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	Message: : : : Tempus Irae 17 Hang To Dry : Last time on Tour of Duty we sinned. Following Cosimo’s philosophising : about truth, salvation, and Lambs of God, we explored another churchy area : – it felt like it had been a while – and broke into a small cottage, went : to a library, climbed into bookcases (resisting Labyrinth quoting), : entered a fireplace, and ascended into a hollowed out cross … and now? : Well if this is “to be saved”, I think we were better off with just the : sin. This level was named in reference to an earlier one it replaced, : “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”. : We start now in front of a locked door, again, and with a staircase heading : up in front of us. A second magnum is in view, for the scratchstarter, and : a bunch more ammo and an Assault Rifle spawn in as we advance, as do some : Pfhor – a Trooper back behind us down the stairs, a small mercy that that : door didn’t open and bring more! The Spoiler Guide finally admits to this : being a common practice for the scenario, and refers to such Pfhor as Rear : Admirals … nice, and yet not nice! There are more from up ahead as well, : with an Enforcer and Hunters for friends. Dealing with them leaves the : large courtyard we come to next rather empty – except of course for two : Projectile Fighters, one on each side raised up on very narrow ledges with : just nothingness behind them, making it hard to hit them with splash : damage. They are easier to just avoid. : Up ahead past the courtyard we find more of our favourite things: locked : doors. Then there’s another small block to go around, with more Pfhor, and : then another larger one, with yet another locked door on each side, but : recessed on the far side, a Pattern Buffer, this time on a desk rather : than a wall. Next another locked door, and one that is huge and just : raised, rather than locked, in a large outdoor area, so that the map shows : more going on behind it. On the far side of this area is a raised platform : with stair access and is it a Gallows on top? With an intermittent bell : sound – for whom the bell tolls? Well it works for us anyway, because it : seems that standing up here opens one of the doors a ways back, and there : we have the mechanic for this level – activate something (or in this case : just stand there), then go and find the door it opened … sounds kind of : familiar, to be honest! Here’s what we’re looking at, anyway. Proper : pictures in mine will have to wait for the New Year now, just wanting to : get this done quickly. : : : So clearly there is a secret way off this level, especially obvious in that : 3D render! I guess we’ll figure that out as we go along. For now, that : door we opened – on the map it is to the left just back past the Pattern : Buffer. It has us descend into a set of narrow passages around a sewage : pool, with Drones rising out of it, as they do. There are a couple of : pillars in the pool, but there don’t seem to be any flashing sides, or : anything else of note – there are stairs down into the pool at the far : end, and a smaller pool off to the side, which is walled all around … and : curiosity leads me to try jumping in there. And a good thing it did! It : seems that secret area is not really a secret exit after all, but a “yes : we thought of that too” room. We get teleported off there as soon as we : hit the ground. : : : : There’s a locked door (well how could there not be?), some ammo, and a : terminal, with Cosimo talking about lambs again – we are now the lost : lamb, and there are choices, with pastures and flames, but also pastures : of God, which I guess are a bit different. Viking points out that Cosimo : certainly seems to be more aware of what is going on as regards our : presence and the fact that it was kind of unlikely we would find ourselves : down here. The terminal picture, rather than the usual mirrored Italian or : Latin, is mirrored English, with a few spoilers of some of Tempus Irae’s : secrets – stand on the Great Pillar past the Theatre’s fourth door, look : twice for the half-ass hatch on Game Of Death, and the girls are for your : eyes only … well that’s not much of a spoiler as the way of accessing that : is still pretty arcane. That was a fun Easter Egg though! : The terminal doesn’t help us leave, but he does provide what looks like an : exit teleporter. In this instance it merely takes us back to the door we : would have reached just moments later anyway. We hit the switch beside, : and looking straight ahead through the door we see a Trooper. If we just : carry on towards it, we don’t even notice that we have just been tipped : back out through one of the earlier locked doors, and are about to : continue through a third! Some mysteries solve themselves, and this place : is opening up much quicker than we are used to! In this next area, there : are some rooms with columns but no sewers. Drones descend from a raised : area that appears inaccessible, but an odd wall between the first two : rooms is actually a platform (the Spoiler Guide says the previous door : switch sets it in motion), and we can use it to get up there – not that it : seems all that useful. There is one AR magazine, and a door at one end of : this odd passage that reveals another exit terminal lookalike … but all it : does is spit us out right back in front of it! Shenanigans! This is like : that Gauntlet level where all the walls look like exits. : Carrying on, it seems that the raised passage makes another slight change – : we can hear Pfhor spawn in on the far side of it, quite a long way down : the corridor from here. Interesting map design. Further on we come to an : alcove with what looks like another desk Pattern Buffer, except it doesn’t : work, a switch, and a terminal. : : : : : : : Finally we hear from Leonardo again! And we have a passage in Italian of a : prayer in death, followed by the translation, and Leonardo’s reaction to : it, plus the revelation (appropriate) that he now knows that the figure : that has been shadowing him is S’bhuth! And he has been sharing various : pieces of advanced knowledge of the universe, as well as ideas of threats : to our existence, which all sound a bit biblical, really, rather than : Renaissance. : Back in the present or however this time period self-identifies, the switch : opened a door just nearby, which takes us back out