📚marathon-lore-discussion

[azure monolith]

ooooh

[unreal plank]

Wait how mamy marathons are there 😭😭 i knew there was previous games but i didnt realise there was so many

[azure monolith]

makes sense

[tropic eagle]

Is a theory. We really don’t know anything at this point and time

[agile cairn]

What is nu

[rotund stump]

NuMarathon

this one

[tropic eagle]

Marathon 2026

[finite night]

yeah because of 2's epilogue

[agile cairn]

Maybe THAT’S why it’s called Marathon

[rotund stump]

blame nucal for the slang 💀

[agile cairn]

Because of so many running timelines

Amazing writing Bungie

[subtle oracle]

Thats the idea. M:Inf "ended" and that our timeline but the earth is hard focused on TC4 and thats the side we're getting, not the durandal pov

[modern ember]

Omg just saw some new player inspired art with three runners in like a poly cube situation I think that games on track to do well

[finite night]

2 doesn't show w'rkncacnter getting released after events of it but it does happen

[rotund stump]

4, the trilogy happened in the 90s so we get to enjoy some funky 90s scifi concepts and themes once again lol

[azure monolith]

... uhm... is... when... didn't someone say it just... it was between or something in between M2 rewrite?

[tropic eagle]

Mfw there is a W'rkncacnter sleeping beneath Dire Marsh

[unreal plank]

Dammmm i need to read up on the lore

[remote magnet]

Ppossibly

[finite night]

or more correctly

[remote magnet]

I mean, there's one sleeping on earth. Why not also on tau ceto?

[finite night]

infnity prologue is also seperate timeline but it happens after 2

oh we can't forget also infnity manual

[tropic eagle]

Very true. The anomaly could be coming from a W'rkncacnter, or it’s the aftermath of Jjaro tech use

[finite night]

non important to the game but also one of timelines

[azure monolith]

THERES A MANUAL?

[rotund stump]

m1 happened, and then m2 we get taken aboard the ship durandal hijacked and we fight the s'pht war, trih xeem releases the wrkncacnter, m.inf alters the timeline to make it not happen, and we don't know the timeframe of nu aside from some established important dates and the perspective's on sol and tau ceti instead of lh'owon

[subtle oracle]

IVE CRACKED THE CASE

QUICKLY

SOMEONE TELL ME WHEN THE TRI XHEEM IS RELEASED

THE UEAR

[finite night]

yeah it's told from prespective of one of bad characters from 2

[azure monolith]

OH MY GOD.

[finite night]

it's basically sorta different version of 2

[azure monolith]

...this

this is fine

[rotund stump]

wait was it tfear?

[finite night]

yeah

[subtle oracle]

OKAY SO ILL DO IT

[rotund stump]

yeah I vaguely remember it LOL

[finite night]

t'fear retelling of 2 where shit go rather differently

it's just like to prepare player to shit that's gonna be with timelines lmao

and yes w'rkn gets released there too

[subtle oracle]

M1- 2794
M26 impact- 2794

M:inf Tri Xheem defeated 2811
M26 Anomaly/Contagion start...

2812

[tropic eagle]

Only issue I see with NuMarathon being after 1 is that Durandal still seems to be on Tau Ceti/The Marathon no? If someone can clear that up

[subtle oracle]

maybe

maybe we ficked the timeline

and that cause the anomaly

and thats why its CALLED the anomaly

[finite night]

well more proofs in piggy bank named "Nu-Marathon set in 7th timeline"

we will see in full release

[rotund stump]

there's also this tinfoil theory that tau ceti's alive and actively culling the colonists via the anomaly and contagion like antibodies in a wound

take that with a grain of salt

[tropic eagle]

Speaking on the Anomaly, we know it’s a temporal thing, is causing rampancy with the support AI Darius, and “something” killed Holt. Excited to see more of it

[finite night]

I kinda wish this channel had image perms, or some role like lore master idk who could post images but it's fine

[rotund stump]

if they do drop the wrkncacnter name and just refer it as the anomaly I wouldn't mind it either cuz wrkncacnter sounds so insanely 90s 💀

[tropic eagle]

And the anomaly was interfering with Darius’ shutdown from time_place_PRISON which immediately makes me think Wrkncancter since they are alllll about being imprisoned

[rotund stump]

no not the good ol 90s the your hair is white and your knees buckle when you squat kind of 90s

[finite night]

what's wrong with “Whirr cun kak inter”

[remote magnet]

W'reckingcactus

[rotund stump]

hey I'm just saying I'm not discriminating

[vestal onyx]

you're not supposed to be able to correctly pronounce it anyway so it's completely realistic if they have different names for it

I'm fine with the workcenter

Worcestershire sauce

[tropic rivet]

Didn’t it take a star to contain a wrkncacnter in the og games?

[finite night]

sure door handle

[remote magnet]

Wir-kin-canc-ter

[tropic eagle]

Yuh

They were swimming cozily in da sun

[rotund stump]

anything chaotic yes

blackholes, stars, you name it

just massive celestial entities

[sage lark]

Planet core could work

[rotund stump]

so you're pretty insane for blowing one of these prisons up in the first place and even more insane for pressing the universe's kill switch

(yes tfear)

(you)

[long sail]

did u see the pic of one

its actually so cool

cant post it here

[remote magnet]

To be fair, they didn't know that a grumpy local god of chaos was swimming in the sauce

[rotund stump]

somebody did a wrkncacnter concept art??

[long sail]

the potential for this game is so insane im hyped, imagine instead of fighting UESC you fight the Pfhor

[tropic eagle]

Yeah, MandaloreGaming commissioned someone to make it

I think

[gloomy zealot]

Does anyone know where to find transcripts for the Runner entries on the codex?

[long sail]

yeah I cant post pics in here its on google

[gloomy zealot]

I’ve heard a bit about Vandal’s and I got interested on the others

[rotund stump]

oh jesus 💀

[long sail]

artist rerecation of one, its like a space whale

[rotund stump]

ik everybody's except assassin's so ask away

I'll try to answer lol

[gloomy zealot]

Just a screenshot/transcript of them would be enough

Though with image perms, you can try tldr’ing em

[rotund stump]

can't do for transcripts but I can give tldrs 😭

yeah aight then

[gloomy zealot]

Yea- LMFAO

literally what I said

[rotund stump]

gimme a starting point rq

[gloomy zealot]

What’s the deal with the Triage shell?

[remote magnet]

Hm, just looked at the concept art and it's really underwhelming imo. Just a tyranid with a scythe

[gloomy zealot]

Like, what does his entry say about them

[sage lark]

Triage was a mining shell to keep martian miners safe from hazardous stuff

Tldr

[gloomy zealot]

Oh really? That’s pretty cool

I assumed he would be associated with healthcare on Mars or Earth

[rotund stump]

medical unit deployed to mines, med drone is proprietary traxus companion tech, reboot+ is part of the standard triage package

[sage lark]

Runners modified the Aux matrix to be more combat friendly because it had a soothing bedside tone

[gloomy zealot]

But a hazard/safety shell is a really cool idea

[rotund stump]

runenrs had to jailbreak and mod the aux matrix cuz yeah too caring

[rotund stump]

you are NOT taking my job

bitch

:(...

[sage lark]

Youre good i only played triage lmao

[gloomy zealot]

Makes the new short sting even more

[gloomy zealot]

Based

[rotund stump]

oh my god 😭 😭

[gloomy zealot]

Triage is my go to on teams

[rotund stump]

my dumbass also only mained recon it's ok

[gloomy zealot]

What about Recon? They have crossed UESC equipment so I’m guessing they have MIDA ties

[mortal wolf]

I played Triage then switched to Destroyer when I started feeling the bloodlust

[finite night]

triage is must in trios i believe

[rotund stump]

aha my turn

[gloomy zealot]

Aura moments > Useful abilities

/j

[tropic eagle]

Vandal is the one with MIDA ties

[gloomy zealot]

He’s my second main lol

[mortal wolf]

Doing a jump dash through a smoke then unloading into someone generates a lot of dopamine

[dull crescent]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1rkr4c5/strange_differences_between_new_and_classic/#lightbox @sage lark did you see this

[burnt nebula]

Eyyy by this time tomorrow we be RUNNIN!

[gloomy zealot]

Yeah, I know that. I thought the anti-UESC stuff also made them connected to MIDA
like, it’s pretty on the nose

[gloomy zealot]

In an hour, yes

[burnt nebula]

no its 24 hours now on steam

[gloomy zealot]

24h and 40min remain 👍 🤛

[burnt nebula]

damn i must be gettin in an hour early

[dull crescent]

the only thing i don't get here is how there's a decade gap allegedly between TC4 being attacked and contact lost

[gloomy zealot]

Either altered info or someone was keeping contacts even after the attack

Or timeline hopping shenanigans

You pick yours

[gloomy zealot]

Although

[rotund stump]

for context the UESC had a biomata military project, recon and destroyer were part of it and were made by the combat science labs (CSL hereafter), early models had a chance to scramble the neural matrix and make the user go crazy

fast forward, Consequences of Violence treaty got signed, project's shelved, shell schemas leaked on black market and us runners jumped at it, recons were used primarily to eventually crack every personality matrix

turns out the CSL implemented restrictions in the matrixes forcing people to do some stuff, partly why the project got shelved from public eye due to said user agency concerns (but rumored to still deploy destroyer shells against runner ops in sol)

whew

and seeker drone's a kitbashed bug nade, black market tech

I promise the next one won't be as long LOL

[gloomy zealot]

Runners being used as sleeper agents is honestly horrifying but expected

[rotund stump]

per the war crime loving government

[gloomy zealot]

Undermined social class lore

I really hope there’s some kind of light at the end of the tunnel

[finite night]

i feel like "humans" that would be encountered in game might be sleeper agent battleroids since they mention newer battlesroid blending and doing other tasks perfectly

[gloomy zealot]

Not expecting it but it would be a good surprise

[rotund stump]

oh mb not blackbird causing psychosis it's the shell itself with how much info it shoves in the user's brain at once

[tropic eagle]

Or simulacrums

[gloomy zealot]

Information overload pretty much destroying someone’s mind is gnarly as heck

Jeez

[rotund stump]

we just chalk up the risks like usual 💀

sekgen reweaves it anyway

yawn

[remote magnet]

When the pfhor attacked, leela, one of the marathons AIs send the distresssignal we got. The pfhor nuked tau cetis spaceport, so people couldn't leave the planet anymore. Maybe all theyr communication tech was also in saved spaceport?

