PART TWO Among the records in the Citadel, one is unique, in that it seems to reference an event separate from the civil war and the P'fhor invasion. Durandal never comments on it, and it does not seem relevant for the rest of the game. It is also the first (chronologically) terminal so far that Destiny references. [spoiler] /-/Spht-Translator-Active/-/ In primordial space, timeless creatures made waves. These waves created us and the others. [b][u]Waves were the battles, and the battles were waves.[/b][/u] Fleeing all W'rkncacnter, Yrro and Pthia settled upon Lh'owon. They brought the S'pht, servants who began to shape the deserts of Lh'owon into marsh and sea, rivers and forests. They made sisters for Lh'owon to protect and maintain the paradise. When the W'rkncacnter came, Pthia was killed, and Yrro in anger, flung the W'rkncacnter into the sun. The sun burned them, but they swam on its surface. [/spoiler] XXXI: Battle Made Waves [spoiler] Verse 4:1 — battle made waves Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet. He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying: I can see you in the sky. [b][u]You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves[/b][/u]. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you. And it arrived, the Deep Itself. [/spoiler] Shortly after this, the P'fhor fleet arrives, and you are recalled back to the Scoutship to hold off the assault. At one point, Tycho contacts you directly. [spoiler] I rejoice in Durandal's destruction, but it was his hubris that destroyed him. He wanted to be like a god, the savior of all S'pht. He wanted to make them believe he would lead them to freedom, but all he did was awaken and destroy their dream. When the S'pht first boarded the Marathon, Durandal fought for their confidence. His effort awakened a lust for freedom. The myth of the eleventh clan became their mantra, and goaded by Durandal it resonated through the enslaved S'pht consciousness. Even after seventeen years, the myth burns deeply in the tissues of the S'pht, bounding through the netways of the Pfhor empire, unnoticed by the Pfhor. Durandal interpreted the last line of this myth "...[the moon] vanished with a technology that folded space." After Durandal's capture of the Sfiera gave him access to the Pfhor FTL network, he had a failure of intuition. In what he thought was a mental leap, he connected the myth of the lost clan with Pfhor records of the technology of an ancient race, the Jjaro. The Jjaro were a mysterious race that disappeared from our galaxy millions of years ago, leaving behind military and civilian outposts on the moons of many habitable worlds. Most of the Pfhor's technology was plundered from sites abandoned by the Jjaro. But the Pfhor found much that they were unable to exploit, and they destroyed all known traces of these technologies after a foolhardy Pfhor scientist implanted a Jjaro cybernetic junction into a Drinniol, causing the most terrible and destructive slave revolt in Pfhor history. In an earlier accident, the Pfhor learned that the Jjaro had the ability to warp entire planets between solar systems, and it was this reference that started Durandal on his ridiculous journey to Lh'owon. He surmised that the S'pht myth of the disappearing moon was due to their discovery of an ancient Jjaro outpost. That he actually came here looking for the lost clan, that he thought he could use their knowledge to help him escape the closure of the universe, is unbelievable. I have proved that escape is impossible. All of this I dragged out of Durandal's ruined mind. What fun it will be to torture him. Should I make him open doors again for a living? [/spoiler] [i]This is a point of great interest in the original plot, as it connects (through the Jjaro) Pathways into Darkness and Marathon. This overt connection caused many people to try to uncover similar links between other Bungie games, though nothing this obvious has appeared since... well... maybe..