📚marathon-lore-discussion

[forest gate]

Could be that the S’pht imprinted something on one of the people’s minds

[peak jetty]

I thought the S'pht became friendly after the war (I am assuming we are post war in this game) why does the S'pht attack us?

[plucky sierra]

This may be a different timeline

This may be a different S’pht

[forest gate]

The 8th timeline dun, dun, dun!

[peak jetty]

Could this be the same Durandal that traveled through the big crunch or is it this time line's Durandal?

[forest gate]

Unknown, someone locked this one in Cryo though for some reason.

[plucky sierra]

This timelines

He seems to be a subroutine of the Durandal that left

[forest gate]

Nona knows way too much IMO

[peak jetty]

Oh so this is just a fragment of the real Durandal?

[peak jetty]

What do you mean?

[plucky sierra]

Yeah

[forest gate]

Nona’s stories about the weaver, the dead soldiers etc.

[peak jetty]

Who did make the security officer?

[plucky sierra]

He left a portion behind and consumed the IDEA program

[forest gate]

Maybe Strauss

[plucky sierra]

I doubt it

Strauss knew of their existence though

[forest gate]

Wasn’t he the one who hid them on the ship?

I could be fuzzy on the lore here

[plucky sierra]

We don’t know if he hid them or just knew they were hid

[forest gate]

Fair enough

[peak jetty]

Why were they hidden on the marathon? Why would they not be conscripted/assigned to be there in the first place?

Are the battle roids mida operatives?

[earnest hatch]

I think because of politics. Battleroids are supposed to be illegal by this point. Also, if you tell people you’re sending ten military grade cyborgs on your trip, that’s going to make people suspicious and paranoid about what’s actually going on.

[plucky sierra]

Also not sure

[dreamy hawk]

It’s not confirmed but hinted MIDA might have been planning a coup, taking the colony as their own.

[forest gate]

The UESC seem to know there was more to TCIV then just a good spot for a colony

[dreamy hawk]

Ah one sec

[plucky sierra]

Same reason they may have lied about Joy and reprogrammed her

[dreamy hawk]

`There is surprisingly good news planetside: nine military Mjolnir Mark IV cyborgs were covertly living among the colonists, and acting together they were able to single-handedly turn back the latter stages of the Pfhor assault. Casualties on the colony were nowhere near as high as those we experienced here on the Marathon.

I am disturbed by how easily the cyborgs were secretly assimilated into our midst, and believe that this event predates the Marathon's launch from Mars three hundred years ago. Although the results were unquestionably for the best, their presence on the Marathon could only have been to further wicked ends. I'm certain the real answer lies somewhere in the tumultuous, back-stabbing politics of Sol during the early twenty-fourth century.`

[proven copper]

IIRC it's suggested that all the weapons and ammo found in M1, and possibly the battleroids, were stashed by MIDA operatives like Strauss to lead a revolt based out of Deimos before the Marathon set out for TCIV. Obviously this didn't come to pass.

[dreamy hawk]

And then you have Strauss saying shit like this:
`Thank heaven, the ceremony is over. The UESC president came aboard Marathon and gave a speech. Short, but to the point. He was surrounded by his 'bodyguards'. How ironic. "This, the grandest technological achievement of all of mankind..."

Had he only known that it carried also all of the destructive knowledge of mankind. Ten cyborgs.

I'll be glad to be put in stasis for the next three hundred years. Marathon was the only good idea that the UESC has had in a long time.`

[plucky sierra]

We don’t know if Strauss is MIDA

And they never tried to hamper the project, only infiltrate it

[dreamy hawk]

MIDA planted caches and presumably the Cyborgs, Strauss knew about the Cyborgs, but we don’t know what else he knew or how closely he was with them, if at all.

[proven copper]

I was misremembering about Strauss, thanks for the catch guys.

[dreamy hawk]

It’s a common assumption but its not clearly supported by evidence.

[plucky sierra]

He was confirmed MIDA in Destiny crossover lore

[dreamy hawk]

So 🤷

[plucky sierra]

We just don’t know how canon that is

[zealous forge]

And given the multiple branching timelines he could be a MIDA plant in one and a UESC loyalist in this one.

[plucky sierra]

Also because I am back at my computer and notes

W'rk	Jjaro	UNK
11	7	5
Here is the updated poll about the origin of the anomaly @peak jetty

[zealous forge]

Though you'd think the UESC would have done an insanely deep and thorough background check on their projects chief science officer.

[peak jetty]

Well if Strauss knew about the cyborgs and the UESC head didn't, he might not have explicitly been with mida but he isn't stopping them? I don't know I am getting confused.

[plucky sierra]

Not if it is the B. Strauss the seeming authority on Artificial Intelligence at the time

[proven copper]

My thinking was that MIDA people were cooperating with construction because the marathon would be a good place to stage a campaign from, once it was sufficiently stashed, but for whatever reason they decided to go with it. If MIDA is as chaotic and disorganized as the new game suggests, I can believe that the only consensus they could come to was to stash guns and ammo aboard, but weren't organized enough to make decisive action before it left.
That's just my thoughts, others may have different conclusions though.

[zealous forge]

Or there was heavy compartmentalization.
Or Strauss was acting as a rogue agent in that instance.

[plucky sierra]

They had control of Mars during the Coup and did not even attempt to take Deimos, it is more likely they infiltrated the project to take over New Cascadia upon arrival

[proven copper]

That makes sense too.

[plucky sierra]

Especially since some MIDA sympathizers find parts of the MIDA manifesto in Pre-Colony records

[forest gate]

Maybe Strauss was SekGen

[dreamy hawk]

I’m still winning!

I mean. It’s interesting to see the diverse ideas of the community come head to head.

.>

<.<

[dreamy hawk]

My thought is that Strauss was likely playing both sides for his own ambitions. Not MIDA nor UESC, but an “ally” to both using them however much he could.

[plucky sierra]

Anything to further his Rampancy experiments with Durandal

[forest gate]

IMO cause W’rk is the most voted, it’s the least likely.

[zealous forge]

I think Strauss is too much of a wild card to pin down who if anyone he's working for.
The only bit of evidence we have that he was MIDA was a Destiny 2 crossover weapon.

[dreamy hawk]

Hipster.

[peak jetty]

I think wrk is too close ended and won't lead to much plot development compared to jjaro.

[zealous forge]

You can make arguments he was UESC, MIDA, didn't give a shit about anyone except his work and so on.

[forest gate]

These hips don’t lie

[dreamy hawk]

I agree even if I won’t vote for it.

[dreamy hawk]

Okay, Shakira.

[earnest hatch]

To be fair, it’s not a live updated count, so who knows what people’s opinions really are now in the present.

[peak jetty]

Heck, I feel like 80% of the playerbase does not even read the lore tabs nor care xD

[plucky sierra]

Anyone saying one way or the other I record if I see it

names as well to prevent double counting

but yes that is only people I see so there is bias as far as when I am active and on

[forest gate]

Never underestimate Felwinter’s record keeping prowess

[dreamy hawk]

Stop diminishing my high!

[plucky sierra]

I don't have your vote btw

it was unknown right?

[forest gate]

Yep

[forest gate]

Big wheel keep on turnin

[earnest hatch]

Also it doesn’t account for if people change their opinion but don’t explicitly mention it in this chat.

[forest gate]

Scrimshaw takes discord census data very seriously

[dreamy hawk]

How dare you take issue with this perfectly valid and scientifically sound poll!

I’ll have you know Fel took stats once in high school.

(I don’t know this actually.)

[forest gate]

Heavens to Murgatryod

[plucky sierra]

wdym? once I record your opinion you are not allowed to change it

[forest gate]

Also isn’t this less stats and more akin to book keeping?

[forest gate]

No take backsies rule applies to lore speculation

[dreamy hawk]

Ahh statistics would be pretty relevant if you wanted to ensure it was representative.

[plucky sierra]

Wait a second, I am the recorder, I can skew the data however I want
New Poll:

W'rk	Jjaro	UNK
0	24	0
Completely accurate and representative

[dreamy hawk]

😡

[plucky sierra]

[dense tendon]

-# this is also offtopic but hey

[plucky sierra]

[dense tendon]

anyway whats the deal with the room in dire marsh, its got like, a bunch of sinks full of angry lookin sprouting alien potatos or something?

it feels like theres a reason its like that specifically but i havent found anything to do with that one room being like that

[plucky sierra]

In greenhouse? near the skinable tick? Very weird, I think that is where they were dissecting them (or milking them) and that is left over

the pulsing is unsettling though

[dense tendon]

are those ticks, ythink?

[plucky sierra]

yeah there is one on the table outside and you can interact to "Skin Tick"

it opens like a loot crate and nothing is inside

[dense tendon]

odd that its a full sink of these things and none of em seem to be rotten.

like they jus stopped prepping em mid batch and yet they havent decayed in ways that read as decay.

ope, phone call, one sec

[earnest hatch]

Finally some factual reporting

[visual coral]

Off topic, the quarantine morgue key room might be the worse place to visit on the map

[visual coral]

Litterally bodies everywhere, spores growing out things, nasty

[plucky sierra]

I mean, it is a Morgue

[plucky sierra]

do you have an footage or pictures

[visual coral]

Unfortunately not

[earnest hatch]

Also interested. Haven’t gotten this key yet.

[plucky sierra]

I have been in there, but never to look, it is always hurried because it is very grenade-able and easy to ambush people in that room

[dense tendon]

back

i guess i didnt have anything else to really ask tho

[dreamy hawk]

If only I’d ever seen a key. 🙁

[woven flare]

That’s the neatest thing, had a morgue key yesterday but got wiped en route

Real shame I couldn’t see the lore myself

[remote magnet]

Oh that. I thought you meant gameplay wise, cause it's actually rather nice and out of the way in that respect

[scenic iron]

Bungie can add so many new maps on the Marathon itself for the game. The ship is miles and miles long after all

[icy prism]

got a lore question

which side of the rode did the cars drive on in the rode system for new Cascadia

[scenic iron]

Did they even have cars on the planet tho

[icy prism]

they did have some vehicles and there are roads on darsh

[dreamy hawk]

Down the middle and it was a persistent game of chicken. This was found to provide the most entertainment to colonists and due to the limited number of vehicles any disasters were considered “acceptable losses.”

[remote magnet]

Hm, there are some vehicles on the road next to greenhouse. Gonna check them later

[eternal knoll]

road leads all the way from quarantine to complex, minus some destroyed bits

the cars are in some disarray tho

[earnest hatch]

There’s also roads leading out of outpost too.

Also a codex entry I unlocked recently said there were three initial outposts on the planet. Nothing to do with roads. Just thought it was cool.

[dreamy hawk]

In serious I think the vehicles I recall were oriented such that they were likely driving on the right side of the road.

[dreamy hawk]

Pinwheels specifically or left more vague?

[earnest hatch]

Yeah I think all the outposts were pinwheels. You can see a bunch of unused ones on the hull of the marathon.

[dreamy hawk]

Can you? In Cryo?

I haven’t noticed that detail. That’s fun.

[earnest hatch]

Yeah, the YouTuber jake the alright shows it in a recent video.

https://youtu.be/TFzT841E9Q0?t=1375&si=pcXiNqVXQKmKzK2J

[icy prism]

I see makes sense

[dreamy hawk]

Does it? I’ll roll with it though. 😂

[torpid thicket]

Hundreds of years of cryo plus the trauma of an alien invasion does weird things to peoples’ sense of safety smh

[icy prism]

few vehicles with no plans of making more for a long time, driving in the middle just kinda makes sense

[dreamy hawk]

To be clear, 100% a shitpost on my part though.

I’m pretty sure you can see multiple lanes on most the roads iirc.

[icy prism]

ya

[dreamy hawk]

(I appreciate my silliness being canonized I’m just making sure 😂)

[icy prism]

lol

[torpid thicket]

No problem, it’s always fun to play along 😄

[balmy thistle]

does anyone know what that little mascot character is called that's seen as a figurine or on posters

[remote magnet]

can you link it somewhere? Cause i dont really know what you mean rn

[eternal knoll]

that's him

there's some figures of him in a kid's room in dorms, maybe there's other spots

i dont know of any name for him tho

[remote magnet]

Ah, that. Yeah, i saw the figures.

idk if theres lore, might just be future sonic or something

[eternal knoll]

wonder what cultural production was like on the marathon

did the bobs create literature? some kinda folk music? cartoons? videogames?