[gloomy zealot]

The NuMarathon universe is getting into grimdark territory and I honestly fw it

Like, this is some hopeless shit

[rotund stump]

lemme segue into destroyer rq then

[finite night]

simulacrums is most likely because we AREN'T doing any shit against singular battleroid 🔥 🗣️ 🔥 🔥 🗣️

[dull crescent]

i guess that oir the LoS thing is from the PoV of Sol @ lightspeed comms

[tropic eagle]

HEHE

[dull crescent]

almsot but the scale aint there just yet

[tiny pewter]

Biggest question is: when did they start to eat each other? I found the logs in Dire Marsh of a professor complaining to an IA that the crops are not getting grown, while the AI starts to hallucinate about some visions.

[gloomy zealot]

Knowing how Bungie usually does their lore, I think the scale is there, they just haven’t showed it off

[remote magnet]

No clue

[tiny pewter]

Definitely

[dull crescent]

it depends what level of grimdark you're used to - marathon universe is a lot tighter in scale than, say, 40k, or even halo, i think?

[safe idol]

who does arthur morgans voice actor even voice in the game i heard him once in the opening cutscene bro

[rotund stump]

on top of the above info despite the backend deployments destroyer's technically considered a walking war crime machine with the treaty in place, destroyer shells are also majorly considered for corpo security detail

riot barricade's made of hard light and was first used by police units, SnD during the CSL times was considered "too effective" to the point where it started clouding the user's mind, also another reasons for shelving the project

[tropic eagle]

Grimdark is based off scale?

[short ingot]

Question for those who played the original marathon years ago, how many entities/enemies are there? Cause till now i’ve only noticed those UESC robots and compiler. Surely there are more no??

[gloomy zealot]

Robocop

[safe idol]

ye i was gonna say i really hope theres more than just this

[tiny pewter]

There will be some phony stuff in the cyro chambers for sure.

[dull crescent]

i think it lends itself to being massive scale yeah, because it's part of what makes the world seem so insanely hopeless to the subject

[sage lark]

its a live service game they are gonna build on it

[rotund stump]

I'm not too sure about assassin's lore but ik its synth smoke

[tropic eagle]

I see. Thanks

[gloomy zealot]

Peter Weller as Destroyer would fit like a glove

Someone needs to make that edit

[finite night]

quite a lot

basically stuff you seen in promos and in game is not even surface

[short ingot]

Are they all mostly AI ish and robotics??

[safe idol]

who does roger clark voice in this game ive only heard him once

[finite night]

aliens

more like halo if you played it

[dull crescent]

i don't think it inherently needs it, but not every dark story is grimdark, and when you look at true grimdark stuff like the 40k universe, it's on the scale of millions or billions of suffering souls, thousands of star systems grinding away i ntheir own economic/govt system, etc

[short ingot]

Interesting

[rotund stump]

first used by firefighting units, later retrofitted to have nano sensors in the synth smoke itself synced to assassin's camo filter to make him autocloak in smoke

[safe idol]

do we have any sort of confirmation that this is true

[short ingot]

Quite a lot of content and lore then

[gloomy zealot]

Oooooh that’s a pretty reasonable explanation to the cloak

[finite night]

s'pht is clearly not looking like humans that's for sure lmao

[rotund stump]

drop it on a destroyer in psychosis

[finite night]

as for them being in game i think it's obvious

[rotund stump]

too hot sir cool down

[finite night]

M1 still happens

[safe idol]

i wouldnt really call it obvious because we havent heard a singular word about them

the only thing we have heard is that the compiler is on cryo archive

[dull crescent]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1rkr4c5/strange_differences_between_new_and_classic/#lightbox there are defo some differences

[safe idol]

thats all theyve said

[short ingot]

Probably will introduce them with seasons

[tropic eagle]

Yeah I don’t think NuMarathon is anywhere near the bleakness of what constitutes something as Grimdark

[finite night]

yeah that's why I said earlier this day that game might be reboot where events similar to M1 happens

[dull crescent]

numarathon to me feels like the cyberpunk universe in 700 years

[safe idol]

hope so, i love new enemy races

[dull crescent]

it's dystopian but i woudlnt say grimdark

[tropic eagle]

The debt traps, the revolts, the dystopia

[finite night]

I don't think you wanna spoil stuff to new players or old comers

[tropic eagle]

Very cyberpunk

[safe idol]

we shall see i guess but again i wouldnt call it obvious when there isnt any evidence supporting it

[gloomy zealot]

It’s not the right term, honestly. It was just the hopeless vibe that led me to call it that

[safe idol]

id find it awesome if there really is a whole new race of spht in the cryo archive but i doubt it

[dull crescent]

i mean, given the topic of 2077 (soulripper, transferring past the blackwall, existing on the net) it's very on brand

[short ingot]

Lore seems pretty interesting honestly, tried getting into it but i get lost with every video i watch lol

[gloomy zealot]

The Marathon experience for you

[dull crescent]

what we've seen of numarathon for me feels like it's to cyberpunk as event horizon is to the 40k universe

[safe idol]

i think its so cool that the only sign of life on the uesc marathon (that went missing for 60 years) is a cryptic message, mustve been so confusing for colonies

[dull crescent]

its like unofficial canon lol

[gloomy zealot]

Yeah, it’s moreso like C2077

Though I think it’s still incredibly dark

[dull crescent]

ofc, but so is cp77. right

there's enough dark shit there

[tropic eagle]

When Durandal sends a distress signal a century later to do a lil trolling

[tiny pewter]

Event Horizon is dark as shit, however we don't really know what will happen here in the end, but maybe not a portal to hell(ish dimension).

[safe idol]

i really hope we hear durandal a lot in the game and not just as a rare message when you load in

[dull crescent]

yeah dont read too much into the analogy, just wanted to highlight the unofficial canon idea

numarathon feels like a logical extension of the cyberpunk universe

[tropic eagle]

I hope so too. Hopefully we hear him a lot when we raid the marathon

[dull crescent]

just as event horizon feels like a genuine lookin to the pre-40k universe

same vibes, same high level themes

[short ingot]

This might sound dumb but I’ve always wondered, how does one explain going into dire march for example and simply finding loot? Wouldn’t it be empty and looted lore wise?

I mean i get it’s a game cycle

But would there be an explanation on how or why runners/shells would go to the same place again?

[dull crescent]

the anomaly makes all the junk reappear

[severe kestrel]

this is the question you just have to not ask when u play extraction shooters

[dull crescent]

(but i dont think individual game lobbies are canon)

[tropic eagle]

Priority contracts

The contracts are the story and motivation to go to these places in-lore

[modern ember]

hang out

[short ingot]

Yeah ik lol, but i feel it could make sense with how marathon is

[safe idol]

ya u could say the same with arc and such because all of the stuff should already be looted

[sage lark]

how

[tropic eagle]

Where we hangin’ out

[safe idol]

its just how extraction shooters work

[sage lark]

its a game

yes

[safe idol]

the gameplay loop wouldnt work if it was all looted already

[short ingot]

Yeah true but with arc you couldn’t really make any sense with how loot just simply reappears, with marathon however i felt like there could be a reasoning behind it

[safe idol]

John marathon placed the implant so we could go find it and just trash it

[scenic summit]

Stuff can just teleport in

For all I know Durandal could be teleporting stuff in to keep the conflict going on purpose

[gloomy zealot]

The Gatherer Shell comes after the round is over and puts things back into place for the next round of runners

[bright jungle]

I can’t wait to see how they incorporate Durandal n all that shit

It’s gonna be peak

[remote magnet]

The colonists are all still there, living they're lives, just phaseshiftet, and we are stealing they're stuff

[finite night]

tycho

[scenic summit]

There could be maybe even literally any plot hole in the story or game mechanics and the answer could be "because Durandal thought it would be interesting if that happened"

[dull crescent]

lmao

where's my mf keys
and some cyberpunk dick 60degrees away moved it overnight

[remote magnet]

This lol

[silver slate]

I gonna meditate until the game launchs on 10 am pst zulu standard time . Ser you guys in agharta

[drifting garnet]

Although practically speaking, considering the OG trilogy is +30 years old, aka multiple generation of gamers who've never played the original at launch, any retcons would be inevitable and necessary so people don't feel like they need to play the old games

[scenic summit]

It was part of Durandal's plan to annoy you slightly today. All according to plan.

