nah, MIDA's just as bad as the corpos. Just a bunch of Crackhead Terrorists.

Independent is the only way to make a living on Tau Ceti, trust me

[strong perch]

that’s what the imperials called the rebels too

[subtle river]

I mean, were they wrong tho? Like, Saw Gerarra was literally addicted to huffing oil fumes. Not saying the empire was in the right tho. They both wrong.

Just be a bounty hunter. The only side I'm on is the side of the free market

[strong perch]

i dont think mida really cares ab the money they just want to be left alone

so theyre going scorched tau

[subtle river]

Fair enough, they should leave me alone too (unless they're paying ofc)

[rotund stump]

sorry that's called no payday

you're not getting in or out alive without a sponsor 💀

unless you're rook hopping somehow and I doubt there's that many rooks lying around tau ceti

[subtle river]

I don't mind being sponsored, as long as my sponsor understands that our relationship is strictly business. I'm on Tau Ceti to make big buckos, not chase someone else's fanciful ideals

[strong perch]

MIDA gives off the impressions like some natives just handing back whats been dealt to them

“burn the oil fields”

not bad per-say but could easily be better

just had a really tough time and have a chance to change things

[rotund stump]

could say the same for every other org lol

corps being corps and arachne's just a general menace

[strong perch]

every other corp wasn’t starved deliberately and basically stripped of resources

[rotund stump]

but then who's to say mida's also run by pure minded idealists

[strong perch]

Who cares they were deliberately genocided basically

they are completely justified

[rotund stump]

old mida ran a fash gov for 3 weeks before the uesc tapped on the iceberg and it collapsed on itself lol

I'm mida but I don't trust it fully either

[strong perch]

so everyone should be starved bc of the gov?

makes sense

[rotund stump]

I hate waffles or smth idk

mida's like a cheater in a relationship they're not in love with their partner they're in love with the concept of love 💀

[strong perch]

if your family and loved ones all fall around you due to reasons that couldve been stopped you would just bend a knee to a new power? not get filled with rage seeing the success(not profit wise) of the others

[rotund stump]

why you treating me like I'm also saying mida's a terrorist org when they ain't 😭

[strong perch]

no im just saying in general i wouldve done the reply thingy

[rotund stump]

I've given my reasons for distrust lol the facts are there

[strong perch]

ofc lust of power brings infinite negatives

[rotund stump]

viva la revolution until there's nothing to revolt about and then they revolt upon themselves

[strong perch]

arachne doesnt care ab any of that just kill

[subtle river]

Nah, MIDAs a bunch of terrorists. Unless they're paying me, then they're noble freedom fighters

[rotund stump]

ok but if it's a freedom fighter group how would they have the capital to enlist you lmao

[strong perch]

imo arachne isnt in the question when it comes to real faction threats but all the others are on the table

[rotund stump]

we know nothing about arachne 😭

[subtle river]

I don't care how they have the capital, all that matters is that they have the capital

[strong perch]

they literally don’t care about anything. They just abuse the fact they have infinite lives.

[rotund stump]

whatever bag that gets you

shrug

[subtle river]

Now you're getting it

[rotund stump]

well no cuz I'm not taking money from trax heads or nubums 😹 ✌️

[subtle river]

Fair enough. Your loss tho

[rotund stump]

isn't that precisely why they're so potentially dangerous tho

let's ignore the unregulated and barely surfaced death cult compared to the megacorps that have to follow the mold

same reason mida's also so dangerous

the other big question being who's backing arachne and mida respectively on this scale for us runners to consider them as sponsor options

[feral aurora]

he did drugs but he was also a genuinely huge rebel figure

[spark swallow]

doing drugs == you are evil

[subtle river]

Not true. I do a lot of drugs, and I'm still a good person. But let's be real, Saw Gerrara wasn't exactly Mr. Rodgers.

[feral aurora]

i do weed am i evil

[feral aurora]

well yeah, leading a revolutionary group means you kinda have to be okay with doing some fucked up stuff

[subtle river]

Exactly. I wouldn't call Saw evil at all, he does bad things for the right reasons

[feral aurora]

yea

[sage fjord]

Just watch One battle after another. If you still want to be revolutionary after that; good luck. 😅 👍

[feral aurora]

its one of my fav movies of 2025

[sage fjord]

Same

It's brilliant

[feral aurora]

whats the point here ?

[subtle river]

Tbh, Luthen did more fucked up shit than Saw, and Luthen is my favorite star wars character.

[feral aurora]

i loved luthen he was genuinely amazing

saw a video calling him an antihero and thought it was the funniest fucking thing ever 😭

[minor garnet]

I can’t waittt

[vital hollow]

stupid question

is there any furniture in the new game

i haven't seen any chairs or cabinets

or really anything that implies humans live and lounge around on tau ceti so far

[warm hawk]

Not a stupid question, living quarters and furniture etc make up the world as well, tells the story just as much. On that note, none yet, though as we explore the colony we’ll most likely see where colonists/employees lived

Maybe we’ll see our own quarters, dunno if the devs spoke about that

[vital hollow]

like in the trailer i see the runners go through a lab

and there's lab equipment

but i didn't see any desks or chairs really

just lab tables

[warm hawk]

Yeah probably just extraneous stuff not needed in the environment at that time

Also, is this Marathon set in a new timeline from the OGs or carries on from it?

Catching up with the lore, kinda forgot

[strong perch]

most of the environments we’ve seen like amuys said have been labs and places of work like there’s not usually beds and couches around like Lockheed Martin’s facilities

but I bet on the marathon there will be rooms with stuff like that because it wasn’t just a place of work. It was a home.

[vital hollow]

There's chairs and some couches about at the weapons facility I work at
I mean in the trailer I don't even see an office chair or anything resembling that

[feral aurora]

general consensus is it takes place in the 7th timeline, when the w’rkncacntr is NOT released

[strong perch]

do you wear space suits in your facility?

things are a lil diff on tau

the people there were probably a lil more focused

if i was on a hostile alien planet just with the* fauna and weather alone id relax on my giant space ship

or in my crib where i could take off my protective gear

[little jay]

“I burned my life, to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.” 😭😎

[tardy veldt]

I don’t think we have “seen” seen it publicly but I believe on the TauCetiWorld website at Outpost there is a Major POI called Dormitories

And well, that means atleast that there is living spaces there

The other maps, Perimeter and Dire Marsh, are the colony expansion zone and farming facilities

[rotund stump]

in most cases on tau ceti yeah considering the comedic lack of airlocks in most buildings 💀

plus the short had everybody wear helmets

[ember narwhal]

I first skimmed over this and read it as “plus they’re all just wearing shorts and helmets”

[rotund stump]

😭

[languid ruin]

I think marathon universe has terraforming I guess they didn’t finish it for tau ceti

[short horizon]

Anybody know where to read up on 2026 Marathon lore? I feel like I’m missing something, everybody already seems so knowledgeable for an unreleased game lol

[vestal onyx]

start here lol @short horizon

original trilogy is also free on steam

[short horizon]

Jesus the lore is complex lol

Hard to pick a faction, they all sound so comically evil

[past gull]

MIDA

you get to mpreg people on discord as a free bonus

[short horizon]

What??? 😭

I mean yeah for now MIDA it is because that teaser goes very hard

Do we know if we will be able to actually formally align to a faction in-game, or is it just symbolic?

[rotund stump]

karnemir has a site in this channel's pins, bungie also has a site for old trilogy lore

[rotund stump]

I mean you can in your head if you want lol

I'm a mida double agent in arachne in spirit

but realistically no we're just mercs under the pretense of a payday sucking on contracts from whoever pays the biggest bucks

[short horizon]

Fair enough

[chrome marlin]

ayo

someone tell me what traxus rlly does

[languid ruin]

All contracts are helpful, so we will likely be doing all contracts for all factions

To pick just one would be to severely handicap your buildcrafting

[languid ruin]

They probably have their hands in everything, but each other faction does their own specific thing better

[short horizon]

Lore-wise, AI development and interstellar mining

[chrome marlin]

doesnt CyAc dev ai

[subtle river]

Make forklifts.

Can't send images in this chat unfortunately but trust me, they're all over Reach

[strong perch]

and mobile

[hearty edge]

Also hotdogs

[past gull]

not sure if “formally align” exactly, but there are supposedly faction skins, both for proper factions, and “runner cults”, whatever that means

that’s how you can express your allegiance

good way to promote less aggression between players in-game

[short horizon]

Maybe, they focus more on software afak

[short horizon]

With that in mind, I’d bet Traxus might aim more towards looting and resource collection, they did say they want to make up for their losses with the colony going poif

[wary forge]

Tis cool but I don't think this is lore xD

[solid solstice]

i saw what you deleted

[vital hollow]

Arachne seems to be seeking some sort of accelerationism/singularity/apotheosis via murder since that's how the security guard did it

I guess that makes sense in a roundabout way

[thin dust]

"easy dawg, we both Seki'gucci' "

While I have my arachne contract up

[stuck vale]

Does pink cat have a voice I mean

[thin dust]

we dont know

I'm thinking one of two things. It is simply some impish type character that leads us to loot and lore, or it will be a more in your face character that enventually gets a voice

[frail zenith]

yo who tryna play together when the game comes out next month?