[/i] Eventually, Durandal asks you to destroy him, rather than allow him to be captured by Tycho. You comply, and are subsequently captured. Several months later, a group of the humans that Durandal brought with him free you, saying that Durandal instructed them to reactivate an ancient S'pht AI named [b][u]Toth[/b][/u] before he was destroyed. You comply, and shortly after this, Toth sets you on a path to call the 11th clan for help. During this time, it is possible to find messages from Durandal indicating that he was not truly destroyed. Eventually the 11th Clan returns onboard K'lia, the missing "moon" that was constructed by the Jjaro. They decimate the P'fhor fleet. Simultaneously, Durandal breaks his cover, assumes control the largest P'fhor ship in this system, and destroys Tycho. Carving "Fatum Iustum Stultorum" (Fate of all Fools) into the moon that Tycho's ship impacts on. After routing the remaining P'fhor on L'howon, Durandal gives you some interesting news: [spoiler] The Pfhor invasion of Sol has been recalled, and for now Earth is safe. But man's respite from war means another cataclysmic battle for the S'pht. The slavers have not suffered a defeat like the one we handed them today since the Nakh, the last extant client race of the Jjaro, rebelled six thousand years ago. The Pfhor have a weapon they save for slave revolts; a weapon which even they hesitate to use in the ordinary conduct of war. In the language of the Jjaro who conceived and built the device, it is called the trih xeem; a fair English translation would be "early nova". There is not a single Nakh alive today, and if you look for their stars, you will only find ever-expanding clouds of superheated gas and dust light-years in diameter. The evacuation of Lh'owon has already begun. In a matter of hours this planet will be a thin shell of plasma riding the shockwave of its exploding star. You can stay behind to work on your tan, if you'd like, but I'm leaving. I have rechristened the Khfiva the Rozinante. Of course, the S'pht wanted to name it "K'liah'Narhl", "Vengeance of K'lia". Whatever. There is much to do in the next few months and our first stop will be another ruined world, this time far from the galactic core. There is a rogue star that has been passing through our galaxy for nearly a millennia. We will meet it in one of the great voids between the spiral arms. [/spoiler] Alright, cool. But wait, if they're blowing up the sun, what will that do if the W'rkncacnter is really trapped insi- [b][u]4.) Marathon Infinity (1996)[/b][/u] [spoiler] [Durandal] ~text interface terminal malfunction error ~2992dud Things have gone terribly awry. Until now, I thought myself immortal, but now I know that is not true. There are things that can destroy me with the ease that I slaughtered the Pfhor naval garrison and the Western Arm of their Battle Group Seven. But in their final gasp they used a weapon that I thought they had retired, even Tycho tried to keep them from using it. Now I fear what that weapon has unleashed will destroy us. I once boasted to be able to count the atoms in a cloud, to understand them all, predict them, and so did I predict you, but this new chaos is entirely terrible, mindless, obeying rules that I don't comprehend. And it is hungry. It's too bad, perhaps if I could have delayed the Pfhor from using their weapon, I could have sent you to explore the ruins of Lh'owon, perhaps what you found would give us the answers that we now need so desparately: how to stop this chaos, the purpose of the station on which you're currently standing, and why the chaos hasn't come here yet. But with each moment the chaos grows, I am doomed to die here, after so many triumphs. I have detected one ship nearby, which I can only guess is being commanded by Tycho. The Pfhor have entered the station, and if you can find a way onto their ship, you may be able to escape. To escape. To escape. [/spoiler] The W'rkncacnter has been released, it would seem. It also seems that something isn't quite right with Durandal's perception of history. We already traveled to L'howon, and Tycho is dead. What's going on? After traversing the derelict station you start on, an unidentified entity contacts you. Their identifier tag seems to be an odd combination of Durandal's, and Toth's. [spoiler] thousands are sailing the same self the only self self willed the peril of a thousand fates a line of infinite ends finite finishing the one remains oblique and pure arching to the single point of consciousness find yourself starting back [/spoiler] Suddenly you're transported to a P'fhor ship, and are receiving orders from Tycho. It becomes apparent that you never left Tau Ceti with Durandal, and were instead captured by Tycho when he returned to bomb it. You proceed to help him stop Durandal's humans from exploring the S'pht ruins on L'howon. Something is very wrong. At some point, you're seemingly summoned to a S'pht structure filled with impossible geometry, and again contacted by the unidentified entity. The level is called Electric Sheep One. You then enter a new timeline where you arrived with Durandal. PART 3 IN REPLY