[dull crescent]

the originals are older than i am

i was just barely old enough to play CE on launch

[drifting garnet]

It's good that at least they're super accessible to play thanks to Aleph-1 but in terms of actually playing it...yeah they feel like games that came out in the mid-90s, for better and for worse, lol

[scenic summit]

And then start a war that lasts years or something later, idk how I'm feeling today

I think. I don't know how much he's levelled out.

For (Pfhor) context...

"You should encounter little organized
resistance because the Pfhor are
preoccupied.

I've been introducing them to the magic of
orbital bombardment."
-Durandal

He's a bit weird with his violence

[dull crescent]

how did the pfhor get blasted so hard by like 10 cyborgs

[plain stratus]

They’re like marathons version of Spartans

So they’re goated

[dull crescent]

right but like
this is an alien race with interstellar FTL and a whole ass slave species
vs 30,000 idiots and 3 LLMs

and they lose?

[sage lark]

it was a small scout force

[dull crescent]

don't they get assblasted back to their homeworld by the end?

[sage lark]

i dont know you should just watch the hiddenxperia videos they explain it well

[silver slate]

I need some Nucaloric Maruchan

[agile cairn]

The lore behind ROOK, is it a bot with human consciousness? How does that work if so, because the UESC bots are programmed, correct? Or are the ROOKs just bots who gained sentience?

[sage lark]

same as other shells just a salvaged uesc shell

[drifting garnet]

Hey now! You don't gotta insult those three by saying they're just better ChatGPT!

[sage lark]

cheaper alternative to the other shells

[silver slate]

The rooks are a sekeleton of a biomata configure to camouflage as a uesc trooper

[haughty sapphire]

They’re salvaged uesc

Thought that was clear by their design

[rotund stump]

we're ported into a rook frame on site, signal masking is very recent black market tech (developer unknown, spreaded like wildfire in the back channels) and due to the simplicity of being a proto shell quick repair's a lot easier using the same tech you would normally rez a teammate with

I'm still wondering how far we can stretch the definition of DBNO and ASF

destroyer in the MV has an entire arm blown off there's no way quick repair's able to be fix it this fast lol

and I don't think sekgen would just leave emergency weaveworms in a shell to reattach a part

unless they do but yk

[lilac cedar]

Friendly reminder that you can preload. 😀

[eternal shell]

in that scenario i suspect it's up to the destroyer to extract and then get medical care

[silver slate]

I thought the opposite a skeleton of a shell painted to look like a uesc bot to blend in

[sage lark]

i dont think that makes a ton of sense, it looks like the UESC bots, and its a scavenger, you barely enter with anything

[haughty sapphire]

To me it looks like a UESC recruit salvaged and painted by someone like MIDA

[sage lark]

so it sets the vibe that its bottom of the barrel stuff

yeah

which its how its conveyed in gameplay aswell

[storm field]

Sorry to ask in here, general chat is mental and never makes sense:

Where can I report changes I’d like to see in the game?

For eg:

• Doubling bag sizes (plus making purple/gold even bigger) OR increasing med and ammo stack size
• Making weapon mods way easier to remove and attach in raid
• No wallet max capacity
• No auto sell loot

Etc

[violet sapphire]

Ya

[violet sapphire]

Feedback channel

[sage lark]

#1475613238438658068

[dull crescent]

why would we not want auto sell loot lol

[queen adder]

so did anyone pick up on environmental lore during the slam?

[steel urchin]

I like this

[sage lark]

people wanna hoard valuables i guess

[queen adder]

there's in your face stuff like nucal missions

[storm field]

Because atm there’s a money cap. So we can wait to sell when we are low on funds to buy gear as it stands

Otherwise we auto sell loot when at max money and essentially lose money

[queen adder]

but they've obviously tried to tell some stories with how things are laid out

[dull crescent]

the money cap is there to encourage you to buy gear and run with it

finishing a run when you're at teh cap is a skill issue

[queen adder]

Drumming out players because you didn't bother to not punch them in the face is a business skill issue

[dull crescent]

hwo are you getting punched in the face when you're at wallet cap xd

[queen adder]

so then who cares?

[dull crescent]

eveyr aspect of the game's design is built to encourage you not to hoard lookt and money

[storm field]

I couldn’t see this on the side before. Thank you!

[sage lark]

yeah its hidden by default atleast for me

idk

[stable tartan]

i just knew there was silk cap not money cap

[remote magnet]

Not much. I found the colonists with the exploded head from the trailer floating near the anomaly, that was kinda cool

[queen adder]

i only had a few rook runs where I started looking around but I think there was some interesting stuff based on where things were?

there's kind of an underlying question of "where are the bodies" which is hard to know if its legit or just "don't worry about it, we're not rendering that"

[sage lark]

No they mention it in logs too

Lot of bodies missing

[queen adder]

okay cool

the spot i probably got the best look at (because it's a fucking killzone and it took me awhile to click on that) is that infested spot

in columns

dunno if there's straight up logs explaining what's going on there but obviously something happened with ticks

and someone locked themselves in

but then where's the body

or did they climb out the vent

[light python]

I only got the first couple logs down this path, but one of the future entries was labeled "Tick Incident"

I think the ticks we interact with were a failed bioengineering outcome

Like they were trying to uh, milk them

(I think that they are actually uh, juicing them)

[remote magnet]

There's also the crops failing due to an unknown contaminant. Something on Tau Ceti messes with living things, even AIs

[light python]

(It's Tick Milk in the sense that Almond Milk is)

[queen adder]

aren't ticks also clearly the lower form of a marathon enemy?

i forget which one

[light python]

Lurkers

Hard to say what their relationship to lurkers is

[remote magnet]

I di.ly remember a codex entry calling them natural fauna of Tau Ceti, no?

[light python]

The starvation angle is weird

[eternal shell]

if they're modified lurkers: absolutely horrible choice to modify the exploding insect to make food

[queen adder]

needs must

[light python]

They might have been confused about what's native

It's pretty clear there was a Pfhor attack, and that they were trying to figure themselves out much diminished after it. It's unclear if the Tick stuff was before or after that,

[queen adder]

or they actually are native AND part of the larger empire?

[eternal shell]

one thing i always found funny about the og trilogy is that the pfhor must have brought those animals along to tau ceti but you never see them otherwise

[remote magnet]

The colony precedes the invasion though

[light python]

but the way I'm wanting to read it is, the marathon had agricultural faclities. Pre-attack, they put some of the ag stuff down planetside for the colony, but still were producing and shipping down food

But the attack wrecked the Marathon

So they lost access to a bunch of food stores, they lost access to a bunch of workng Ag facilities,

and then they started to get real interested in alternatives

[unreal slate]

One thing we know for sure is they brought drinkable cheeseburgers with them

[remote magnet]

Or the timelinefuckery of infinite messed up the timeline so bad that suddenly lookers where always on Tau Ceti

[unreal slate]

it's true

[light python]

I think the drinkable cheesburger "cave johnson" founder's message

plus the fact that I found mine in a locked office safe

Is just hilarious

Drinkable cheeseburgers were clearly actual treasure by the end

I do

[unreal slate]

always were

[light python]

Sign: the old-style terminals down on the colony have the new marathon symbol

I think that's a subtle marker of timeline difference.

[remote magnet]

No no, you misread the situation. They tried to contain the abomination

[light python]

Differences could go back to the Clinton administration or further

[livid lion]

It would be funny if TC Ticks are immature Lh’owon Ticks

[cold light]

Oh wait, you're right. I didn't even realize that it's different like that.

[light python]

Bill Clinton is the only canonical american president

Is that true?

I thought M1 ends with Durandal leaving without you

or who takes the Marathon Battleroid and when is a major pivot of universal survival

There's space for it to have happened that way, I think.

Though - and this is fridge logic stuff but - the weapons.

No original marathon weapons on the colony that would have been armed with that stuff only

The fridge logic part is: what time period are the weapons we use from?

[eternal shell]

I'm sure you're wondering why you were in stasis, what happened to the Marathon and Tau Ceti, and most of all where your rocket launcher and fusion gun are. There'll be plenty of time for explanations later.

not the first time we've asked "but where's the guns gone"

[dull crescent]

can't wait for us to get rocket launchers tbh

bungie game without a 2 tube rocket launcher wtf

[light python]

I am also mad that Bungie has repeatedly decided that "fusion pistol" is a forbidden string

[autumn cipher]

Ikr it's crazy

[light python]

I love the V11 Punch but why doesn't it chirp and shoot shinies and have the word "fusion" in its name

Been my favorite gun for 30 years and these fuckers out here making "plasma" and "volt" pistols that have a charge secondary fire.

[inner stag]

yall think were gonna get any pfhor, i really hope so

[dull crescent]

probs get some major aliens by season 3

[light python]

Not in this season

[inner stag]

i js really wanna see some of the original games enemies in this

i know the compiler was shown already looked awesome

[light python]

I want to see the base slaver dudes being huge problems

Recontextualize the battleroid's feats as insanely powerful

Whole server full of runners trying to deal with a single Drinniol hulk just pouring blood out of its wounds and relentlessly advancing, slapping runners straight to consciousness-eject with a single swing

[inner stag]

it looks like that will happen considering it was just one compiler in the trailer

in the old games you kill like 5 of them in one minute

[light python]

Ah but those were enslaved S'Phit

they fight poorly on purpose

[eternal shell]

i maintain that compilers in general arent that hardcore

but the one we'll meet will be, because of jjarro tech

[light python]

Depends on how hackable your body happens to be

[storm field]

I hope there’s a futuristic Gallerhorn

[random hornet]

Is there a quiz I can take somewhere to determine which faction I align most with?

