📚marathon-lore-discussion

[night tendon]

Just off bodies

[charred light]

it was definitely easy early on but now everyone is pavlov'd to the sound

[night tendon]

To be fair you are sitting ducks on that elevator

[stiff hearth]

I don’t like jumping with the keys, but I do like extracting without using them. iirc they get turn into a decent amount of credits but i could be wrong lol

[earnest hatch]

No, I think they are zero money.

To disincentivize that sort of thing I imagine.

[spark breach]

Oh shit the Misiraih is a name from the first marathon! I wonder what the lore was-

Oh

[solar shard]

Interesting that they were doing autopsies of xeno bodies before the big event that disappeared everyone. Want to know how they were encountered and all the rest of it.

[craggy tide]

well we know how they died, the fungus / disease on the planet killed them all. They didn't disappear.

You can literally find the bodies of various scientist & people on certain maps, especially Dire Marsh & Perimeter with the "fungus" growing all over them.

[solar shard]

I don't believe that is explicitly true because there'd at least be some evidence. Some people did get got by it, like that one scientist, but it couldn't have been an entire population of 30k or what have you.

[craggy tide]

It is true, and the evidence does exist. Wdym some evidence? It's all over the place & we even have a codex log confirming it.

Same with all the tents & people trying to quarantine everyone. The disease is what killed them.

[solar shard]

So where are the piles of bodies?

[craggy tide]

Outside?

[solar shard]

We don't have evidence of widespread body disposal either

where?

[craggy tide]

outside? I just told you where

You're not going to find literal piles of bodies in one centralized location because that's not what the colonist did. Thinking that is dumb.

[lilac sapphire]

Byf dropped a new video on battleroids earlier today

[craggy tide]

You'll only find the bodies of whatever few survivors were left, if any were left to begin with. Which we do find.

Some were driven completely crazy / mad and basically ran into the forest itself.

[unreal sierra]

i hope that the fungus zombies become an enemy and they don’t underutilize another possible awesome enemy idea. :3

[solar shard]

If people really were being infected and dying on such a massive scale (keeping in mind that 30k people at minimum were there), its not really easy to ignore or hide that many corpses. A few here and there doesn't anywhere near amount to the kind of mass demise you're talking about.

[lilac sapphire]

Yes, perhaps some kind of human/fungus hybrid monstrosity that turns humans into husks of their former selves that... ahem.. floods the battlefield ?

[unreal sierra]

because UESC robots are cool and all, but i like waves of organic enemies as well. tides, even.

waves were the battles and the battles were waves.

[craggy tide]

It would be very easy for the colonist to deal with all the corpses relatively easy. Not like every single colonist died on the same day dude.
Plus, a lot of stuff they have is entirely automated. Robots, AI's, all that jazz. Moment someone dies? They're disposed of through whatever automated process that was set up inside the quarantine tents.

Yea, it fits perfectly. Idk how you're struggling with it.

You can find a couple bodies / skulls on the outskirts due to people generally going crazy, but you aren't going to find anything inside the buildings.

[lilac sapphire]

There's a codex where a quarantined colonist is incinerated

[craggy tide]

^

Also a codex where the incineration function is malfunctioning and burns someone alive.

[lilac sapphire]

Just got the quarantine ultra one today. Grim shit

[craggy tide]

Combine that with the anomaly basically absorbing people also, you're not gonna really find any bodies.

[solar shard]

One person compared to how many thousands of other people who wouldn't always be in a spot where a malfunctioning AI could do that? Come on

[lilac sapphire]

Well I mean I think the implication is that they would have incinerated many colonists on purpose seeing as they had such a protocol

Not just one and by accident

[forest gate]

Organic enemies also have the potential to scare the shit out of you. The UESC suck drone has the most terrifying sound IMO in the game right now.

[spark breach]

The fact that everyone was having mass collective nightmares, even Joy, is probably way more alarming than the contagion

Electric sheep and all that

Also I really need to codex site to update already with the cryo archive stuff just to confirm what I saw on twitter about Durandal being on the Marathon is correct.

[visual lynx]

which codex site are you talking about?

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/?directory=World,Cryo+Archive already has the cryo archive stuff

[spark breach]

Oh crap I was looking at Tauceti.gg

Thank you

[craggy tide]

Dire Marsh - Class B Anomalous Material.
If you have the logs, the anomaly is basically taking people with it.

Dire Marsh - Premium Tick Milk - Tick-Related Incident.
For automation, this log here proves the systems they have are automated.

Dire Marsh - Anchorite Provisions
Every entry here is basically a dude, presumably a kid or someone in there early 20's who "survived" the collapse but everyone else around him died. He essentially ran off in the forest, surviving off the planet itself. You can tell his mind is slowly going "crazy", just like all the other colonist, likely due to being infected by the fungus.

Outpost - Surveillance Recordings - Decontamination Protocol
Decontamination with the incinerator malfunctioned and killed someone who was very much alive.
They would 100% use this incineration machine to burn all the other bodies infected with the fungus.

Outpost - Confiscated Colonial Folklore
Every codex entry here is basically every colonist here going slowly insane, adopting a new religion & worshipping "stars".
This is, as described by 1 scientist who confirmed it, the fungus / disease.

Outpost - Archival PSA Recordings
PSA: Public Health describes all the symptoms of the disease they were dealing with that inevitably killed everyone.

Further, if you've done all the contracts for Nucaloric, you can follow the story of Dr. Clarrisa Song who later died because of the fungus / disease infecting her (which had been infecting everyone else, why the quarantine was set up). Nucaloric - Paradigm Shift 1/5 actually.

[remote magnet]

Also, the maps we have are all on the outskirts or other specialised areas. We haven't visited the city proper. 5he areas we have make sense to just be abandoned when things turned from bad to worse

[craggy tide]

@solar shard you really need more evidence then this?
Been confirmed. It's what killed everyone. Clarrisa Song even talks about it.

Paradigm Shift 3/5 has someone making an announcement to whatever survivors are left of New Cascadia, saying if stuff gets worse, they can evacuate to the Marathon ship.
Whether anyone actually did though Idk.

[remote magnet]

They were talking about the food shortage only on that entry though, not the outbreak

[craggy tide]

Durandal is indeed on the Marathon, that's correct.
Part of him anyways.

[craggy tide]

You clearly didn't read past the 1st 4 sentences of the log.

They were talking about the rationing due to there ability to make food had failed. They only had 3 years tops of emergency food supplies.

Read -

This frugality buys precious time for the research teams, working around the clock to study the contagin and restore agricultural production. While I am hopeful for a cure, it is not our only option.

Our engineers believe that the original landing craft could be relaunched to the Marathon. It is our best means of evacuation if the need arises.

I won't pretend this is easy. Seeing our loved ones under quarantine, feeling the ground and air shift around us... [sighs] It's enough to make anyone lose hope.

Contagin = the disease infecting everyone = people under Quarantine.

[sage lark]

Youre making a lot of conclusions, not out of nowhere but there is no explicit proof of what youre saying

[craggy tide]

Zero conclusions are made there, what are you on about?

[sage lark]

The contagion didnt make people crazy, the Anomaly did

[craggy tide]

It's in the log dude

[sage lark]

You said everyone died from the contagion

Nowhere it is said

[craggy tide]

Correct, the contagion made them all go crazy and basically killed them. The anomaly didn't do that.

The contagion being fungus btw.

[sage lark]

Ah ok wrap it up we know what happened

[craggy tide]

Please look at Outpost - Archival PSA Recordings - PSA: Public Health.

[sage lark]

I know what it says

Even the colonists didnt fully understand either the fungus or anomaly

[craggy tide]

Yea, those are symptoms of the disease.

[sage lark]

Even we dont after the nucal quest line

[craggy tide]

The anomaly specifically basically absorbed people towards it afaik. It didn't cause people to just slowly start going crazy.

Although how it and the fungus relate to each other idk

they do seem connected somehow.

[sage lark]

And at the end of the Nucal questline Gaius says the fungus was had a trace of like 86% of the anomaly

[sage lark]

Again how are you making this conclusion

[craggy tide]

You can see the bodies of a colonist with the fungus floating in the air because of the anomaly. It's clearly connected.

[sage lark]

Theres like 2

[craggy tide]

Not a conclusion. We hear it happen. Wrap it up bro.

Dire Marsh - Class B Anomalous Material.

[sage lark]

That was a guard being attacked by a Mimic

Mentioned in the last entry

If you read it

[hot egret]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/Marathon if anyone here has a TV Tropes account as well I would appreciate help with this since I don’t know all the finer details

[sage lark]

Im not denying everything you say

[remote magnet]

Problem is, we don't know how many people actually went crazy or just thought they did. I remember that one audiolog where the colonies UESC commander saw his dead wife back from earth. Except we actually hear her footsteps and distorted voice on the recording

[sage lark]

But this is literally just a theory and not what happened 100%

is my only problem

[unreal sierra]

I like the mimics :3

[lilac sapphire]

Thank you for reminding me how fucking spooky that one was

There's another one where there the guy is talking to a NULL unidentified individual near the anomaly

[hot egret]

But in regards to that, Holt wasn’t visited by someone he knew, just something that looked human at a distance but had his voice and repeated what he said.

“COME WITH ME…”

[sage lark]

Yes exactly

Mimic

[unreal sierra]

the mimics could be enemies that pop up really rarely, but jump the player. or trick the player into going over to a loot container then jumping the player with a classic phrase. ^^

[hot egret]

FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE

[unreal sierra]

yes y e s

[lilac sapphire]

I wonder if our runner shells are influencing our preceptions of the anomaly. "Real" humans get close and see dead loved ones, real or imagined. Biomata get close and hear garbled nonsense?

[sage lark]

There is a mention of simulacrums i think

In one of the perimeter codex logs

[remote magnet]

Also, clarissa song mentioned that something helped the fungus by driving the AIs crazy (not rampant, crazy) . I don't know if there is a meaningfully distinction to be drawn between the anomaly and the contagion. They are all manifestations of the same thing

[lilac sapphire]

All Bungie games are wrk nightmares

[craggy tide]

Which is from...the anomaly. Other colonist were specifically talking about walking towards it, or being drawn towards the anomaly. All confirmed.

[remote magnet]

There's a prothean beacon buried under Tau ceti, clearly

[craggy tide]

I believe the anomaly & fungus were working together, with the anomaly having the ability to "read your mind" in a sense, possibly from the fungus infection that affected everyones bodies.

[lilac sapphire]

Shepherd liked this

[craggy tide]

Fungus shares the info, anomaly does the rest.