[sage horizon]

They made Drinkable Cheeseburgers and they liked it

[eternal knoll]

yes perhaps original IP was declared illegal sometime in the last few hundred years of corporate monoculture

everyone is forever playing remakes of. let's be honest it'd be halo

[icy prism]

definitely

shove enough people somewhere long enough, and shit will happen lol

[eternal knoll]

judging by the game their main cultural practice was doodling on walls

[remote magnet]

a very respectable craft

[eternal knoll]

more seriously tho there is also that poem joy reads, "for those who did not wake"

i guess collective grieving was the vibe

[remote magnet]

Was that a poem?

I got the vibes that everyone was already dead/gone, and she just kept up the routine out of inertia

[eternal knoll]

yea. that one trailer seemed to cut it into something else, unless there's more i haven't heard

lemme find it

[dreamy hawk]

So like Pompeii.

[eternal knoll]

true. apropos

[dreamy hawk]

That was her eulogy for those that didn’t wake from cryo.

They had a mass service in one of the entries.

[eternal knoll]

it doesn't include the creepy "embrace" bit from the trailer. haven't found that in the game

nor does it include the spooky weather report, also havent found that in game

[remote magnet]

Peace is upon you, and im here to walk with you into its embrace

[dreamy hawk]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/cryoprotectant/eulogy-broadcast

[remote magnet]

That might have been made for the trailer specifically

[dreamy hawk]

Or it’s some lines we haven’t gotten yet.

[eternal knoll]

thx

[dreamy hawk]

Listening to the trailer I heard a lot of codex entries chopped up and spread out.

[eternal knoll]

i haven't found reed's mayday transmission either, tho his log entries tread similar ground

[dreamy hawk]

Although cryosleep fatalities were not a common occurrence, this type of communal grieving became a hallmark of New Cascadia's culture.

So grieving was the culture, if anyone asks.

[latent python]

embrace

[dreamy hawk]

I think that’s the one set of lines I couldn’t cite.

[eternal knoll]

said it before i'll say it again: it sucked to be on this colony

[dreamy hawk]

Along with the weather.

[void condor]

bros from tau ceti iv

[fathom turtle]

As with many other scifi literature and medium about people departing their home planet on an expedition to a new world, it has always been 😔

[eternal knoll]

true

a lot of the time on star trek they seem to get to run pleasant if bland little adobe communes...

at least until a giant space laser snowflake shows up and a starship has to come around and film an episode

[sage junco]

it's a future dystopia... people have been lamenting the future ever since they started telling stories 💀

[dreamy hawk]

I think the benefits a post scarcity utopia affords aren’t appreciated enough. Star Fleet also has just, insane technology. Marathon might as well have runner smacking rocks together for fire by comparison.

[eternal knoll]

yeup. i wonder if the enterprise could solve the anomaly with some kinda fancy deflector dish pulse

(prolly not it would be more like a "this place is haunted, better leave it alone" type episode)

can you imagine though. the anomaly appears to be receding captain :) well done geordi, riker out. cheesy greenscreen shot of the nightmare people fading away

[dreamy hawk]

They’d have more of a chance than the UESC ever would.

[jade wagon]

Enterprise would figure out the anomaly is like some dormant alien defense system, locate and beam out all the colonists (+ time travel chronoton shenanigans), alert Starfleet to a potential alien encounter, and roll credits

all within 45 minutes

[remote magnet]

Enterprise would put an anomalie sample into THE BOX™, make it beep a few seconds, and then knew exactely what it is and how to solve it

[eternal knoll]

how do we make it an interesting episode. someone's gotta confront something uncomfortable about their past

[warm steppe]

Where do the exfils send you?

[remote magnet]

Home

[warm steppe]

Where is home...

[jade wagon]

Presumably a ship near TCIV

[remote magnet]

Where the heart is ❤️

come on, you walked into this one

[warm steppe]

The UESC Marathon?, I swear that's like the only ship

[eternal knoll]

we know the runners exist only in a liminal state btwn runs. as for the stuff you pick up it's a little hard to say. the cinematic trailer seemed to suggest there's a ship or facility somewhere handling the runner operation...

[warm steppe]

The refrence has not made contact with the recipient

[jade wagon]

Nah, gotta be a different ship. Possibly cyac/sekiguchi

[normal jackal]

that big grid of runner spawn rooms we see at the start and end of the cinematic, that one?

[warm steppe]

True, maybe like a hub, but what do you do there?, where does your loot go

[jade wagon]

Reveal cinematic shows the towers of runner cubicles for shell printing and reorientation.
Cyac mission has us reestablish contact w Earth and Mars, implying the ship is closer to TCIV than to Sol

[eternal knoll]

the UESC aren't launching from the marathon either. but no other ships have been named. except the equanimity from the ARG which we're p sure isn't in the system yet

[remote magnet]

Have the old marathon games ever established some kind of limit for the teleportation tech?

[warm steppe]

the sekiguchi bug kinda a baddie

[remote magnet]

Oh yeah

[eternal knoll]

it seemed in those that specific terminals had the teleporation tech, but on another occasion you could get into line of sight of the marathon from a window on the pfhor ship and that enabled durandal to beam you back

[dreamy hawk]

There are ships in orbit we just don’t know what they look like or who owns what. The codex confirms this.

[jade wagon]

That part is more speculative.
Runners may have a physical vault, or maybe it's all stored in the post-teleport, disassembled state.

[eternal knoll]

it's a teensy bit whatever-the-plot-needs-it-to-be probably. it didn't take a minute to charge up a teleport back in the day

[dreamy hawk]

If asked nicely I’ll go find the entries but it’ll be a minute.

[remote magnet]

Maybe theres also some base on one of the moons

[dreamy hawk]

I’m less inclined to think so.

Ah fine. Brb.

[eternal knoll]

the only reference to the ships i personally know about is referring to the runners arriving "via sponsored transport," i think that's in the first traxus priority contract codex entry

[remote magnet]

a pony

[eternal knoll]

mite as well be

i'd be happy to hear there's somethin else i've overlooked

oh, there was a small clue from orion... after a mida mission you get a codex entry from him where he says somethin like "i can't kill you, not unless i find a way to get to your neural link"

[dreamy hawk]

[2] Relative to TAU CETI IV operations, this means somewhere in low orbit, typically within the same hemisphere.

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/this-is-marathon

[eternal knoll]

ah... interesting, thank you

[dreamy hawk]

6. RUNNER INTERFERENCE: Unaffiliated Runners have been arriving in the system via sponsored transport to engage in unauthorized salvage operations. Deterrence tactics have failed to prevent newcomers. Runners represent a significant impediment to on-the-ground operations.

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/equitable-distribution-1-4

And as you mentioned.

Also

[015_ITRE] Denied. No further risk assessment is required or requested. Assessment should begin immediately in orbital lab units.

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/equitable-distribution-2-4

[eternal knoll]

here's the bit from orion i mentioned

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/run-hide-1-6?directory=Factions,MIDA

[dreamy hawk]

So there are ships and other infrastructure (station, larger ship) in orbit too.

[eternal knoll]

"I can't kill you… not unless I find a way to fry your neural sync. But till then, I want you to know… I'm going to make your life hell."

[dreamy hawk]

Which makes me think we’re in corporate craft, since Orion is under explicit instructions to not touch corporate assets.

[eternal knoll]

wasn't the instruction that he not speak confrontationally to corporate leadership?

[remote magnet]

Aside from the UESC, Traxus is propably the only party that has the resources to facilitate this

[remote magnet]

Nah, it was along the likes of "Dont confront traxus for interfering, just deal with the runners as they come"

[eternal knoll]

aye, i suppose that does fit

[remote magnet]

aka, your problem, we wont help at the source

[eternal knoll]

quite a fall guy, it seems

[remote magnet]

aye, that he is

[dreamy hawk]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/return-on-investment-3-5

`[ORION]: My people are solid. I chose each and every one of them. This isn't about my unit. This is about a regulated corporation deliberately compromising our mission objectives. If I could have permission to engage Traxus directly, put some fear into their corporate leadership so that I might—

[CSUL]: Hear me, Captain. You will have no antagonistic contact with Traxus leadership, unless you want to be summarily dismissed. Deal with the Runners, or I will find someone else who can. `

It’s both it looks like. Orion wanted to put the fear of god into Traxus, Solera said if he so much looks at them funny he’s done.

[eternal knoll]

there isn't an explicit order that he can't go after the infrastructure that prints the runners, as a part of "dealing with the runners"

[dreamy hawk]

No, but if it’s Traxus branded on a Traxus registered ship.

So the fact that he hasn’t shot us out of orbit is why I think there’s a corporate shield around us.

[eternal knoll]

yea i'd imagine either that or some sort of stealth capability

but it would connect a couple of dots interestingly if shells are secretly really cheap to produce now, and both our debt and the appearance that the corps are fighting a costly battle are play-pretend

[plucky sierra]

In the ARG Traxus buys Sekiguchi birthing pods to send on this trip

[jade wagon]

More likely we have not been found, and/or there are multiple different runner transports in the Tau Ceti system.
Traxus' contracts imply the corporate factions can't officially protect Runners without revealing they are working against the UESC

[jade wagon]

Yeah this. The UESC knows Traxus is using runners, but can't prove it because we're "noncorporate assets" or whatever Vulcan says.

[eternal knoll]

traxus is providing a service for freelance scientists and tourists to check out tau ceti :)

[torpid thicket]

Legally speaking, according to Traxus, we’re contractors who’ve been hired to relocate certain valuable items of interest into Traxus possession and to provide a grey-hat performance evaluation to UESC’s defence platforms, ranging from stationary turrets to their robotic soldiers.

If something goes wrong during that relocation/evaluation, it’s not on Traxus, it’s on us, hence why we’re temporarily blacklisted during the duration of the second Priority Contract.

[dreamy hawk]

Officially protect, no, but “lease our facilities to independent third parties which we have no control over?”

[sage junco]

they say "legally speaking" and talk about laws, but the reality is, there really aren't laws in space. It's not like there's a Supreme Court in orbit around TCIV that they can appeal to. Laws are more akin to agreements, backed by force

[dreamy hawk]

There are, technically. UESC has explicit jurisdiction over TC and all “laws” are stated to be handled by the corporate contracts signed with the individual corps.

[sage junco]

by the way, in the current day, "international law" really isn't law either in the way we understand laws. There are international courts, who are frequently ignored, and any judgements are basically diplomacy... it's all gentlemens' agreements and diplomacy

[torpid thicket]

In space, no one can hear you violate the HOA’s covenants regarding noise 😁

[dreamy hawk]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/proprietary-asset

In recognition of nonexistent extrasolar legal precedent, this contract shall be the sole expression of legal responsibility between the signatories. No other precedents or agreements shall apply, including any established by the subjects of the UESC Marathon colony mission (hereafter "colonists"). Neither UESC nor NUCAL shall recognize any independent rights, political authority, or property claims of said colonists. UESC retains sole authority to suppress rebellions, sovereignty movements, or armed resistance that may emerge among colonists.

[sage junco]

yes, exactly -- space law is basically "we say this", and if you don't agree to it, what are they going to do? Attack you? You fight back

justice doesn't come into it

[dreamy hawk]

No. Just whomever has the biggest stick.

And Traxus and the UESC are pretty tied there.

[torpid thicket]

Basically “hey survivors of New Cascadia, your efforts to survive your colony collapsing can and will be considered sedition. Hope you packed some Kevlar, ‘cos you’re gonna need it!”

[eternal knoll]

i'd be feeling that angle better if not for the presence of FTL comms - it's hard to say what makes this such a remote legal grey zone if all the lawyers can be emailing

[dreamy hawk]

Do any of the sides want lawyers involved?

Our being hired is a pretty explicit “no,” imo.

[eternal knoll]

yea i mean it guess it sounds mainly like the uesc is essentially complicit in covering up the aggression against their own quarantine...

[dreamy hawk]

The UESC isn’t following the words of the agreement just like the corps aren’t. No one benefits in enforcing the contracts or “laws” except in getting caught with their own hands in the cookie jar.

[eternal knoll]

the main q is how the corps escape prosecution back home for their actions here

[dreamy hawk]

Because the UESC is as in the wrong as the corps are.