[queen adder]

it's kinda hard to gauge since our only other encounter with them we could punch through them

[inner stag]

yes

[real hazel]

no just pick arachne

[random hornet]

Propaganda in the lore chat. Love it

[inner stag]

DONT pick arachne, pick Traxus because of the lion

[eternal shell]

the way i see it is, the security officer is damn powerful sure but he's using standard weapons against them. and bobs/vacbobs in 2/infinity fight compilers reasonably well too

[random hornet]

Mida or the sekgen scream out to me

[real hazel]

pick arachne we’re a death cult

full of hot people

:p

[remote magnet]

There is. It's on the tau ceti website, don't have the link on me

[random hornet]

Perfect thanks

[real hazel]

arachne restricted comms also so full of propaganda

[finite night]

arachne are larpers

[real hazel]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/850771986379702293/1462237101474185448/arachne_skeletonbangingonshield.gif

arachne skeleton banging on shield.gif

:p

[random hornet]

i got mida on the quiz

[eternal shell]

i forgot what i got on the quiz but i know i like cyacs green on black aesthetic

but if tycho shows up and starts handing out contracts im switching

[hazy mist]

i got traxus on mine

[real hazel]

ignore the quiz be arachne

[fickle creek]

I got total equilibrium

[serene pelican]

my result was mida a hairsbreadth above arachne 😆

[onyx bluff]

I was equal between traxus, sek, mida and archne

[finite night]

tycho to me seems more like arachne guy

[eternal shell]

no he doesnt care about skins

he just wants you to drink your daily allowance of vacuum

and he wants to destroy durandal

[light python]

Yeah I think if anything Tycho is a Pfhor slave, and the Pfhor are going to get along with one human faction, if any: Traxus.

Same totalizing fascist worldview.

[naive shell]

Yo where’s the quiz

[real hazel]

there’s no quiz join arachne

[violet sapphire]

The Ph’for wouldn’t do that lol they’re an alien supremacist race

They just want slaves

[real hazel]

kill everything and be nothing

[light python]

So does Traxus!

[naive shell]

I wanna see it anyways

For fun

Send it

[real hazel]

it’s somewhere on their site i can’t send links

[pliant elm]

Pfhor would enslave, everything - and Tycho would destroy, everything.

[violet sapphire]

Traxus wants a consumer base which is why they intentionally avoid pissing off the UESC

thinking they’d ally with the Ph’for is not accurate they’re more likely to fight them

[light python]

I don't think that's true! I think you're describing NuCaloric

I think Traxus would happily overthrow the UESC if they thought they could,

[violet sapphire]

Uhhh

[light python]

put mind control chips in everyone

[green plume]

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

nucal burger slop

[violet sapphire]

Overthrowing the UESC and allying with the Ph’for are two very different things lol

[green plume]

yeah lets ally with the space slaving alien race... heresy detected.

[remote magnet]

Wrong setting mate

[light python]

The Pfhor (pronounced FOUR!) might be uh, much reduced and in need of allies. And Traxus seems to me to be the only human faction that would play in that particular ballgame.

[violet sapphire]

The Ph’for typically dominate and extensively modify anybody they conquer, like juggernauts or Compilers

[light python]

Strong PTMC (from Descent II) vibes off Traxus.

Expect them to start calling me "Material Defender"

[violet sapphire]

The Ph’for are not in need of allies at all they’re a transgalactic empire

We’ve only seen a single battle fleet

They can kill space gods

[light python]

Well, we don't know what happened. Hundreds of years ago, in at least some timelines, they got their faces kicked in.

[violet sapphire]

In fact humans are SO useless to the Ph’for as slaves they’d rather wipe us all out lmao

[light python]

They can't kill space gods, they can only accidentally let them out.

[violet sapphire]

This is canonical and in several terminals

[fickle creek]

Which the UESC might be trying to do

[light python]

I don't think they've made a final ruling on humanity's suitability for enslavement

[green plume]

Do they even know the workingactors are there?

[violet sapphire]

One sec

[real hazel]

why even discuss non arachne factions :p

[light python]

I know they have a department dedicated to developing extermination options for species unsuitable for enslavement

[real hazel]

arachne skeleton banging shield gif

[vivid terrace]

Everyone needs targets

[light python]

But they sure did load a bunch of BoBs into stasis chambers for a species committed to that point of view.

[violet sapphire]

“The elaborate Pfhor bureaucracy has a
Ministry for the Eradication Through
Imitation of Hostile Species Unsuitable for
Enslavement”

[ripe sparrow]

yo guys, a silly question but what do nucaloric do besides providing like heals for runners?

[light python]

They produce consumer goods, especially food.

[green plume]

make food out of slop

[violet sapphire]

They make all food for sol as far as we know

[violet sapphire]

They use them against Tau Ceti

[vivid terrace]

Food; they’re very big on agricultural production. Helped save Mars during a famine of if I recall

[remote magnet]

Food, agriculture, pharmaceutical, make up, cars... All basic consumer goods

[violet sapphire]

I think we’re getting into the weeds though, the Ph’for would NOT ally with any human faction. They have dozens of slave races at hand

[vivid terrace]

Essentially Everywhere

[light python]

I know, that's where the bomBoBs come from, but I don't think the involvement of a department with that name actually represents a formal conclusion

[ripe sparrow]

oh so they’re pretty solid, alright, ty guys

[violet sapphire]

And have no interest in being allied with a “lesser race”

[light python]

I do think they're pretty salty, in M2, about losing a ship to humans, and rule them maybe too risky on that ground

Since they show up with nukes, which is petulant post-slave-revolt behavior from them.

[green plume]

Sir, phor are the lesser race.

[violet sapphire]

Now the S’pht or Jjaro? That I could see. I personally think that Sekiguchi has some Jjaro tech floating around in the worm room

[violet sapphire]

Yeah just from the perspective of their philosophy

They’re the inheritors of the universe in their opinion

[green plume]

I wonder how much of their stuff is found Jjaro tech

[light python]

Yeah but what if the S'Phit slave rebellion has been playing out on them?

[violet sapphire]

I definitely think we could see the Ph’for Balkanize and ally with some alien races that freed themselves

[violet sapphire]

Well then why would they ally with the people that freed them lol

[real hazel]

:(

[green plume]

Didn't Sekiguchi have a hand in making the battleroids which use Jjaro tech?

[light python]

It's clear that Durandal didn't teach the UESC to do the warp capable fusion missile thing, so combined human-11th fleets probably didn't wipe them out

[naive shell]

I got mida

[violet sapphire]

Yep, they also have some sketchy leaps in technology lol

[light python]

Sekiguchi didn't have anything to do with the battleroids as far as I know

[violet sapphire]

I think the fact they were locked in beta indicates there’s something go with them

[hot thicket]

have we got P'for sympathizers i see

[green plume]

Yeah they probably exploiting TF out of that tech

[violet sapphire]

MIDA guy sympathizing with Ph’for who coulda seen it coming 🫩

[vivid terrace]

Friends help friends explore the heat equation of life-death

[delicate kiln]

Could use a burger rn

[hot thicket]

Jeez i was gonna make a typical leftist anarchist joke but XD it writes it self

[violet sapphire]

The anomaly is also I think almost definitely Jjaro adjacent

I’d be kinda surprised if it wasn’t

[hot thicket]

The jjara were at tau ceti, for a reason

that reason is the same reason were being sent down

[violet sapphire]

Yeah I think the question is was there always an outpost or did Durandal bring something back

[remote magnet]

Sorry, Sekiguchi Genetics is an reputable philanthropist organisation solely dedicated to the advancement and betterment of the human race

[hot thicket]

do you guys really buy the, recover our propreitary technology bull

[violet sapphire]

Yeah and CyAc has 3 months cloud storage free my man

[hot thicket]

its true, but they charge you for those 3 months after the trial period

thats how we get into debt

[violet sapphire]

I wonder what APR rates are looking like in marathon land

[violet sapphire]

I think the proprietary technology is a looooose interpretation by corporate lawyers lol

It’s been what almost 400 years what could they possibly be missing

They want that juicy juicy Jjaro god power

[remote magnet]

Sekiguchi. You might be indebted, but you'll be indebted FOREVER! ☺️

[scarlet turtle]

is there a good source of complete marathon lore up to this point?

[green plume]

jakethealright and hiddenxperia on youtube

[violet sapphire]

Going further into debt to buy a shell instead of declaring bankruptcy

[scarlet turtle]

anything written?

[violet sapphire]

And then leaving the solar system so no debt collectors can get you

Holy based

[green plume]

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

[sage lark]

enjoy trillion billion pages

[trim basin]

Literally watchin this right now. It's good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDHhNALaLr4

[green plume]

that whole website

[remote magnet]

Hey, that's just smart business practice

[violet sapphire]

The wiki, its very dense but Hamish is good about including potential interpretations and the nitty gritty

[valid pewter]

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

[violet sapphire]

It’s the link Contagion sent

[valid pewter]

Hammish Sinclair my beloved

[violet sapphire]

We put a feedback post about having him in the game somehow if u want to bump :p

[valid pewter]

Link?

