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	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty , we ran around opening airlock doors on : Durandal’s ship, at Tycho’s command, as part of our late introduction to : another new timeline, our part in which began with Durandal’s ship adrift : and Tycho taking over, riling up the compilers and generally making a : nuisance of himself. We fought new vacuum BoBs and some super compilers, : and ultimately switched sides, although it -was- forced upon us. It’s all : a bit confusing. : We start in a little corner room and immediately find some super compiler : bolts coming towards us across open space, from a very similar corner room : on the other side of the area, and yet we’re still not in vacuum. We duck : for cover, and the compilers soon lose interest and head out of their : room, but they seem to get word to ones closer to us, and the door out of : our room opens in a rather ghostly way (he’s invisible!) if we hang around : too long. There is a Fusion Pistol here (no cheat scratchstart for me this : time!) and some ammo for it and for a shotgun we might have from as : recently as Carroll Street. There is also a 2x recharge canister! : We find there is one door that does not open and one that does. Behind the : latter are compilers both visible and invisible, and a small group of : green vacuum BoBs teleports in. I only recently realised that they were : actually on our side here. They don’t tend to last long enough to ask : questions of, anyway :(. This is a large open space, with a slight rise : cordoning off an arc, behind which is a big pool of slime with terminals : up on the walls all over the place. I even bothered to mark them on the : map, which I took the liberty of creating in lieu of one from PS, as we : seem to have caught up to our supply of materials again! Mine do rely on : being able to explore all areas of the map, so I have contacted PS to see : about better ones going forward :). : : I always thought those terminals were inaccessible, and that they were where : the odd humorous line about Greg K was written, but it turns out that is : rather an M2-like “cheater” message, and those terminals all display : Tycho’s “eat vacuum” message, which I will get to shortly, through the : only way out of this room that doesn’t involve slime, a door … to a dark : narrow corridor, oh God! There’s another invisible compiler and a Hunter, : and a couple of doors to the right, to tiny rooms, the first empty and the : second with a terminal, from Tycho, like the slime ones but without all : the slime. : : : This is the first real sign we get that we’re not where we expected to be; : that the only choice we had for leaving Naw Man did actually result in our : swapping sides, and Tycho is pissed off, in wonderfully lyrical form. : Again, the level is not in vacuum, so his threat is an empty one as far as : the game engine goes, but he does send us off into space, which is : amusing. And we are saved by Durandal, and greeted with a terminal from : him. Of course we could have got there via the lift that we were very : near, but I like the touch that it suggests that D saves us here. : : Durandal is much happier than Tycho. We’re a bit confused as to our location, : as Durandal talks about the humans fighting on -his- ship, and says to : kill Pfhor compilers on this deck – now are they the ones on Durandal’s : ship that Tycho has been rampanting up? I guess he has some of his own, : and maybe they’re affecting D’s ship remotely? Are they what is pinning : down the engines, which is what Kent was supposed to find and destroy? All : those crazy Tycho terminals around the place suggest it as being his ship : anyway. : I am not sure why Durandal is kind of cocky even in the circumstances – is : “their humiliation” referring to our part in the story, and the S’pht’Kr : returning? How far along is that process in this timeline? Or does he : foresee something else? Very interesting also that he finds it important : to help the humans off his ship – I guess that happened on the DL in M2, : or they were actually already on the planet anyway when we had to work : with them exclusively after doing in Durandal. They were down there since : What About Bob … had they not got off the ship in this timeline? Without : our involvement in the earlier parts of the timeline, it’s hard to say : what went on – I guess the humans were more important for defence with us : not there, and especially the vacuum BoBs. : There are compilers in this room when we arrive, including invisible ones, : and a couple of Hunters, so Durandal’s saving is a bit of a two-edged : sword. There is a pattern buffer up here as well, and a 1x recharger at : the far end of the room, which taunts us as we are busy fighting and : losing health. There are two exits from this room – a lot of this level is : nicely symmetrical; I do approve! The doors from here are similar to ones : we saw on Post Naval Trauma – they don’t take up all of the open : horizontal space, but we can’t fit around the sides. At least these ones : open, and don’t have Enforcers behind them. They have liftshafts and more : doors behind them, and then some Pfhor behind some big wall sections – : they’re happy to stay asleep and leave us alone, and we’re happy enough to : let them. Then there are some doors that just don’t open, either yet, or : at all. As for the liftshafts, the one on the right-hand side goes back : down where we’ve been, and actually works as a lift; the shaft on the left : goes where we haven’t been – don’t be fooled by its appearing to be : slime-filled on the map, that only happens after executing a secret in the : next area. : We fall down to a dark narrow corridor with doors in very similar places, : except that the ones that were little closets on the other side just don’t : open on this side. There are Hunters and compilers around; the door to the : far left opens to a big room with a slime pool and compilers, again : beautifully symmetrical with where we were at the start. There’s even a : matching oxygen charger, and a door to the room from which we got shot at : when we first started. There’s a platform in the middle of the slime pool, : and a switch half-submerged on the right wall, which opens up the secret I : mentioned earlier. Finally, there’s a window to a corridor just in from : the one we came from, and there are Hunters inside. No more BoBs here : though. : Hitting that secret switch drops the lift down even further in the shaft we : fell down from the middle, and that results in it hitting lava. Heading : down there we find a Mother of all Hunters, a SPNKR, a decent ammo stash, : a 3x recharge canister, and a teleporter to get us back up top. Good haul! : I guess we can still fall down to the left-hand area from above; I don’t : think I’ve ever tried. Then we can go to the right in that corridor. : Unlike the right-side one, it finishes in stairs that take us to a ledge : over the lava – this ends in a lift, with Cyborgs and Hunters incoming. : The switch just to the right is not actually for the lift, but raises a : walkway over the slime to meet the central platform … halfway. Up in the : area above, we find a pattern buffer, and to the left, a switch that opens : a few doors about the place – opening up the closer corridor with Hunters, : and a door at the other end of this higher area, which connects us back to : the middle part of the level. There is also a door here to a very narrow : passage that just ends in a window over the slime. I think it is to give : us a straight-on view of that “secret” switch. Another switch at the other : end of the area, near the door back to the middle, completes the : (alternative?) footpath across the slime. : We take the path back to the middle of the level, and, looking around a bit, : find that yet another door is now open, straight across from the one we : just came through, to reveal the equivalent area on the right-hand side of : the map, with Cyborgs, Hunters, and one last switch. This one opens two : doors to connect the start room with its opposite, and reveal the end of : the level between them. : : A short, sharp message from Durandal, albeit in the wrong colour. The humans : are cut off at his core, and Tycho’s Pfhor are headed there to capture : Durandal. So are we, although I think at this point Durandal is not : expecting that we’ll be killing him; he thinks we can save the situation : somehow; he seems to know something that we wouldn’t expect him to know; : seems to suspect something from our Thoth-like role in this timeline, : balancing the sides, or playing them against each other. We are indeed : headed to his core, but the level is quite different from the last time we : were there!
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