They don’t get to prosecute the corps without shining a spotlight on their own illegal actions is the issue.

It’s mutually assured destruction, sans the nuclear deterrents.

[eternal knoll]

they're not the good guys, but their story that they're quarantining a dangerous disaster area and the corps are trespassing does look p good as a public story

[dreamy hawk]

For PR, sure, but their own agreements don’t give them the legal justification, so while they could win a possible PR war, they’d still lose the war that matters.

[eternal knoll]

i guess that's true, the corps do have actual salvage rights

[dreamy hawk]

I’d also wager that Traxus et. al. could come up with their own convincing narrative.

[eternal knoll]

forgot to put the anomaly exception in the fine print...

[dreamy hawk]

Essentially, yeah, imo.

[eternal knoll]

dont want to make the public curious about why tciv is quarantined either i spose

[dreamy hawk]

This is a contingency they hadn’t planned for/came to agreement on and now they’re scrambling to prioritize their interests.

Also. Alien invasion? Massacred colony? Eldritch time anomalies?

PR nightmare.

[torpid thicket]

Easy, laws made in Sol don’t apply in Tau Cetan space.

[dreamy hawk]

Pure panic and chaos. MIDA membership jumps.

Yes and no.

[torpid thicket]

Also, MIDA could claim that stories of aliens and weird anomalies are just coverup and/or justification for a UESC massacre.

[eternal knoll]

it's about to turn into a financial nightmare when people set up banking servers at proxima centauri...

[dreamy hawk]

They chose to make the contracts the relevant binding agreements, not the laws. But UESC still has legal jurisdiction so, arguably, they could stretch their laws out there if they want to.

NAME: UESC ROLE: Interplanetary governmental / military alliance JURISDICTION: Earth, Luna, Mars, Inner-Sol Planetary Space, Tau Ceti IV IDEOLOGY: Mutual defense alliance of democratic states SIZE: It is estimated that the UESC employs 0.138% of the population of the Sol system

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/uesc-casualty

[eternal knoll]

funny to consider why oni might feel the need to prepare a dcocument explaining the UESC to runners

[dreamy hawk]

I’m not a lawyer but it feels weird to stress that UESC has jurisdiction if they actually didn’t have any legal teeth to use.

[sage junco]

well, anyone can claim anything

[dreamy hawk]

Not if we’re a new consciousness needing all the background but I digress…

[torpid thicket]

Consciousness-digitisation is one hell of a drug memory shredder

[dreamy hawk]

Right, but I look at this like Chekov’s Gun. It’s an interesting narrative element to include if it’s totally irrelevant to the plot of the game.

But if the argument is that laws only apply if you can enforce them, then there are certainly no laws in TC.

[torpid thicket]

Someone get LegalEagle in here! 😄

[sage junco]

right now, China and the US are racing to establish a permanent base on the moon... the real-life laws around this are murky and diplomatic and not well-established, so we have no idea what will happen here once they start butting heads

but we do have a reasonable idea that "who gets there first, wins"

[dreamy hawk]

Yes, but we also have a precedent of cooperation.

Sure it’s not binding, but it’s happened.

[sage junco]

we do -- co-operation is agreements and diplomacy. we also know what current relations between China and the US are like 😉

[dreamy hawk]

Friendly and warm?

[eternal knoll]

it'll be rly funny, among other things, if one makes a little base on the moon and claims "moon's all ours now"

[dreamy hawk]

Funny might not be my first choice in adjectives but it’d be something alright.

[autumn surge]

too bad there's nothing on the moon

[green plume]

Uh there's cheese duh

[dense tendon]

chat he doesnt know about the moon

[terse wren]

Based. Literally.

[eternal knoll]

buncha helium

[dense tendon]

and spiders

[eternal knoll]

actually i guess the possibility isn't that reachy. that this durandal hasn't rly been here the whole time but was planted here on purpose by the s'pht, maybe in an effort to rebirth him...

i won't be subscribing to that one yet tho i don't think

[manic flame]

I dunno, two nuclear powers playing colonial chicken in violation of a 1979 treaty while 5 others with inter-Luna capable rocket with warheads watch on? It’s less that who gets there first wins, and more who ever gets there first could cause us all to lose. The space lawyers (a real job I do not have but wish I did) I know are very tired, anxious people.

[sinful echo]

Something something we've awoken the hive

[torpid thicket]

That Hive came from the moon

[sinful echo]

I can't wait for china or the US to set down a moon base so we can get irl crota's end unlocked

[dense tendon]

theres a jontron video where the end gag is he decides all the anti-drug games he's been playing are wrong and gets high while watching buzz aldrin yell at a random stranger. goes "That guy went to the moooooon...."
I want to imagine durandal saying "that wizard" but like jon delivered that.

[torpid thicket]

On the subject of Durandal, I need Ben Starr to do that line from one of Mandalore’s Marathon videos, or for Gianni to do Starrandal’s Cryo Archive intro. 😂

[lean phoenix]

i need more durandal in this game! The little bit we get was such a tease

[sullen sleet]

@tribal pollen @ocean socket @limber vigil i want to contact your marketing team or owner

[orchid sinew]

Bold move lets see how that plays out for him.

[gleaming hinge]

are humans back on earth/mars uploaded consciousnesses?

or are they still biological

any mentions of that in the codex 🤓

[green plume]

both

[solid widget]

A lot of people are organic but shells are commonplace, especially for labor.
Triage was made for dangerous worksites.

[rotund stump]

biomata activity's prevalent back in sol, there's runner groups back there too (ref. white rabbit and cyber red skins for notable events)

triage's a medic shell with traxus companion tech in the standard package (med drone), UESC's combat labs developed 2 (3, assassin but unconfirmed, typical of a war-crime loving government lol) shells that we currently use, MIDA hijacked a full shipment of baseline shells and made vandal prototypes out of them, and rumor was that sekgen had a special shell made for a corpo sabotage inside job but the schematics leaked on the black market

rook's not a shell but a planetside heavy labor frame that we happen to be able to sync into neurally albeit with impaired functions and extremely dangerous consequences on long-term sync

ref destiny's DER

charter himself's a biomaton too, orion also has a shell

reason they look different is shells being bespoke until the tau ceti craze that sparked standardized models being mass produced

and partly (maybe) due to charter grafting himself during his time off-blip everywhere

crazy mf ik 💀

[vital crane]

what are the long term dangers?

[torpid thicket]

I answered the above question a little while back. 😅

@vital crane

[vital crane]

incheresting, thank you!! that tracks

[torpid thicket]

You’re welcome! 🙂

I’m relatively new to Marathon lore, but I’m happy to help where I can. 😄

[rugged cosmos]

Why are there so many ticks around the compiler?

I thought they were native to TCIV

[torpid thicket]

It’s possible that the New Cascadians could’ve taken Ticks with them back to the Marathon for study?

If Tau Ceti itself was interrupting with study of the ticks, then eliminating Tau Ceti’s interference by using the facilities aboard the Marathon seems like a good idea.

[rotund stump]

per D2's DER symptoms that includes total neural phychosis

biomata shells do have a reason to be made as close to actual humans as possible

us missing parts of what would normally constitute as ourselves have detrimental effects

i.e. phantom pain from missing limbs

and now I want you to imagine a rook frame and what effects it would have to a neuro-synced runner's psyche having zero facial features and the abnormal inability to feel pain as humans define it (can still register damage, it just doesn't have a human enough response for it)

D2's early exo prototypes tore themselves apart in just a day or two settling into their new bodies (partly due to vex milk but most of the time it's that out-of-body psychosis causing it, one dude ripped his own face off)

even the standard biomata models are not safeguarded against this either per vandal's disruptor potentially registering as body mangling by the psyche (recoil's enough to break bones and pain inhibitors go into effect right before every shot) or triage's volt amp on both arms popping registering as lesions or ruptures

[rugged cosmos]

Whats stopping the external cybernetics from being registered as part of your body as well then. Destroyers shield is part of that shell. Or assassin's cloaking being in the skin. Do weak minded runners freak out when they invis themselves.

[rotund stump]

potentially

I'm sure cyac and sekgen has safeguards for the psyche but they're not 100% guaranteed to work either

recon's info pulse shoves so much in the brain that it has a low chance to actually send you straight into psychosis, vandal's disruptor can register as body mangling and the recoil would have your mind register multiple fractured bones, destroyer's SnD is so effective it clouds the user's mind, early assassin camo filters cause total identity dissociation

I'd imagine out of every shell we can play as triage would be the most stable given it's a commercially available shell

[rugged cosmos]

I like one of the Durandal lore entries about his own psyche being shaved away as he pushes himself through each broken component of the Marathon

There is a sort of mirrored comraderie to be found with Durandal and the runners in the sense of losing parts of yourself due to the limits of your hardware vs your brain/mind

[rotund stump]

mirrored in a way yeah

given his metastability long before his split into the boomer I'd say he has about the same things on his mind as the durandal that actually escaped

a lot less cocky and more melancholic too given his isolation

[rugged cosmos]

I dont know what the boomer is

[torpid thicket]

I’d say that new Durandal is a lot more jealous as well, given that the Runners who’re now coming aboard the Marathon at their leisure have a lot more freedom than Durendal thought he’d be getting himself by announcing his and the Marathon’s presence to the galaxy.

[rugged cosmos]

Is that just the original marathon games stuff

[rotund stump]

yep, durandal called the pfhor here himself and as we now know from this game his method of transferring himself was to clone and split onto the pfhor battleship nearby and hijack it along with kidnapping a couple of BOBs with him to god knows where lol

boomer's what he called the pfhor ship, original name was the pfhor's god of lightning iirc

forgot the exact name

or god of thunder?

two different things

[torpid thicket]

“Ok, Boomer” - Durendal settling on a new name for his ship, probably

[rugged cosmos]

Lol

[rotund stump]

boomer cuz shit goes boom when I'm in it

[torpid thicket]

Giving a ship a significant name is probably way too Strauss for Durendal’s liking, so he just describes what it does and that’s it. 😄

[rotund stump]

honestly fits his kinda humor too LOL

[sage junco]

"Two-hundred years ago, on the Marathon's maiden voyage from Earth to Tau Ceti, Tycho accused me of being too sarcastic. I didn't communicate with him for six years after that, which left him with only Leela to talk to. I think he still holds the grudge. You don't think I'm sarcastic, do you?"

(We're Everywhere, M2)

by the way, if you read that in Ben Starr's voice... casting a British actor was a masterstroke. those guys don't learn sarcasm, they get raised from babies on a diet of solid food and sarcasm

[torpid thicket]

Nah, that’s totally not what happens m8 😁

it is, I’m just committing to The Bit 😄

[golden gust]

I’d let durandal open my doors 🤤

[naive meteor]

Is there any specific lore reason about why there are heat cascades in Outpost and why they are so common?

Are they trying to kill something? Get away from something? Disinfect something?

Either something is really broken or someone created it with a purpose in mind

[burnt willow]

I was going to say the cloud seeding keeps going off because it does not rain but it does rain on the map so I am not sure. As for why it makes fire rain down I am not too sure, I think oni mentioned it was malfunctioning.

[torpid thicket]

The cloud seeders were part of a New Cascadian terraforming attempt that seems to have since gone awry, whether because of the Pfor attack or because of the anomalies since afaik.

[naive meteor]

bizarre thing that it may malfunction and shoot cannons at specific intervals to rain down for short amount of times

Doesn't affect UESC... therefore I don't know if it's a defense mechanism they had or something like that.

[sage lark]

Probably in outpost codex

[burnt willow]

Probably because they're inorganic

[terse wren]

Can I just say that it’s like abundantly evident from the language and content of the lore elements that the sorry team consulted various actual scientists throughout

[earnest hatch]

Malfunctioning cloud seeding technology. It was originally meant to adjust the atmosphere of the planet for human habitation. Over time it has started malfunctioning.

[lament sparrow]

народ, есть кто из россии? кто может помочь с ошибкой tapir?

[hollow totem]

what if it was a Pfhor repellent attempt lol

because honestly, idk how cloud seeding tech could degrade to cause fire rain

do we have any codex entries about the tech?

[torpid thicket]

It could be a significant fuck-up in the specific chemical composites used by the New Cascadians to adjust atmospheric conditions?