[violet sapphire]

I’m gna forward here feedback channel disappeared for me lol

[real hazel]

only arachne friends

everyone else is evil nd shit

[violet sapphire]

Don’t yall worship sekiguchi 🤔

[clear zinc]

Just injected myself in… the humans are gone correct?

[tired grail]

https://tenor.com/view/bungie-marathon-new-marathon-nu-marathon-bungie-marathon-gif-2701323247976763654

[violet sapphire]

The ones on the colony

Sol is still fine as far as we know

[clear zinc]

Ok. I got caught up to speed with nucaloric.

[violet sapphire]

Yep humanity is still doing good back at home, we’re just trying to figure out what happened at Tau Ceti

Well

Doing “good”

I still can’t get over how a 2 second clip of UESC bots in a dropship mogged every runner in the new cinematic

They did not need to aura farm that hard

[real hazel]

get caught up with arachne

atp it’s all propaganda idek

arachne skeleton banging shield gif

[cinder lance]

-real eyes realize real lies

[real hazel]

[violet sapphire]

I want u to know CyAc monitors all the Arachne chats and we saw your people talking about how ur tryna see what’s under ur bosses cloak

Little freakaleeks over here man

[sharp quarry]

Hey...was there a second colony?

[real hazel]

no shame

[sharp quarry]

Someone on reddit is telling me there were two colonies, one that was totally destroyed and one that came afte.r

I know that's not true

but they're saying it so confidently

[violet sapphire]

Yeah they’re wrong lol

[sharp quarry]

that I'm starting to wonder if I'm wrong

[violet sapphire]

There’s a second planet in marathon classic but it’s not a human colony

No idea what they’re talking about but they’re misinformed

If they’re talking about Lhowon that’s not a human colony it’s the S’pht home world

[sharp quarry]

I said that the colony not being nuked to bedrock was evidence we are not in the m2 timeline, they said:

"The colony likely was nuked to bedrock as we don’t see it in the new game. We only see the ruins from the recolonization and not the original colonization. "

and like...what?

[green plume]

nah infinity has def jumbled some stuff up and we don't know what happened in the time gap from 1 to 2/infinity

[violet sapphire]

Yeah we’re pretty assuredly not in the M2 timeline, I think maybe some M2 things have happened but not all

[pliant elm]

I'm more skeptical of the fact there's humans back in Tau Ceti IV again - why. Lol. And how. And why. And how.

[violet sapphire]

For example it appears the S’pht are free

[sharp quarry]

What do you mean?

[violet sapphire]

I don’t think there’s any like meat humans there

[pliant elm]

Isn't this new storyline about the disappearance of colonists there?

[sharp quarry]

Yeah, the original colonists from the Marathon

[violet sapphire]

Yeah but it’s referencing the original colony

[sharp quarry]

The second Pfhor attack didn't wipe them out in this timeline

[violet sapphire]

The one the Security Officer was on

[sharp quarry]

or, it did, just a lot later

instead of nukes they used the Anomaly

it seems

[green plume]

If there was a second phor attack

[sharp quarry]

I don't see why there wouldn't be, why would the timeline have changed that much in 3 months?

[violet sapphire]

Either that or they enslaved everybody

There’s no bodies for whatever reason

[sharp quarry]

They would've had to come back 33 years later and do that, as the colony was running for many years after that attack

[pliant elm]

Wait so this game is set to find out why humans on Tau Ceti IV stopped responding from the original game?

[violet sapphire]

Yep

[sharp quarry]

Not as many as there were colonists, but there are some, mostly exploded and/or overcome by the fungus

[violet sapphire]

Yeah I still think one of the seasons is gonna be fungus season

Considering the M2 developer notes

[spring kettle]

So I'm desperate for anything Marathon until tomorrow and I'm just watching the short films over again and glitch and void/assasin and vandal, both have the same child picture. I dont think theres been a common consensus on what it means but could it be that a lot of these runners are just ctrl c/v'd? The short film shows the two computers that presumably the both of them were being hosted on, and while having different layouts: glitch's has a prominent marking "CD-818" and Void has a very small hidden marking "PH850". Out of the markings on both, these two are the closest, maybe hinting at different spun up versions? CD or PH referring to who owns it or something, and 850 being a later version of 818. (Void is also more disconnected) Sorry for throwing all this out there just bored at work

[queen adder]

my take is yeah they're either copies or straight up AI being gaslit into thinking it's a human

[sharp quarry]

Outdated info, outdated lore, not really a relevant question anymore. Though one could simply assume that the glitch and the void at the end are simply the same runner in a different shell.

[violet sapphire]

We’ve had this discussion a few times and probably not, each runner is a distinct person, it’s probably the same person using different shells

[sharp quarry]

Not likely, they're advertising this service in sol, why advertise for something you're not actually doing?

[torpid anvil]

Played all three of the original games when they came out. I’m having a hard time figuring out where this one picks up. So about 100 years after the events of the first game, but all of the events from Durandal and Infinity did happen, correct?

[sharp quarry]

Yes, this is in the 7th infinity timeline or one very similar to it.

[spring kettle]

But they're both present at the same time?

[violet sapphire]

So far the only thing we know is concrete is marathon 1 and I guess pathways

[queen adder]

i can think of a few possible reasons

[sharp quarry]

Two people can wear a void shell at the same time

[queen adder]

for starters might just be "we need input data even if the people who sign up are functionally killed" and could also be "This would be STUPID illegal so we pretend otherwise"

[sharp quarry]

That first void isn't necessarily the second void

[violet sapphire]

Shells are all mass produced

[spring kettle]

I suppose

[violet sapphire]

I think the real question or conundrum is the loss of self when having your consciousness transferred dozens to hundreds of times

Are you still you

[torpid anvil]

Ok, and even though the whole colony was killed at the end of 1, there was somehow 30000 in Tau Ceti right before the start of the new game?

[queen adder]

and we've straight up got lines on run start about checking consistency, doing assert statements, and restoring from backups

[violet sapphire]

But the shells have multiple built in failsafes for HUMAN consciousness to be more comfortable in the shell, I.e. the personality constructs

It would appear that yes each runner is a distinct human consciousness, that being the player

[queen adder]

actually while i'm at it, do we actually know how AI's are made in marathon? Is it just "code" or jjaro tech or rip someone's mind apart or what?

[violet sapphire]

Probably a lil bit of both

[queen adder]

yeah that's where my money would be but i don't recall if there's any real explanation

[violet sapphire]

Even the Ph’for are amazed by human AI, and Durandal integrates with a Jjaro AI with basically no issues

[sharp quarry]

Well in the first, that's just what is happening either way. It's a brain pattern copy, you can't "transplant" a soul, there's no inherent property of "you" that can be moved from one body into another. So if your identity isn't tied to your memories and personality, and instead you attribute it to your flesh, you are in fact dead, even if it's exactly as advertised. In the second, why advertise it at all? Why tell aynone? Just keep it a secret. "We're trying to prevent rampancy by tricking AI into thinking they're people" doesn't need to be public.

[hot thicket]

are we going to help the final story somehow

is it gonna turn out that we helped piece together the thoth Durandal hybrid by running ourselves to death

[queen adder]

Yes but there's a difference between a copy of you showing up somewhere else and a copy of you being used for training data. Don't want to go down the entire philosophical rabbit hole since yeah it shouldn't matter but it also depends on if normal people get that or not (or if there is literal atom by atom movement of your neurons or something).

For the second, because it can't be secret?

[violet sapphire]

It also raises the issue that if the runners are AI, why are we mercenaries. Why aren’t we beholden to the orders of the faction that made us.

[spring kettle]

I mean we don't know for sure they're copies, its pitched as digitally uploaded minds and until you got proof otherwise I don't think you can say its not "you" being moved between whatever. Theres like no info on how the tech works

[torpid anvil]

You sure about that? The developers have said the events of the entire fist trilogy did happen.

[hot thicket]

i believe thats similar to what they were doing in MGS 2

[violet sapphire]

Yeah but that could mean anything with Infinity being included. Could be a completely different timeline we don’t know

[queen adder]

not sure that we really are is the ultimate argument.

[nimble pecan]

extra dimension of time. how many timelines ago did they happen?

[queen adder]

or that could literally be a part of it

[violet sapphire]

I’m just gonna let the timeline stuff play out it’s impossible to know

[violet sapphire]

I’m not sure what you mean can you rephrase that?

[torpid anvil]

True, but we do know that the prime timeline did have all of those events.

[nimble pecan]

what parts of those events can manage to influence the events of this iteration? we dont know yet. the games happened, but how much of it matters?

[pliant elm]

What I don't get it. Blake ends M2 with a Pfhor ship with space-jump technology, how didn't they made it to Earth or Tau Ceti faster than these corps arrived to Tau Ceti IV again lol.

[sharp quarry]

"Right before" meaning 60+ years before there was activity. The 30,000 is just the total of people who were supposed to be there, the 6,000 on the Marathon and the 24,000 colonists. The Pfhor's second attack (if it happened at all, but I don't see why it wouldn't) did not wipe them out in this timeline.

[sharp quarry]

Can you point to the "mind" for me, on a diagram of the human body?