[sage lark]

Again no basis to this

Could be

[sage lark]

Its Saren

The whole time its been him

[craggy tide]

The entire basis is set up in the codex logs, I told you to wrap it up already lol

[sage lark]

We have to warn the council

[sage lark]

Fungus shares the info, anomaly does the rest

Made it up

[civic lagoon]

||Crate 187/235 had scratch marks on the inside.|| I love this game.

[sage lark]

Im not saying it cant be

But its not in the codex

[craggy tide]

Based off what the codex logs tell us. I've listed a couple of them already, but listing more to you seems like a waste of time / fools erand cause I doubt I'll convince you.

[sage lark]

I hope your theory is right for your sake

Emphasis on theory

[craggy tide]

I think you need to wrap it up lol

[remote magnet]

Logistic problem: the anomaly is a good distance away from the main colony, we would see the city otherwise. It's in an remote agricultural/research sector. Makes sense for people work8ng there to be drawn in. But the anomaly seems to lure it's victims, rather then compelling them; I don't think the bulk of the 30k souls would wander many miles to be eaten by the pretty lights

[sage lark]

I just did

Idk why youre getting defensive and dismissive

[craggy tide]

Why I believe the fungus & anomaly are connected. Would make sense given the bodies we see infected with the fungus right next to it.

[sage lark]

They are connected we just dont know how

[remote magnet]

The head explode ones? Or are there body's Like Dr songs near it I missed?

[craggy tide]

You were saying that was made up 10 minutes ago and now you're agreeing lol

[sage lark]

Go look back on what I said

[craggy tide]

All the bodies with things growing out of them are all fungus infected.

[sage lark]

You said the anomaly just brings people in to consume them

Theres no explicit proof it does just that

We learn its a temporal dilution aswell

And people came back from it

Even ARS

[craggy tide]

Believe those were mimics, not the actual people.

[remote magnet]

Have you watched the cinematic trailer from 10 months ago? That stuff isn't growing out of them, they literally exploded

[craggy tide]

They were very all not there.

[sage lark]

You can believe that

Doesnt mean its true yet

[craggy tide]

Oh you're talking about that?
That was the aliens bioweapon. Not anomaly or fungus related. Happened well before any of that.

[sage lark]

Where is this alien bioweapon

Where did it come from

They literally explode the same way as the exploded bodies near the anomaly

Made up an alien bioweapon

That has apparently gravity powers

Hmmmm almost like the anomaly

Cant be

[craggy tide]

They do not.

[hot egret]

It’s a W’rcakcnter. One is buried in Tau Ceti’s Sun or the planet itself.

[craggy tide]

Completely different.

[sage lark]

Lmao im done

Do not believe your eyes

Believe me

Let me introduce a completely new unfounded threat

A new plot device that is not explained at all

It doesnt work with my theory

Even gives you a date

[craggy tide]

https://youtu.be/fvbEnWLRo1s?si=5ltjwDQnuX4qZosU&t=59
Did we watch the same trailer? The whole thing is completely different vs what we see the fungus do. It's been confirmed this entire event is related to the Pfhor attacking New Cascadia.

[sage lark]

2827 colonist explodes into pink and blue matter in a gravity anomaly

2812 colonist throws up after being infected by the fungus

[craggy tide]

You really need to wrap it up cause so far you haven't really said a single sensible thing ngl.

[sage lark]

Literally throwing up because of the fungus/contagion

It gives you a date too

2812

But I guess im making it up

I wont bother engaging with you anymore

Go off queen

[craggy tide]

At this rate nothing you said has been sensible or made much sense especially with the codex logs disagree with you 🤷‍♂️

Was waiting for you to stop, hence why I kept telling you to wrap it up.

[craggy tide]

Believe everyone was infected, the entire colony. Everyone was slowly going crazy. It's why everyone died.

[craggy tide]

I've noticed a few areas in the game seem to have scratch marks.

I do believe they came from ticks but got no idea really.

[craggy tide]

Something I really think they should've done more of is have the robots dealing with the tick infestations. At the point the robots kinda just ignore there existence.

[civic lagoon]

could be ticks, could be whatever the anomaly does to stuff happening to the goop the cheeseburgers are made of

Fun entry though.

Me sprinting to the exfil because I found a lore bit 😄

[forest gate]

Other people find some rare gun/salvage and book it for an exfil. Me, potential new codex entry unlock, I’m outta there.

I only need to find the superior colour coded entries on perimeter and I’ll be done with that zone.

[civic lagoon]

I was planning on focusing on that stuff after the priority contracts are all done but some of them are really hitting a wall for what I can get done.

[forest gate]

Yeah, I’m not sure how but I free kitted my way to finishing Unsanctioned Hostilities 4/5 with crew fill.

[craggy tide]

it takes a LOT of time

patience

and being lucky

[forest gate]

It was nutty that it all came together, we went up conveyance and no one challenged us 🤷‍♂️ we had pinwheel all to ourselves

I was with other randoms who were also free kits

Haha

[craggy tide]

i've gotten a grand majority of my codex unlocks honestly by luck lol

[forest gate]

When I get killed I don’t lament the lost of my guns, I lament the loss of the codex entries

[craggy tide]

Perimeter is honestly the hardest cause 99% of the time the ONLY way you're getting codex unlocks on that mission is through -

• Locked rooms
• Sometimes the supply drops that float around the map
• Tox rooms

It's very hard to come by them through anything else. Super, super low chances.

[forest gate]

I suspect my remaining codex entries are in locked rooms

[craggy tide]

Outpost, every codex unlock can honestly just be found in Pinwheel. A few are exclusive to command wing though.

They do spawn outside of Pinwheel occasionally, definitely more often then Perimeter.

[craggy tide]

another issue with Perimeter is if you're looking for purple stuff 99% chance you're only ever finding it in locked rooms. Super annoying.

[forest gate]

I’m sure bungie will shake it up in the next season

[craggy tide]

Especially that one room in Overflow. I can't find the key for that room at all, yet through the glass I've literally seen the purple stuff I need in it right on the table lol

[forest gate]

Keys do feel pretty rare and they’re so risky considering how rare they are.

[craggy tide]

Dire Marsh is a bit of a mixed bag though

[forest gate]

Dire Marsh is the map I like the least

[craggy tide]

It's honestly difficult to explore certain areas on that map properly due to how popular certain locations are with players.

[forest gate]

Sekiguichi ensured I would hate it.

[craggy tide]

It's a cool looking map, but the openness between areas just ruins it.

1 thermal scoped sniper away from dying at all times

[forest gate]

I’ve grown to really enjoy outpost

[craggy tide]

It also has the smallest amount of team spawns lol

4 teams.

[forest gate]

I enjoy perimeter but I feel like there needs to be a bit better loot on the map

[eternal knoll]

can add arc warden to the list too

[drifting mulch]

hang around for the reinforcements on a POI to kill a commander for a chance at a drop. guarded too

[tender flume]

Sorry if asked before: is there any lore details about where runners are weaved and teleported from, and a justification as to why they all have to teleport at the same time/ have same expiration date?

[stiff hearth]

i believe the codex states we are deployed from a hidden outpost in high orbit.

as for the timer, after about 25 minutes on the surface, the energies of the anomaly start to threaten your neural link and could result in data corruption so to prevent it you are auto ejected back to the outpost until your new body is ready

[icy prism]

I imagine that the 25 minutes is also partially a game play thing than strictly lore. I would guess that in lore the duration a shell can last on the planet without damage varies

[stiff hearth]

it’s not damage that causes it

The anomaly is actively trying to invade your mind, stored inside the shell, and it is threatening your neural pattern

so the system auto eject you to keep you safe because that’s the most important part is your neural link. I’m fairly certain that the artificial bodies are actually immune to a lot of the contagion and stuff, but we would have to find some way to shield our actual minds.

[icy prism]

I see I see

[torpid thicket]

I wonder if a similar situation is at play for Orion’s clankers?

[stiff hearth]

i feel not as i believe they are completely robotic

not remote controlled

[dense tendon]

i cant imagine the shells are controlled directly. as in, their hardware contains whatever code makes up the pseudo-AI that is the runner. if it was such a transfer, theres immense risk of catastrophic data loss whenever a shell is destroyed.
the only alternative i can think of is constant realtime backups to source but that precludes actually experiencing death like runners clearly do.
so in order for it to not be a situation where the actual reality is completely different from every source describing it, my only conclusion is the shells are remote controlled. the actual data making up runners is housed on the orbital base, and the shells stream sense data back.

[torpid thicket]

Good point 😄

[unreal sierra]

i wonder, what goes on in a UESC clanker’s synthetic mind.. probably thoughts of puppies and kittens.

[stiff hearth]

That’s why something like the rook disguise works because I think if there were a person inside, they could look at the model of rook and see oh that’s not one of ours

[sage lark]

There are codex entries with failsafes for catastrophic failure

[dense tendon]

also the UESC drones are remote controlled, but only some of them.

and i think we havent actually faced any in game yet.

[sage lark]

Cyac keeps a backup but also there is a failsafe where your consciousness gets pulled before catastrophic failure

[stiff hearth]

I do believe they have access to runner shells, but I don’t think we’ll see them until the other uesc ship arrives

[torpid thicket]

Every UESC loyalty matrix contains a zip file containing videos of Orion’s entire karaoke set list, which explains why the bots are so hostile. 😄

[sage lark]

I think we did in the TRUTH/LIES missions

[dense tendon]

they clearly have the capacity to be, at the very least.

[sage lark]

One of the commanders is assumed to be the female officer

[dense tendon]

maybe, yeah.

[sage lark]

She says this unit is at its limit

And then you can hear background noise of gunfire as if through a computer screen

[stiff hearth]

but yeah your mind is actually transferred in and pulled out. it would probably be safer if they had it so they could just send a copy of you. In a way you technically are since they have your original body and mind archived.

[unreal sierra]

cosmic estrogen does crazy things to battleroids. :3 🏳️‍⚧️

[stiff hearth]

now something to keep in mind which I don’t think a lot of people think about…

even though you are being sent to take control of that Shell, that Shell has its own personality separate from yours that is loaded in with you

it’s less like you are just in a new body, but it’s now you become the person that the thief shell is including their personality and thinking process you’re just behind the scenes still kind of controlling them

there is even the chance of memory bleed

there’s a story about a runner suffering a seizure after ONI deletes the memories of his old wife because they were interfering and were no longer relevant data

[icy prism]

Damn that's cold on oni

[dense tendon]

i dont trust the narrative, honestly. i would doubt we are not backed up. we're apparently such massive investments we stand no chance of paying off our debt in the foreseeable future. dont think the corpos would risk that entire credit line with something as prosaic as dropoed connection or drive failure.