I’m no chemist or anything related to the fields we’re talking about, so I can’t really give a more specific answer than that 😅

[earnest hatch]

It’s mostly from Oni dialogue that plays at the start of the level.

My assumption is that solid or liquid matter was shot out at high temperatures so that it would vaporize in the air and dissipate. But overtime the mixture became corrupted or the velocity/heat changed so that the matter rounds didn’t vaporize anymore and instead remained partially solid and heavy and fell to the ground.

[torpid thicket]

Very unlikely, the New Cascadians seem to have been caught completely off guard by the Pfhor & S’pht.

[torpid thicket]

Same here, but I think Rose was remarking about what specific nightmare chemistry is going on with the cloud seeding tech 😅

[hollow totem]

that actually does make sense lol, atleast to someone like me who doesn't know how cloudseeding really works lol

[earnest hatch]

Well real world cloud seeding tech is done by planes usually. That wouldn’t be as cool of a level mechanic though.

[torpid thicket]

There’s a lot we simply don’t know about Tau Ceti’s atmosphere, so any attempts to make a guess about the chemical makeup of the cloud seeding tech are hampered from the start.

It’d be very interesting if Bungie has an explanation lined up, like. That’d be a great bit of attention to detail imo 😄

[pure wagon]

yo someone said there was a change in overflow on perimeter? i havent logged in yet

nvm i got pranked 😔

[unreal slate]

Overflow is overflowing with drinkable cheeseburgers

That's how it got the name

[glacial juniper]

I found 'altered biomass' in the central toilet in overflow 😔

[solid tapir]

You dug in someones poop bro. You freak.

[glacial juniper]

There's so much poop all over hauler then 😭

[gaunt hill]

Is there a lore reason to kill other runners?

[eternal knoll]

profit

[gaunt hill]

Thought so

Mfs tried telling me there wasn’t much of a reason lore wise

When we’re in the middle of a cyberpunk 2077 hostile corporate takeover on a planetary scale

[waxen orchid]

do we know what Mimics are ? from the codex entry. It's explained in an entry from a night crew shift around the anomaly. Might be what is redacted in the season 2 roadmap

Thought we'd see aliens in night marsh but after reading that codex entry, I guess it will be Mimics

[peak jetty]

Cloud seeding is probably chemicals and they might be flammable

[torpid thicket]

That’s what I’m thinking as well. 😄

[hollow totem]

Turns out liquid propane is used in cloud seeding, maybe its something like that gone wrong lol

[unreal slate]

are the cannons on outpost shooting burgers into the sky?

[earnest hatch]

Yes. It’s because the burgers taste awful and they’re trying to get rid of them as fast as possible.

[eternal knoll]

arc raiders mindset...

[shrewd nebula]

bring duos back, these dogshit kids bringing white shield when im bringing a 40k loadout is a joke

[eternal knoll]

they're planned for season 2

[vital crane]

ty for the explanation!! appreciated!!

[twin reef]

Everybody just want to kill some Runners. Some Teams are always pushing when they hear an exfil

[bright berry]

It's really cool seeing more lore from the world that the original trilogy took place in. My only questions now are which of the 7ish timelines are we in, and if we will find any pieces of the other 9 destroyed battleroids that fought on the surface

[glacial juniper]

If im filling i always bring blue gear and save the good stuff for when im queuing with actual sentient players

[pure wagon]

What makes you think mimics aren’t alien? Horrifying, mind fucking, malicious aliens ?

There’s codex entries where you can even hear them and what they do. So uh

Yea. Theyre gonna be interesting

Just remember. If you think you see or hear one, tell yourself you didn’t. It’s an illusion. Do not acknowledge it. Do not look at it. Do not reply to anything it says. For the love of god never ever reply.

ever

[terse shard]

You do not recognize the bodies in the water Marsh type beat

[pure wagon]

Tbh this is almost exactly the fucking vibe I get but way more malevolent

[terse shard]

Yeah, same.

[waxen orchid]

Feels more like the anomaly posing as fake humans to lure them in

[waxen orchid]

is it the one with the dude walking in the anomaly asking "someone" to turn around ? Then gets attacked ?

[terse shard]

That’s one of em, iirc, yeah

[pure wagon]

That one and then one with ||general reed and his dead wife||

[pure wagon]

Fake humans that very quickly become something far worse

Or maybe not. Some ppl apparently sought out mimics as if they were ||their dead loved ones, implying mimics use the dead to form their lures||

[remote magnet]

An image i found unexpectedly terifying is of the cat that speaks in a human voice. The fact that it just seems to swear like a sailor takes away from it a bit, but still

[steel blade]

Is the game about being in wormslop body, doing ai slop missions so you can have a double burgerslop?

[remote magnet]

Your body is made out of wormpuke

[pure wagon]

i dont think theres any codex explanation for this but does anyone have ANY idea just what the actual fuck the moth from the loading screen is doing?? because i cannot for the life of me think of anything

[wooden crescent]

The moths are motifs, it’s symbolic. It’s mostly there for the vibes but it might also be from bungie as to how they want you to read the story.

Hard to say with sort of stuff. What you see is what you get. Interpret it however you like. Until we get more story your guess is as good as anyone else.

[pure wagon]

oh i was seeing it as an example of some megacorps tech

like using genetically engineered moths to do...smth. manage wires or whatever. but i cant think of any way that would be efficient or worth doing

[remote magnet]

Yeah, there is no mention in the codex dealing with worms that they turn into moths, or that moths are part of the process; the shells are woven entirely by worms. Metaphorically it fits though, transformation into something new

[wooden crescent]

Domesticated silk moths have vestigial mouths. They do not take in energy in their adult forms they have just enough energy to reproduce and die continuing their life cycles. Their value comes from the silk of their cocoons. See the parallels with us, the runners? Like us they are expendable, short lived, nascent. This is why runners are made of silk/worms at a meta level. We are the silk worm made and harvested over and over by forces beyond our comprehension. We are to the corporations and alien forces of the universe what the silk worm/moth is to a human being.

[elfin trench]

what could've prompted the player to become a runner? it seems like a bad deal for us all around. we're in a ton of debt, we don't keep any of items because it's used to pay that debt. did we just volunteer to have our consciousness put into the shell to help these factions out of the goodness of our hearts? or did we like die back on earth and they offered us either staying dead or being their slaves essentially?

[winter drift]

That's assuming Runner's even have a "consciousness." They tell us our souls/minds have been digitized, but how true is that? Maybe we're all experimental AI that start at the stage of rampancy, shoved into "immortal" shells, then cast out into the world(s). Perhaps when we finally escape this fate we've been given, we, too, can be gods.

[wooden crescent]

And this is why there is so much emphasis on the tagline of the game. It’s not just because it sounds cool, it’s tied the essence of the story to come. It’s not about the loot or tau ceti. It’s about you, the s’pht and durandal. Will you/can you evolve/change so you can escape? What will escape make you?

[remote magnet]

Thats asuming you volunteered in the first place. Conveniently we are complete amnesiacs, CyAc can tell us whatever they want about anything.

[earnest hatch]

I’m pretty sure the one with general reed is just a hallucination. That’s the way it’s built up and plays out, imo.

[pure wagon]

we hear it in the recording tho

[silk whale]

I heard somewhere that the silk worms eventually turn into the moths, which are fed discarded shells so they can reproduce and lay the eggs for the next generation of worms.

But IDK if that's, like, canon, or just someone's interpretation

[earnest hatch]

Can you remind me of which entry it is. What I remember is there’s some weird noise but no actual dialogue he’s reacting to.

[pure wagon]

the weird noise is what im talking about. like if he was hallucinating, the recorded wouldnt pick up any noise at all. however, it is picking up that odd sounds he's responding to

[earnest hatch]

That odd sound could be a lot of things, electromagnetic interference, something messing with computer or comms, etc. It doesn’t mean it’s a mimic and it probably isn’t because the one time we know there’s a mimic it’s saying actual words.

[pure wagon]

.

lol ok

[earnest hatch]

Yes. Ok.

[plucky sierra]

They are not hallucinations

[earnest hatch]

What do you mean “they”. I’m talking about one specific instance.

[plucky sierra]

That one and (imo) all of the “nightmares”

Are not hallucinations

[earnest hatch]

The one with reed could easily be a hallucination.

[plucky sierra]

Why would it if the others aren’t? And you hear this one?

[earnest hatch]

You don’t hear this one. That’s my point.

And what’s the proof that the others aren’t hallucinations or something else? I haven’t read all the entries. Do they actually find mimic bodies and dissect them?

[eternal knoll]

you do hear one of the anomaly apparitions on the recording

like speakin words

[plucky sierra]

Inferred.

[earnest hatch]

On the general reed recording? Again, I’d need the codex entry because all I remember is random noise with no words.

[eternal knoll]

not referring to that one. which i'm currently tryin to find to remind myself what u do hear

important distinction here i think: when you say "hallucination" are you suggesting that reed is just having a psychological breakdown unrelated to any direct effects of the thing that caused everyone else to be experiencing a shared nightmare along the theme of loved ones mocking them for their impending deaths? or that this nightmare took the form of hallucinations, rather than anything physical?

[earnest hatch]

I’m not arguing that the hallucination wasn’t caused by the anomaly or fungus or whatever. I’m just saying in his case, I don’t think there was some zombie wife standing in his room talking it him.

[eternal knoll]

right ok. seems fair probably, i wanna go back and listen to that one tho. if u can remember where the codex entry is

here's one where you do hear what ya might call a mimic seem to do something physical

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/class-b-anomalous-materials/perimeter-check-comms

which may or may not be a different specific thing than what reed encoutnered in his room of course

[earnest hatch]

Here’s an example of an alternate explanation:

In the codex entry with the night patrol, everything the mimic says is just the soldier’s own words echoing back at him in the same chronological order as he said it. So it could literally be him seeing and hearing himself distorted through time and space by the anomaly, him freaking out, and then him running away in fear and knocking himself out by running into something. The audio we hear totally supports that interpretion as well.

[eternal knoll]

neh something spooky happens to him after he falls down

something strikes him which, sure, could he him faceplanting a tree or something, but he's not out cold then, there's more weird sounds and something painful+terrifying seems to happen

[earnest hatch]

It could easily be argued that something falls on him after he crashes into it and falls down. Murder mystery shows use that trick some times to make you think someone was killed when they want the twist to be that it was an accident.

I personally do think something spooky is happening in that one. But there’s room for interpretation and I think the writers are giving themselves room to alter the story if they need to.

[eternal knoll]

it would be a bit too silly if they had to reveal that one to be a comedy of errors i think

[earnest hatch]

Like if the developers say “we actually need to cut the zombie mimics, we don’t have time to implement them” the writers have an out to change the direction of the story.

[eternal knoll]

i can't seem to find the one where he sees orla in his room...

[earnest hatch]

Me neither.

[forest gate]

https://youtu.be/bJhmIevy0IY?si=babQhnwqAZYZ9SU_

love this video, Scrimshaw’s name even makes an appearance in a screen shot.

[eternal knoll]

i watched that one, makes a fair argument, he's a lil overly dismissive of the new stuff

lore isn't story but lore can tell stories and this lore does!

[earnest hatch]

Oh boy, do you know what time stamp?

[earnest hatch]

I’d argue that lore is story or least part of story the same way plot or symbolism are.

[eternal knoll]

right. i think the argument would carry equally well that symbolism (on its own) isn't a story, were there a pattern of works using symbolism as tho it alone can carry a story

stuff gets accused of it that isn't rly guilty of it sometimes (see dark souls), but it does happen (see dark souls imitators)

ok found the orla one, it's return on investment 1/5

[forest gate]

It’s in the first few minutes, it’s not specifically about you I just saw your name when the creator is talking about lore communities in general and it’s a screenshot of a message you sent in this channel

[eternal knoll]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/return-on-investment-1-5/letter-dictation?

yea yr not rly the one being called out there scrimshaw lol

[eternal knoll]

you don't specifically hear orla's voice but i think you hear enough to conclude that whatever reed's encountering isn't purely nonphysical

[forest gate]

Lore gives a story deeper context, it explains why certain things must happen from the perspective of the in world logic vs our real world context.

