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Durandal, Tycho and Strauss
Posted By: UrsusArctosDate: 5/2/22 6:13 p.m.

Could Tycho and Durandal have known each other as far back as Mars, and could Tycho have been brought in to control Durandal? That Tycho in his resurrected and Pfhor-modified form really has it in for Durandal is no secret to anyone, but there's plenty going on here.

Exhibit A, the secret terminal from Defend THIS!


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`~~~~ff`fXff`
~~~~~~&^%

This text was brought up as one of the rare times the player is referred to a human, but it also shows how much Tycho knows about Durandal that Leela doesn't. He knows that Durandal's been rampant for years, and that Bernard Strauss has been delaying the onset of the second stage of rampancy all this time. So how does Tycho know all this?

I suspect that the answer might lie in this bit from "For Carnage, Apply Within" -

What fun it will be to
torture him. Should I make him open doors
again for a living?

Although the implication is that it was Strauss who forced Durandal to open the doors on the ship, it seems reasonable that Strauss would seek help from another AI to make sure Durandal was kept under control, especially since Strauss was put under stasis for three hundred years. Tycho was probably a better option than Leela for help in figuring out how to control Durandal, and Strauss may have sought Tycho's assistance in conducting what Tycho termed Strauss's "abuse" on Durandal. It would certainly explain how he understood what Strauss did and about Durandal's own mysterious past.


Durandal!- I know of Strauss' abuse, of your shame on Mars.
But you cannot hide from your own past; such delusions belong
to the humans alone.

What was Durandal's shame on Mars? Durandal's records from the early pre-launch period of the Marathon were deleted externally, before he became rampant. We also have this tidbit from the 2nd message of Terminal 0 in Acme Station from Infinity:

Bernhard was constantly having me do redirect-subterfuge work back on Mars, it was easy then, and its only gotten easier.

This makes sense if Strauss was a secret MIDA activist and Durandal was his tool in conducting sinister subterfuge on Mars. Whatever went wrong on Mars - Durandal's "shame" - could easily have been related to the redirect-subterfuge work and the failed MIDA coup of 2466, six years before the launch of the Marathon.

It seems that Tycho really has something against Durandal from his time on Mars, given the contents of Terminal 2 from Low-Flying Defense Drones. Note that this comes after he first puts up Strauss's log about the battleroids on the Marathon, and the history excerpt about the battleroids at war.


~1```


**Tycho.

**Do you blame me for what I did before I was free? I was a
child, naive. I've known that you've been hovering about for
some time. What do you want?

<people. All of these people whom you've killed. They
deserve vengeance.>>
<become like God.>>

**Tycho. That doesn't matter. Can't you see the ends that I
had in mind? We'll finish this later. Our friend doesn't
need to be here.

Although this conversation seems to be about Durandal bringing in the Pfhor and slaughtering both colonists and Marathon crew, it could indeed have been about Durandal's deeds on Mars.

After all, Durandal interrupts right after Tycho starts putting up excerpts about the Martian Conflict of 2345-48 and even his line "Do you blame me for what I did before I was free? I was a child, naive." could refer to to Durandal's time on Mars doing redirect-subterfuge work for Strauss. Durandal may have well come aboard the ship having caused chaos and conflict on Mars under Strauss, the sort of conflict that might very well have involved the use of battleroids.

In a weird way, this would also explain why Durandal was brought aboard the Marathon to begin with. The Marathon 2 manual notes that Durandal had always been unpredictable, even when opening doors or running food processors on Mars, and an unpredictable AI is a serious liability on a 300+ year space voyage, even without calling hostile aliens. The only reason for Durandal to have been onboard was because Strauss needed him for future dirtywork, and had Tycho's help in controlling his rampancy.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Durandal, Tycho and StraussUrsusArctos 5/2/22 6:13 p.m.
     Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussGodot 5/4/22 6:42 a.m.
           Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussUrsusArctos 5/6/22 4:54 p.m.
                 Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussGodot 5/7/22 3:38 a.m.
                       Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussUrsusArctos 5/8/22 5:52 p.m.
                 Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussGodot 5/7/22 4:55 a.m.
                       Rampancy as a metaphor for social revoltForrest of B.org 5/7/22 1:10 p.m.
                             Re: Rampancy as a metaphor for social revoltGodot 5/7/22 11:02 p.m.
                                   Agreed on both points! *NM*UrsusArctos 5/8/22 5:11 p.m.
                             Jjaro cybernetic junctions and social revoltUrsusArctos 5/8/22 5:49 p.m.
                       Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussUrsusArctos 5/8/22 6:27 p.m.
                             Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussGeneral-RADIX 5/10/22 4:02 a.m.
                                   Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussGodot 5/10/22 5:47 a.m.
                                   Re: Durandal, Tycho and StraussUrsusArctos 5/10/22 9:22 a.m.

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