: I don't think the W'rk would dream of anything that would put it at a
: disadvantage (assuming its control over its dreams is that precise)
Last night I had a nightmare about Ren and Stimpy running in a cave full of killer worms. They had to move to the next room before the light phased three times, and they couldn't take the green paths. One time they didn't get out of a room in time, and the swarm of worms attacked. Then some giant humanoid worm-headed monster... thing appeared and I woke up. It was legit scary even though it sounds ridiculous. Point is, dreams are nonsense, even though there's unconscious logic to them.
As for the rest of the artifacts, a lot of it seems to be inspired fanfic of ancient Mayans, and the theories that their calendar, crystal skulls, and the nazca lines in south America all have something to do with aliens. PID's underground passages in and of itself are like the cenotes, the underground tunnels Mayans believed to be in limbo between earth and the spirit world (the mayan equivalent of Hell), Xibalba (coincidentally, they were formed by the meteor that hit the earth 6,000,000-ish years ago).
Magic crystals, mystery potions, gold, gems, ancient keys and treasure, deadly traps... it's all stuff of an Indiana Jones adventure given the horror-edge it richly deserves.
Oh, then there's the lovecraft influences. The alien pipes resembles one of the Yithians' heads to me... at least that's what I thought after I read Shadow Out of Time. Then there's the parallels to the dreaming god and Cthulhu, or even azathoth if you want to go that far.
You speculate about the items, but what about the monsters? What in Xibalba is a headless? What is the big blue meanie/greed? The nightmares? The nightmares and oozes bear similarities to the f'lickta and ticks that would be introduced in Marathon 2. Are they nightmarish versions of what it saw on Lh'owon?