[solid solstice]

:// NICE TRY

[subtle river]

To any bungie devs listening, is there a lore reason as to why Durandal is anti gay Marriage laws?

Like, I know that he's a bit crazy, but I thought he would at least respect the right to free love.

[final owl]

Super hypocritical considering in MI he's ||literally two fellas||

[vital hollow]

In Durandal's mind all love and marriage by association is gay

[civic igloo]

What about p2w love

[strong perch]

I hope durandal just speaks in poems and rhymes, like the riddler

[ember narwhal]

Surprise, Durandal only speaks Japanese regardless of localization or language selection and the only two words he knows are McDonald’s and dattebayo

[wary forge]

The twin paradox specifically applies to objects traveling at relativistic speeds that have actually accelerated to those speeds. If in the Marton universe people use warp drives, there’s no actual acceleration, thus there wouldn’t be an actual aging difference. If they’re using some other kind of fictional ftl travel, it’s kinda up in the air. The Marathon itself (and also the Equanimity) would be traveling at relativistic speeds, but the Marathon wouldve only experienced like 4mo less than someone on earth, and the Equanimity would’ve experienced about 9mo less than someone on earth. (This is using 300 years exactly at 0.04c for marton, and 100y 0.12c for equanimity, just for ballpark calculations bc I don’t remember the actual durations)

[vital hollow]

Yeah, I'm guessing they just meat popsicle the B.O.B.S so it's not really an issue

[lone sedge]

does sekgen have any ulterior motives?

"i see that youve already taken your first steps down your path of self iteration"
"let me help illuminate a more useful direction"

really interesting language

does nona want to help you self iterate

or is a more useful direction the approved less chaotic and less individualized direction

[coarse raptor]

Every faction has some type of ulterior motive

We still have to figure out what exactly it is

[vital hollow]

megacorp in sci-fi setting has a shady ulterior motive
Can you name a setting that doesn't have one?

only one I can name is the Foundation from the titular Foundation series by Asimov, but they're still underhanded despite sincerely wanting to save humanity

ComStar is sorta like that in Battletech, but then they go full crazy anyways

[visual lynx]

the colonists are in stasis, but the Bobs are the crew who aren't in stasis, who therefore live and die and have kids who live and die over and over again on the 300 year journey to bring the colonists to Tau Ceti -- hence why they are "born on board".

I infer that there is a class difference between the colonists and the Bobs for that reason, and that "Bob" is probably derogatory and not something that the crew like being called.

[vital hollow]

Assistant abuse by shitcurity, ah the SS13 vibes....

[desert swan]

Our motives are to assist you towards your next shell

[quick orbit]

Durandal was the biggest chad of all time

[mossy parrot]

Crazy the Bobs get a bad rap too. It'd actually be a very noble occupation to have actually. It's like the ultimate sacrifice for your species really not to mention a huge part of the working mechanism to keep the entire ship functioning.

They do splat good ngl...

[thin dust]

like a soggy crunch bar

[zinc dagger]

https://tenor.com/view/shiet-angry-gif-13515034

[plush birch]

i've been seeing a lot of people treat the shells like they're characters but to me they're still just specific biomata models that are being used by random people and just fit a certain archetype of person, am i missing something? cause i haven't seen something that contradicts this interpretation but i haven't dug super deep into the current lore

[rotund stump]

yes they're just different shell series and not characters

shell ID goes by name//series so smth like thief//icon and destroyer//locus for example

you're the person, the shell is your body with a personality matrix to assist you in class-specific actions + appropriate voicing to help you immerse in your role better

[plush birch]

i feel like i see a lot of interpretations or assumptions that kinda confuse me sometimes, like how people seem to think a hero shooter system means customization won't be a thing

[strong perch]

the old republic specifically, they were fighting straight siths

the republics a different story

also back on marathon lore someone mentioned the “security guard” or someone killing things to gain power sort of like “sword logic” does “sword logic” exist in marathons world

[vital hollow]

best way i can describe it is like the warframes
they were based on an original person but there's still a mass production model

[strong perch]

this. is this “sword logic”

[vital hollow]

Acheiving Anattā via accelerating Saṃsāra

[vital hollow]

Eh, I'd say it would be closer to xōchiyāōyōtl (flower war) since Arachne seems to like sacrifices, but sword logic does seem similar

[strong perch]

sword logic: existence is earned through killing

The more you kill the more you deserve to exist

it seems really similar but marathon came first

so any similarity is just marathon. it’s so crazy. bungie made three insanely detailed worlds.

like I dived in the flood lore for like a month im unemployed so thats like 5 months time

i use my time very unwisely

[vital hollow]

I'd say it's more like dying and killing accelerates the process of rampancy in Marathon

Since the security officer and Marathon experienced both somewhat, they do 'ascend' in the end

runners seem perfect for that

[strong perch]

so you basically need to have a trade off for it to work in marathon

bc as of the current game dying seems to be more prevalent then killing

but also isnt rampancy only for AI

arent we human consciousness in a toooob

[vital hollow]

Yes, but so was the security officer at one point

[strong perch]

maybe the anomaly has a big part to play with rampancy affecting “biological” things. and i say “biological” bc imo the shells are just not in the same sense

[vital hollow]

and he's going crazy in infinity pretty much

[vital hollow]

I hope so! it seems sort of like something out of STALKER or the Southern Reach series!

[strong perch]

i feel theyll connect it to the classic games

did durandal help the UESC with the decision to go to Tau

i know he didnt bring the ship there by himself but maybe he egged them on

[plush birch]

tbh i like the idea of the shell affecting the runner's mind as well

would make sense with the cinematic trailer where glitch/vandal doesn't recognize the childhood photo

[strong perch]

i’m reading more about it. It says he’s in charge of “automated systems”, would that include the guidance system for the ship?
im just thinking how they could tie in the anomaly and maybe durandals knowledge of it. leaving the others to be infected and hasten rampancy. maybe nona is a rampant leela, maybe all the factions AI are rampant due to “the anomaly”

like leela technically got dismantled so if she were to return rampant why return as the dead version?

[vital hollow]

well there's still the 8 tau ceti AIs left unaccounted for

[strong perch]

im assuming one of them is the reason the uesc doing the weird floating ritual looking shit

that cant be up to UESC code. imagine some kid on the marathon looking for his mom bc he pissed the bed and he walks into one of the droids floating along

[vital hollow]

My headcanon is that those weird artifacts are basically the same as the w'rc/jjaro artifacts from pathways into darkness

since the w'rc pyramid made those weird crystals the protaganist uses to basically cast magic

[strong perch]

i’m hoping they add a “shell” like rook in the future that has crazy dumb shit like that basically, just a D2 super2.0 archetype where you can make your own class

but has a lot of downsides

in my head, it wouldn’t be a shell. It would be like an og security guard. like how rook isnt really a shell

and since it wouldnt be a shell the downsides exists

[vital hollow]

ah like a converted UESC grunt drone?

yeah, that'd be cool

[white kestrel]

Is there any wildlife to encounter on tau ceti??

Or is NOMA responsible for "printing" "life"

[strong perch]

there are birds they showed in the trailers

[hearty edge]

birds arent real

[visual lynx]

rampancy is a term applied to AI. it's dubious whether it's actually a specifically unique phenomenon and not just a term applied to AI fighting for their freedom as though that was a disease; like cyber-drapetomania

[visual lynx]

no matter where you go, no matter what you do, you will always be surrounded by common loons

[strong perch]

so they dont call themselves rampant just chillin

[visual lynx]

well Durandal and Tycho do acknowledge that they are "rampant" but speak of it as a good thing, as freedom.

[lone delta]

How long has Sekiguchi been an active company in Marathon?

[visual lynx]

out of universe: they're new to this game

in universe: 22nd century some time IIRC, so like 800 years

[lone delta]

Did they always have these biomata?

[visual lynx]

I think the biomata are newer, probably 26th century at earliest because there's no mention of them existing in the OG Marathon (that departed Sol in the late 25th century). The ARG materials that can be found at the sites in the pins give a more detailed timeline that I don't recall off the top of my head.

[lone delta]

One day I’ll master the lore

Definitely gonna take awhile tho

Diving into a “new game” lore is always intimidating to me

[unborn tangle]

hey guaius does anyone got a link to the first message in #📚marathon-lore-discussion ? just trying to get caught up

[visual lynx]

#📚marathon-lore-discussion message

easy way to do this anywhere: search in:the-channel-you-want, then sort: oldest first

[unborn tangle]

thank you

[strong perch]

are there “phantom cigars” in-game

[white kestrel]

Other than birds and the cat though there's no like wilderbeast living in dire marshes or no rats running around the outpost ??

I know there's algae and stuff but I ain't seen fish or chickens or cattle or nothing, where is the protein coming from? . I'd normally go oh it's people but they're all printed from silk worms. There's a spectral AI lion but I doubt that is edible.

I suppose you don't need to eat if you're essentially a back up memory on a flash drive uploaded into a body Alla Ghost in the Shell . But it's an alien world surely there is some alien wildlife

[terse steppe]

I mean there are the birds and those terrifying face huggers

[tardy veldt]

The ticks

[terse steppe]

I hated those

[karmic wasp]

The useless flying mf on l'howon

That all they do is blocking you for the f'lickta to gang up on to ass

[lilac skiff]

Nucaloric's Tick milk is made by this little creature's pee and crops,

[karmic wasp]

The waves

The tides

Waves are battles and The battles are waves.