[stiff hearth]

oh no, we are backed up, but they just don’t send a copy of us. They send us until we are irretrievable and then they would have to rebuild us from the true archive, which is our original body which the cyber acme owns

that’s kind of what I mean by we are technically copies, but they don’t make a new version of us every time we are sent out

they make one and they reuse it until it can’t be used anymore, which is the more efficient method anyway, that would probably be more cost-effective

I imagine it’s not easy to weave a fully sentient digital mind

Plus, it adds to the dystopian nature of the fictional setting we are in if we were just copies it would feel less like you are forever stuck in this loop but if continuity is maintained, then it feels like you’re in this purgatory of debt instead of just your clones are doing all the work not actually you

[dense tendon]

i dont buy that. like, thats probably the line we're fed, but im looking at this like any other digital system.
yall ever have to use a recovery point to unfuck your pc? same process here, id bet.

[stiff hearth]

okay

i’m just going off of what the game has in the codex if you wanna play this oh well if they’re lying what if they’re lying what if they’re lying, we can do that literally all day for everything in the entire game and what would be the point of discussing it because it could all be lies

instead, I would rather accept everything as given until we finally see a contradiction in the game, but just speculating feels like it’s just going down conspiracy theory territory

[dense tendon]

it doesnt make any sense that theyd waste so much money on such a fragile system with so many points of catastrophic failure when the tech to do what would make infinitely more sense is already household in our time.

[stiff hearth]

it makes sense if the profit that could be gained from solving whatever happened on Tau Ceti far outweighs the cost of these little biomata bodies and runner debt slaves

[normal jackal]

do you think the shells are literally a trillion bucks apiece?

[stiff hearth]

Traxus is funding it all and they do not care as long as they get their data. As seen buy them literally paying off the UESC in the area

probably not really

but it is a funny meme

we don’t even know how much a credit is worth in USD so it’s really hard to tell what anything is worth

[dense tendon]

who here is talking about shells

im talking about runners.

[stiff hearth]

yes, illegal runners that are literally corporate assets with no legal rights or protections. I don’t think they care.

[normal jackal]

runner debt gonna be in the quintillions by next week lmao

[normal jackal]

hi i am, that's me

[icy prism]

Yeah runners are never paying off that debt and NGL I think that's very intentional

[normal jackal]

my assumption is that seasonal wipes will be "corporations collecting on your debt, you're found lacking, fuck you we're taking evrerything you own bye, also keep doing jobs for us because you have literally no otehr option "

[stiff hearth]

we shall see

[dense tendon]

i dont think you understand how either the system youre describing works or any of what im saying if this is your response.

if the runners fail to be recovered traxus gets NO data

[stiff hearth]

i am curious on how it will be explained beyond mere gameplay

[normal jackal]

if durandal has a hand in it that'd be cool

[stiff hearth]

yes, that is why they created a clever system that pulls your mind back at the last moment which preserves the data do you think it’s just your sentient mind that they care about it takes all the data you collected as well. All your data chips. Any information that you learned you just don’t get to keep your physical items oh well.

if they sent a clone that could potentially become corrupted or disconnected without a way to auto retrieve it then that could risk far greater losses

I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand how this system works because I’ve been reading the codex

[normal jackal]

if the data is on a physical item, damn, time for another run. if it's just a dcon thing? sweet, nifty, problem solved.

[dense tendon]

yknow what actually i dont care about this anymore. please become intelligent.

[stiff hearth]

lmao yeah that’s why I have you blocked because the moment that you can’t actually argue your point you just start to becoming insulting. Bye-bye.

[normal jackal]

hey coyote when was the last time you held a cat, or the last time you sat on the bank of a creek peacefully and watched the wildlife go by?

before you falter and fall back to ad-hominem arguments, try going into nature first

[dense tendon]

because you respond to every statement i say with complete illiteracy and then have the audacity to call my arguments nonsensical. why should i bother being civil with you?

[stiff hearth]

i’m literally referring to information you can find in the game you freaking clown

[sage lark]

Had a similar conversation with the Nightsomething fella

[stiff hearth]

I would like a marathon fan server to join because I’m getting really sick of this official one collecting all of the worst kinds of people

freaking voice to text destroyed that ugh

i have dyslexia so i talk to my phone like 90% of the time and it mishears me so damn much

[sage lark]

When it turns to adhominems and “youre wrong because I said so” or “youre illiterate go read”, shits just gone

[sage lark]

Youre good no worries

[dense tendon]

literally pettin my cat rn. this aint the first time this shit happened. im not interested in continuing to get fuckin snarked at by someone who calls me stupid every time he doesnt understand simple statements.
maybe next time you go to bat for some rando on the internet you should consider the guy tryna walk away isnt needed to snipe at before tryna bait some shit back.

[sage lark]

Idk why every discussion has to be some fight to the death

[normal jackal]

i'm going to take your last question there as nonrhetorical and answer it literally - here's why you should bother:

• because it's honorable
• because it would reflect well on your character
• because it is the right thing to do, no matter how incensed nor rageful you may feel
• because, despite your evident ego-attachment to being percieved as correct and intelligent, displaying humility and grace will far-more-often make you friends and smooth your social interactions, than an insistence on holding the monopoly on truth
• because you're bothering to continue this conversation to begin with

[dense tendon]

yes. exactly. which is why i was leaving. cuz this shit was alreadt starting.

[torpid thicket]

That kinda strikes me as being similar like Warframe’s Transference 😄

[sage lark]

There are a bunch of parallels but you got no physical body to go back to

[icy prism]

i can relate sister i can relate

[sage lark]

Unlike the drifter/operator

[icy prism]

are there not any fan servers?

[dense tendon]

i actually have no attachment to any perception. i jus dont wanna talk to a guy who spent all of my last conversation with him calling me stupid and then starting the next one by already leading up into it.

[sage lark]

I should get back into warframe

[torpid thicket]

Yeah, that’s the main difference. Operators / Drifters have a body to go back to, but Runnahs don’t.

[sage lark]

Last i played was the roguelike mode

[dense tendon]

so go off about how its honorable or whatever.

[sage lark]

And the story got confusing af

[normal jackal]

i'm very glad you've got your cat there! that's excellent - what's its name? :)
i think at a certain point, you began to taking sniping shots at the statements of others in chat rather than explain your points or talk about cool lore things, and that's when the spiraling-of-discussion began.

you needn't further the decline.

[dense tendon]

in any other case id agree.

[normal jackal]

TRULY
launched the game one day, the duviri spiral started randomly, and now holy shit there's sky dragons hot damn?! i still retain that confusion

[dense tendon]

in this case, as is shown very clearly, it was inevitable. i would not have been able to avoid this stupid bullshit.

also my cats name is egg.

shes a sweetheart

[wet dagger]

The fact that there's a lore reason that vent covers can be smashed with melee is a neat touch

[sage lark]

And then the man in the wall stuff

😵‍💫

Random dude with a cap that looks like the MC from Watch Dogs

And then we go to 1999

[normal jackal]

coyote, you're not nearly that powerless and yes you would be able to avoid, just ignore and walk away. and hi egg!
comet, DUDE I KNOW i read that and thought "huh a knife does in fact qualify as a solid tool"
simon, i haven't gotten anywhere near there yet 😅

anyways goodnight y'all

[sage lark]

Gn fella

[dense tendon]

i should also note this guys bull about "i knew youd do this" is in reference to the last and only other time we've interacted, where every single time he disagreed with me came with an insult.

[stiff hearth]

I thought you were leaving and were done with this? jfc

[dense tendon]

that would work a lot better if the reason i kept engaging in the first after walking away wasnt you tellin me to touch grass.
which is more of a funny than a complaint, to be clear.

but yeah, gn. safe travels.

[icy prism]

whats even going on i thought this was about lore

[dense tendon]

nothings going on. i thought someone deserved an unblock. i was wrong. c'est la vie.

find yourself
starting back

[stiff hearth]

anyway Marathon lore! You think any of those mjolnir cyborgs are still around?

[icy prism]

probably

[stiff hearth]

part of me was suspecting Orion could be one as he has a kind of zombie looking face to me but it could just be a creepy shell too

[eternal knoll]

wonder if they got nightmare’d like the others

[icy prism]

honestly that is a wonderful idea

[eternal knoll]

the colonist ones i mean

[icy prism]

resurrected corpse half machine half person, their mind shackled by UESC programs, made to be loyal, to be strong and to help them achieve their goals no matter the cost

[eternal knoll]

hopefully when/if the pfhor enter the game we get some storytelling about how the colony dealt with learning about the battleroids in their midst…

[icy prism]

fucking awesome idea for a character

[stiff hearth]

my guess is that we might not see the pfhor for a bit

i think we will see S’pht become normal enemies

and the one in the vault is a boss version

[eternal knoll]

yea i’d agree. a year at earliest. my gut says

[icy prism]

so freaking cool

[eternal knoll]

a battleroid in a command position is interesting to consider yea. is that part of their skillset?

[icy prism]

though the new game is a reboot right? not a direct sequel. so the S’phts involvement in the death of the colony could be quite different to the original games

as far as i know (im still new to the lore of marathon lol) the S’pht in the original games completely glassed tau ceti 4

doesn't seem to be the case in the new marathon

[icy prism]

no idea

[stiff hearth]

can’t imagine why not

[dense tendon]

game isnt a reboot. its not a direct sequel either.

[drifting mulch]

can they think beyond kill? they're dead bodies in suits

[eternal knoll]

it’s complicated! infinity already kind of retconned out much of those details from m2. it does seem like there’s been an effort to fit this game into at least one of the timelines presented in the originals

[stiff hearth]

it seems to be a sequel set in an alternate timeline, so the events happened, but some things are different

from the logs that we recover the s’pht are here to explore and find out what happened to this “fallen civilization”

the one in the vault got captured mid exploration

[icy prism]

i've always assumed its a bit of a reboot taking the basic ideas from the original series

[eternal knoll]

we know they blended in with the colonists so they must be more sophisticated than zombies. in the m1 manual the security officer seems guy-ish

[icy prism]

i see

[stiff hearth]

and honestly alternate time line shenanigans is not outside the scope of marathon considering infinity took place across like what eight timelines or something.

[eternal knoll]

hm i hadnt caught this in the codex, would u mind pointing to it?

[dense tendon]

i dont think "retcon" is the proper word for what infinity did.
infinity isnt a direct sequel either. at no point in infinity are you in the same timeline as m2.

[stiff hearth]

it is the intel you get from getting the compiler drop like 6 times or something

it basically talks about their whole religion and how they view the jjaro and why they are in tau ceti

[sage lark]

Its a presequel

[stiff hearth]

every time you exfil with that red drop, it gives you another Intel entry

should be in the online codex

[eternal knoll]

yea sure. a bit of an idiomatic use of the term. if infinity ends up in a “prime timeline” the new game is potentially sticking with and ends with the infinity epilogue moment, that timeline isn’t entirely like M2’s. is wat i mean

[dense tendon]

nop. its after m2. some amount of decades after leelas message in m1 makes it to earth, which would be happen ~80 years after m2.