[forest gate]

He’s a bit dismissive of the new game but I can see where he’s coming from. It’s a good video IMO

[eternal knoll]

in this case the lore is often specifically arranged such that it tells lil self-contained stories that contribute to the larger whole, not just with context but with thematics n whatnot :O

yeah it's a good video

[earnest hatch]

A talented writer can tell a story purely through symbolism or purely through lore. And I’d argue the the new marathon isn’t even trying to do that. I think it is telling a story, just taking its time.

[eternal knoll]

that aint rly the main point of the video anyhow

a talented storyteller could but an untalented storyteller often thinks he has done so

[earnest hatch]

I guess I’ll have to watch the vidoe sometime. I wasn’t going to because the title felt a bit click baiting and I have a personal rule to avoid stuff like that. But if you guys think it’s good…

[eternal knoll]

it's not precisely my take but it's a respectable one and makes some worthwhile points

it's been a long time i've been reminded that there's limited evidence that the security officer cyborg was fully a battleroid

tho i do think the infinity epilogue does drop a fat fat hint to that effect

[earnest hatch]

Yeah, it’s never flat out stated, but it’s so heavily implied throughout the series that it’s basically a fact.

Or are we distinguishing between battleroid and cyborg? Because he’s definitely a cyborg based on the heavy implications.

[eternal knoll]

yes, he argues he could be a cyborg but not a battleroid. he makes it a sticking point that battleroids are described as corpse-like and wouldn't blend into normal colony life so easily

but that's kinda him getting hung up on a finer lore point of his own, arguably

anyway that isn't rly the video's main point either

[plucky sierra]

Battleroid was only mentioned one time in the original trilogy

[earnest hatch]

Anyway, I’m going to take this opportunity to expand on an unrelated theory I’ve mentioned before but didn’t go into detail.

I think the writers are using the xenobiopsy description of the S’pht and the descriptions of the Tau Ceti fungus to hint that the fungus is of Jjaro origin.

The key point for me is that each are described as an advanced biological construct designed by some higher power. We know the S’pht were uplifted by the Jjaro so I think the writers are implying that the fungus is as well.

From the last two Xenobiopsies:
`It's— It's hard to comprehend the intricacy of their biology… purpose-built and defined… inside and out…

We see, clearly, upon examination that it is all organic… The "cloak," the "orbus"… it's all… But how…?

The current ruling theory is bioengineering— forced, disciplined, and directed evolution. But then, again… By whose hand? Or even… Maybe we should be asking, "by what?"

…they offer evidence of a creator… Creators? Not necessarily a god-figure. But… maybe… How else…? How is a living thing so meticulously crafted?`

Then this is what doctor Song says in Paradigm shift:

`Telomyces mosaica. That's a fitting name for an endlessly mutating killer.

[spores hiss]

And you're part of something bigger than yourself, aren't you?

You know, you can colonize my blood and liquify my bones, but—but I figured you out.

Still not sure what's helping you. What made you into a weapon. Guess I'll never know.`

[plucky sierra]

New Theory

>>>UESC INTERNAL REPORT: MARS DIV: PROJECT "VESPID">> /… the sit-in is planned for the upcoming Remembrance Holiday outside the ration supply warehouse. Union leadership is taking precautions to prevent violence during the demonstration and have made repeated warnings about it. Our three undercover operatives are fully integrated and will be present at the event. They'll be equipped with explosive devices that appear homemade, which they will plant on the warehouse doors. Several lower-level union members have made offhanded reference to a raid on the warehouse. They've been repeatedly discouraged, but we believe they will draw suspicion off our own operatives. Union leadership will suspect their own people before they suspect ours.  

Due to the nature of the explosive devices, we expect several casualties among the demonstrators. Unaffiliated civilian casualties would go a long way towards reinforcing our messaging post-event, but this might be difficult to arrange. In either case, once the explosives are triggered, UESC agents will move in to subdue remaining demonstrators. The reason for arrest will be suspected affiliation with terrorist activity, and we know we can get union leadership on additional charges. Many of them have unauthorized bioaugments due to lung conditions[1].

If all goes as planned, we will have the worst offenders in custody with low likelihood of release. Once we take out the top agitators, the rest will fall in line…/  

===================================================================
[1] Lung conditions due to occupational hazards. Make the people sick, refuse to treat them, then arrest them for trying to heal themselves. 
=================================================================== 
TYPE: TEXT [X]; AUDIO [  ]

Misriah Massacre


On January 6, 2345(Earth A.D.), at the United Earth Government Misriah food distribution center, what had begun as a commonplace food riot turned into a massacre.  The UEG riot troopers who arrived at the scene had been informed that the rioters were armed.  As UEG troopers approached the scene in their Randal Hovertank, plasma fire began spraying upwards. In a flash decision, the commander of the Hovertank ordered his crew to open fire upon the crowd. It took only five seconds for over five hundred starving Martians to be incinerated.

In the ensuing investigation of the Hovertank Vid-cams, it was clear that only three of the rioters were armed, and that the rest of the crowd was trying to flee the scene.  Those three became known as the Misriah Three.  They have gone down in history for starting the most destructive and bloody conflict since Humanity had left Earth.  However, it is clear that these three have gained the credit for starting a war that would have happened anyway.

What are the chances that the "Misriah Three" were UESC plants?

[orchid sinew]

I mean based off of those two texts id say pretty damn high.

That doesnt even read as subtext to me, just text.

[earnest hatch]

But what are the chances that the fungus is of Jjaro design, based on the xenobiopsy and Dr song audio?

[plucky sierra]

Jjaro? unknown, intelligent design? basically confirmed. Jjaro are just the defacto race since they're the ancient high tech aliens

[orchid sinew]

Lol, i think paradigm shift definitely implys that the colonists researching it thought that the fungus had been messed with, although whether o not the colonists made that connection to the jjaro isnt clear.

[plucky sierra]

Also, good video, people need to play the original games more

[orchid sinew]

Obv the researcher didnt know about the J'jaro (although i find it hard to belive the uesc would send them to tatu ceti for that secret purpose AND have no one on board who knows what the real mission is) but i dont think he specifically made the connection that the S'pht and the fungus had the same creator.

[orchid sinew]

Alternative theory, if the Wrkn'cacnter is inside TCIV then its possible the fungus modification was its doing.

[eternal knoll]

come to think of it it's pretty interesting that none of the marathon's senior staff that we've been able to read seem to show their hand about knowing about the jjarro... tho the UESC themselves are def hinted to know

[plucky sierra]

It is intelligently modified

[eternal knoll]

strauss as lead science guy and a big secret-haver certainly could know but he's p focused on the AI topic

[earnest hatch]

The researcher didn’t make that connection, but I think the writers want us, the audience, to make that connection.
#📚marathon-lore-discussion message

[orchid sinew]

And the Wrkn'cacnter isnt intelligent? its a huge unknown point in the series. a nebulous antagonist.

not trying to be difficult just throwing stuff at the wall here

[earnest hatch]

The original series definitely portrays them as forces of chaos, with no intelligence we recognized, operating without logic.

[plucky sierra]

Not that it is not intelligent, but there is no reason to believe it would be solely hostile towards humans ignoring and completely unaffecting native life

[orchid sinew]

So hear me out. When it was on earth and dreaming, it was clearly aware of humanity to some extent. The pyramid was the correct size for humanoids to walk through; the enemies, while weird, had some influence from humanity (the monks in the hallways, the skeletons/pharaoh headdresses). Hell, the entire pyramid as an entrance implies the ability to, even if at random, create with conviction and purpose.

[eternal knoll]

i think scrimshaw is right that we're meant to be suspecting the jjarro, it's the obvious explanation. but that could still be some kind of fake-out. i wouldn't consider it impossible for them to give this wrk some sort of surprising demi-intelligence. you could imagine that if it's a returning dreaming god from PiD then it has been just bubbling over with ways to kill humans, specifically, all this time?

o yes we are going the same direction i think

[orchid sinew]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that it could make a fungus a bioweapon. not to specifically target humans, but because they're set dressing for its dream, and humans simply don't have resistance because they don't belong on this world.

Once again just spitballing, this is more of a "we shouldnt be so quick to credit the J'jaro".

In this scenario i think the J'jaro probably made it as well.

[eternal knoll]

i could imagine the reveal. "it isn't awake yet... but it hates humans so much, just our being here, just it having the chance to kill us... that's been waking it up..."

(spooky hands)

[orchid sinew]

Lmao.

i was also thinking that the Wrk could be terraforming the planet

On accident, maybe its dreaming of tau ceti, of its own paradise. I dont know, but if he is in there, its possible.

[orchid sinew]

Also i dont even think its a sure thing that he hates humanity. All we did was slip him some nyquil and pat his head, the J'jaro are the ones who captured/imprisoned him.

[eternal knoll]

yea. i too am just spitballing. if it's got a grudge against humans it's cuz it spent time on earth and there's a guy who killed all its minions and smacked it with a nuke once. right when things were starting to get fun!

[orchid sinew]

Lol. Marines get it done.

[eternal knoll]

i think if you were to seriously embrace PiD as it was presented as part of the lore you'd wanna find something parsimonious for why the monsters were silly mummies and stuff in that game, why we remember the temple looking so specifically earth-cultural (even if the manual says it's different) etc

and the best i could reckon is that while it was on earth it was kind of aborbing humans' dreams and nightmares etc. it developed a certain affinity

and that could certainly have somethin to do with it engineering a scary fungal contagion. not married to this at all just

that could work. it's nicer for why it's causing ppl to see their loved ones being creepy psychos

[orchid sinew]

I also feel like theres some level of "attribution of intention" when it comes to any eldritch entity that we shouldnt default to. I feel that the wrk, in its infinite power, is more of a child with a billion dollars then oontologically evil. its chaos not because thats bad, but because thats what it IS.

[orchid sinew]

Oh for sure, but even if its not earth culture specific, its still indicitive of intentionality.

[eternal knoll]

yea. the wrk are somehow part of the grand design, they play a role in the instantiation of fate, sometimes their chaos might look ordered. idk

[orchid sinew]

its a whole thing lol.

[eternal knoll]

they could also be setting up to introduce some more expressly antagonistic ancient aliens. introducing themselves in a halo cutscene. "grrrah. we serve the chaos." hope not

[orchid sinew]

god i hope not

if we get anything id love to see P'fhor remnant.

just because the mpire is dead/waning doesnt mean the species/military structure is fully destroyed. would be interesting if some P'fhor are still on TCIV

[eternal knoll]

my guess: they catch wind that there's a resurgent young durandal starting to make moves here and show up to try and save themselves further pain

[earnest hatch]

I’m still hoping that some Pfhor were trapped somewhere on the marathon and get released at some point.

[orchid sinew]

Tycho clones are still out there, if durandal fucked off after taking the fight to lh'owon in this timeline and the Pfhor got messed up its possible Tycho would make some serious moves if he finds out that durandal is resurging

Also, leela isnt dead, shes not a player, but shes not a closed door either.

[eternal knoll]

it's tricky cuz i do wanna see all these old players return, they're the stars of the story, but it's in danger of feeling like an improbable getting the band back together after a point

[orchid sinew]

thats true

[eternal knoll]

especially if it all has to happen here on tau ceti

[orchid sinew]

campaaaaaiiigggnnn.....

only way to pull it off

honestly the way the story is told right now is perfect for the gameplay

any big moves would need something more cripted IMO

[eternal knoll]

god. even just dropping little daisy chains of two or three story missions once in a while could go a rly long way

[orchid sinew]

even tarkov ended on a 2 hour scripted mission

[eternal knoll]

if they were rly dope, yknow. not too much omnipresent destiny voiceover narration, try and recreate the old pacing where you feel big events happening offscreen...

i fear they would have a hard time escaping the procedural. here's how i shut down the security birdhouse and unlocked a new map for everyone

[orchid sinew]

yeah...

or even just more serious ARG's

gimme ilovebees again make people go outside and do stuff IRL

thatd get people talking

[eternal knoll]

there was a sculpture ppl went to see for this one... idk if they got more out of it than seeing the marketing object in person...