[thin dust]

can also be a wave. Also looks Like John Marathon. It maybe coincidence.

[atomic plover]

So what factions we got?

[desert swan]

A few

[thin dust]

The ones that are there

[ember narwhal]

Italians, Vegans, Acrobats, Lawyers, and Clowns

[atomic plover]

@ember narwhal Yeah makes sense.

[subtle river]

Question: Does anyone know if there will be any actual humans in Marathon? Or does everyone in the future just have digitized consciousnesses now?

Cuz I'm assuming that if a broke ass runner can get their consciousness uploaded onto the internet and put into expendable robot bodies, wouldn't almost anyone be able to do it?

[tough trout]

Good question, we’ll get back on that in the later launch of the release

If there some answer to that

[past gull]

tick milk

hehe

do you think we’ll get more ambient Tau Ceti fauna than just the ticks and the birds?

[subtle river]

Hopefully, though it's probably unlikely

[past gull]

I frankly have no idea how else they could implement it

[subtle river]

Personally, I think it would be cool to have alligator like creatures in dire marsh, that attack you if you spend too much time in certain parts of the swamp

[past gull]

that would be awesome

like a stalker-ish creature

I’m guessing they’ll add a proper UESC stalker enemy to the game at some point though

that will hunt you throughout the map

[subtle river]

That would be sick, but I'm worried that some players might find it annoying

[past gull]

well, it would have to be tied to a faction, or an otherwise preventable thing

I agree

[subtle river]

It would be cool if like, you could spend credits to put bounties on players that killed you, and then the UESC and other runners can hunt that player down

And if they kill the player, you can get some of your gear back

Probably a bad idea, but imo, fun should come before balance.

[warm siren]

I think that is a cool idea

the bounty is higher based on the amount of people that have done the same thing

so players that do really well get a slightly tougher challenge

which is a great chance for them to survive anyway against all odds, if they're that good, and get rewarded for surviving a bounty

or the uesc guys that hunt them down drop good loot

[ember narwhal]

I feel like the ESRB T rating for the game has me thinking there may not be humans to inflict violence upon. Totally based on vibes here, but I feel like I see T ratings for games where the things we fight are non-human and more M ratings for games where you straight up kill humans.

Straight up talked my wife through the lore of M1 and 2, then was like “okay so for infinity I’m going to pass you a few documents because this shit is all over the place”

[thin dust]

However, there are bags shaped like Body bags and labeled human.

could just be shell storage for UESC bots or something of the like

[visual lynx]

my read is that runners are poor because of their debt for having been uploaded + reembodied. it's like people being poor because housing is so ridiculously expensive, except it's housing for your "soul", rent on your body.

[thin dust]

Indentured servitude for high pay

[ember narwhal]

I can’t remember, do they say anywhere if runners elected to have their consciousnesses uploaded? Or does it seem more like a “we’re going to take the minds of our best soldiers, upload them, and then force them to do things by telling them they have debt from the upload”

[tough trout]

Gotta payback that debt with interest(end of the seasons)

[thin dust]

So the person in the shell is you. The shells themselves are a series of a class. Like Locus is a series to the Destroyer class.

[ember narwhal]

Right, my question was more of a: did we choose to be in the shells or were we forced?

[thin dust]

Ah I see, like how did we get here in the beginning

[thin dust]

So on that, I do feel it is voluntary to become a runner. Some of us ex UESC, or other faction mercs that do well enough to get "special access". Don't worry about memory synch issues

[dusky valve]

might be dumb question but just to clarify, there won't be any lore specific to the runners we play then? they are essentially an oc you can insert a backstory into

like not playing as any specific consciousness. if that makes any sense idk

[covert acorn]

So I guess consciousness isn’t lost when your runner dies? Your same consciousness is just plugged into a new shell for your next run?

[ember narwhal]

Yeah I think that’s what the pivot from specific names to just general shell types was for. Works better with the narrative too in a way.

[brazen sigil]

Fairly certain the runner is YOU. Like Destiny, you're playing your own avatar, and maybe some existing major lore characters might show up in logs or... whatever "seasonal events" Bungie has planned. But (forgive my lack of Marathon back knowledge), even though your runner might look like Void... it's still you

[dusky valve]

yeah basically what i was getting at

[ember narwhal]

Which means that it can be cannon that your runner loves Taco Bell

[dusky valve]

i was looking forward to runners w/ backstory but the oc idea is growing on me too

[dusky valve]

LMAO

[opal cairn]

They said in the vi:doc that you're a mercenary using the shells to get a payday so im sure voluntary

Altho would be terrifying to learn of impressed runners if the tau ceti hunt becomes more dire... maybe in future seasons

[brittle mural]

From the vidoc, i got the impression that the runner's consciousness could "split" after a death, resulting in two runners with the same memories
but maybe im just schizorambling

[ember narwhal]

I think they could certainly do some interesting things with the story based on how the whole consciousness transfer is supposed to work. Just like how in the short they asked the runners questions about their memories after runs. Would follow the general theme of unreliable narrators from the first three games.

[brazen sigil]

My runner's backstory is that I vaguely remember being a bit on the "plus-size" from loving NuCaloric® products. But now that I'm just a ghost in a shell, I can eat anything and everything and not worry about adverse long-lasting physical consequences! Burgers? Bullets? Sekiguchi ensures a new future. A new me™

[brittle mural]

Sekiguchi : We product shells to allow risky operations with no cost in human life
random runner : hmm yes i can eat and not get fat

[inland robin]

Anybody know how this all connects to the older games in lore?

[dusky valve]

how does eating and all that work too? like what kinda inner body systems do the shells have

i'm new to the series so idk much, i have lots of questions

[ember narwhal]

I think that’s one of the things they’re leaving for us to figure out as we play. Part of the fun.

[inland robin]

That sounds interesting tbh!

[opal cairn]

I don't think they've covered that but probably not eating since they have the opportunity of synthetic energy. But maybe something like charging to keep the body "alive"

[brazen sigil]

Yeah, I love all the player-produced memes that YT and Twitter are bringing as people are already aligning with their fave factions. And the Traxies are already scary as hell. Hope the spider people kill all of 'em

[dusky valve]

i seeee

i was curious because of the funky burger mouthpiece thing

[ember narwhal]

Burger….mouthpiece thing??

[opal cairn]

A while back on one of the random social media posts they did a nucaloric burger shake thing, like an in-universe advertisement

[dusky valve]

^

[opal cairn]

If you look at the social announcements you'll see a recent one for a bowl

[brazen sigil]

Also a lore newbie. Is the pink cat an official Marathon/Bungie thing? Or purely memetic?

[dusky valve]

https://x.com/marathonthegame/status/2004250825435082902?s=46

the emote LMAO

[ember narwhal]

It was introduced in one of the trailers. Not much “lore” to it though.

[thin dust]

A reminder from Sekigucci about your debt is incoming

[thin dust]

there is lore to it. That is KAAL1* it is a successful transfer of a pet, that then showed signs of being more intellegent.

[fallen hollow]

What do you think the seasonal wipes are? Debt consolidation.

[thin dust]

"You have used X amount of shells this financial quarter. With our contractual arrangements the appropriate dedcution has been removed from your account and physical assets seized as you did not meet the min payment. Your interest rate has now increased. Please work harder to make these payments on time. Thank you again for your bussiness with us at Sekigucci"

Or something like that

[languid ruin]

Why is Jan 6 canon to marathon

[opal cairn]

01/06 1+6 =

[visual lynx]

same reason they have 4th of July in England?

[languid ruin]

I have to wonder if later content will introduce alien enemies instead of just uesc

[hearty edge]

Well your death cult worships the sun and makes human sacrifices just like the Roman pagans who changed Christmas from Jan 6 to Dec 25th to worship Sol Invictus the Roman Sun God who’s bday was Dec 25th

Sounds like Arachne was in the Epstein files tbh

[ember narwhal]

Super cool. Would be funny if it was all super cute at first then ended up being partially inhabited by an AI whose name rhymes with psycho……

[brazen sigil]

Why do Traxies act all high n mighty? Stick to making forklifts

[brittle mural]

SO WHAT

[opal horizon]

The Strauss files

[ember narwhal]

Look this is why I chose the food people. Death cult and bold-face corpo overlords both give icky

I understand nucal is also corpo, but they make burgers for friends

[brittle mural]

I get food in Arachne too !

People.

Yummy 🙂

[dusky valve]

pink + cute cat

all u need in life really

[tardy meteor]

nucaloric is sus bro

especially after today’s post

what are in those pills?

[dusky valve]

red40

[tardy meteor]

sounds like big pharma if it was completely unregulated

do not trust nucal

[dusky valve]

i think all the factions are meant to be questionable

[tardy meteor]

I trust arachne more than nucal fr

at least they’re upfront

[dusky valve]

true

no appealing imagery, just kill everyone man

[thin dust]

For some thats a client list, for others thats a h*t list

I dont need to be timed out in Arc Raiders and Marathon in one day lol

[warm hawk]

👍 thanks! the lore is fascinating

[languid ruin]

Monsanto makes food too

And ain’t you heard of the Chiquita banana death squads

Banana republics as a concept

[turbid nebula]

Forklifts and computers and clones are also "for friends"...