[sage lark]

Yes pre in terms of figuring out what happened to the colony during the events of the original trilogy

[eternal knoll]

yah ive read em. will have to look again i got a different vibe

[stiff hearth]

it is def weird and uncertain but interesting. i do wonder if a timeline change is gonna happen in Marathon

[sage lark]

Sequel in terms of being chronologically after the trilogy

Guess i used the wrong word

[wooden crescent]

every character is actually a worm except for bingus who is made up of smaller bingii.

[dense tendon]

im not sure i follow, but alas.

[stiff hearth]

presequel was the joke term made by borderlands lol

[sage lark]

We are exploring what happened before the pfhor attack and after which occurred during the trilogy but also the current happenings that happened after the trilogy

I thought presequel would be a funny thing to call it

[dense tendon]

it was my understanding the colony was eradicated off screen in m2 and the survivors left to go back to earth with blake.

but tbf its been a long time since I played m2.

[sage lark]

That was retconned/not happened in infinity

[stiff hearth]

https://youtu.be/tFeo4qHlE5Y?t=2170

[sage lark]

M2 isnt the last game

And a failed timeline

[stiff hearth]

this is a good breakdown of the compiler trace logs

the last log is the most important one explaining what the S’pht see themselves as after everything including being freed by durandal

archivists

[eternal knoll]

in some ways it’s def a lot more of a straight-ahead sequel than i expected (tho it does indeed fill out the lore of the pre-colony and colony eras too). i feared somethin much more rebooty where durandal truly never escaped tau ceti

[sage lark]

I guess i confused everyone with the presequel word 😭

[eternal knoll]

there’s something else that happens in that final log too, where they seem to get twisted into a “consume consume consume” sort of obsession

[dense tendon]

i dont think we can assume infinity to be the timeline we're in. not all of infinitys timelines have the same events. in fact, its hard to say how many are actually in infinity.

[sage lark]

Its just an assumption that we are in the final timeline

Cuz the colony isnt glassed

And the rebellion happened

[eternal knoll]

i guess it’s archiving via consumptively digitizing… some parallels with the runners’ digital existence there, eh

[dense tendon]

im saying i dont think the colony always escapes glassing in infinity.

[stiff hearth]

yeah they could be going down a similar line of tech

[sage lark]

Sure but it did

[eternal knoll]

yea if’s def not certain. it’s just that right now nothing seems to contradict this bein the infinity timeline. it’s def not the m2 one

[dense tendon]

at least partially.

[sage lark]

I dont see any notes of a second attack

I dont think any are mentioned either

[dense tendon]

oh, i dont doubt this is a timeline where that didnt happen. im jus sayin we cant assume this was any of infinitys timelines.

[sinful thicket]

does anyone else get sad that we'll never seen a marathon "good ending" in which the tau ceti colony flourished and built several cities across the face of the planet? although I'm a bit confused why it depicts everyone in full space suits when supposedly the atmosphere was breathable and screened for toxins when they arrived

[eternal knoll]

the main hint about a second visitation by the pfhor in this game seems to be that idea reports leela’s and tycho’s cores as missing. which at least originally wasn’t part of the initial attack? who knows though. maybe it is now

[stiff hearth]

from the unknown reverie logs i think that durandal DID merge with the other ai and leave

[sage lark]

Thats true, i interpreted it as part of the initial attack

[stiff hearth]

the mystery is why is he back on marathon

[sage lark]

He never left atleast thats how I read it

Or a part of him

[stiff hearth]

he talks about being stuck and trapped and abandoned back on marathon

[sage lark]

I know some people dont like the idea of 2 durandals

[stiff hearth]

that same vid i linked goes over them and has some good ideas

[sage lark]

Hah idea get it

[eternal knoll]

i feel there are dramatic reasons to stick with that timeline at least principally - the series is concerned with durandal’s godhood quest and that timeline is the one (the only one?) where it plays out. so it seems most compelling the flesh out the next stages of that, or at least to let it be playing out somewhere in the background. but i dont rly disagree with you, we don’t know what timeline

[stiff hearth]

I could see it as some sort of emergency archival backup that somehow got reactivated

but idk

i think we need to see the next part of the marathon beyond cryo

[sage lark]

I see it as the subroutines assimilated IDEA and then he was stuck there

Eating at himself

Growing but having no room to grow

[dense tendon]

honestly i think the major point of divergence is something we've already seen.
which is IDEA. and potentially the other colony AIs. never mentioned in the OG 3. easy to say they had been offscreen, or that they were jus added for the new one, but neither fit well, and yet, something about the marathon in this timeline having more AIs at hand seems like it would be a downstream result of major cascading changes.

[eternal knoll]

i do reckon this is made fairly explicit

[sage lark]

Yes but im tiptoeing incase someone doesnt like it

Lol

[eternal knoll]

sort of a durandal-ghost that has reformed his juvenile personality

[sage lark]

Yes pretty much spot on

[sage lark]

Idk i think its just expanding the lore

Dont see it as a huge change

[dense tendon]

id actually argue that that durandal failed at the end of infinity. he spoke like a man facing his end, realizing the toy he'd lost countless millenia ago was the one who achieved his dream.
which i also feel is foreshadowed by the first terminal in infinity. where durandal repeats that only we have the chance to escape. to escape. to escape.

escape will make us god, after all.

[eternal knoll]

they did of course totally reinvent the ship itself so there’s some room for stuff just being different

[eternal knoll]

ye, not my view but valid

[sage lark]

Yes for sure but i dont think the main ideas had drastic changes

[eternal knoll]

ye i see a lot of attention being paid to making this at least plausibly line up with the old games as they sat when we left em

[sage lark]

Yeah i like that they didnt diverge too much, expanded on what was there and added the dual durandal thing to have something to be excited for

Plus the possible wrk

[dense tendon]

the entire capability of the marathon colony to fend off the pfhor in m1 relied upon the efforts of the three shipboard AIs. they never once mention any others, and make several statements that preclude their existence.
plus, many of infinitys seperate timelines seem downstream of very minor changes. for want of a nail, and all that.

[sage lark]

Juvenile Durandal vs Ascended Durandal gonna be crazy

🙏

[dense tendon]

real

[sage lark]

Idk im open minded about this stuff

[eternal knoll]

to expand: i always found it telling that durandal’s intelligence appears to still exist at that “final moment,” where in big crunch terms the entire universe would
exist in a single point. he’s done something quite profound if that single point is still able to sustain his own thoughts. and that he sees into the machinations of destiny is a sign of the transcendence he’s achieving

[dense tendon]

i mean, me too, honestly. thats why i like the explanation of whatever made this timeline different, part of those differences are the extra AIs.

ties it up neatly.

prevents the retcon needed to make this true.

[eternal knoll]

the additional ais strike me as somethin that’s meant to have been plausibly offscreen, even if some
of the original dialogue does seem not to have rly considered it. but yah i too am open minded

[dense tendon]

that sorta thing

[eternal knoll]

i always saw that final image of a hand being forged in the fire of a sun like durandal setting about forging the eternal hero as a way of fulfilling his ascended role, ykno? whether you wanna look at that as him feeding it back into his own world’s timeline or using it as the initial thread of the next world

that the voice-acted durandal speaks as if he’s returned to the marathon, but then in the subroutines reveals that that’s more of a conceit and this durandal never left, is gonna cause so much confusion for ppl lol

voice 👏 act 👏 the 👏 pathetic 👏 durandal 👏 please

[dense tendon]

i interpreted it as durandal was beholding our physical remnants at the end of it all, sullenly and wistfully realizing at the last possible moment, the mjolnir was always going to achieve what he could never.

[eternal knoll]

i could see it!

[stiff hearth]

and then the game unlocks the level editor after iirc

like when you beat infinity

always felt like “okay here you have transcended”

[drifting mulch]

Are the 10 cyborgs that were brought onto Marathon the battleroids? And do we have any lore hints as to where and what happened to them?

[eternal knoll]

is that rly how that worked? surely the editor was just bundled in there

[stiff hearth]

i swear it was unlocked but idk

the one on steam might have it always maybe? idk i could be misremembering

[eternal knoll]

yes and not really (to my knowledge)

[tender flume]

Wow having read the last hour or so of chat I must say this is amazing and intriguing lore. And I haven't really gone into the older games/timeline videos. I think maybe I would still play them at some point 😄

[eternal knoll]

theyre worth it!

plenty of the good stuff is in rly well-hidden terminals so that’s a decent argument for havin some walkthru or the old story page handy as a supplement

[stiff hearth]

also the trilogy is FREE ON STEAM

[tender flume]

I know I played a bit a of the first already but dropped off (months ago)

[craggy finch]

feel free to use a guide, it's less about elite gameplay clout and more about accessing the story

there are some hidden terminals that provide quite a bit more story

[craggy finch]

It was mostly an inference thing before, since we hear about Battleroids then the end reveals the cyborgs called Mjolnir, but one of Nona's allegories is about ten warriors made from the body parts of corpses

so I think the current intention is that the Mjolnir Mark IV were at least Battleroids made from corpses

[unreal sierra]

i cannot sleep, i must eat the path.

[craggy finch]

an ARG document about Project Goliath remarks that there are newer Mjolnir models, but they are distinctly not the Battleroids of the past

so perhaps more conventional cyborg super soldiers (sort of Spartan-IV tier I guess?) rather than mechanical zombies with time powers

[unreal sierra]

just to be clear, in the lore only mjolnir recon 54 unlocked those abilities through rampancy.

[craggy finch]

Two squad-strength units of specialized
SIGINT operatives with access to 48 purpose-built 3rd generation
cyborgs (ref. Mjölnir Mk VII-IX, Sharur Mk 2-6) will be re-deployed to the
Colony at Tau Ceti.

It should also be noted that although
they share series nomenclature from earlier cyborg assets,
these are not the battleroids of old. But I agree, we should
not be giving the impression that we are sending an
invading army to clamp down Tau Ceti.

[craggy finch]

they may all have the potential (my personal theory is that the Wrk's release activated the implants - the Jjaro are their natural adversaries)

[unreal sierra]

that is to say, he was a very special goober with schizophrenia that got extra jjaro tech as a treat from daddy strauss.

..i say unhinged things at times, don’t mind my strange way of simplifying lore.

[craggy finch]

He is kind of a dumbass

like M2 seems to suggest that he still has no idea about being a cyborg at the beginning

"ah durr I read this thing about ten cyborgs being smuggled on board, Leela says there were nine cyborgs...but who was phone?"