[violet sapphire]

Yeah but then we get into why is Durandal back at tau Ceti, why is the colony not nuked into oblivion, why is there new AI, etc etc

We just need more info

[hot thicket]

Something has altered this chain of events

[sharp quarry]

Where is the "mind?" and how could they move it?

[nimble pecan]

the anomaly seems new

and the mystery disease?

[queen adder]

option A: Say we're sekiguchi's AI. They don't care who we help, they care that they get the money and the data on how we behave. Go ahead, be a merc. Contracts are NOT very hostile to other factions. You aren't doing their work, but it's not like you're blowing up their factories.

Options B: "Would you kindly" stuff where your "choice" wasn't really a choice. Leads to problematic issues just from a writing perspective if you claim player agency was really "you were coded to take that contract" but still possible

[violet sapphire]

Yeah I guess maybe Blake brought back some Jjaro magic on accident or something

[nimble pecan]

but whatever changed changed events far enough back to alter MIDAs history...

[torpid anvil]

I guess that’s where I’m confused.

[pliant elm]

By the time corps arrive at Tau Ceti there should be Blake's grandson already there saying - yea guys, we were attacked, you can go back home.

Or jump from Lhowon to Earth then back again to Tau Ceti.

[nimble pecan]

its very radiant and chaotic, im betting on those fuckers i cannot spell over the Jjaro as far as the anomaly goes

[queen adder]

And this is another reason I think "copy vs person" is going to be important. A good answer for Durandal being here is ONE OF THEM never left

[nimble pecan]

wrcfrjcjtjr

[violet sapphire]

I guess, but Sekiguchi is also a faction not your boss, you do contract work for them. To the second point, you can just not do contracts. The agency is with the player, who is in turn, the consciousness of the runner

[queen adder]

sure, and they don't care

or again, B, they wanted you to d othat

[violet sapphire]

Nah it’s almost definitely Jjaro. It’s described as emitting “waves” which the Jjaro explicitly use to shape the world around them. I don’t think it’s Wrkcncacnter yet

[sharp quarry]

So, the Pfhor just up and left after their counter-attack, we don't know why, but then many years later the Anomaly popped up (and one could assume it had been working in the background a long time before, due to other details) so it's safe to say the Pfhor showed up 3 months later as expected, and my suspicion is that they activated the Anomaly (they love to tamper with Jjaro technology) realized what it was, and left, knowing it would kill the colony eventually so why waste the nukes and risk it infecting us as well?

[sharp quarry]

If there was a W'rkncacnter present we wouldn't be doing our day jobs we'd be sucked into the heart of madness and watching as dreams of past and future come to life before our eyes.

It's for sure just some Jjaro tech

[violet sapphire]

I’m pretty against the AI argument personally lol, I think we’re definitely actual human minds. Question is are we still alive or dead after each transfer. What does death even mean anymore? Way more interesting than the runners being AI

[sharp quarry]

What is an "actual human mind"

[violet sapphire]

There would also be demons

[spring kettle]

This is a videogame set almost 900 years in the future where you can print bodies from worms theres no telling what sorta technology is in play, yeah it can very likely just be instances of a copied brain but it could be true transfer of conscious. Take the exfil for instance, it can trasnplant matter out of thin air. Thats absurdly high tech and a similar process could be done with real brains and fake brains making a unbroken flow of being reassimilated and retaining the same conscious instance of someone. Just saying we dont know for sure its copies at all

[nimble pecan]

both use waves, no? timeless creatures making waves and the battles were waves, on both sides?

[queen adder]

I see an angle of this becoming "what is the difference between an AI and a digital human mind"

its why i asked if we knew how they were made

[violet sapphire]

Hence rampancy

[queen adder]

because if you can digitize and copy a mind

[violet sapphire]

Long running narrative thread

[queen adder]

why not put rules on it

right

[subtle urchin]

Isn’t Rampancy the same disease that befalls Cortana?

[nimble pecan]

well, something might have to explain season resets...

[spring kettle]

there are the "personality matrix" on all the shells

[pliant elm]

I'm still confused as to why the corps didn't knew what happened to Tau Ceti colony after 80 years.

[queen adder]

they are sure, but i think there's more

[violet sapphire]

Exactly yeah. Is data still a human mind. Are 1s and 0s thoughts? Human thought is very grey, not binary

[spring kettle]

Yes but seems to be different in rules

[queen adder]

again I expect some Soma and Bioshock esque moments in this game

[violet sapphire]

They probably have some idea they’re just keeping it close to their chest

[spring kettle]

Cortana rampancy makes you crazy, marathon rampancy makes you sentient and aware

seemingly

[sharp quarry]

'True transfer of consciousness' Consciousness isn't a substance or a physical property, it's an illusion conjured by the combined work of all our neurons. How do you transfer what doesn't exist? It's copies or magic, and I don't think they'd resort to magic to make the story weaker.

[violet sapphire]

And also pretty crazy

[nimble pecan]

every season reset being a new timeline, yes/no?

[sharp quarry]

Y'all need some philosophy 101 or some shit I'm not talking this subject with you anymore 😭

[subtle urchin]

I mean, I’d argue Cortana was more self aware than ever though at th end. Right? But I get what you’re saying.

[queen adder]

I mean you could take the literal atoms that make up that person's brain and teleport them to a jar somewhere

[sharp quarry]

absolutely not, the story progresses, we already know this

[violet sapphire]

Yeah but there’s a specific terminal talking about the Jjaro manipulating waves to shape matter blah blah blah

[queen adder]

that should, in theory, actually move "your" frame of reference

[sharp quarry]

This is true, but the brains inside the shells are little pill-shaped thingamabobs I think so probably not what's happening

[queen adder]

sure

[violet sapphire]

I mean sure man whatever you want, it’s a video game

We don’t know what the runners are it’s a friendly discussion for a game that hasn’t released

[spring kettle]

Nobody knows what it is so we dont know how it works lol

[sharp quarry]

"it's a video game" to mean "it's inherently meaningless and can't talk on deep topics" oooook buddy

[queen adder]

although if your brain is in a jar in orbit and the pill things are just the terminals for you actions (much like a player at a computer putting input into a server) that could track

[valid pewter]

Durandal acquired awareness for one moment and started a hundreds year long quest to gain transcendent immortality and escape the heat death of the universe.

So a little crazy

[spring kettle]

same same but different

[violet sapphire]

If I thought that why would I be having this discussion? I’m saying it’s a video game you don’t need to be aggro because I don’t agree with you lmao

Classic MIDA tbh

[queen adder]

well if you want to dive deep into philosophy its not really crazy

its very very rational

[spring kettle]

also would you not if you were functionally immortal? would you not try to remove the last barrier to immortality?

[queen adder]

fear of death followed by "oh shit I can FIX that"

[sharp quarry]

I'm not aggro, I'm just not ready to teach y'all a bunch of basic fundamentals of the topics this game is touching on, that it clearly expects you to understand going in

[pliant elm]

It took Durandal 10 years to go from Tau Ceti to Lhowon, theoretically it should take much quicker for the rebels to go back to Tau Ceti again or even Earth in even shorter periods with P'fhor technology.

[torpid anvil]

I thought the Pfhor left because of the revolt of the Spht?

[valid pewter]

Nah, I’m too lazy

[nimble pecan]

youre in a liminal buffer, so digital, between bodies when your shell dies, so i think we dont have bio-brains at all anymore

We are just patterns to redeploy and redeploy and redeploy

[violet sapphire]

Then don’t? I don’t need a condescending jerk off to tell me basic philosophy concepts lmao

[spring kettle]

Theres nothing fundamental about it lol

theres no consciousness 101 or else we would have real biomata and AI already

[sharp quarry]

The pfhor didn't leave during the initial attack, they all fucking died. The second attack they destroyed the colony in m2's timeline, and we don't know what happened in this timeline.

[violet sapphire]

Yeah I think we’re backed up on some orbiting satellite

[sharp quarry]

so you believe there's no theory on what it is or how it works??????

[nimble pecan]

maybe our bio body back home gets a little debt deducted everytime the digital ghost on the satellite gets a run done lol

[sharp quarry]

this is digestible stuff

[nimble pecan]

theres several, is the issue, not that theres none

[violet sapphire]

Ya in most timelines except some of the failure timelines Tfear returns and wipes the colony out after Durandal has already left for Lhowon

[hot thicket]

i keep trying to impress upon you that you do not have a body any longer

[sharp quarry]

Sci-fi has been working with these ideas for decades

fuck there's GAMES

[violet sapphire]

So the only survivors are the BoBs Durandal brought with him

[hot thicket]

we are all Motoko Kusanagi clones

[pliant elm]

Yeah, but I don't know how those don't make it back to Earth or Tau Ceti faster than corps get from Earth to TC, lol.

[hot thicket]

fun fact i was looking up where the idea of rampancy in this form gets coined, Its literally marathon and bungie XD

[nimble pecan]

well yeah

[spring kettle]

Theres theory but thats the thing they're all theories, in the marathon universe you may be copies or there could be technology that makes your personal consciousness a seamless transfer of the same "mind" or "soul" into other bodies

[violet sapphire]

Yeah unless it’s one of the failure timelines and they never made it back

Could be Durandal was destroyed at Lhowon and we’d seeing a backup

[hot thicket]

Bungie has in fact introduced an idea that in the years since has become a recognized trope of AI in scifi, and thats why they got my money

[violet sapphire]

We just don’t know we only have scraps of lore for the new game

[sharp quarry]

Right, but I don't think the writers are such hacks they'd just toss magic into the equation instead of the interesting existential quandry created by doing it in a more practical way.