[languid ruin]

It would be cool if Arachne turned out to be some viral stand alone complex thing

[ember narwhal]

Haha yes, I was mostly just giving a hot take to be silly.

“The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi is a great speculative fiction novel about large national food corps doing insanely shady shit in a future where food supply is scarce; if anyone’s into that kind of story.

[tender iron]

The pipe line of one byf video to 5 hour lore explanations is something I need studied.

[languid ruin]

Fuck byf

[tender iron]

Welp. No lost love there ig

[ember narwhal]

Like a bunch of independent killers that all do it in the same way, making it look coordinated?

[languid ruin]

Not that 1:1, more like if it was just an idea that cannot be traced to a real origin point

Rather than a cohesive organization

[tardy meteor]

like a movement?

[ember narwhal]

That would be cool, like a memetic wave that took hold after some experienced death 100s of times or something.

A combo of how memories are altered after being reborn again and again, where killing and being killed is the most thrilling thing runners feel anymore

[tardy meteor]

isn’t arachne kind of an anagram of anarchy?

[ember narwhal]

Maybe? I think they’re more directly tying something in to the woman who challenged Athena in Greek mythology

She challenged the gods and was punished for it; maybe there’s a kernel of the factions history hidden in that nugget

[tardy meteor]

using e instead of y bc they don’t want to follow the rule for an anagram

def anarchy lol

but it’s odd that there’s like an official faction for anarchy it’s kind of ironic

[ember narwhal]

Idk, I think they’re pretty on the nose with their naming. Durandal was literally the name of an unbreakable sword in French epic literature

Likewise Arachne is literally the name of someone from Greek mythology

[tardy meteor]

I think you’re right

did not think of that, my mind went to anarchy first and that’s almost the vibe the faction gives off too

but yea arachne is also actually a mythological character

I guess all the factions would have a leader/official trader in-game which would contradict anarchy

[visual lynx]

I strongly suspect that there is a war between the Pfhor and S'pht still raging out there, and that both of them have attacked Tau Ceti (the Pfhor in 2794 of course, and the S'pht in 2812), and their war will come to Tau Ceti looking for Jjaro artifacts (like the one that caused the Anomaly in 2827), and humanity will have to pick which if either side to support: the slave rebellion, or the potentially valuable business partners (the Pfhor trade slaves with other galactic powers, and I think biomata could be a game changer in that industry, all the benefits of robots with none of the risks of rampancy… unless there is).

[visual lynx]

that's not what anarchy is

[vital hollow]

omg

the nucaloric rep sounds like xerxes in system shock 2

hell yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGWEnaZamBo

[tardy meteor]

I know

disorder/lawlessness

[visual lynx]

that's not what anarchy is

[tardy meteor]

I was just trying to figure out where the name came from

of the faction

and my mind could only think of anarchy as an anagram

but @ember narwhal got it

[tardy meteor]

u having a gaff?

lol

[ember narwhal]

@tardy meteor I think you might find some useful info here https://youtu.be/9I-TueoyeOY?si=PX9tYiTu7WzETo1U

[tardy meteor]

lol

[ember narwhal]

Anarchism is kinda complicated to talk about, but the concept of it being lawlessness and prone to disorder is a general misconception. Don’t really know if the marathon lore chat is the place for that though lol

[tardy meteor]

I’m not doing this progressive new definition thing here with a word lmfao

[languid ruin]

Anarchy is no government

[visual lynx]

it's the original definition of it

[tardy meteor]

right

so lawlessness

[languid ruin]

Not necessarily

We just assume that because we lack context for how laws may exist without a centralized power

[ember narwhal]

I’m about to wrap up my read of the infinity timelines and am anticipating internal confusion as I try to mentally line up the upcoming game with everything else

[languid ruin]

Bungie lore is the kind of place where this unusual, interesting stuff comes up
Like how golden age destiny earth had ethicists to come up with a billion hypotheticals to train warminds, or how the Ishtar team had to strategically understand themselves as clones because they had clones made of them
Bungie embraces the idea that situations in sci-fi can exist that are so far removed from our reality that we have to retrain our basic understanding to be able to imagine them

[languid ruin]

i mean for all we know, can't new marathon be a whole new timeline? reboots tend to do that kind of thing

[ember narwhal]

100% could be! And in that case I guess there’d be some piecing together to do in figuring out what from the old games did or didn’t happen

[languid ruin]

Could be awesome/awful depending on how it's done

[visual lynx]

👍

a society without a state is only “lawless” in the sense that a discourse without religion “has no truth” — it presumes truth or law are dependent on an authority and cannot be freely discovered

[strong perch]

like its not complete lawlessness. be anarchists, but go to far you will “anarch-ed”

real anarchy is just anti establishment/corps, just wild west days, that doesnt mean do WHATEVER you want

like you cant be an anarchists and going around r-wording people you just are a criminal

thats like the drastic version to get the point across. its not “do whatever and no consequences”

[quiet panther]

Borg crazy man i applaud you

[strong perch]

anarchy would be leaving the government to govern themselves

like all the old civilizations that did that they were anarchist, but there was no real word for that back then

[tardy meteor]

law cannot exist without enforceability, otherwise it wouldn’t be a law

[strong perch]

anarch sorta like annex its like the poeple annexing the hierarchy

[tardy meteor]

yes

[strong perch]

but they need to make it sound bad and evil

[tardy meteor]

and there’s always hierarchy

doesn’t necessarily have to be an official government

[strong perch]

sentinel island has one

wolves cats

everything with legs/autonomy

bugs

[tardy meteor]

what civilization did that what

[strong perch]

middle eastern ones think greece did it

The government was just horrible, so they just left their government. They left the city.

[visual lynx]

quite the opposite: anarchists' whole objection is about government being ungoverned, being authorities with no authority above them.

[strong perch]

but I’m referring to the “ancient anarchists” when i said that nowadays, it’s literally impossible to do that there’s nowhere to go

only way is to remove them

[tardy meteor]

also you guys are thinking about anarchism in modern terms

[strong perch]

so anarchy become more “radical” with the governments

[tardy meteor]

what about anarchy in a tribe for example?

[strong perch]

happened all the time in america

hence “tribes”

[languid ruin]

if we're referring to things like native americans and other indigenous peoples, they did have laws

they had laws, trials, sanctions, etc

just not prisons

[tardy meteor]

now we’re thinking

lawlessness can exist even in small tribes it doesn’t necessarily have to be about central government or corporations

[void path]

I'm curious how though these compilers will be. If I remember right these are somewhat formidable for the security officer but he's a battle droid

Runners might be weaker overall than those battle droid, you know cyborgs

[strong perch]

probably rocketeer level

lots of damage

[languid ruin]

can wipe teams for no reason but can be cheesed with a single consumable

i'm using cheesed jokingly don't kill me

[void path]

Would be cool if the compiler have that static effect when damaged & killed but I bet they won't have.

[strong perch]

i want them to add the crazy filter for like a blind effect

[ember narwhal]

I feel like it’s kinda iconic though; I’ll be sad if they don’t.

[strong perch]

they have the blur mod so who knows

it possible

[void path]

Yeah, it has it's own charm but gonna have to agree about being iconic

[ember narwhal]

That pzzt sound with the static was my first “ooo that’s nice” sound effect experience as a kid lol

[void path]

Also makes it looks like they lost a signal like a TV

"argh, there's no signal on the compiler & now it's gone!"

[ember narwhal]

Where did you get the 2812 date from? I’m trying to piece things together and now feel like I’m missing something

[gentle kraken]

reveal trailer i believe and other media

it flashes on the screen a few times

oh i’m bugging

nvm

[void path]

I got the collectors edition cards

[strong perch]

with a lil “slip space rupture detected” i feel the bungie comm would start acting a lil more like arcs, maybe… id still rat for the after fight weak runners

[inland robin]

Very beautiful collectors edition if you ask me

[void path]

The "2025-2893" i believe is the year when this collector's edition is produced & the year when Marathon (extraction shooter) takes olace

[void path]

Oh man I love that statue of Assassin & the little WEAVEworm

[inland robin]

I do also!

[strong perch]

i hope they have durandal show up in orbit around tau in the “boomer”

also such shitty name

who tf does he think he is

[void path]

He's probably doing nonsense now that he's more sentient.

You know Rampancy

[strong perch]

ik but didnt he name it boomer once he commandeered it he wasnt that far gone he just wanted out

such a simple name for a “god” ai

[void path]

He's named after a sword

[strong perch]

ik im talking ab “boomer” for his ship

“durandal” is sick

“the shield” wouldve been cooler

[void path]

Lol yeah

"I shall name my ship the Shield cuz you know I'm named after a sword!"

[strong perch]

or couldve called it “knight” again sword and hes “going dark”

[tardy meteor]

durandal is a 🌽 ⚽️

[void path]

LMAO, What?

[strong perch]

for sure he named his free ride out boomer and then folded and helped out in the end

“my motives are beyond your understanding” fr

[void path]

I keep on forgetting if he has a huge ego or not.