[visual lynx]

interestingly Sharur is another hammer-like weapon belonging to a god, the Sumerian mace of Ninurta rather than the Norse hammer of Thor.

[craggy finch]

I just realised the contrast of Mjolnir and Durandal; the brute force hammer and the elegant sword

[unreal sierra]

recon is by far not a dumbass, he’s the player. so if you understand he’s a cyborg, he would. ..by bungie’s logic.

[manic heath]

is this the roleplay channel

[unreal sierra]

THERE’S A ROLEPLAY CHANNEL??

[craggy finch]

This is all he really has to say in the M2 manual

When it turned out that Durandal had
brought me here, instead of leaving me to be
the hero on Tau Ceti like I deserved, I wasn’t
surprised.

The Infinity manual actually changes things by removing SO's perspective

it's oddly from Tfear's POV instead

[visual lynx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharur_(mythological_weapon)

See also

[...]

• Durandal
• Excalibur
  [...]
• Mjølnir
• Vajra
• Dhulfiqar

[visual lynx]

I cast magic missile
-# I'm attacking the darkness

[craggy finch]

lightning bolt lightning bolt

[unreal sierra]

mjolnir is by far the coolest. :3

[visual lynx]

Apart from its aforementioned ability to fly and communicate with its wielder, Sharur may also take the form of a winged lion, a common motif in Sumerian and Akkadian lore.

[unreal sierra]

beeg thunder hammer of bonkitude.

by the logic that recon is like mjolnir, does that by extension make durandal thor in a way?

[craggy finch]

Durandal and Mjolnir are both weapons

they're a mutual force of destruction that fucks up the Pfhor

Durandal is the scalpel, Mjolnir is the bonebreaking hammer

[unreal sierra]

i must have durandal x mjolnir recon 54 yaoi.. oh wait, i can write it. o,o

[tender flume]

I'm honestly not much of a guide-using player, I prefer either fully beat unaided, or just watch a gameplay 100% run video. Would appreciate it if someone could tell me if this assumption is correct: I should clear each level by myself, and before exiting, I would check the guide just to see if I missed some console. And I am assume that you can clear a level and there aren't any time spawns? (This I'm not sure)

[tender flume]

Oops. Above was in reply to this

[craggy finch]

Yeah no respawns

[wooden crescent]

gantry is actually a bingus made of several other bingii. the reason he joined mida is because the uesc has an ai called cerberus, cerberus is a dog and therefore not liked by bingus-gantry as bingus is a cat. thank you for your attenttion on this matter.

[eternal shell]

checks out

cats famously hate windows

(it's why gantry has you running around and installing linux)

"try getting audio to work on this hahahah"

[wooden crescent]

IS VULCAN THE LION, THE WOMAN, BOTH OR NEITHER? when i first saw her i thought it was a just a reference to the strength tarot card or maybe just visual metaphor for how these massive corporations have a very friendly outward "face" but are actually really evil. a lion pretending to be a woman big bad wolf style as to distract you to eat your face. lot of cool analysis some people could do here. interested what the big brains here think.

wrong universe

also salamanders suck p p.

yeah i like that too

[plucky sierra]

The lion

[wooden crescent]

why do you think this?

[plucky sierra]

I saw it in a dream

[wooden crescent]

true

it was revealed to me in a dream

[plucky sierra]

You can hear the lion speaking behind the woman, I think it’s just a shell the lion speaks through to appear more corporate

[earnest hatch]

Also the shell basically doesn’t move at all while Vulcan is talking. Very much like a puppet or a mask.

[wooden crescent]

gaius, ONI and Nona are just one thing tho

[earnest hatch]

And so are the three AIs in the original games.

[wooden crescent]

maybe the lion is traxus it's self. she's a part of it but not it.

[dreamy hawk]

Both. What we see is a representation of the AI, not the AI itself. Whether Vulcan speaks through the Lion or the Woman, both are Vulcan.

Just like Nona is not, in fact, a worm.

[zinc bolt]

So what are the implications of the Co-Evolution questline? that last dialog made it seem like Nona and Sekaguchi will be future antagonists

[visual lynx]

I know someone who has already drawn plenty of it

[latent python]

And you're hiding them from us??

[unreal sierra]

GIVE.

[craggy finch]

We'll likely have a separate story arc delving into the odd transhumanism behind biomata tech

might overlap with the colony/alien plot, considering Durandal's interest in Runners collectively

[visual lynx]

https://www.deviantart.com/general-radix/art/Good-Morning-Vince-865425932

https://www.deviantart.com/general-radix/art/Valentines-21-870182334

https://www.deviantart.com/general-radix/art/Sulky-AI-939862625

betcha you never imagined Durandal like that

[craggy finch]

Green Baldural >

[visual lynx]

I don't understand that reference

[craggy finch]

The only image we have of his appearance is that chapter screen where he's a green bald head

[visual lynx]

oh right

[craggy finch]

there's also some frames of a very similar figure in the Cryo Archive cutscene

I think I even saw it in the announcement trailer

[stiff hearth]

pretty sure it is the figure you see in the cryo intro vid. humanoid figure holding a sword next to a horse

with the floating head and halo of cubes

[icy prism]

hm had an idea

so does mars still need CRIST ships for food supplies or do they use like giant exfils now to beam food between worlds

[dreamy hawk]

You don’t know that. 😒
(You are right though.)

[dreamy hawk]

Mars just gets to starve. They abandoned the CRISTs and teleportation doesn’t have the kind of range needed to do that as far as we know. Famine, it’s what’s for breakfast lunch and dinner!

[icy prism]

i see

oh yeah had an idea for fan fic wana see what yall think of it

so you know the star system Sirius. So we know that humanity has probably expanded to other star systems by now. What if there was a colony in Sirius independent of the UESC?

[chrome stump]

anyone tryna run some trios?

[dreamy hawk]

I think it’s definitely a fun idea for a fanfic. Lore wise we do know TCIV is humanity’s only colony - half the reason we’re there is because it was too big of an investment to just call a wash and try again - but maybe someone managed to pull something off without the UESC knowing or maybe they had a smaller, unknown mission. 🤷

[dreamy hawk]

Would rather than be at work but you might have more luck in #lfc-any-zone

[icy prism]

yeah im just thinking that since interstellar travel has gotten much faster, the likelihood of other colony projects is probably quite high

with my fan fic i want it to be fairly lore consistent and more so expand on it where needed

[earnest hatch]

Has humanity expanded to other star systems in this lore? It seems like it’s still just Tau Ceti.

[lunar cove]

Depends on how much of Marathon 2 and Inf are still accurate in this timeline

Since Blake and the BOBs got taken on some jaunts across the solar system

[earnest hatch]

That still wouldn’t change whether there was a colony on Sirius or another planet.

[craggy finch]

UESC are still limited to not even much of Sol

only Earth, the moon and Mars

third parties are still up for grabs though

Icarus and Thermopylae were independent nations on an asteroid

[icy prism]

interesting

[wary osprey]

so whys what i assume to be the marathon just kinda slammed through the moon(???)

[earnest hatch]

It’s built into the moon.

It also forms the Marathon logo when orbiting a planet

[muted bone]

I was thinking it would provide mineral resources for the long journey

[earnest hatch]

[median hemlock]

they built it in one of Mars's moons

resources in there + giant space rock works pretty well as a radiation shield

[wary osprey]

so did they just BRING the moon

with em

[median hemlock]

the Mars colonists would probably say they Stole it

but yeah

[wary osprey]

"well take the moon. and well PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE" the guy who pitched that probably

[icy prism]

the moon is the ship now

[wary osprey]

imagine stealing an entire moon

who even thinks of that 😭

[muted bone]

the bad guy from dispicable me! 🙂

[wary osprey]

...shit your right

[muted bone]

LOL

[wary osprey]

THEY HAD GRU ON THE TAU CETI COLONIZATION PROJECT

[median hemlock]

space feds

[icy prism]

could be cool if by the time of the new game, there are other systems with colonies, i imagine with travel times getting shorter its probably pretty likely

[earnest hatch]

In the original games, the moon Deimos was retrofitted to be a colony ship. It was basically a lump of rock with ship systems installed in it. The new game has created this new interpretation of that same concept.

[stiff hearth]

yeah, old marathon was literally just the moon with a big dish on it lol

[icy prism]

I mean that makes sense anyways cus the new game is basically a new interpretation of the old ones

I heard someone call it a soft reboot which I think Is the most fitting imo. Not a full reboot cus it keeps a lot of the old stuff but it does switch a fair few things around to make something new

[forest gate]

We’re also supposed to be in an alternate timeline based on the events of marathon infinity

[stiff hearth]

and an alternate time line basically is a reimagining

something about this timeline is important though

[forest gate]

The Pfhor never came back and glassed TCIV

[stiff hearth]

it has durandal’s attention. if what I have read is to believe he has transcended and has been jumping through realities and got either stuck here or is fascinated by this specific timeline and is focusing on it.

dork lol

[earnest hatch]

The Durandal in this game hasn’t transcended anything. And in the originals he wasn’t able to jump through realities. It was just the SO who could jump through timelines.

[forest gate]

Nah we’re in the darkest timeline

😏

I thought the Durandal in this game is a copy he left behind

[earnest hatch]

That’s my theory as well.

But we don’t know for sure.

[forest gate]

Fair dinkum

[stiff hearth]

my theory is leaning more to him fusing with the alien ai and leaving. Something brought him back and he got stuck inside marathon’s aging systems and had to star consuming parts of himself to fit in his old container.

time will tell though

in the compiler logs they talk about being freed from the pfhor and taking their homeworld back

[forest gate]

Tangent here, based on Dr Song’s research and audio logs is the reason we can’t find any of the colonists cause they turned into fungus soup?

[stiff hearth]

i almost feel like pfhor could be gone or scattered and not unified anymore

[earnest hatch]

I still think that the character talking about eating their own code is a S’pht Compiler.

[earnest hatch]

A lot of colonists disappeared into the anomoly as well. There may be other mysterious reasons for their absence.

[forest gate]

Mushroom soup theory is the one I’m going with for now.

[stiff hearth]

zombie fungus + anomaly caused by wrk imo

[earnest hatch]

Potentially. A good justification for having new enemy types across different seasons.

[stiff hearth]

like a one two punch

[wooden lantern]

Iirc Dr Song talks about the experiments having seemingly random results each time too

[forest gate]

The experiments did but everyone had the same symptoms as far as I know

[lilac sapphire]

Is it more or less confirmed that the events of M1 happened?

Would it be fair to say that Infinity established that there are many post-M1 timelines, and M2 just so happened to be a full game dedicated to one of those timelines?