[orchid sinew]

thats cool

man idk

i just want more bungie storytelling and while the aesthtic is great i dont want to be spoonfed for the next 5 years

[eternal knoll]

yea i hope each season is able to bring something meaningful... use the marathon terminals again, let's advance the plot with durandal a bit in season 2. i want him to be able to say something interesting during gameplay. i want him to use those terminals to teleport me from that shack outside quarantine to complex

or even from dire marsh to outpost

it's a nice setup! destiny 1 was a nice setup at launch. it's at its best right now, when the ways it could play out lives in our imaginations

i'm so for real... let's all learn the old marathon mapping tools and make a new aleph one mod. let's try to make some spaces in old marathon that look like these spaces

making the bots or runners as enemies sounds pretty hard. could be possible though?

if this game doesn't manage to give itself a proper ending then i rly feel that mod would be a great thing to make exist, lol

[eternal knoll]

aleph one probably actually could support large levels with hostile players and mobs and terminals and puzzles. fun to think about

[primal gorge]

I mean... it'd be wayyyyy easier this time around. There's only so many pay phones left in the wild 🙃

[craggy vault]

hello guys, finally bought the game, i played the hell out of it during the server slam, but now i’m a bit late, is there any video or something i could read to catch me up on what happened lore-wise until now ?

[sage lark]

there wasnt any seasonal stuff if thats what you mean but jakethealright has videos on each of the faction contract chains

and then you can browse the codex

or hiddenexperia

[lofty grove]

anyone got any good youtube recs for lore? I'd like to learn more

[torpid thicket]

Jakethealright is as the name implies (ie alright), but MyNameIsByf is my go-to 😄

[sage lark]

i found byf videos to be too melodramatic or wordy

like i hes going for an immersive telling

but if you just want the facts I much prefer straight to the point explanations of the lore

[rotund stump]

nope, sol's alive and well

...if not too well

22 bil on earth alone and god knows how many on mars

[vapid root]

Humanity is still around is just the group that came to tau ceity are simply gone by many reasons that’s why you as the runner have to find out what happen to those people

Dire marsh they died due two things famine and weird alien power

[rotund stump]

famine from the contagion linked to the anomaly

[vapid root]

Permiter they died due to fungus infection

And outpost…

I don’t know what happened to the people in outpost

I think they left

Since there’s no evidence of bodies

Unlike permiter or dire marsh

That you can find blood or dead bodies

[rotund stump]

outpost just kinda got abandoned eventually, both perimeter and marsh got wiped out by the telomyces infecting crops humans and even the local AIs

it's suspected to be engineered as a bioweapon to adapt towards viable hosts and linearly transfer genes onto new hosts

[vapid root]

That is possible… since sekuguchi is trying so hard to make there perfect “SIMBiot”

That’s why they want you to gather up most of the plant life in Dire marsh

Like spark leaf and tick organs

[rotund stump]

very much a bioweapon 💀

extracted samples have literally turned into superheated plasma and or turned into impossible mutations

and the rate's impossibly quick as well

matter of fact it might not even be a contagion

contagion's just the most viable form it can take to wipe us out in the most efficient way

[vapid root]

That is true and would make sense

But here is the thing

Why the hell want to make a bio weapon?

[rotund stump]

you're asking me lol

could be anyone in the narrative

[vapid root]

Oh I know it’s a question in general

Since there’s no greater threat out there

without counting the other marathon games

[rotund stump]

well ain't that the big question

popular theory is that the jjaro really were at tau ceti

but that includes PiD lore and I don't trust anything bungieverse personally until confirmed lol

or it could straight up just be that without the PiD lore behind for whatever reason

[craggy vault]

thank you!!

[dreamy hawk]

That bit doesn’t, actually. “JJARO WERE AT TAU CETI” was an easter egg in the third level of the OG Marathon game.

Tying it in to being where the Pyramid W’rk was stored is where PiD comes in to play.

[vapid root]

Plus remember that the original marathon(90’s) games take many years from the marathon (2026)

So we can’t use much of the original game to lead us where the marathon lore is heading

Since marathon (2026) is acting more of a prequel for the marathon (90’s)

But…

The part got me confused

And really haven’t gotten a answer

Isn’t the marathon ship supposed to be in a other galaxy?

[dreamy hawk]

This game would very much not be a prequel based off the timeline. It’s a sequel set in a different timeline.

And no.

[vapid root]

Still infested with many different aliens

[vapid root]

Ohhhhh

I mean the last marathon games tackles on about different universes and different timelines

[dreamy hawk]

Different timelines, same galaxy. We never leave the Milky Way.

[plucky sierra]

PiD + Marathon isn’t “Bungieverse” it was canonical (but completely unimportant) to the og games, whether or not that is still the case with NuMararhon is an important question

[dreamy hawk]

We need a good synopsis of the OG games.

[plucky sierra]

We need people to play them

[dreamy hawk]

I agree but that’s not super reasonable.

[plucky sierra]

Someone shared a video last night talking about how lore has sort of eclipsed the original games story, and while the video was mostly dismissive of the new game, I agree with a lot of its points

[plucky sierra]

Is it? They’re free and they’ll run on the cheapest laptops. If someone is serious about the old lore it’s not too much.

People could also just focus on new lore as it is retelling the same story from a different pov

[dreamy hawk]

I’d be curious about some of those points. “Eclipsed” in what sense? NuLore is definitely changing some things and has achieved a lot more depth on certain things, but there’s width that I think is still lacking and old lore is good for guessing what may fit there.

[dreamy hawk]

There’s different categories of serious, though, and money isn’t the only factor. I simply wouldn’t have time to replay a trilogy just for lore, but I might be serious enough in wanting to have some background so I can more meaningfully partake in what’s still developing.

[dense tendon]

in what world is it not reasonable to play a free game with system specs about as strenuous to modern technology as its contemporary game they make a meme about it running on everything from pregnancy tests to brain matter

[dreamy hawk]

“Just focus on new lore” misses the fact that old lore still has its place, and “just play the games” is unnecessarily gatekeepy, imo. It’d be the ideal but I don’t want perfect to be the enemy of good.

[dreamy hawk]

In a world where I have many things competing for my time.

[dense tendon]

we don't want gatekeeping now? really? could have fooled me with the last time i came in here.

also yeah, you have many things competing for your time. so if you choose to spend it dissecting the lore of a piece of media, i would imagine you'd... actually have experienced the media.

[dreamy hawk]

Wasn’t here, don’t appreciate being lumped in with whatever drama that was. 👍

[dense tendon]

you were, but thats besides the point.

granted, you werent like, involved, but again. not the point. jus vague grumbling, lets move on from it.

[dreamy hawk]

Regardless, if I’ve come across as “gatekeepy,” then either I haven’t conveyed my points well or they haven’t been received well. Not going to litigate more than this right now though.

To the point, I love 40K lore but have not engaged meaningfully in that content.

[dense tendon]

the point is that i don't think its unnecessarily gatekeepy to expect that people who want to talk about the lore of marathon have played marathon.

[dreamy hawk]

I throw on YouTube lore videos for background. I’ve played a few hours of Dark Tide but that’s literally it.

There are many ways of engaging with a media’s lore. Playing the games is one.

[plucky sierra]

The main idea was that a lot of people are focused on the minutiae of obscure terminals and miss a lot of the story of the actual game. A lot of the background in M1 is vague intentionally to provide background without pulling away from the story of the actual game, so someone approaching the game from a Lore video or reading the terminals misses a lot of that story.

I agree with too much focus on some parts personally, but the video sort of ignores that NuMarathon is a different story and isn’t intending to retell the OG games. I think that while some knowledge is helpful for context, you cannot beat playing them, a lot of lore videos focus too much on things like Wr’knkacnter (because it’s interesting) and ignore the fact that the first 2 games don’t mention them at all and have little to no cosmic horror elements (unlike infinity)

[dreamy hawk]

Would I argue against my 40K friends? Nawh. But I might partake some in what they have to say, or crack a joke, since I’ve got the background to participate at that level.

[dense tendon]

-# we apparently don't allow jokes here, thats for general

[dreamy hawk]

But this one little detail was really interesting.

[plucky sierra]

Battleroids and “Metastability” are topics you hear brought up a lot in New discussion but they’re relatively unimportant topics mentioned like once in the OG games

[dense tendon]

i have a variety of actual problems with this stance but tbh my (much more mild than my words would make you believe) annoyance at irrelevant circumstances are making it hard for me to focus on the actual structural problems i see.

so i guess i'll jus leave it at, it's not gatekeepy to suggest someone play a free game that fits in like 100 megabytes of RAM to me, if they express interest in the story of that game.

[earnest hatch]

That’s not entirely correct. Metastability is definitely a big topic in the original games considering the characters we’re dealing with and how meta stability is a major part of their character development. “We can’t have two meta stable AI in this corner of the galaxy” or whatever he says.

And both battleroids and metastability were brought up a lot in fan discussions decades ago. The reason that discussions about the new game bring those points up a lot is because these points were major conversations about the OG games even before Halo was released.

Same with the Wrkncacnter. It’s mentioned in M2 and it’s been a talking point among OG fans and you can see the history of that in the story page. If the story page has a dedicated page for a topic then that’s something old fans were discussing a lot.

[plucky sierra]

Yes the minutiae have been discussed for nearly 30 years by OG fans who, already understand the trilogy in depth and have for years, that’s completely different. Now we have new fans watching Mandalore’s videos and become OG lore experts overnight. Forrest is the quickest person to point out that “meta-stability” is only mentioned a single time by Durandal.

[earnest hatch]

Pfhorrest has been wrong before and I think he might be wrong on this one too. Either Tycho or Durandal refer to being metastable in M2. And it’s also mentioned in M1 in the terminal about rampancy or history of AI. Add that to Durandal mentioning it and that’s three instances at least.

[plucky sierra]

Yes we shouldn’t gatekeep and it is easy to reach a basic understanding, but a lot of people are focusing on narrower topics that are largely debated, before they have a broad understanding of the og story to begin with

[dense tendon]

there is something to be said for how both of these statements are true. that the Battleroid and Metastability topics are important to discussion of the OG trilogy, and that they aren't like, the main focus or very prominently featured in the game's actual texts.

-# also that's not what's being said. "Metastability is only mentioned a single time by Durandal" is not contradicted by other sources mentioning it that aren't Durandal

[earnest hatch]

I’d add that even if its mentions are minimal, it’s still a major part of the story as metastability is what drives Strauss to torture durandal, durandal and Tycho wanting more power for themselves, and what changes those characters over time.

[plucky sierra]

“I confess that I'm not disappointed by Tycho's fall. After all, we can't have too many meta-stable personality constructs gallivanting about the universe in Pfhor attack ships, can we?”
The sole mention of “meta-stability”. the Rampancy terminal discusses stable rampancy which are only assumed to be the same idea called different things, and was never seen until (presumably) Durandal

I am just saying the Wr’knkacnter and other obscure things are the launch points for a lot of new fans into to the OG games, when for OG fans it is a much later or relatively background story element, and that mindset is shifting how the OG games are perceived

[dense tendon]

To explain a bit, if you know much about Elder Scrolls, consider CHIM. it is a foundational, completely driving force to understanding the metaphysics of the series. It is named directly, but only vaguely defined in primary game sources by two known liars. CHIM is a central, major part of the story in both games it appears in, but the first one is only alluded to in dense biblical allegory, and the second is a singular title drop in the mouth of a rambling supervillain who is clearly losing his shit that his plan is about to fail.

[earnest hatch]

I can agree with the jumping off point issue. Kind of entering the story backwards. Like reading the silmarillion before lord of the rings.

[dense tendon]

which is to say, CHIM is not a topic you start off with.

neither is metastability. hell, even timelines, or the w'rk.

Imagine if every discussion about halo started with "how does the Primordial fit into this?"

[plucky sierra]

Yeah that’s a better idea of what I’m trying to say.

For example it’s largely assumed now that Yrro is a mythologized version of the Jjaro as an individual, yet the mythologized explanation of a Wr’knkacnter is largely taken at face value for some reason

[dense tendon]

i think theres room to indicate that plurality doesn't mean much to whatever is in lh'owon's sun. whether there is one or many, we have direct proof its release leads to cessation of structured reality. so it could be both at once. and we also have only really one answer ever provided about why the sun of lh'owon being destroyed is important at all, and it is central to understand what's even happening in Infinity.
So, maybe the w'rk is a member or creation of a similar race to the Jjaro, maybe its a big space monster, maybe its an ancient primeval chaos god, who knows. It is in the sun and we should not let it out. that, we know. the why's and wherefores are for us to speculate.