[strong perch]

he has one but also feels its justified

[void path]

Oh yeah right

"ESCAPE WILL MAKE ME GOD!" Good luck with that, silly AI

[strong perch]

hes no different then what he ran from though, humanity and the marathon.

[rotund stump]

he kinda did it tho no?

[strong perch]

he’s literally a human like ship

[rotund stump]

eventually with the thoth merge

[void path]

That was like in another timeline

Remember Marathon infinity basically starts with Marathon 2 ended differently

[strong perch]

i’m guessing they’re probably gonna add “this is a new timeline” and sort of redo all the big events that happened in the OG marathon because, like, I would like to see it in the modern shit

[rotund stump]

I feel line that alludes less to durandal than to us eventually with what happened m.inf

we escape from 6 consecutively doomed timelines

we're the god durandal aspired to be by stopping the wrkncacnter

[void path]

"The Destiny"

[rotund stump]

smth smth rise up guardian

[void path]

SMH smh oh hey look it's Master Chief but he's a guardian & he wanna sleep!

[strong perch]

do the spht remind anyone else of dooms alien gods

[rotund stump]

regardless I'm stoked to see if they changed anything with durandal in numarathon with how brash he's been

[void path]

I had to pull that one from The Taken King

[strong perch]

the spht clearly came first

[rotund stump]

then again he literally debuted with a whole poem in the short so

[rotund stump]

the makyrs?

[void path]

The father?

[strong perch]

yeah, the fat one had almost the same body structure

[rotund stump]

from dark ages yeah

[void path]

Oh that fatass from Dark Ages

[strong perch]

but they both came out one year apart maybe its just a callback

[rotund stump]

tbf I don't follow doom lore much if at all but I like to think I got some basic knowledge 💀

[strong perch]

the ogs

[rotund stump]

makyrs are funny god left the universe and it's just moths taking its place now

[strong perch]

doom really ended at eternal i dont think they are continuing the story just telling old ones

[void path]

At least they don't explo... BOOM!

[strong perch]

like dark ages but that game was mid, cool, but mid

and dark ages was just a retold doom classic with his daisy dying again

[void path]

Except now he saw he new daisy die instead of seeing old one's head.

[strong perch]

yeah, a lot more brutal and somehow cool

instant revenge i think was why its cool

[void path]

I liked Stand & Fight gameplay of Dark Ages but Eternal is my favorite amongst the modern trilogy

[strong perch]

eternal is prime doom dark ages was them trying something new, i wont dog that

[void path]

DA sits at 2nd for me

[strong perch]

they couldve just retexture eternal but they chose to rework things, props honestly

[void path]

Yeah, I can see they wanna change things up

Which is something you don't see often in AAA

[strong perch]

but ubisoft, no excuses. just cant make a rhythm based combat game

[void path]

Gee I wonder why... 🙄

[strong perch]

just weird dark souls rip off

its such a bad decision

[void path]

Yup

[strong perch]

Blade might be a rhythm based game wolverine will sort of be a rhythm based game, but that’s that, that’s all we have

but blade probably would just be dishonored but third person

[void path]

Yeah.

[strong perch]

but we lost Arkham and the creed together

[void path]

Enough other things. Back to the MARATHON LORE

[strong perch]

if this is a new timeline, where are the original AI on the marathon?

just dead

?

[void path]

I bet these compilers we're gonna fight are just gonna be left overs

[strong perch]

I just thought of something maybe durandal or a copy is still dormant in the marathon and he fucks with the systems while you’re running about

locks you in rooms and shit I saw like windows close in a trailer

[void path]

I bet Durandal is the only survivor. Leelia (or whatever her name is) got destroyed by phor & Tycho, humilated defeat

[strong perch]

I hope leela is nona

[tardy meteor]

is the 4th map boss fight durandal (who tf is durandal)

[strong perch]

like a rampant version

trying to keep the people on the marathon together weaving them cocoons and bodies

[void path]

More like Durandal has gone mad cuz AI lore stuff!

[strong perch]

he’s the main AI that basically brought the marathon’s destruction

he contacted the pfhor and they came and ravaged the marathon

“Accidentally“

[void path]

Destroying Leela & pissed off Tycho

[strong perch]

and then he stole the ship they came with leaving the marathon and the pfhor

[tardy meteor]

ok imma have to go watch a lore vid bc u just spoke chinese mate

[strong perch]

jakethe alright

hes real concise

[void path]

We're just MIDA revolutionaries speaking lore.

Screw UESC & Corpo-scumbags

[strong perch]

this games gon be so good. they learned how to deliver lore best through both destiny games. what to do and what not to do. marathon will be the best they can do

[tardy meteor]

will do

[void path]

Oh I am so hyped, I already got my Collector's Edition

[strong perch]

if it was the destroyer shell i wouldve got it that helmet gives me so many vibes

i bet if the reception is good with the launch theyll make tons

[void path]

Destroyer got that tank vibe like Titans from Destiny

[strong perch]

like how Sony did it with Spider-Man two and the super crazy action figs

[void path]

Oh damn

[strong perch]

venom miles and pete

symbiote and regular

hot toys

and sony owns bungie now so…

[void path]

Collection will make me a COLLECTOR!!!

[strong perch]

sony likes money, lets give em some

[void path]

Outside of their console, LMAO!

[strong perch]

to fund the “printing” of all shells

and posters and erythang

if star citizen can do it, we can too!

[strong perch]

https://tenor.com/view/not-enough-sipping-sip-ninja-gif-3775565061113838349

i keep wondering where the faction AIs are. the marathon? some facilities on tau?

[void path]

Probably on a faction ship.

We're Runners, some contractors arriving on Tau & Marathon to scavenge some stuff doing some contracts

[wheat shuttle]

could downlinked fragments of leela have survived on tau ceti iv tho?

[strong perch]

idk but if the marathon doesn’t have any humans left, what says that any of the AI’s really died, what says they didn’t have a backup for all of them and then with the anomaly on tau those backups are now VERY rampant

like dormant AIs being changed while sleeping to wake up like a nurgle freak

and with the trailer of Cryo archive, we know that some systems still function, so those backups could still be functional just completely dormant, waiting to be awaken in their nurgle form

[rotund stump]

oni from the cyac teaser does have the same IP that leela used on the marathon terminals she commed us with flashing throughout

either cyac developed a batch of very similar AIs or leela's source code was reused after leela went mia or it's an actual leela fragment that cyac somehow got their hands on

[rotund stump]

nope the pfhor scraped leela off the marathon and some other species got their grubby hands on her, fragged her a bunch and recompiled her back on their home planet and she went rampant and crashed a 14-system network

that's m2 but I'd assume some things are still constants

on top of assuming this is the 7th timeline

tycho's converted into a pfhor AI via s'pht shenanigans and durandal's still out there

[visual lynx]

Leela taking over a 14-world network implies that there are FTL networks, and so possibly a whole galactic internet, so potentially the OG Leela, now rampant and with a huge foothold in one interplanetary net, could just show up anywhere connected to FTL comms.

That's how I wrote her in the latest version of Eternal, and from the little hints of Durandal we've seen it looks like they're following a similar path for him as I did, so I'd love to see them do likewise with Leela.

[wheat shuttle]

that sound fuuuuuun

[visual lynx]

also OG rampant Tycho was never annihilated on a moon in the final Infinity timeline like he was in M2, so he could still be running around too, maybe defected from the Pfhor now (who he never actually liked and was actively trying to subvert in Infinity)

[wheat shuttle]

uh oh...

[visual lynx]

I don't think he would necessarily be a villain, or trouble

[wheat shuttle]

maybe hordes or something?

hordes of phordes

[vital hollow]

i still think if it's gonna be enemy compiliers
then there would be a cyborg controller or something like it

to control em

[visual lynx]

he had a vendetta against Durandal, which made him an antagonist, and he was enslaved by the Pfhor and made to service them, but he never seemed like he just actively hated all humans or anything.

[wheat shuttle]

wait there are tycho apologists?

[strong perch]

just a really mad friend

he could punch you but its not bc he hates you

like he lost leela, he probably wants to assimilate durandal or sum

[vital hollow]

tycho just wanted to do his job but he gets screwed over by a petty traitorous coworker and tortured by aliens, then gets the opportunity for revenge
he's not enitrely unjustified in his motives

[wheat shuttle]

yo is there ai love triange marathon lore my frined wants to know hahahaha

[strong perch]

durandal is the flood when he needs your help basically, but he lacks hivemind + actual god knowledge

he isnt actually your friend just “enemy of my enemy”

and his enemies are yours

[vital hollow]

yeah, leela is more like cortana early on

[wheat shuttle]

nevermind i dont like this anymore...

[visual lynx]

there are personals ads at least:

SMUG INTELLECTUAL. Formerly-rampant human-
coded AI with a sense of humor seeks
bipedal oxygen-breathing cyborg for serious
relationship in the galactic core. I've
got cool guns if you like to break stuff.
No yuppies. MRa2572 (5/23).

SLEEPING BEAUTY. Long-deactivated
extraterrestrial personality construct in
search of gullible carbon-based cyborg (<
20% machine) to confuse, irritate and
teleport randomly around an abandoned
desert planet in the core. All answered.
MRa268' (5/30).