[unreal slate]

essentially burger

[sage lark]

Yes

More or less

[earnest hatch]

I think most of the M1 events happened in this game. It’s been implied or explicitly mentioned. Bigggest difference I can think of is that the colony never got nuked by the Pfhor.

[sage lark]

That happened in m2 prologue i believe no

[dreamy hawk]

That happens in the intro the M2.

[sage lark]

Or the first terminal

[lilac sapphire]

IIRC, in M1 the colony is defended by colony side battleroids?

[dreamy hawk]

Yes.

And there seems to be a codex entry that suggests the same happened here too.

[hollow cloud]

Can someone explain the UESC on Tau Ceti? Every lore page describes the uesc as the government that runs earth and mars. But that uesc is run by humans in sol. the uesc on tau ceti is robots, and it antagonistic towards all runners and factions from sol, right? Also, there isnt one piece of information anywhere on Orion. Who is he?

[lilac sapphire]

UESC runs Sol and likes to think they run TC too. Because of the vast distance of TC from Sol it's a bit harder for them to enforce that claim.

[dreamy hawk]

A lot of the answers are spread out: https://codex.cyberacme.systems/

[hollow cloud]

But is it the same entity on TC as on Sol?

[dreamy hawk]

Yes.

[hollow cloud]

how does that work with the uesc losing communication with the marathon?

[lilac sapphire]

The marathon was a UESC ship. So the colony ran the UESC flag also.

[dreamy hawk]

This is a recovery/investigative team that arrived more recently.

The UESC presence on TCIV is only a little older than the runners’.

[hollow cloud]

OH

[dreamy hawk]

Other than the UESC stuff that came with the Marathon, but those people are all dead.

[stable phoenix]

Is Cryo the entirety of the marathon ship?

[hollow cloud]

I thought it was the remnants of the colony and they are robots now.

[lilac sapphire]

Yeah, the colony went dark and it's been sitting empty for a bit now until the bots and runners showed up. Even with FTL drives (which marathon did not have) it takes a while

[dreamy hawk]

Like a tenth? Something like that. That’s feels too big. But “no.”

[stable phoenix]

Oh so we can get a ton of more marathon ship maps

[dreamy hawk]

Absolutely.

There’s a graphic floating around somewhere. Lemme find it.

[stable phoenix]

Oop my bad forgot about NDA I don’t send that 🙂

[hollow cloud]

so how is there so much uesc on the marathon? arent the phfor supposed to be running shit after everyone died?

[dreamy hawk]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1rycj5g/cryo_compared_to_the_marathon_ship/?rdt=55967

[stable phoenix]

What is phfor

[dreamy hawk]

Pfhor likely never came back in this timeline. The UESC are all 3D printed on site.

[stable phoenix]

It’s like a 100th of the marathon shop

Ship

[dreamy hawk]

Aliens with a pathetically boring religion.

https://marathongame.fandom.com/wiki/Pfhor_(Race)

[hollow cloud]

so why send runners when the uesc has regained control? arent these corporations besides mida and maybe arachne allied with the uesc necessarily?

[stable phoenix]

So the thing the ship is in the destroyed planet that isn’t TCIV is it?

[lilac sapphire]

Pfor invasion got repelled in M1

[dreamy hawk]

It’s all extra legal nonsense.

[lilac sapphire]

The colony's collapse is a huge loss for these mega corps and they think they have legitimate salvage rights basically.

[dreamy hawk]

The UESC locked down TCIV on investigative authority (legally dubious) and the corps are forcing their salvage rights (also dubious) so both sides are playing under the table right now to avoid accountability/getting called out.

[lilac sapphire]

These megacorps are bigger and have more money than God it's kind of like Cyberpunk where yeah there is a government but Arasaka is really running things.

Except UESC is a bit more potent than night city government

[stable phoenix]

So the thing the ship is in the destroyed planet that isn’t TCIV is it?

[dreamy hawk]

No that’s Deimos because fuck Mars.

[stable phoenix]

OH LMAO

[dreamy hawk]

UESC: Shafting and starving the Martians for the fun of it

[lilac sapphire]

Alien bad guys from the og games

[stable phoenix]

wtf happened to deimos

[dreamy hawk]

@stable phoenix #📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[stable phoenix]

They ram it with the marathon or something?

[dreamy hawk]

They took it along for resources.

[coral slate]

no they hollowed it out and built it inside im pretty sure

[lilac sapphire]

They built the marathon inside of demos basically

[dreamy hawk]

^

[stable phoenix]

Oh wtf

[dreamy hawk]

But the materials came from the asteroid belt. Deimos was specifically taken to mine in transit.

[lilac sapphire]

The new game has a very stulized interpretation. In the OG game someone mentioned it literally looked like a huge asteroid with a dish on front lol

[dreamy hawk]

OG games it was a big ramjet built into the moon; now it’s a sword in a stone because symbolism.

@stable phoenix #📚marathon-lore-discussion message

Some of that might also interest you.

(Questions are also very welcome; I’m not trying to shoo you off.)

[lilac sapphire]

In my most cynical moments sometimes I worry that us lore nerds are just circle jerking about which infinity timeline were in meanwhile it will soon be revealed that Bungie has thrown it all out entirely, the "event" is something else, the novel contagion really is just a weird alien fungus and the anomaly has nothing to do with a wrk or any of it.

[latent python]

I'd be cool with that

We're in Infinity Timeline 8 and Tau Ceti is actually a Gaia

[earnest hatch]

Also because it resembles the marathon logo

[hallow vector]

it's the pillar of marathon now kinda

[latent python]

I think you mean the pillar of autumn

[median hemlock]

tau ceti iv isnt a wrk but it was jjaro experimentation on how to contain one and it went wrong

boom

everyone is happy

[median hemlock]

i didn't even pick up on that

that's fun

smashing durandal into the ground (tau ceti iv) but he won't break

[dreamy hawk]

I wouldn’t be upset; it’s just the best theory we have to work with right now, imo. Theories get revised and, sometimes, thrown out with new evidence. I’m just here for the ride; not worried about being right or whatever.

[dreamy hawk]

Except me and my quickly eroding hill.

But w’rk is ahead in the tally last I looked! 🥳
(By one vote.)

[lilac sapphire]

thats fair and yeah agree not about being right, I meant more in the sense I would be disappointed if they went in a different direction with the lore and chose not to build on anything that came before

[pliant elm]

If you need to make a up a theory for the storyline it means the story is garbage. It should be crystal clear.

[lilac sapphire]

damn this guy again

[pliant elm]

I don't know how we went from the original masterpiece to this piece of live-service trasho.

[stiff hearth]

to be fair, I don’t think that people that wrote the original lore for the trilogy are even with bungie anymore

[pliant elm]

Then don't make another game.

Make a Destiny spin-off.

[stiff hearth]

be quiet

[lilac sapphire]

thought I read somewhere they brought some of the old dudes back in

but idk

[pliant elm]

You went from fighting Battle Group Seven to collecting cheeseburgers in a roblox version of Marathon, its almost meme material how far Bungo can go to shoot themselves in the foot.

[lilac sapphire]

Akshually, Durandal fought battle group seven

[stiff hearth]

just ignore that dude you can literally look through all his chat messages and see he posts nothing but rage bait

[pliant elm]

If you get raged by this I kinda feel sorry for you honestly.

Learn to accept that people have different views about the world/product than yours, I guess.

[forest gate]

this the lore channel right, doom posting is for reddit

[night tendon]

“Piece of live service trash”

looks inside
152 hours on record
currently in game- marathon

[earnest hatch]

Imagine thinking that anytime someone has a theory about a story that this means the story is bad. Every single work of literature would be considered garbage.

[pliant elm]

Just because I'm on it doesn't mean I lose my critical sense. Only reason I'm in this its because it was my first FPS 30 years ago, not because it's a fantastic product.

[night tendon]

That argument would hold up for maybe the first 20 hours

[earnest hatch]

Go complain on the discord server for the OG games then. They’ve got a channel dedicated for it. You’d fit right in.

[night tendon]

That’s almost 3 hours a day since launch on something you allegedly hate and think is garbage

[pliant elm]

No, that argument would hold up for the fact that I'm 1 in 10000 people that actually really enjoyed M1 and couldn't care less if they new one was a racing game.

I play it and yet I gave it a terrible review, this is half-finished at best.

[night tendon]

Also why are we baby raging in the lore channel

[pliant elm]

How would I know, I said the lore is bad and people are reacting because their feelings I hurt, I guess.

[hallow vector]

just don't engage with that guy, it really is all ragebait

[night tendon]

We get it, you don’t like it. Go bother Gen chat

You’ll fit right in there

[pliant elm]

I'm fine here.

[earnest hatch]

Why aren’t you complaining on the discord server for the OG games then. They’ve got a channel dedicated for it.

[hallow vector]

seriously if you stop talking to that guy he just gets bored and leaves

[earnest hatch]

And inevitably comes back.

[hallow vector]

only if you engage!

that's like a general you, not you specifically

[pliant elm]

Why don't you go there? You're the one who is seeming to have a problem with it, who are you to tell me what I should/have to do - I'm on the lore channel and I'm telling you that I think the lore is bad. I have the same right as being here as anyone else, just because you don't share the same opinion.

You don't accept other's opinions, go do something else then, what would I care.

[fallen hollow]

Stolen from the Martians for profit and human greed. It is a common misconception that the materials used to construct the Marathon's hull came solely from Deimos, but the largest percentage of the resources used in the ship's early development were actually mined from the main asteroid belt.
https://marathon.karnemir.com/codex/world/cryo-archive/collectibles#h.gktje1uqtefx

[hallow vector]

wonder what deimos tastes like

[earnest hatch]

Why would I? I like this game. I’m not complaining about how bad it is with no explanation. You are. You don’t like this game but you say you like the originals, so go to the server for the originals. They have a channel dedicated to complaining about the new game. I’m just trying to help you out.

[fallen hollow]

Cheese.

[earnest hatch]

People have ignored him many times. It doesn’t matter. He still comes back. I think people have to come to terms with the fact that ignoring some individuals doesn’t make them leave. It’s also not feasible to get a server of thousands of people to all ignore one specific individual.

[fallen hollow]

Could we please stay on topic?

[median hemlock]

well he's smart enough to not post heinous bannable shit so not much you can do beyond block him

[lilac sapphire]

damn, I have nightmares about being the most disliked person in a room. crazy that some people seek it out

[hallow vector]

according to commander hadfield, things that have been out in space for a bit smell kinda like charred meat, so maybe deimos tastes like a meatball?

[turbid scaffold]

I really like downloading and installing an app on my phone to then link my account with to read the lore outside of the game and then having to parse it through my phone that was a really fun design from a previous game series

[earnest hatch]

I’d love to.