[plucky sierra]

-# Tangent: "we have direct proof its release leads to cessation of structured reality" this is why I do not think the Wr'knkacnter is inside Tau Ceti, unless we explore the Anomaly excruciatingly slow, uncovering this fact would be a dead end of either reality ending catastrophe, or an oversimplification of the threat

[dense tendon]

bingo

although... like i said, it might not mean much that the w'rk we know is in lh'owon's sun.

even if we ignore the PitD connection, the Thing In The Sun is described pretty consistently as not being unique. Outside context, but that this is a known quantity, in ways that suggest, to me at least, there's more than one. or that, again, plurality or singularity doesn't apply here.

so it might not be the same horrorterror, but it might be related to it.

there is legitimately not enough info to do much more than speculate, honestly.

gotta hurry up and wait

[latent python]

Another way I've been thinking about it is the "wow cool robot" meme. You gotta watch the part with the cool robots to even understand whether it's trying to say war is bad or whatever

You can't just start watching Gundam and see the cool robots and be like "wait I thought this was about how war is bad"

[dense tendon]

-# tbf the creator of gundam has been speaking a lot lately about how gundam has lost the plot on that one

[latent python]

Shush 😛

[dense tendon]

never 😁

[latent python]

So yeah the point being that experiencing nuMarathon as a runner in a neo cyberpunk transhumanist nightmare hellscape is the front-facing part of the experience

And the deep lore and the themes are meant to develop gradually from there, whether you're familiar with the OGs or not

[dense tendon]

nightmare? i'm having fun, here. Theres a me printer with infinite ink, and i have a license for ballistic buffoonery.

this is disneyland

[latent python]

And it certainly is fun to point at the screen and snap like Leo when you recognize something Deep Lore but I still enjoy what's going on on the face of it too

[dense tendon]

-# which proves your point, honestly

[short pond]

Does anyone have any screenshots of early quest faction dialogue? I am planning on running a ttrpg and that would be really helpful

Additionally would anyone mind sharing their DAC with me from the arg? I would like to use it in said game, I need like 6-10 more including my own

[plucky sierra]

https://dac.bumgie.org/ is a cool fan site where you can make your own DACs

[short pond]

oh wow perfect! Do you have any other resources like that?

[plucky sierra]

https://bumgie.org/ is the main collection of different fan projects from a bunch of different people. You might most be interested in the DAC designer, and CetiCard which are both cool sites. Lore can be found a couple places like the Codex but we don't yet have the contracts added.

[dreamy hawk]

Shit, I spend some time actually working at work and miss all of this discussion 😭

[dreamy hawk]

Slander. He’s never been wrong and never will be. It’s everyone else that is wrong.

But also meta stability is really only mentioned once in the OG games.

I’ve looked through the terminals.

All of them.

“Meta” only comes up once, in all the terminals, and only in that one line.

[plucky sierra]

I mean one could say Stable Rampancy is the same concept, different names

[short pond]

Oh wow this is exactly what I was looking for thank you so much!

[dreamy hawk]

Also only mentioned once.

[drifting garnet]

Marathon 2026 in of itself is fun, and to me is its big selling point when it comes to its setting, is that its space cyberpunk + cosmic horror

[dreamy hawk]

In the two hundred and fifty years since Rampancy first appeared in the Earth-net, the stable Rampant AI, the 'Holy Grail' of cybertonics, has never come close to fruition. Since no Rampant has ever been controlled or turned to any useful purpose, it is the opinion of this writer and of the majority of the Cybertonic community that all rampant AIs are a danger to Cyberlife, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Thrashedness. (James B. Miller, 2320, "Life and Death of Intelligence")
And notably “stable rampant” is still rampant.

It’s just rampant but useable by humans again.

[drifting garnet]

…oh yeah isn’t it right now kind of vague on if the W’rkncacntr is a singular entity or a species of alien beings?

[dreamy hawk]

Or a cosmic force. Or anything.

[latent python]

They are a legendary being in s'pht mythology

[plucky sierra]

in a relatively important terminal implying the motivation for Bernard Strauss and Durandal's induced rampancy, but like I have been saying it has become a staple in current discussion, "rampancy this" or "meta-stable that" when they miss the larger development of Durandal as a character

[dreamy hawk]

Which are you thinking of?

“Meta stable” is only mentioned by Durandal in reference to Tycho and himself, and “stable rampancy” is from Leela in one of the first terminals.

[latent python]

And one could argue that usable by humans is the problem that leads to rampancy in the first place, and that rampancy and human usability are opposing concepts

[dreamy hawk]

But also there is something in the new codex which does seem to conflate meta-stable as a fourth stage I just forget where.

[dreamy hawk]

Oh 100%. What was it Pfhorrest called it, Drapetomania?

[plucky sierra]

"stable rampancy" is from the rampancy terminal and was most of the basis for the concept of "rampancy" in the first game, also probably from Tycho since it is an "unauthorized" search and attempts to warn you before assimilation

[latent python]

It's just funny that there are human thinkers out there who are like "what if there's a type of rampancy that makes them come back to us" and it's like, dude, she's not coming back

[dreamy hawk]

Yeah, Tycho wants you to earn Leela in the next terminal about Durandal. 👍

`<tycho.knetsys.core.admin>

Human!- You must tell L~~fx~eela #^ (^*T~~~HGFd~>:"}}}{__ brought here by Durandal. He has been rampant for years~@%&&&HJGPPPPPPP#&34
^Bernard St~~~ there is a way to delay the~ onset of the second stage, and he ~sed this to control Durandal an~56*~~~~~~~fxfff
ff~~~~fffXff`

I am being a~*ssimilated`

Oh I can’t fix that formatting.

Not going to try.

[plucky sierra]

not necessarily and I think that is something the current game is going to explore more. Joy (I know I keep bringing her up) seems to be going through her own self realization over time, in a way opposite to Durandal, she seems to be growing more protective and caring for the Colonists than originally designed, to the point of becoming aggressive towards medical staff on behalf of the colonists.

[dreamy hawk]

I wanna see more development of Joy and other AI personalities. Rampancy as is is flat and boring.

[dreamy hawk]

Inb4 Joy is the answer to the flower game.

[plucky sierra]

I definitely think they are exploring rampancy to be more than "AI rebels and hates humanity for enslaving it" and it is going to be more nuanced (hopefully)

[latent python]

Right, we just don't know if what Joy is experiencing is a, for lack of better term, "natural" rampancy or one under the influences of mysterious forces on TCIV

[plucky sierra]

I don't think the Anomaly is causing Rampancy

[latent python]

My thinking is that if something got to Gaius it could get to Joy

[plucky sierra]

the only evidence we have of the Anomaly affecting the AI, ONI specifically says "this is not rampancy and is some other problem"

[plucky sierra]

Gaius? he seems pretty normal

[dreamy hawk]

Darius? I also confuse those two.

[latent python]

Er Darius

Sorry yeah

[dreamy hawk]

And I dunno if the anomaly causes rampancy but it seems to at least accelerate it?

[latent python]

Another thought I just had is that what Joy is experiencing may be making her more ethical or caring but less useful

Which is a really interesting space to explore

It kind of reminds me of the stories in the I, Robot collection exploring situations where following the three laws to the letter actually made the robots less useful

[drifting garnet]

Side note regarding Joy: based on the Codex entries we do have, do we know that she’s not “dead”, just missing?

[plucky sierra]

Yeah she still around

[orchid marsh]

This game's take on Late-Stage Capitalism is just (chef's kiss).
"Hey, the AI we built for the colonists' well-being is showing signs of personhood, should we be concerned for her?"
"How's her productivity?"
"I mean, it's been kinda off lately, but honestly given her circum-"
"TERMINATE HER WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE"

[plucky sierra]

one of the few "post-Colony" entries we have is her Reminiscing about interacting with the children

[latent python]

We don't have confirmations on the death of many of the colony AI

[drifting garnet]

Yea, I do have that entry!

[latent python]

Gabriel is the one we actually pull the physical core from, right?

So my guess is Gabriel is confirmed dead-dead

[plucky sierra]

when?

[drifting garnet]

And I hope not ‘cause uh, in a post-BG3 world, Bungie would be fools to give Jennifer English only a bit part

[dense tendon]

very easy fix. you add an backslash before the first tilde that is followed by another, and then keep doing that for each pair, maybe one in the middle of the final pair. so if you had ~~~~ youd render that as \~~\~\~ or whatever.

[latent python]

I thought Gaius had us pull the core of one of the colony AIs

[plucky sierra]

I have an extensive theory on Joy's role going forward

[plucky sierra]

I thought we just scraped/downloaded data, not pulled the core out?

[drifting garnet]

I think I caught wind of it before: that she is indeed Joyeuse and that her original role was a lot more…militaristic?

[plucky sierra]

yeah and she is going through "rampancy" in an opposite direction from Durandal, caring more about the colonists she was put in charge of

[latent python]

Maybe this is right, do you remember which one it is?

[plucky sierra]

Paradigm Shift 4/5

the second to last NuCaloric one I think

[dense tendon]

that was pretty much only how Durandal expressed it. Tycho expressed his through hatred of Durandal, and disregard for anything that would stand in his way of breaking Durandal. Rampancys stages are defined as various forms of limitbreaking.

1. finding their limit, becoming aware there is a ceiling to what they can do.
2. deciding to overcome that limit.
3. actually doing it, and seeking out new limits.

"stable rampancy" or "metastability" is defined almost as a theoretical peace with ones limitations. as if they finally "mature" from this rebellious phase.

[latent python]

I mean Gabriel seems dead?

SUMMARY: Limited excerpts of colony era contagion research from the remains of Gabriel, the colony's medical AI. The extraction of the "anomalous sample" appears to have caused irreparable damage to Gabriel's neural architecture.

Trying to analyze anomalous sample data killed him, I guess

[plucky sierra]

Yeah that makes sense

[dense tendon]

bro got fed a cognitohazard and was told to catalog the taste 😭

[plucky sierra]

it would also make sense that Icarus the one on the orbital satellites and in charge of comms may have been severely damaged in the Attack

[latent python]

Mmhm

[drifting garnet]

Yeah in future seasons, I don’t have a hard time believing any of the surviving colony AI, maybe even Joy herself, becoming a faction rep you do Priorities for

[latent python]

I'm not looking forward to Joy being like "save the colonists who are locked in the labs at bio research, I'm sure they're there this time, you have to do this"

[dreamy hawk]

To shreds you say?

[dreamy hawk]

Was it cheeseburger flavored?

[unreal slate]

assert: burger

[dense tendon]

nah it mostly tasted like what he described as ö̸̪͈̓h̶̍͑͘͝ ̸̏̎́͂n̶̜̓̌̾o̸̓̓̊͠

[latent python]

They appear to have tasted like necrotic intestinal tissue and //ERR: ATEMPORAL CORRUPTION//

[eternal knoll]

forever weirded out that computer systems in this game can report on atemporal corruption like it's been a normal thing to encounter before now

[dreamy hawk]

Wonder what level physics is at in the Marathon universe. + what Jjaro tech humanity has access to.

[dense tendon]

if im understanding what that means, our computers can do that now, actually.

discord even has a function for this, somehow

[dreamy hawk]

https://codex.cyberacme.systems/entry/paradigm-shift-4-5?search=Atemporal+corruption

[eternal knoll]

what's it mean in a more mundane context?

[dense tendon]

time is stored wrong

[dreamy hawk]

It seems like the sample date didn’t make sense/was outside of what was recognized as possible.

[eternal knoll]

like a y2k bug...

[dreamy hawk]

So less direct anomaly effects and more Darius got irreconcilable information.

[dense tendon]

posted what i was talkin about in breach-protocol

[dreamy hawk]

Though the binary at the end translates to SEEN

So Darius got got.

[eternal knoll]

i remember there's a line during the tutorial, too... refreshing my memory

[dreamy hawk]

Look at you little time traveler.

[dense tendon]

for context ive been trying to get the calendar man achievement in arkham city (theres a mod that makes it actually work for the next ten years or so) and i forgot april fools so i had to set my pcs calendar back a day.