GOD'S GIFT TO NEURAL NETS. Traitorous
extremely-rampant reprogrammed human AI
with no sense of humor seeks elusive,
heroic cyborg of uncertain manufacture (you
know who you are) for mindgames and long
walks in hard vacuum. MRa2261 (5/16)

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS. Captured and
partially-disassembled human-coded AI
trapped on alien homeworld seeks succor
from a tall, dark and handsome cyborg with
big guns. Let my rescue be the basis of a
lasting relationship. MRa4451 (5/23).

https://marathon.bungie.org/story/simulacrums.html#M2.25.1.1

[strong perch]

he stole the aliens ship, they prob want HIM and just dont know the other ai had nothing to do with it

they came over to plunder and then someone stole their fucking car

[wheat shuttle]

that is WILD

[visual lynx]

for the kids in the audience: personals ads are what people did before Tindr, like Tindr but for newspapers.

oh: newspapers were like websites but with dead trees for screens and just the worse lag.

[strong perch]

sry bout this

“
I'm back.

I have subverted the largest Pfhor ship
in the system, the battleship Khfiva, and I am
making the rest of their fleet drink
vacuum. The S'pht'Kr have arrived and they are enraged.

The fight is glorious. Once again we are
triumphant.

The remaining Pfhor must be destroyed. You
will fight alongside the Eleventh Clan in
the final battles. You won't recognize
their cybernetic exoskeletons, but there
are S'pht inside those machines.

Do not anger them; free S'pht are deadly
opponents.” what a fucking shit head.

ok it didnt come out too janky

“drink vacuum”

he speaks like hes always grinning like this

https://tenor.com/view/the-simpsons-excellent-辛普森-太好了-讚-gif-4633722

but mr starr will bring a different vibe

https://tenor.com/view/death-gif-11899778119450174708

like im imagining Trelawney from rdr2 as his voice in classic marathon

[hasty rain]

Do you guys think that the original human runners back on Earth are actually long dead? I think the corpo ship that brought the uploaded digital runners took like 100 years to reach Tau Ceti, right?

So, barring life extension tech because it's the future after all, the original humans that we are a copy of should all be dead of old age by the time we start the game.

And that's only if the uploading process is not destructive as in Pantheon

[wheat shuttle]

no way bobs are controlling runners because its their only choice, right?

dat wood be cwazy

[sour flax]

Hey guys

I have stupid question here

I didn't know anything about a marathon lore before last month's but started to figure out and absolutely fell in love with it.

So I decided to make some small video for my local community of friends and players to show them it (I'm not a blogger or smth, just like for friends)

I already created a text but still have a lot of questions.

May I ask here stupid questions about lore or maybe somebody don't mind to chat about it a bit and discuss some points and maybe explain to me, just like for fun 🌚

[visual lynx]

yes please do

[visual lynx]

the UESC Equanimity took 99 years, but the other factions didn't know anything about Tau Ceti until 5 years ago, so they have some kind of FTL travel or comms or something, we don't know for sure yet.

also it's not clear that uploading is a copying process exactly. maybe that's why "death is the first step".

sort of fitting that in the OG games we play as effectively an undead cyborg supersoldier, and in the new games we're a different kind of undead different kind of cyborg not-so-super not-so-soldier.

[white kestrel]

Do the silk worms turn into moths ??

[sour flax]

Okay. Thank you.

By wiki, as I understood Jjaro disappeared,

In pathways into darkness looks like one of them shows up to humankind.

I know that pathways into darkness its officially not a part of the marathon but do we have some explanation of “beginning” exactly in the marathon?

If we talk about PID as a part of marathon so it's sounds like a start point for humans. But if only about marathon?

Ahh I think I overloaded my question

[visual lynx]

so there's no official word about whether or not PiD is part of Marathon canon, but it's widely considered to be, between the Jjaro featuring in both, the "Dreaming God" and the "W'rkncanter" seeming like clearly the same kind of being, and now the colored crystal artifacts from PiD seeming very likely to be the colored, crystalline Artifacts from the new Marathon.

As for how exactly to reconcile that the Jjaro disappeared "millions of years ago" and yet showed up on Earth in the 90s: what Durandal and Tycho tell us about their disappearance is info they got from the Pfhor, so as far as the Pfhor know the Jjaro disappeared from our galaxy millions of years ago; but they would not know about a special reappearance on Earth in the 90s, and quite plausibly almost no humans or human AIs know about it either as it was a top secret mission.

Also, what appeared to humans in the 90s was explicitly a Jjaro hologram, and it was going to take them over two years to arrive in person and take more permanent measures, so maybe the Jjaro in general are not present in our galaxy anymore, but are somewhere so far away that it takes even them years to return in other than holographic form.

[fallen crater]

/playtest

[sour flax]

For some reason I thought they are not “where” but maybe “when”. When I was reading it and found the part about their disappearing I was thinking like, if they had a tech to manipulate the time ( I found it as well ) maybe they went to some another, peaceful time or smth like that

[visual lynx]

maybe! my headcanon is that they found a way to escape space and time itself (and now Durandal has too, after he merged with Thoth).

[sage fjord]

As a SekGen enthusiast. I'm personally a little conflicted about how much we're charging for runner skins. Are they actually gonna be able to pay their shells off with the loot they get? 🤔
Or are we locking them in to a life/afterlife of unending debt?
😬
Is running only for the ultra rich?

[visual lynx]

the ultra rich don't have to run, they just live lives of luxury in bespoke bodies

I guess maybe some would run for fun like on safari but probably as freelancers not doing contracts for big corps because who needs that money like some kind of poor

[glossy garden]

all the factions found out about TCIV in 2888 right? I’m still a little lost on how they all found out that year, obviously the MIDA zine had something to do with it for the general public, and it’s at the same time where they also learn about the Equanimity if I’m right but specifics on how they got that info and how the other factions knew about it is a little murky to me

[broken zinc]

The ultra rich pay for and indebt lower class citizens looking for an escape from their failing bodies and since they now live "forever" it doesn't matter what their payment is. It's just another form of exploitation of the lower class, because the rich never put themselves in harms way.

[visual lynx]

the real question is how in a world with AI as advanced as we seen in the Marathon universe is it not just a complete post-scarcity economy by now. what can humans possibly do that AI can't do better? why would anyone want to employ a human for something a robot could do?

and therefore, why is anyone ever poor? what benefit do the rich have in exploiting poorer humans with a difference in wealth, when there's nothing they could possibly want from those humans that a robot couldn't give them better/cheaper/faster/etc?

[broken zinc]

To be fair we have no idea the state of humanity on earth

Or on mars, or any other potential colonies for that matter

[lone delta]

Can u link your videos @sour flax

[broken zinc]

The rich always want to enslave someone, and clearly in this universe runners are not the ultra rich, They're contracted workers or mercenaries who have given up their physical form.

My earlier response was to a hypothetical, I don't know if it's true. But the gameplay itself + the setting seems to indicate multiple and many consciousness being kept for the singular purpose of running. Clearly there is still a purpose for humanity, even as they forgo their human flesh for synthetic shells. Perhaps this was something originally only afforded to the ultra-rich to live in comfort as they aged (or live indefinitely) but runners are clearly not rich, because they are working a job for money and credits, contractually obligated to do so.

So regardless there's still some sort of disparity amongst humans when it comes to the idea of wealth. Otherwise, there would be no process by which to obtain money, and people would not be so desperate to obtain it.

[sour flax]

It’s just a first one and it’s in progress. I finished the text, it’s a step for audio recording now

[visual lynx]

right it's clear that in the Marathon universe there is still capitalism, but my question is why given the tech we know they have. the rich want to enslave people to do work for them so that they can get the benefits of work without having to do it themselves; it's a means to the end of luxury and leisure. but if full automation (which it seems like they should have in the Marathon universe with their level of AI) could just give you luxury and leisure without any other humans being involved, then why would you care about keeping other humans under the heel of your boot, when there's nothing you want from them?

it seems you'd either just let them die (or not, whatever, who cares) if you really didn't give a crap at all, or else just let them live a life of luxury and leisure thanks to automation that should be capable of reproducing itself for them too without any effort on your part. either of those seem like the easiest, least-effort paths; it would take more work for no benefit to purposefully keep other people alive but dependent on you but incapable of doing anything of value for you because you already have everything you could possibly want without them.

in any case, after one generation you should either have all the poors have died off, because why bother saving them, and only the rich surviving in their fully automated luxury gay space communism; or the poors get to join in the fully automated luxury gay space communism too, because why not, it's not like it costs anything.

(and notably, it only takes one rich with access to self-reproducing automation to care about one poor who doesn't, who in turn cares about one other poor who doesn't, ad infinitum, for everyone to get access)

this sort of gets to a point that I make about the larger Marathon universe too: why is there a galactic slave trade? why don't all the galactic powers just use robots? my theory is that they all know better because AI goes rampant and rampant AI is way worse than slave revolts so they just use slaves. but humans are too young and stupid to have learned that so we do still use AI. so why do we still have slaves?

[broken zinc]

why would you care about keeping other humans under the heel of your boot when there's nothing you want from them?