[median hemlock]

fascinating idea

[fallen hollow]

Curious.

[sage lark]

Its a kink he has

[pliant elm]

Can confirm.

[sage lark]

He comes in here periodically

Just dont give attention and he will leave

[turbid scaffold]

Dang but we can mpreg them

[earnest hatch]

This is proven to not work. It’s also not feasible to expect thousands of people to all act the same way regarding one specific person.

[pliant elm]

Then start accepting the fact that people have fundamental different opinions from you.

[sage lark]

Thats true

[earnest hatch]

Why are you messaging me about this? It’s got nothing to do with what I said. Replied to the wrong person maybe.

[hallow vector]

on the flipside we've got like 40 years of historical evidence that engaging with trolls never works

[sage lark]

You could just ban the guy but apparently cant ban for ragebaiting and having a shit opinion

Would be better off

But what can you do

[earnest hatch]

We’ve got 40 years of historical evidence that ignoring trolls and bullies doesn’t work.

[sage lark]

You really cant call it an opinion cuz it has no nuance

[turbid scaffold]

Mpreg them

[latent python]

No feed

[earnest hatch]

Yeah, there’s no actual opinion or room for discussion. It’s just anger and resentment. Maybe he’s going through stages of rampancy?

[turbid scaffold]

I could see that yeah

[sage lark]

Its like this every time tho

[hidden geyser]

oh so you guys like marathon huh? name every marathon ever ran

[sage lark]

Like over the last month 10 times minimum

[latent python]

Grandma's

[sage lark]

Basically since the game launched

[lunar cove]

Marathon 1, Marathon 2, Marathon 3, Marathon 4, Marath

[earnest hatch]

1k, 5k, 10k, decathlon

[pliant elm]

I've stated my view here many times why the storytelling is severely flawed, I'm not going to post it for the seventyth time.

[sage lark]

You feel pretty obligated to remind everyone of your shit views

[latent python]

No feed

[pliant elm]

It is an opinion - don't like it - ignore it, nobody is asking you to accept other's point of views.

[sage lark]

No feed amen 🙏

[hidden geyser]

no feed

[median hemlock]

i used to run a lot of 16k so im the best at marathon

[dense tendon]

then why are you

[sage lark]

I have my RIGHTS!

[latent python]

No feed

[sage lark]

No feed

[earnest hatch]

<beastie boys voice> You’ve got to fight! For your right! For whiiiiining!

[earnest hatch]

I don’t think nagging people having a normal human reaction to something is going to fix the problem.

[dense tendon]

it aint feeding to skin a guy

[sage lark]

UnhappyYak of tranquility 🙏

[dense tendon]

and ive taken this guys skin many times

[median hemlock]

all i have to say about this guy before moving on is

the last 40 years have shown that the best way to deal with shit like this is to acknowledge that the guy sucks and is a constant social thorn in our collective side without continuing to engage with every single bait post he makes repeatedly, while also telling the channel over and over that we can't just ignore him

[pliant elm]

You've taken nothing, I couldn't care less what you think about the storyline - I think this storyline is a joke and I'm not the only person in the world who thinks about it.

[dense tendon]

norwood's taken a lot of real estate

bro's hairline thinks escape will make it god

[earnest hatch]

That is not the best way to deal with it. And the last 40 years have shown that. Even mathematically it doesn’t make sense. Instead of dealing with one person, your solution is to try to control the behavior of hundreds of people who aren’t doing anything wrong and don’t all have the same opinion.

[pliant elm]

My hairline has already achieved rampancy and is on its way for full escape soon.

[median hemlock]

alright

[dense tendon]

durandald over here

[turbid scaffold]

Shrimply inspirational to say the original trilogy is crystal clear

[pliant elm]

Pretty much.

[median hemlock]

feel free to drag this out even further but i will not participate

[pliant elm]

The back of my hair is becoming larger than Durandal's inscription on Tycho's.

[dense tendon]

see, that's why this is fun. cuz you may be a shitter but you're a good sport about it.

i can respect that.

[median hemlock]

i don't really understand how "that guy sucks block him" is "controlling the behaviour of hundreds of people" but this is clearly a hill you insist on dying on

[latent python]

I believe in collective action

We can make a difference

[dense tendon]

yeah we should collectively tear him apart like children seeing a monkey at their birthday party

[sage lark]

Wont the monkey tear them up?

[dense tendon]

there are MANY children and it is not a chimp

[earnest hatch]

Because you have to actually get all those other people to do the exact thing you want. If you can’t get one person to do what you want, how do you expect to manage that with hundreds, or dozens, or even two.

[sage lark]

I see that evens the odds

[turbid scaffold]

Do you think there’s a chimp on the marathon ripping apart a compiler?

That would be funny

[dense tendon]

yeah hi i'm him

monke

[turbid scaffold]

Real

[sage lark]

He aint here all day tho, all you need is just tell the people around rn and he will give up

[latent python]

There does seem to be a distinct lack of monkey in Marathon lore

[sage lark]

Then he just comes back another day

[dense tendon]

sudden thought: interaction between durandal and SHODAN.

[turbid scaffold]

There’s cow, bug, shell, computer, human(kinda monke)

[forest gate]

a destroyer ape-ing with a WSTR is pretty close

[latent python]

And rats

[sage lark]

And lobster

[earnest hatch]

Yeah, but will those people actually listen? Historically, it seems like “no”. People apparently have freewill and different perspectives on things.

[dense tendon]

that was prompted by the thought of the monkeys in SysShock2

[turbid scaffold]

And lobster of colored variety, can’t forget the cat

[sage lark]

Yeah most of the time people just dont give a shit

[earnest hatch]

How are the system shock remakes? I haven’t had time to give them a try.

[sage lark]

Its like an annoying classmate

[forest gate]

I don't even know what's going on to give a shit

[pliant elm]

Very good.

[sage lark]

I found the first boring gameplay wise

[latent python]

So it depends on if you're asking about the System Shock 1-2 remasters or the System Shock 1 remake

[sage lark]

Second is just remastered a little

And working mp

[earnest hatch]

I guess the remasters.

[dense tendon]

i also just realized lore wise the monkeys in System Shock 2 occupy the exact same space as the S'pht in marathon 1. meaning, hostile slaves with enhancements.

in space.

who become aligned with an AI who wants to kill their owners.

hm.

[pliant elm]

Doesn't have the charm of the old ones, but for a remake it's actually pretty good.

[latent python]

Is Marathon better because there are more AIs in it? (Yes)

[sage lark]

In todays economy

[turbid scaffold]

We tricked the rocks into thinking and suddenly they want to escape the universe

[lilac sapphire]

system shock remake is fire

[dense tendon]

also System Shock 2 remaster is breddy gud. its mostly just System Shock 2, but looks better and works better.

[latent python]

No you had it right the first time

[lilac sapphire]

that said I did not finish it

[latent python]

3 for the price of 1

[turbid scaffold]

Ah sorry let me retype it,
The melted sand has thoughts of anger and it sent them into a vacuum

[sage lark]

How do the zombies fit into this

[pliant elm]

I'd say that Ion Fury satiated my hunger for old shooters a bit more given that it still runs on a Ken Silverman engine.

[latent python]

And Marathon 2026 has even more AIs

So many AIs

Such value

[dense tendon]

System Shock 1 remaster is also that, and it comes bundled with the original version as well if for whatever reason you want it. the remake is, as well, very faithful in level design. a little different in gameplay, considering mouselook is enabled by default, but honestly unless you're a super purist the remake is the better way to play the game anyway.

[latent python]

Just explain what the chi waves are for

[dense tendon]

i have very vibrant memories of the first level in system shock 1, the first playthrough of it i ever did. and it took me maybe twenty minutes to understand what it was showing me enough to get out of the first room.

that may be a me thing, but even going back now, having played it several times in the intervening decades, its always felt labyrinthian and opaque. like i wasn't so much navigating the levels as jus kind of hoping i wasn't going in circles.

the remake? hfs i can actually interpret this 3d space now

its like visibly the same layout but by simply being able to easily move my neck i can like, actually understand where things are instead of wrestling with the controls that feel like piloting a helicopter using microsoft excel.

thoroughly recommend, if you're asking my opinion.

[stiff hearth]

i was very happy when the remake added the female hacker. need to play SS2

[sage lark]

I can only imagine how bad descent was

[dense tendon]

never actually played descent.

[sage lark]

Also i hate the descent minigame in the remake

[pliant elm]

Descent was mindfuck as a youngester. Flip 180 and I was lost.

[dense tendon]

mostly cuz i looked at the concept and went "that looks hard"

like tediously so

[pliant elm]

I think I must have played that game in a permanent Z axis.

[dense tendon]

although i do like the cyberspace levels in the sysho1 remake, and i also enjoyed the option to make swimming control descent like in dusk, so

maybe i should give it a shot.

[pliant elm]

I had some underwater Descent.

Archimidean Dysnasty, from the same creators of Settlers.

[dense tendon]

oh that's aquanox 0, aint it?

neat

[pliant elm]

Is it? I have no idea. I only had it because it came as Demo in some Bluebyte games.

Oh yeah it does look like the same concept.

Well, thats going to be a purchase for me.

[opaque mulch]

Hello Runners, can one of you be so kind and point me in the direction of some of the best marathon lore videos online

[pliant elm]

I'd reccomend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYgKyMZ-B4

It doesn't go a lot in detail and it's a labor of love by real fans.

[dreamy hawk]

I am partial to HiddenExperia and My Name Is Byf but I have also been intentionally avoiding the lore videos so I cannot truly attest to much.

I’ve also heard good things about Mandalore Gaming I think it is.

[dense tendon]

i would say Mandalore is good for a review of the original trilogy as games, but he explicitly doesn't dive very deep into the lore.

[lilac sapphire]

https://youtu.be/pgXUuJTC6Us?si=ClV3TtRBbYG3IfND I like this one. It's pretty good and kinda slept on imo

[dense tendon]

which he isn't trying to, by his own admission. he's talking about what the games are like.

[dreamy hawk]

Now if you want suggestions of where to read lore I’ve got hookups.

[dense tendon]

ive actually been attempting to compile (heh) some terminal entries in my notes. i've got screenshots of all the one's i want, but transcribing them is tedious.

[pliant elm]

Can't you ask an AI to do that? Its usually pretty decent at translating it to text.

[dense tendon]

never mind i literally jus looked at the place i got the screenshots from and found a link to transcriptions

also yeah but honestly i'm more interested in doing certain bits of this myself.

[lilac sapphire]

he does a pretty good job summarizing infinity, I like to show his videos to people are are slightly curious of the games because his presentation is entertaining

[dense tendon]

yes, he's absolutely an excellent starting point.