[nimble pecan]

the mysticism is kinda core to the mythos is it not

[sharp quarry]

Didn't we wipe them out personally in the 7th timeline while working for Tycho?

[pliant elm]

They forgot that one Simulacrum on board.

[hot thicket]

Its like being in a mexican stand off but with alternate timelines

[nimble pecan]

magic isnt "hack" behaviour, its... the sublime

[sharp quarry]

Humans never have magic. Jjaro have magic. Beings beyond knowledge have magic. Humans are simple, the grounding point, and almost hard sci-fi sometimes

[sharp quarry]

The magic isn't what makes it hacky, the circumventing the philosophical questions to make the plot easier to write would be

[nimble pecan]

what are you even talking about lol

[hot thicket]

jjaro have science beyond our understanding ,mstarting to think they are from the previous universe

[nimble pecan]

the nazis had a demon in a bottle in pathways

[sharp quarry]

A W'rkncacnter creation

[violet sapphire]

Cedar Box posting will commence

[sharp quarry]

unless you propose that CyberAcme's etherlink is in fact Jjaro-made?

[hot thicket]

are the working canter basically chaos demons

[violet sapphire]

Nah like lovecraft gods

[sharp quarry]

kinda, more like chaos incarnate than beings in tribute to chaos

sort of

elemental

[nimble pecan]

fuck i mean it well might be based on the same tech battleroid implants are, sure, why not?

[spring kettle]

it doesnt have to be a hack, i'd argue the theme of marathon is more about perptuality and not instances of something so the "copies" may play with that idea worse, but, we wont know till we know

[hot thicket]

Elemental chaos

[violet sapphire]

Yeah more like a natural disaster than a malevolent entity

[spring kettle]

in other words i guess im saying a actually immortal conciousness of the same person seems more in theme

[nimble pecan]

if the cyborg can store an AI pattern and a Shell can store a human pattern why would they not perhaps share a common origin

[hot thicket]

Ok so we cant negotiate with the pfor or the chaos gods

We know we can someitmes ally with the Compilers

[sharp quarry]

Hmm, possible, Sekiguchi might've been responsible for those who's to say they didn't lend some of that stuff to their close partners...

[hot thicket]

Do we trust ANY of our Ai overlords corporate or non

[violet sapphire]

I mean bungie games always deal with themes of individualism and self determination. “You are destiny”

I think the runners are almost definitely individual consciousnesses

[nimble pecan]

i trust mida

i trust mida to lie to me

[violet sapphire]

Now is a backup of that person the same person

[torpid anvil]

So we’re not sure if the Marathon in this new game is the same Marathon. We know for sure it was destroyed by the Pfhor 3 months after the first game, so it probably isn’t? Or, unsurprisingly, Durandal could have lied? Or it’s just a different timeline where it was never destroyed or the attack didn’t even happen?

[violet sapphire]

Idk we can talk all day about it

[hot thicket]

One Bioroid traveling between timelines basically saved the universe

[violet sapphire]

I trust Oni because she’s hot and kinda nice to me sometimes

[queen adder]

This game is also just dripping in themes about "what is human" and "evolving"

the loading symbol is a moth coming out a cocoon

[neon olive]

I guess Tau Ceti f is basically Tau Ceti IV

[queen adder]

and silk month iconography is for a reason i'm sure

[violet sapphire]

Yeah the Tau Ceti system has multiple potential livable planets, IV is just the best

[sharp quarry]

The theme of marathon is the impossiblity of perpetuity. Escape is impossible. Everything ends, or rather, it never begins, it's a loop, a circle, a cycle, it's not infinite because it was never finite. In it just being copies ("Just" i say lightly, as I believe they're just as much "you" as "you" will be tomorrow) it creates a microcosm of Durandal's quest, his long-standing attempt to escape the universe. We "escape" our deaths, in reality only postponing them in facsimile.

[neon olive]

Thats one of the many

[queen adder]

I would love a scathing diatribe from Durandal that boils down to this.

[hot thicket]

as a maid i can assure you that is totally professional courtesy and i can tell you that secretly shes the most hatefilled of all because shes nice ,... maybe dont quote me on this

[nimble pecan]

well, is that about evolving or is that about escape

[queen adder]

like all good symbolism/metaphor "yes AND!"

[violet sapphire]

Yeah but in Infinity in a way the SecOff does escape

[hot thicket]

Im only here on tau ceti IV to extract Durandal god

[neon olive]

There is not planet named IV we named the fourth one f but yea it's IV

[sharp quarry]

Oooor we really do become immortal and there's no questions or parallels or interesting ideas.

[violet sapphire]

Well I’ll be her shoulder to beat on

Oni if you’re reading this call me

[spring kettle]

I think the theme isn't "Am I me or just a copy" and instead "am I me after hundreds of years and different bodies? Does it even matter who I was before?" Hence why I think the single consciousness idea could hold up

[nimble pecan]

escape from entropy, escape from programmed orders, escape from pfor slavery, escape from the sun, escape from the nuke in the pyramid, escape from tau ceti, escape from linear time

Escape from the maze. Eat the path, become god?

[sharp quarry]

Yes, into the next battle, into the next story. Wyrd, Master Chief, so on. That's where the wheel comes in.

It ends, but it never ends, and there isn't escape because there's nothing else

[queen adder]

so as someone who didn't play destiny, is the larger lore "you are the hero" or more decentralized and acknowledging you're a part of a group of players?

[violet sapphire]

Samsara baby 🫩

[queen adder]

i ask because that's another thing to think about for marathon

[hot thicket]

Fun fact after jet li the one , i made sure to have all my alternate timeline selves agree to a non aggression pact, so i dont care if im a copy of me or not

[spring kettle]

Well then the death could be a decay of the mind over years rather then, oops I got spun up again, new me

[nimble pecan]

its more a shared myth than a multiverse, yknow

[sharp quarry]

apple user detected, rectangle deployed

[violet sapphire]

Of course ur a Samsung guy LMAO that checks out so hard

Or even worse huawei

[nimble pecan]

themes reverberate, iconography repeats, mirroring each other but different points of view

[sharp quarry]

WRONG motorola

and I'm on PC rn

[spring kettle]

Woof

[violet sapphire]

Holy lord

[spring kettle]

Not doing favors

[sharp quarry]

bc who tf uses discord on their phone

[nimble pecan]

when im on public transit

i dont have my pc

[finite night]

Monomyth

[violet sapphire]

I’m out of town visiting my girlfriend I have been subjected to console gaming and discord mobile

Have mercy please

[hot thicket]

im actually very well versed in shared narrative universes, Elite dangerous is written in one

back in the old days, guys like larry niven wrote in a shared universe for a lot of stories

[placid pond]

⁉️

[sharp quarry]

No we're definitely sure that's the same Marathon. The ending crawl never actually specifies that the Marathon itself was totally destroyed, and it is half-wrecked in the state we find it in.

[sharp quarry]

Oh, my sympathies.

[violet sapphire]

Real question is where boomer

[nimble pecan]

the big part is like, its not a shared universe neccesarily

[sharp quarry]

Boomer......is still crashed on one of the moons of Lh'owon and in pieces

[violet sapphire]

Bungies shared universe is a lot looser. It’s moreso linked thematically

With some harder links

[sharp quarry]

Yes, every world has the same rules and the same ideas, but none of them ever touch, they're parallel

[nimble pecan]

i dont think pathways and marathon share a universe for example, or even a timeline, even though names and concepts are present in both, but i recognize, they at least might

but the rest is way more disconnected

[violet sapphire]

Now that marathon is back maybe we can get a new Myth

[violet sapphire]

I’m lowkey a pathways canon truther

But halfway jokingly

[sharp quarry]

I'd say why would they mention the Jjaro in marathon, before they had started their whole loose bungieverse kick with halo, if they didn't intend direct connection and to explain the "sleeping god" as a W'rk

[nimble pecan]

so is it all about us as the players, is it all Meta? not really, but some of it is, so all of it is a little

[finite night]

Halo CE is obviously set after infinity epilogue when universe closes

[hot thicket]

im still thinking about that mural

[queen adder]

from a real world perspective, i suspect OG bungie had plans for a single universe, but Halo changed that

[sharp quarry]

Because Halo created the bungieverse by accident, it was inherently connected to Marathon as it was originally a Marathon universe game, but since they had to change it it created the looser universe as it is now

[violet sapphire]

Now that we know there’s 11 AI and it’s not referencing the battleroids there’s more to chew on for sure

[nimble pecan]

cause theyre insane (complimentary)

[pliant elm]

You will find out in this game that the W'rkncacnter both existed in Pathways to Darkness universe, the Marathon universe, but they actually originally from the Mario 64 universe.