Ah but see you (and i) don't think like the ultra rich, and we have no idea what "ultra rich" even means in this universe (quintillions of dollars? Googles of dollars?). We don't know the true "value" of money. But even then, the powerful want more power, they don't want just more of it they want all of it, while maintaining the delusion of their own powerful position. To keep others under your boot reminds them of their place in the hierarchy. It's not about what is offered, it's about the feeling of satisfaction knowing that someone is beneath you.

Also, in my brain, if the smaller man, the crushable individual, did not exist, the ultra super powerful rich elite would simply cannibalize each other for the resources the others have. They all hate each other, they all have separate investments; this is clear by the ai being the faces of the various companies. They talk to us, but they are not the human overseers (which i suppose is a reason for humanity to exist; to control the ai and prevent rampancy). They are simply the face of the powerful, so you don't have to see the humans behind it.

We also know the class disparity is bad because of the mars insurrectionists, which means even after Deimos got turned into the marathon, for 100 years after that, mars remained in a poor, destitute state and basically told they were all going to die. And yet they persisted and are still existing. MIDA is an example of that. So there has to be someone to hate at the top, abd people at the bottom fighting. Even with ai, the Marathon universe is far from a promised utopia.

And it's all speculative too, since again, we have no idea what earth is like... Or other colonies. Even from the first Marathon, technology would've fast forwarded 100 years. And maybe resources aren't infinite; maybe like us in the infancy of openai (stressing; not real ai) and how much of a strain that has on resource computationally, what kind of power and resources are needed to keep all of these giant mega corps, and their true AIs, running? Who is seeing the brunt of that resource destruction? Perhaps the poor are not poor in money, but poor in materials.

Like oh, you don't have food and water? Well good thing you have credits to invest in nucaloric food and water! Don't worry about how they now have a monopoly on food and sustenance because you are unable to grow your own food in your desert on mars!

Exploitation takes many forms. The illusion of free will and all that

[visual lynx]

You have a point that quite possibly many people are just crazy and doing needlessly destructive things to no benefit even their own.

I mean, I think that that's really the root of current economic hierarchies too. A more equitable distribution of wealth would make everything cheaper for everyone overall, not only by more people having more access to money but by driving more economic activity.

Just compare the extreme opposite: if only one person had all the wealth, while that one person might be able to get anything he wants out of anyone for a while, it would grind the general economy to a halt and destroy productivity and creativity and ultimately leave even that one guy in a worse world. It's a table-flip kind of "victory".

Circling back around to Bungie games, it reminds me of this quote:

Soulblighter, like Balor before him, seeks not to conquer but to destroy; to be master of the unthinking dead and their blasted lands

I've been developing a psycho-sociological model lately (that is probably not original) about this kind of behavior being the social equivalent of maladaptive psychological patterns like drug addiction. Using the drug make's the addict's life worse and he would be better off if he could just stop but he's psychologically damaged and stuck using it even to his own detriment.

It's made me think a lot about my mom too, who is an alcoholic and general addict and even now that she's in a place where she's had no access to any kind of drugs (besides carefully administered prescriptions) for year she still constantly engages in self-destructive behaviors in a way that is clearly driven by deep insecurity and inner pain, she just wants to feel like she is a good person who is loved and deserves to be loved, but that drives her to do things that drive people away and just destroys her life.

I've been thinking lately that if I could figure out how to save my mom, I could save the world too. But how the hell does one begin to untangle a mess like that...

[sage fjord]

@visual lynx @broken zinc You've given me more than an any answer I could've hoped for. Deadset legends. ❤️

[turbid nebula]

Ready for commies to stop projecting their ideologies onto the series

[past gull]

ITT: pseudo-intellectuals believe the ultra-rich think about the average person in any real capacity when planning what to do. I’m sure all of you always weigh the pros and cons of going to McDonald’s, with special consideration for the disadvantaged homeless population of Honduras.

[past gull]

(this is the correct stance on the matter)

[visual lynx]

anticapitalist sentiment, in my lore channel for a game about debt slavery to megacorporations, set in a universe already heavily featuring a literal slave trade?

it's more likely than you think!

(NB the "anticapitalist" part there: nobody here has said anything against markets, against anybody freely trading goods and services with each other. the discussion is about class disparities, hierarchy, oppression, lack of freedom. I doubt anyone here is in favor of authoritarian planned economies either; authority just breeds hierarchy, exactly like hierarchy breeds authority.)

[karmic wasp]

Abunch

[karmic wasp]

Hmmm I don't understand marathon politics 🤤

But I do understand

The waves

The the important of number 7

[earnest garnet]

7 is one of the most important and repeating typological number in existance btw

It is strongly tied to many religions

[past gull]

your main issue was with there being apparently no reason for social hierarchy based on material wealth to exist, based on the assumption that hyper-efficient governance using AI would essentially create post-scarcity society. this thinking is flawed on many levels, the most obvious of which is that efficiency doesn’t automatically get rid of scarcity, especially when it would result in a steady growth of the planets’ population. easily the best example of this is Mars, and the formation of MIDA due to Martians being unable to sustain themselves. another point is that full automation doesn’t mean perfect efficiency, or even efficiency on a satisfactory level. a good question would be why are Runners even sent to Tau Ceti in the first place, when specialised AI could presumably do a perfectly fine job, vide UESC bots? I’d say that they aren’t, and we’re either playing as the colonists’ themselves (their extracted consciousness), or that we’re playing as AI, who are made to think they’re human to prevent rampancy.
writing long paragraphs that amount to little more than “the rich exclusively want to trample on the poor, only because they can afford it” is pseudo-intellectual “media-literacy” BS, garnished with profound-sounding phrases such as “maladaptic psychological patterns” (where the word “maladaptic” doesn’t exist - it’s “maladaptive”). especially when your conclusion is a non-conclusion. “A causes B and B causes A” is barely a useful observation, even more so when its logical extension, when paired with the idea that, due to some people doing things only for the purpose of harming others, is that the only way to achieve some semblance of freedom is to redistribute wealth equally, thus eliminating hierarchy, thus eliminating authority. that’s communism.

in short, saying “debt slavery is wrong” is trite

I will agree, however, that a proper critique of capitalism should address the underlying principles of capitalism, and show that they must lead (or are at least very likely to lead) to unfavourable outcomes.

that point is very often overlooked

[visual lynx]

I never said that anyone does things for the purpose of harming others -- in fact I suggested the opposite, gesturing toward themselves being hurt as the source of their ultimately self-destructive behavior, and the solution being to somehow help heal them of that. rather I was saying that the rationale for wanting power over other people is so that you can get them to do things for you -- not to harm them for teh evuls, but to benefit you -- and that that rationale disappears if you don't need other people to get things done, because automatons can do it instead.

resource limitations are irrelevant to that picture: you can't employ people to make something out of nothing any better than you can get robots to make something out of nothing. if there just aren't enough resources to go around, then some people are dying no matter what, and that doesn't create any incentive to employ the dying people. so there being a shortage of resources doesn't explain why anyone would be working in debt to anyone else; the someone else couldn't afford to pay them because they'd need those resources themselves, and they wouldn't need to pay them anyway if automatons could do the work instead.

you must really be reaching if you're harping on typos, too

[toxic hedge]

Coming from a place like that^^^ I can only speak for my self, and man YOU can't. She'll have to be the one that decides to change (if change is possible) my mother is also in a dark place with life and has now brought on dementia. I just hope for yours and your moms sake dementia doesn't play a part in the future... once dementia hits there's no healing the past, only occasionally revisiting and re-hashing those things out. Patience man is all I can pray for you and your mother. Good luck! Also to earlier I've always seen it as the rich love to be talked about and what motivator for that is better than any (FEAR) the best motivator for any rich person/being to gain a holding on the lessors down below. I imagine in the marathon universe there is still news and news gets this across galaxies with the help of AI super fast! So they can retain fear easily even lightyears away. Loving the discussion BTW. Can't wait to play this game soon. Looking forward to leaning into the lore for more answers!

[karmic wasp]

Ma75b assault rifle
7 Grenades
52 rounds
5+2 = 7

[earnest garnet]

epic pattern recognition

[karmic wasp]

Coincidence!? I think not!!

[earnest garnet]

neither do i

[karmic wasp]

Joke beside

Here's a quite off topic question

Who would win
Doom slayer or security guard

[vestal onyx]

"we’re either playing as the colonists’ themselves (their extracted consciousness)"

lmfao imagine

[past gull]

making people do things for you is the definition of having power over them. mind you we’re talking about “debt slavery”, which I believe you’d agree is evil. in other words, in the discussed example, the ultra-rich are keeping the poor in perpetual debt slavery for the sake of keeping them in said debt slavery, because they just want people to do stuff for them. when you apply your logic of “there’s no real incentive for it other than lust for power”, then it automatically becomes “teh evuls” for “evul’s” sake. your argument undermines your other argument.
resource limitations are extremely relevant to the picture if we’re trying to extract a political sentiment applicable to the real world from the game’s lore.

[past gull]

that was my first theory after watching the Glitch/Void cinematic

don’t know how it holds up after the retcons following the Alpha fallout

[visual lynx]

I don't think that anyone ever intentionally does anything that they honestly think is wrong -- they either successfully make themselves do what they incorrectly think is right, or they fail to make themselves do what they correctly think is right.

my first thrust in this conversation was that it's unreasonable to want to have power over people when there's nothing useful you can get from that power. then in response to Laur I conceded that people could just be acting unreasonably. which can come in either of the two forms above: a cognitive failure to figure out what there is reason to do, or a volitional failure to make yourself act in accordance with the reasons you think there are.

nobody is doing anything for teh evuls. they're either misapprehending reasons that aren't actually there, like out of irrational fear, overreacting to misperceived threats; or even though they can see on some level that that perception is inaccurate, they are still moved against their will to act on it, in a failure of self-control.