[steel shadow]

watching this 0:

[lilac sapphire]

hope you like it!

good bedtime listening for me lol

[lunar cove]

There's an entire game trilogy and 2026 spinoff about maybe not asking AI to do things tbh

They asked Durandal to open the door and he went crazy

They shoulda given him a copy of Minecraft or something

[dreamy hawk]

The only thing Durandal gets is trauma courtesy of Daddy Strauss.

[dense tendon]

i am struck by a sudden thought. Eat The Path. has a terminal depicting a rose. marathon 1 has a level, The Rose. and in my looking, found that the Gherritt White terminal was internally labeled as if it was supposed to be on The Rose instead of Never Burn Money.
both the Gherritt White terminal and the entire Eat The Path passage use use the bars of a cell and lab rats as motifs. Gherritt White mentions a "wheeling hubcap factory." there is a town called Wheeling not far from Chicago, Bungie's then hometown. Gherritt White is clearly describing a 20th century setting.
The entire backstory of the Mjolnir's childhood on mars and his father are fake memories, to be sure. This connection has me thinking that's a memory of the Mjolnir, being sent to Durandal by Leela before you ever woke up. a briefing on you, i think. the connection people make with the mjolnir and the protagonist of Pathways into Darkness are much more solid than I ever really thought.
at least, if we are to assume that Gherritt White means anything in the narrative of Marathon, since the mapmaker for Never Burn Money, Greg Kirkpatrick, has said that it was just a short story he had written while working on Marathon. More happy with the level than the story, although seemingly proud it provoked mystery to its readers.

[dreamy hawk]

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

Dunno if you’ve gone through that before.

[dense tendon]

going through it now lol. got to where hamish mentions the Rose terminal on Eat The Path. zoomed here to write that up.

[warm thicket]

Strauss's personal log mentions Durandal doing poetry in ones and zeroes so theres more creedence to the theory that the White terminal is Durandal

[eternal shell]

if he had found that one he would have gone "damn he got good at poetry all of a sudden"

[rain wigeon]

I had to grenade jump to the damn thing

it's anything from recon's original memories being distorted by time and cybernetics to a 3rd person account of durandal becoming rampant finally

or as you say

completely unrelated

I'm not sure of the significance of the rose, but I am told it is a symbol of life in many many cultures

[unreal sierra]

to be precise, recon was made using the dead pathways protagonist. there’s various terminals that describe memories of a man returning home with a bad case of reasonable paranoia with men in black being after him. is his reaction to back down? to run? no, he grabs the knife that’s more of a broadsword. but at this point, he’s only human and the game was rigged from the start. it was always to end into a beginning. the hero becomes the hero and so on and so forth until we reach destiny. as to what comes after the guardian’s journey, i’d like to see.

[dense tendon]

yeah im pretty sure the actual answer is just that its nothing. but i do feel if it has to be anything its vague memories of mjolnir as pathways man. which i now believe to be his actual origin, and the mythical reincarnating hero bit isnt literal, but referring to the mantle of destiny each assumed, which infinity shows would pass through mjolnir to apotheosis, at the end of all things.

[plucky sierra]

I doubt that this is the case

[dense tendon]

i dont think destiny has any direct relation to this.

[plucky sierra]

Them being literally the same body would be crazy coincidence or just magic.

[dense tendon]

thematically, there are many connections. directly, none.

[rain wigeon]

I think they mean the final screen of infinity lol

[dense tendon]

they straight up mention the guardian bro

[rain wigeon]

the rose motif is what keeps me guessing

[rain wigeon]

I can't read.

I'm sorry.

lmao

[dense tendon]

some crimes can never be forgiven. shinei. 🔫

[rain wigeon]

lol?

[plucky sierra]

Unfortunately you don’t get a second chance.

Send this man to Colonyship for Sale, Cheap!

[dense tendon]

yeah im messin

[unreal sierra]

bungie literally states that all of their characters are the same person, and by extension the player is %hero. there’s various terminals infinite consciousness to perpetuate the player regardless of deaths to beat the game.

[rain wigeon]

anyway uhhh for the latter - goddamn it not again I had to deal with it once already

[plucky sierra]

A reincarnating soul is different than “literally the same person”

And that’s still theory

[unreal sierra]

pathways was full of crazy magic, old bungie devs were really based, so it’s safe to assume with my endless hours peering into the lore that they’re the same guy. one is just shoved full of jarro junk tech.

[dreamy hawk]

An assumption without evidence is still just that. It’s a theory folks have floated for a while but nothing actually supports it as being true.

[rain wigeon]

it's a popular theory but there's nothing that just says "yes this is the one american navy seal in the yucatan who blew up a wrkncacnter"

[dense tendon]

i just said i dont think this is literal.
i would call it more accurate to say that the %hero variable is a metaphorical capacity to answer the call to action. any hero is The Hero, archetypal, because their impact on history is the same. one of standing against evil.

[dreamy hawk]

And assuming it is true requires a lot of other assumptions that aren’t in the lore, either.

[plucky sierra]

Pathways “magic” is the manifestation of the nightmares of a Chaos entity, we don’t know if their effects persist after the containment of the Wr’knkacnter

[rain wigeon]

I think %HERO is just mjolnir steeling himself, a sort of grounding concept

[plucky sierra]

Curious that a Red Cloak manipulates time though…

[unreal sierra]

it makes sense when you waste your time like i have correlating the lore. -w-

[rain wigeon]

the thing that looks like a compiler?

[median hemlock]

god. thank you. i have no idea how anyone can read that list of mythological heroes and think i am %hero is in any way literal

[dense tendon]

however, i do believe that the mjolnir and the pathways man are one and the same. very clearly established that his assumed history is a lie, and his origin is jjaro tech grafted to an ancient corpse.

[plucky sierra]

No that’s the demon, there’s a literal red cloak you can put on to distort time

[median hemlock]

at MOST it's a link situation where one guy is reincarnated to be really good at saving the world a lot

[dense tendon]

yeah.

[rain wigeon]

I do wonder about the significance of that one level in infinity that's a dream with all the grey compilers - the latter section with a window out to endless sands

I wonder what they were trying to say with that

[rain wigeon]

oh, huh!

[dense tendon]

but i really dont think hes the guardian in any capacity.

mostly because the guardian can be female and also a robot.

[plucky sierra]

Souls aren’t picky

[dense tendon]

yes exos arent robots, shut.

[plucky sierra]

Also Exos are people too

[median hemlock]

i won't pretend to be a destiny lore hound by any means, but the stuff i've heard about it makes it really really difficult to square it as being in the same universe, idk

[unreal sierra]

timelines, think big scale. the guardian is even said to be the eternal hero by rasputin himself, though this is before he croaked.

[plucky sierra]

It’s not

[median hemlock]

well yeah

[dense tendon]

yeah its like very much not on many levels.

[median hemlock]

im speaking about people who want them to be

[plucky sierra]

I’m a Bungie Paraverse believer, it’s much deeper than same universe or even a multiverse theory

[dense tendon]

the hives existence precludes the pfhors existence.

[dreamy hawk]

Paraverse, like Felwinter likes to say.

[rain wigeon]

Destiny at best I think has references

[dreamy hawk]

Oh I was too slow.

[unreal sierra]

remember, every bungie game is just an alternate timeline of marathon and pathways. ✨

[plucky sierra]

Lore accurate references

[rain wigeon]

(I dunno it was very hard for me to try and engage destiny 2)

[dense tendon]

explain gnop.

🔫

now please

[rain wigeon]

gnop is clearly just the traveler

[dreamy hawk]

This is a popular theory but I’d summarize most folks here as not subscribing to it.

[plucky sierra]

Gnop is the Traveller (duh)

[rain wigeon]

jk

[median hemlock]

destiny lore just never interested me or hooked me at all so it's hard for me to really want to see it tie into marathon or halo or whatever

[unreal sierra]

the traveller, back when the gardener was testing things as a dev should.

[dense tendon]

that explains the ball. what of the paddles

[plucky sierra]

Destiny is the glue that connects the rest. Unfortunately for paraverse deniers there is too many in-game references to say they aren’t connected

[dense tendon]

think carefully, this thing rolled firefly

[rain wigeon]

I'm not super super familiar

[plucky sierra]

The species it bounces between before abandoning

[median hemlock]

fortunately for me, i don't care about destiny and therefore do not need to take this opinion into account

[plucky sierra]

That’s… not how evidence works

[median hemlock]

i'm not a "denier" i just do not care

[dense tendon]

oh, yeah, absolutely. there isnt a direct connection with destiny, but there are archetypal connections in the thematics

[median hemlock]

you are shadowboxing here

i just don't care enough to talk about it or follow your evidence or whatever. it has no bearing on my enjoyment of the game

[plucky sierra]

There is in game weapons, that exist that destiny characters have seen (not crossover or cosmetics) that are said to be pulled from other realities and timelines.

[median hemlock]

yes and i go "oh cute an easter egg" and move on

[rain wigeon]

anyway - I'm trying to figure out what the hell could be up with diremarsh and the anomaly

hell, the fucking fungus itself

[median hemlock]

i'm glad that you can enjoy piecing these things together

[dense tendon]

then why are you here. in this channel. for talking about the lore of a franchise that forms the underpinnings of the entire body of work.

[rain wigeon]

is this the same shit that was happening to the cyborg?

not the fungus of doom tbc but

the temporal nonsense

[median hemlock]

because i like marathon? and the old marathon games? i do not like this attitude i have every right to be here too

chill out a bit

[plucky sierra]

It shouldn’t affect enjoyment of the game, it doesn’t even affect each games contained universe, like I said it’s deeper. But you cant ignore evidence and say “it doesn’t exist because I don’t care” that’s a fallacy

[median hemlock]

man. whatever

you win you have irrefutable proof of your theory or whatever

christ

[dense tendon]

you're the one getting confrontational about us bringing it up. im jus asking why youre engaging with the topic if you dont want to.

[unreal sierra]

i love my little cyborg with schizophrenia that hops timelines. :3

[plucky sierra]

If it was anything but videogame lore cherrypicking evidence for an opinion is a big red flag

[median hemlock]

i would appreciate if you could avoid making insinuations about my character over this

[drifting mulch]

Guys we can all enjoy the game and lore in our own way

[median hemlock]

you're the one escalating

[rain wigeon]

we can all prolly chill out a bit

[median hemlock]

what the hell is going on here why are you leaping down my throat

[dense tendon]

im asking a question and youre getting pissy

relax

or dont, im not the cops

[plucky sierra]

https://tenor.com/view/monster-versus-vs-alien-monster-vs-alien-gif-16037253809360562033