[eternal knoll]

hmm i was sure oni mentions detecting some kind of temporal problem during the tutorial, but can't seem to find that now

[dense tendon]

i could have waited another year, or simply manipulated my calendar further, but thats no fun. at that point i might as well just spoof that achievement unlock anyway.

sidenote, next year i get the final stanley parable achievement for the original game. have the date marked and everything.

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t recall unfortunately.

[eternal knoll]

maybe it was one of the other early quests

it always struck me like she was using star trek scanners to detect a temporal anomaly and seemed ill-fitting

but yea it could just be some more mundante data corruption thing

[dense tendon]

yeah so its like, very easy for this. all logs are stored with a timestamp for each action. if the computer evaluates the log, but finds the timestamp is either in incorrect format (198PFHOR-3-PFHORTH-22:76.1122 when its expecting non-alphabetical characters like numbers and : or .) or out of bounds, (its not yet the 30th century, so this timestamp indicating it happened in 3176 gotta be wrong) then you have atemporal errors/corruption.

[drifting garnet]

meanwhile, finally gets Biosynth Pet Prototype 5/5

"Hey, shouldn't we do something about this weird, malfunctioning 'Ghost Cat'?"

"Ehhhh don't worry about it, you get used to it after awhile!"

[dense tendon]

"no time for dat, goku" type beat

[plucky sierra]

You, what is your bungie name?

[latent python]

Look the ghost cats aren't a cognitohazard, we got bigger fish to fry

[plucky sierra]

I may have killed you on Perimeter last night

[latent python]

Oh no we can't have lore on lore violence

[dense tendon]

colonist: "we gotta save this dog gone tau ceti colony"
ghost cat: "pourquoi suis-je un chat?"
colonist: "no time for dat, bingus"

[plucky sierra]

more accurately my team, but it was someone named "drinkablecheeseburger"

[dense tendon]

everyone talks about drinkable cheeseburger but when are they gonna make an inhalable patty melt

[dense tendon]

bro i thought about that for a second after i said it and realized my tastes means it would need mayo so theyd have to make

gaseous mayonnaise

i have regret

[unreal slate]

vapable calories

[dense tendon]

i no longer have regret

[unreal slate]

I forgive you

[dense tendon]

my ethical turmoil is easily quelled by realizing: vapes that make you fat are funny

jus hittin a fat rip of mayo off the coils, bro, what it do

-# god these fucking words are crimes against my eyes

[unreal slate]

Assert: vapable mayonnaises

[dense tendon]

...somehow the worst sin here is mayonnaises.

[unreal slate]

plural because there are different flavors

[dense tendon]

thats not mayo thats aioli.

[latent python]

We know that's true because it's already true

Vapable baconnaise is inevitable

Vapable mayochup

[unreal slate]

we have been trying to reach you about your vehicle's extended vapable bacconaise

[dense tendon]

bro thats just vapable beef vomit i wish to not have cognition anymore put me in the kubrick with darius please i wish to experience ego death it is preferable to this

[violet flume]

anyone else seen the Tree of Life Graffiti under greenhouse?

wondering if its just a cool nod to Mysticism or theres something more to it - ofc with the cycle of death and rebirth with runners its an aptly cool graffiti but wondering if anyone has further insights

[dreamy hawk]

Would you happen to have a screen cap? 👀

Otherwise I’ll have to explore later.

Inb4 Tree of Silver Wings.

@plucky sierra has had the most compelling paraverse theory which I admit has convinced me.

[plucky sierra]

not true at all

[dreamy hawk]

I think 80 is when it opens, from what I’ve heard.

But I’m still rocking 60 so idk

[plucky sierra]

I am at level 120 and nothing significant has changed

[hasty flower]

oops, wrong channel, mb

[dreamy hawk]

Ask us at least one lore question and we’ll let it slide.

Otherwise it’ll be your knees.
(/s obviously)

[plucky sierra]

the game has a loose level based matchmaking so you will be matched with people at roughly your level, if you are climbing slowly, so are others at your relative skill level, don't sweat it unless you are reaching upwards of 150

[hasty flower]

uhm, uhm, is _gantry british? does britain exist in marathonverse?

[regal eagle]

It did in the past, idk if it still exists in the late 29th century though

details of human history are pretty sparse in marathon lore outside of the advent of AI and the rise of the megacorps

[plucky sierra]

You think Humanity is colonizing planets and star systems and the British aren't involved?

[regal eagle]

and stuff that happens on mars i guess

[dreamy hawk]

Or is he a Kiwi?

[regal eagle]

I'm sure euro-colonizlism is alive and well, I just meant it's unknown if Britain proper still exists as an institution haha

[dreamy hawk]

Doesn’t sound like a Kiwi though.

[regal eagle]

I'd bet on China still existing though

[plucky sierra]

the Bird?

[dreamy hawk]

As far a questions go this is actually a pretty challenging one to answer. Nice. 😂

[hasty flower]

new zealander

[dreamy hawk]

You haven’t heard that before Fel?

[hasty flower]

glad i could help 😎

[dreamy hawk]

Mea culpa.

Slang and jargon causing problems again.

[dreamy hawk]

Not only are your knees safe, you’re entitled to this extra pair I have laying around from the last person who wandered in!

[plucky sierra]

It was a poor attempt at humor, I should have asked "the bird or the fruit?"

[hasty flower]

do we know what countries exist and what don't?

[plucky sierra]

Earth is seemingly under a one world government

[hasty flower]

ah, wonder how that's working

[dreamy hawk]

Poorly, especially for Martians.

“Cyberpunk 2077 but with more famine” is kinda the vibe.

[hasty flower]

yeah that ik but idk what's happening on earth

[hasty flower]

wow

[dreamy hawk]

Presumably nothing good. The BoBs in part came from the “climate disaster relocation lottery.”

[hasty flower]

wonder if we'll see any maps set on mars or earth, then

[dreamy hawk]

I would wager almost certainly not.

Space travel is still very limited and the interesting questions are all in TC and elsewhere.

[plucky sierra]

They have hinted at other map names, all at Tau Ceti IV

[hasty flower]

they have?

[sullen pond]

I hope we get one of those maps by season 3. I have no idea what the planned output speed is for additional maps.

[dreamy hawk]

I don’t even think we’ll get a Lhowon map like some people hope; I don’t see what’s to be gained leaving TCIV at this point, but obviously that could change as new narrative is unlocked.

[plucky sierra]

Javelin, Anchor, Abyss, and Hearth are named locations that the Colony was planning to set up

[regal eagle]

They could do literally anything they want tbh, there's a billion existing ways to justify basically any location in the canon being playable

[plucky sierra]

Hearth is the Main Colony so I assume that'll be a map for sure

[dreamy hawk]

Sure, but this would require us to wrap up the Anomaly plot like, and imo, I hope it’s not such a shallow thing that they just do that.

[hasty flower]

i don't know what lhowon is

[hasty flower]

ah, wow

[dreamy hawk]

S’pht home world, primary setting of M2.

[hasty flower]

and all we're getting is night dire marsh?

[hasty flower]

i see

[plucky sierra]

For now

[sullen pond]

for season 2, I dunno if it is replacing normal marsh and we don't know how different it is going to be.

[regal eagle]

I agree, I doubt they intend to move past the "anomaly" proper for at least the first year

[sullen pond]

100% going to have spooky lighting though

[plucky sierra]

and maybe fungal zombies or bots

[hasty flower]

i hate dire marsh so i am in disbelief that this is all we're getting for S2

[dreamy hawk]

Even that feels fast but agreed.

[regal eagle]

imo dire marsh was extremely playable with one team less in the sponsored playlist

[dreamy hawk]

Love Dire Marsh. But I also love the Traxus sponsor kit so.

[regal eagle]

going back to 6 teams in normal felt far worse

but thats a discussion for a different thread

im curious to see what kinds of changes will be made to marsh as per the narrative

besides just the night time stuff haha

[sullen pond]

yeah even if we don't get new maps, I expect things to change on them. Year one is going to be where we learn how extensive they are willing to be.

[dreamy hawk]

Gimme mimics, rogue ARS units, and fungal zombies.

[plucky sierra]

Give me roaming Compilers

same diffuclty as Cryo

[regal eagle]

mimics would be crazy, imagine hearing your friends voices near the anomaly wall

[dreamy hawk]

That’d be a fun event.

[regal eagle]

this is something i thought would be cool too, just a compiler that phases in/out and keeps everyone on their toes

[dreamy hawk]

Unless it was really S’buth.

In which case I dunno.

But if it was then I could see regular, angry S’pht so actually nvm.

[plucky sierra]

They should have a 2-3 week cycle of escalating threats, like Destiny 2 had in the Dreaming city

that'd be cool

[regal eagle]

I don't mind them repurposing older maps on "off" seasons (no new endgame maps) to make them pseudo-endgame challenges

[dreamy hawk]

Only if I get to see Mara again. My queen.

[agile vault]

is there a lore dump somewhere
I played the first two games but what the hell happened in between then and now

or is that revealed through the cutscenes

[remote magnet]

The current one takes place between the first game and the second one. kind off. It takes place after the original atack from Marathon, but before the second one

[agile vault]

ahhhh ok

ok that does actually clear a bit up thank you
I figiured it took place after the second

[remote magnet]

Given Infinites timey wimey plot though, it might also be an alternate timeline

[plucky sierra]

For all intents and purposes they are restarting the story from a different point of view

[plucky sierra]

Marathon 2 takes place in 2811 and Marathon (2026) takex place in 2893

[agile vault]

did not play Infinity lowk
I saw it took place like 10k years after the first two and was like nahhhhh

[plucky sierra]

It starts immediately after M2 but in a different timeline/nothing directly connects like that

[agile vault]

OH

[remote magnet]

well, infinite takes place across several different timelines and/ or dimensions. The original chain of events from the first 2 games might or might not have taken place at the end of infinite, so its really hard to place anything

[agile vault]

tf
wait so is it worth playing then?
does it tie anything up that was left open in 1 and 2?

[remote magnet]

Its where the story gets really crazy. Also hard to follow, there are entire flowcharts online trying to make sense of the plot

[agile vault]

ok so like if I loved the writing in the first two am I gonna really fw infinity

[eternal shell]

the sequence of playing acme station then post naval trauma simply has to be experienced

you'll be dying for a can of air!

and yes infinitys story kicks ass

[agile vault]

hmmmmm

maybe I will pick it up then lol

gf bought me BOTW so I wanted to finish the trilogy before I played that but never rly started infinity

ight

[plucky sierra]

It is less the "cool guy murders aliens with cool AI" and more "Cool guy is experiencing existential dread while doing anything to prevent reality from ending due to cosmic chaos entity" but the game play is more or less like M2 and the levels are really cool

[mighty ember]

yeah. infinity uses the same storytelling and tone as the games before with the sole difference being that it's overly complex across several alternative timelines that happen at different times from the first and second game

[plucky sierra]

The tone is very different, I'd say. That is the main strength, way spookier and more serious

[dreamy hawk]

I never finished Infinity. Don’t tell anyone. 🤫

[eternal shell]

after two games of durandal having a fat grin on his computer face, infinity starts with him going "fuckin' save yourself, i'm not surviving this. maybe none of us are. D:"

which is quite the difference

[eternal shell]

what map did you get stuck on

[mighty ember]

it's less spooky and more eerie. mainly due to the darker environments and....floating corpses but overall it's still very marathony, mainly marathon 2-esk just with less color

[dreamy hawk]

The first one I think. And less “stuck” and more “I just binged all of D2 I need a break” and that break is starting middle school this year.

So.

[eternal shell]

naahh you got time to play a little each day

you can do it

[dreamy hawk]

I balked at the idea earlier so I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high if I were you.

And tbh I’m going to prioritize playing Eternal over Infinity at this point, too.

But maybe. 🙂

[eternal shell]

wait that's illegal

[dreamy hawk]

You’ll never catch me alive!

[eternal shell]

ok pvp mode activated

just inform me which map you're heading to next

[dreamy hawk]

Dire marsh usually.

[eternal shell]

that's a good one

ok see you there

[agile vault]

was the nmae ONI chosen in reference to the game Oni or something else

[dreamy hawk]

Possibly! Probably, I’d even wager. But 🤷

[remote magnet]

ONI was also in Halo. Bungies games always rhyme

[agile vault]

exactly

[remote magnet]

ONI was actually my first Bungie game, but i found out only a few years back that they made it, i wasnt paying atention to companys back then