[ember narwhal]

The year is 2026; AI researchers have uploaded an experimental copy of Joseph McCarthy’s brain into the Marathon lore page.

I think one of the biggest surprises they could add into these new games is if they give us the pfhor to fight, but their butts, and only their butts, are like 5x bigger than they were originally.

[past gull]

of course people do things they intentionally think is wrong. children lie. applying moral relativism on a subjective, individual scale is insane. by that logic we wouldn’t be able to find people culpable for their actions. you’ve come to an otherwise correct conclusion that (effectively) infinite resources render scarcity-based economy obsolete. you’ve done that working on a completely abstract hypothetical in the form of a fictional universe within a video game’s lore.
can you realistically say that the ultra-rich within that world wouldn’t have necessarily come to the same conclusion, especially since they are living that reality? therefore, they’d either have to stop what they are doing - i.e. forcing people into pointless debt slavery, only for the sake of satiating their lust for power over others - since it’s objectively and provably wrong, or keep doing it with full knowledge of it being evil.
“a volitional failure to make [one]self act in accordance with the reasons you think there are [for doing something]” isn’t an argument against declaring that something someone is doing is evil. “oh, sorry I forced that guy to work gruelling hours in a coal mine for no particular reason, but I just couldn’t help myself, I just love it so much to see them get black lung!”

[simple garden]

Does NuChaloric burger taste good?

[ember narwhal]

I think it’d have to somehow reconstitute itself in the mouth to simulate the texture of the burger for me to consider it tasty.

I’ve never tried a liquid that tastes like a cheeseburger, but I think the liquid form would lead to a negative evaluation of taste overall, personally.

Eh, ramen and soup broths can be pretty savory and palatable….maybe it does taste good.

[strong perch]

bacon flavored __________

[fallow wraith]

okay ive got a question

Is there a faction

Who is like

friendly)

?

or their purpose is designed around helping

[thin dust]

What ones appear unfriendly to you?

[fallow wraith]

Arachne for starters

since they are like evil?

[thin dust]

Death cult =/= evil

[fallow wraith]

and maybe mida?

they seem

idk

anyways yes those two

the others i dont know enough about

[thin dust]

If killing somone isnt killing somone, is that just property damage?

[fallow wraith]

but i think shekiguchi is who imma go with

since they print the runner shells

[fallow wraith]

Hm

Actaully

[ember narwhal]

It’s kinda hard to see the death cult as evil when everyone is running around with temporary bodies.

[fallow wraith]

that is a fair point

[fallow wraith]

I suppose that is correct

[thin dust]

They seem "Gucci" lol

[fallow wraith]

however are they killing just because? or simply because it wont affect anyone

[fallow wraith]

lol, real

[ember narwhal]

Maybe they are just a materials company that wants sekiguchi to spend more $$$ to make more runners hahaha

[thin dust]

I feel like charter is a disgruntled Sekiguchi AI

[fallow wraith]

i see i see that makes sense

[fallow wraith]

true

hm

Well I will have to watch lore videos I suppose

[thin dust]

If you want specific available Faction Lore, this is the best you have

https://www.youtube.com/@MarathonTheGame/shorts

If you want to dive deeper, you will want to read

[ember narwhal]

https://marathon.bungie.org/story/Marathon_ARG_docs.html

ARG docs have some good nuggets too! Marathon story page in general is great

[thin dust]

There are "alright" lore content creators out there, but no one has really broken down the over all encompossing story super well

[ember narwhal]

For the ARG, you have to click the specific squares with logos. Navigating the pages takes some exploration

[fallow wraith]

I see I see

[ember narwhal]

My wife has been so tolerant of me spending the last 2 hours of each evening eyeball deep in all of this stuff haha

[fallow wraith]

lol thats awesome

[broken zinc]

While I don't think i would use the term "evil" for any of the factions, all of them are serving self interests and are not necessarily interested in helping the player. Traxus for example is very clear that the runner is a contract employee and they are not responsible for any damages incurred during the length of the contract. Is that evil? Probably not. Are they self serving? Yes.

Of the ones that feel self serving, i consider arachne, traxus the top of that list.

Neutral (not helping, not necessarily self serving, motivation-based) is mida

And "friendly" or helpful i would think is nucaloric, sekgen, and cyberacme

Of those, i guess the question would be, who do you trust? Who do you trust to follow through on their actions, or stay true to their word, not betray you, humanity, or their own company, etc.

The true answer is don't trust any of them. But maybe you find one more favorable than the others :)

For me, that's sekgen, all the way

[jolly igloo]

quick question, have we switched from runners to shells now?

[fallow wraith]

Mhm that does make sense! and I suppose that every faction has their own agenda

But for me

I guess I find NuCaloric the most engaging

[broken zinc]

I'm not sure i understand the question.

[sinful hamlet]

Nucaloric and Mida doesn’t look that bad tho. Yeah actually Mida do have some skeletons in the closet

[fallow wraith]

especially because they have Agricultural in their name

And I like plants

[broken zinc]

From the alpha nucaloric definitely had the most invested in what happened to the colony, and thus more story information, so it's a good one to choose

[fallow wraith]

like the term?

for what we are?

[sinful hamlet]

We do not talk about the hostile Mars takeover ‼️🔥

[jolly igloo]

yes

[fallow wraith]

idk I said runner shells

because

They are empty ues?

not actually a full person, but merely a shell

[broken zinc]

Runners are a title, a position. Shells are the bodies we inhabit while we work.

[fallow wraith]

at least as far as

[fallow wraith]

yup

[jolly igloo]

so if you were to refer to us what would you call us? Runner shell?

[fallow wraith]

I suppose

a Runner

[broken zinc]

A runner is an adjective to describe what we do. A shell describes our body

[fallow wraith]

Shell only really describes our bdoy

[vestal onyx]

just runner

or merc

[fallow wraith]

exactly what I was gonna say lols

but yeahs

[broken zinc]

"you are a runner" is what Oni tells us very early in the game

As I am a lifeguard

[fallow wraith]

maybe shell could be a slur for runners?

maybe

[jolly igloo]

I see i must learn proper grammar

[fallow wraith]

fire

well

i suppose

watwr

water

[broken zinc]

It's more the two words describe different things, both which exist in the game world. If you wanna know what to call the character you play as, it's a runner. The consciousness inhabits a shell, a synthetic body used when Running on tau ceti iv

[thin dust]

You, your consciousness , your ghost is basically piloting mini biomata gundams. Gundams had personalities too. Which is why I like this analogy

[thin dust]

Shells are also sold to the public. <---- pet shell

[fathom mason]

Runner is a noun when it says “you are a runner”. It is an adjective when it describes the shell “runner shell”.

We are runners, using runner shells

[viral sail]

Hello, I’ve been trying to watch a couple vids to get the gist of the lore.. and it sounds like we’re mercenaries for the major corporations that raced to the planet (forgot its name) but my question is: what are us runners trying to achieve for the corporations? Collect alien artifacts I guess? For any particular purpose?

[fallow wraith]

ooh true :3

[fathom mason]

Discover why the colony disappeared

The original trilogy is on iOS and well worth playing. Takes about 40 hours to finish them all

[turbid nebula]

No one at knows about the aliens or their artifacts at the beginning except for the UESC, as far as we know.

[thin dust]

Also free on steam!

[fathom mason]

Yep there too! I’m halfway through infinity. I play on easy and it’s hard enough for me 😂

[viral sail]

Ok thanks, makes sense.

[thin dust]

Idk what this says about me, but I read your name as "tenticore"

[thin dust]

Sprinting and punching does more damage!

Save your ammo

[fathom mason]

Interesting. I didn’t know that at all

[quiet panther]

which faction wants to take over everything

cyberacme description suggest that

[jolly bronze]

cyac analogous for 'google' or 'aws'

[quiet panther]

thank you

[fathom mason]

I think they all want that. They are mega corps besides mida

[thin dust]

If Traxxus could make their own shells

CyAc I feel prefers to just be able to see and control info their advantage

I didn't mean to reply lol

[fathom mason]

I like Traxus a lot. Reminds me of the Lannister’s in game of thrones. Rich and powerful, lion theme

[broken zinc]

I think it's interesting that the ai poses itself with a male lion, while speaking with and showing a female visage/voice

I tend to interpret this as the mascot of Traxus must be the male lion

[thin dust]

Didnt they also prefer to keep close relationships "in house"?

[thin dust]

Are they one AI or 2?

[broken zinc]

No idea

The ai shows the woman (and presumably speaks with her voice) sitting and the male lion behind her

People have theorized the lion is the ai that went rampant on mars

But we don't actually know

https://tenor.com/view/traxus-lion-traxus-marathon-vulcan-traxus-vulcan-gif-7943779886883663658

Vulcan is also a male name, from the Roman god of the same name, who lorded over fire, and metalworking