[hot thicket]

11 AI, for 11 Tribes ... interesting

[violet sapphire]

Sure is

I’m moving with the idea that each AI is linked to their terminal colors from Marathon Classic but maybe that will change

Same with the lobsters

[hot thicket]

if at least as a easter egg

[nimble pecan]

from knowing how some similarly mad stories came to be, i wouldnt be surprised if the loose bungie myth predates pathways as just... a fixed idea in the minds of some of the devs

[violet sapphire]

I hope Leela comes back

And not as a warlord but as regular Leela

Lmao

[hot thicket]

but i agree the color scheme and font typing is almost totally on purpose

[nimble pecan]

you know how Disco Elysium and Sacred and Terrible air are both based on a pnp campaign? stuff like that

[hot thicket]

the so called fontslop is literally a hold over from the OG games when each AI had its own voice font

[sharp quarry]

It really feels like it came about by accident due to Halo being abruptly ejected from Marathon canon, and originally it was all meant to be directly connected

Like how some insiders once said early on that the hole in Myth is where Tycho's ship crashed or some shit, but later on it became just vaguely W'rkncacnter related in spirit when people asked.

[hot thicket]

maybe halo is our universe free of the working canters

[finite night]

It was intentional to connect indirectly (chief is hero like security officer and roland and e.t.c) in first game however as franchise grew they dropped it during development of second game

[hot thicket]

master chief was the security man all along

no wonder Cortana picked him 😉

[sharp quarry]

Yes, they were sort of in defiance of microsoft saying "this can't be Marathon" going "Ok we'll just make it not-marathon" and then when 2 came around they realized they kinda wanted to push it into its own direction and by the point of 3 it was totally unrelated.

[nimble pecan]

wait ive never thought about that part i never googled that, what is the wrckkjfgfk equivalent in halo if halo started in the same setting. I know theres the pit, but like, in general, whats the modern equivalent of em?

[finite night]

Yep

[finite night]

Well yeah hero always must have girlfriend

In Chief's case it was cortana

[sharp quarry]

For the security officer it was Durandal

[finite night]

For SO it was Durandal 😜

[gray sluice]

Durandal a freak on Tuesdays fr

[violet sapphire]

Durandal slipping his core into security officer what did he mean by this

[sharp quarry]

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)

[pliant elm]

It took Bungie more to make another Marathon than humans making it a third of the way already to Tau Ceti again.

[gray sluice]

I think it's just easter eggs to other games tbh like traxus in halo just like the 7 rule

[sharp quarry]

You dislike the idea of these games having a connected but never directly in touch mythos that guides their hand in one massive, beautiful loop of story exploring and turning inside out the same ideas?

[pliant elm]

By the time they release Marathon 3 they can already return back to Earth again.

[finite night]

No?

Universe dies

New one begins

Vaguely similar but different enough

[violet sapphire]

The only actual constant is the SecOff/Chief/Sgt Eddings

I don’t know enough about destiny lore to speak on that though

[sharp quarry]

Ok, don't say that then. But they clearly do play by the same rules in poetic and long-forseen ways, looping in on each other and molding into the shape of the Hero always.

[storm field]

woah

[finite night]

Constant is The Hero and their companion

[pliant elm]

Welcome to actual reality of existance though.

[sharp quarry]

Another constant is pairs

[storm field]

Have you guys seen the image from the unitypower.io terminal after gaining access to the media server?

[finite night]

Ronald and Durandal for example

[hazy mist]

no where is it

oh unless ur talking about the like concept art

[pliant elm]

Rampancy confirmed. Ahah.

[storm field]

It's the concept art regarding the aztec looking art and the three people coloured Pink, Green and Blue

[finite night]

Mural

It's on Ai uplink

In marsh

Possibly depicting leela, durandal and tycho

[storm field]

THIS - after watching so much lore and today finishing a 1.5 hour video, that really does seem like it

DUDE THIS GAME IS SO GOOD, the lore, the ARG's even as far back as Apirl/May, the music, gunplay, everything.... Bungie has the kitchen in flames from absolutely cooking

[feral aurora]

i love having contempt for the medium of video games 🙂‍↕️

what do you mean “art” its a just a gameee

[hot thicket]

actually i think it might be depicting the old gods yyro and pthia

[violet sapphire]

If you read two more messages you would know this is not what I meant at all

[hot thicket]

but the colors also coordinate with the AI's ... but the idea infers that the AI are similar to their old gods maybe?

[violet sapphire]

I collect video games as art lmao

[sharp quarry]

why would the colonists know about a legend that is written in an alien language and only found on records on a burnt-out planet 500,000 light years away?

[violet sapphire]

I’m the last person that would ever condemn video games to a lesser medium

[hot thicket]

thats a very good question we do not currently have answers for

[sharp quarry]

But when? The free compilers were all taken with Durandal, unless perhaps there were some on the surface that Durandal didn't teleport up in time?

But then wouldn't there be more records of contact?

[hot thicket]

so there was something in the slam that i could not help but notice but i never said it

[sharp quarry]

And they'd know more about them than to make the effigies as though they were some spirit

[hot thicket]

The constuction on tau ceti IV looks like its building a giant computer processor

one of the AI is building itself a jupiter brain

[violet sapphire]

I think it’s possible the new AI were also getting memetic influence from the anomaly as well

As well as the compilers

[sharp quarry]

My guess is scouts looking into the anomaly?

[violet sapphire]

But the mural is probably the 3 original AI it lines up too well with the colors

[sharp quarry]

The colonists would've shot on sight, though, they didn't know they were enslaved, or wouldn't without Leela to inform them

[hot thicket]

imagine we get stuck in the timeline with the evil security chief and we have to defeat him

worst timeline luck

[sharp quarry]

Yeah I can't imagine it's about Yrro and Pthia

[violet sapphire]

if he has a gold SPNKR he’s got to go

[hot thicket]

the colors line up with the AI but the imagery lines up with the Legend

[violet sapphire]

Or at the very least with the AI

Darius is obviously being messed with somehow so it’s likely that the AI were having something done to them and the colonists were completely unaware

[hot thicket]

and if you fold the mural inward like an old mad magazine poster you get the arachne symbol or something similar to it

[violet sapphire]

C Song seemed weirdly dismissive of Darius tweaking the fuck out on a colony 300 light years away from the nearest humans

[sharp quarry]

I think they were probably just spotted during the attacks going around and sabotaging tech. You see a cloaked humanoid floating by, ignoring all input and instantly brain-frying anyone who gets near, and you assume it's a fuckin' ghost because what the hell else.

[violet sapphire]

But what do I know I’m not a space colonist

[sharp quarry]

I can't deny the 11 corpses is something, but what about the 7 tortured souls?

What could that represent?

[hot thicket]

it looked like the green one was infusing itself into their bodies... or shells

[sharp quarry]

True

[sharp quarry]

Looked more like puppet strings to me

And then, what did the W'rkncacnter infuse itself into?

If it is the myth

[hot thicket]

i think the wrkn would be the red figure killing the green one

[violet sapphire]

Arachne also has a lot of puppet string imagery

[hot thicket]

O.o oh good call

[sharp quarry]

Oh possible. But then what did Pthia infuse themselves into?

or take control of?

[hot thicket]

the colonists?

[sharp quarry]

That was millions of years ago

[violet sapphire]

I mean also Yrro didn’t stab the Wrk he threw it into the sun. And why would he be crying/mourning

Doesn’t add up

[sharp quarry]

ok, no, probably just tens of thousands

[hot thicket]

we have 11 so we gotta ssume the 7 is also a hint number and literal not metaphoric

so what do we have 7 of

[sharp quarry]

a lot of things

a damn lot of things

[violet sapphire]

The 7 I really don’t know it could be so many things

[hot thicket]

he was mourning the loss of his wife, thats why he made the tribes

im not a marathon lore expert though this is just my research

[sharp quarry]

Yes, Yrro was said to mourn Pthia and in sorrow abandon the S'pht to fend for themselves

[hot thicket]

that explains the corpses

[violet sapphire]

Hm now yall r convincing me a little

[vocal robin]

You guys figure this game out yet?

[sharp quarry]

But then why wouldn't one be highlighted? Part of the legend is about the S'pht'kr escaping enslavement?

[violet sapphire]

Compilers may have spread their religion to the colonists or something

[sharp quarry]

Gods, no one will say yes to that for about 30 years I wager

[violet sapphire]

Ask Hamish he probably knows lol

[sharp quarry]

Maybe 2 or 3 people on earth can say yes to that about the ORIGINAL trilogy

[vocal robin]

Lmao

[sharp quarry]

oh fuck it's both

[terse wren]

But here wasn’t it unclear whether yrro was an individual or an entire species (Jjaro)

[finite night]

Hamish can say yes to both btw

[sharp quarry]

we're discussing the legend, not the literal events

[violet sapphire]

Yeah that whole bit is a little obscure and metaphorical

[sharp quarry]

Jjaro was a species and Pthia likely the same

[sharp quarry]

ok hold on

so

[terse wren]

Right right right

[sharp quarry]

let's say for the sake of theorizing

friendly spht DID get in contact with the colonists

[hot thicket]

it still begs the question as to where that mural came from ON tau ceti XD

[violet sapphire]

More of a religious allegory which would contribute to the theory that the compilers are religiously converting the colonists maybe

[sharp quarry]

we have no evidence for this

none at all

but if they did

and shared the legend

[violet sapphire]

But the colors matching the 3 AI is such a huge point lol

[sharp quarry]

what if the colonists imprinted it onto their own history

that's why it's the AI

[hot thicket]

Also the color kind of matches the cats pink dont it

nu calorci, the cats and that image all share a color

[sharp quarry]

they saw Yrro, Pthia, and the Wr'kncacnter as Leela, Durandal and Tycho

they only know part of the story

so they filled it out with what the S'pht taught them, seeing the cosmic pattern

but then still