through yet another of : our earlier locked doors, and this time we head back into the garden to : find the large barn door has come open, but there are no horses in sight, : just more Pfhor. There is a locked door and an apparent dead-end, but the : map again shows stuff going on behind them. There is also an actual : opening, so we take that for now, and find more Pfhor, a locked door, a : bookcase, a fireplace, a working Pattern Buffer, a switch, a 1x recharge : canister, and a terminal with more description from Leonardo, leading into : his role in the plan to bring us here. He talks of the idea of building a : time machine, but fears S’bhuth’s motives in sharing his worldly secrets : and also his interest in politics … maybe there’s something to do with : balance going on, Thoth-like? : : : : : This time we don’t have to go far back to find our newly opened door. It : leads to a dead-end corridor with an actual player-controlled door off to : the side. The room beyond has our religious chanting ambient sound. A : bunch of ammo spawns in along with a 2x recharge canister, and a bunch of : Pfhor, if that is the correct collective term for them. Quite a lot of : them, in fact. Pillars line the walls, and down some stairs and to the : back of a structure in the middle, we find a switch for a door into the : Crypt is it? Well only briefly down, and then back up again, through Pfhor : ambushes and to another player-controlled door, seriously! Also a tempting : secret with a half-open door that has a 3x recharge canister just beyond : it. : The controllable door leads to two more with switches, although one is : disabled for now. Just through the other one is our next manuscript, a : staircase to a door that joins back up to a corridor from earlier, and : another terminal from Leonardo, who talks more about -us-, the fate of all : the worlds put in the hands of one saviour – no pressure – and the : manuscripts. There is also a little secret room with ammo accessible from : this area – actioning one of the bookcases in the correct angle reveals an : L switch recessed up in the wall above! Which reminds me, I was wrong : about that bookcase door on the previous level – conspicuous as it was, it : was actually the wall above that opened, and the hidden switch that opened : it -also- had that issue of being a one-time use switch that was also : cancellable! Just an aside :). : : : : : Viking has a bit to say on this: How does this tie into the Marathon : storyline? We know that the Pfhor attack on Lh’owon happened around 1,000 : years before 2811, so it happened in the early 1800s or late 1700s, which : is still well after Leo’s time. We can’t count on Durandal’s estimate : being completely accurate, though – he probably just rounded it down to : 1,000 to make it easier on us. What I’m getting at here is, did S’bhuth : come to Earth after he left the S’pht clans back during the Pfhor : invasion, or did he travel back in time here? If the latter, why is he : begging Leo to help him build a time machine? Did he not take the time : machine back with him? I’m leaning on this being fan-fiction based on the : history in the M2 terminals from when he left Lh’owon, so this may be the : first time he’s attempting to make a time machine. : This must be Jjarro technology we’re dealing with, too. But ... oh yeah, : S’bhuth himself probably is one! Either that or something close to it. : He’s saying it’s for us, the Security Officer, to save the galaxy from the : Pfhor threat (and possibly the W’rkncacnter). Are the manuscripts : blueprints of tools of war for that purpose? To send to the future? : Considering that way back in the beginning the S’pht said we had to fix : S’bhuth’s “folly”, I’m guessing that Leo and S’bhuth didn’t succeed at : building the time traveling machine, and that’s why we’re here retrieving : the manuscripts. : Did something that Leo created enable S’bhuth to come back in time, but just : as a one-off, and perhaps S’bhuth actually needed something more, a : different machine, to get back, or to wherever/whenever else he needed to : be? : Anyway, just like that, the disabled switch for the other door just before, : has become active, and we enter a large area full of yet more Pfhor and : locked doors. There’s even a Blue Hunter, and there are even key slots for : a couple of doors, but we haven’t picked up any keys here! There are more : annoying Pfhor on ledges, but at least this time they don’t disappear into : nothingness. And at the back there is a door we can open. We gradually : descend to a courtyard with a raised structure in the centre. There is : another wooden construction on top and also a 2x recharge canister, but no : obvious way of getting up there! The Spoiler Guide says grenades or : rockets, well that’s a bit of a copout, and I don’t even have any SPNKR : thanks to Never Satisfied! Anyway, after dealing with another Blue Hunter, : we find a door at the far end, which closes behind us and leads to several : darkened rooms. : To the north and south there are Pfhor, and stairs to ledges that just lead : to locked doors, although the south one does give us an overlook of an : earlier courtyard – we even noted the map activity beyond earlier on in : the writeup. In the middle west of these darkened rooms, we even find : ourselves on the opposite side of the door that similarly showed map : goings-on from the other side, but I cannot see why it did, as there : doesn’t seem to be any opening for the light to get through! And there : doesn’t seem to be any way of getting through the door from here either. : To the east is a door that leads to a room with more locked doors and an L : switch. This reveals yet another exit teleporter that isn’t, and it just : spits us out again. : So now what? Well going back west, there is now a switch in the wall – we : have to punch or projectile it as it is a layer too far back, but it opens : the door! And again, now what? Well my first thought goes to that : secret-like 3x recharge canister, and retracing our steps reveals that : that half-open door is now fully open! Beyond, along with the 3x, is a : terminal and a real, secret, exit teleporter! The terminal is from Cosimo, : who still doesn’t seem to think we’re up to his challenges! And kind of : fair enough for the next one on Game of Death, for which we will turn to : Viking. But for now we’ll go and find the normal exit. : : : : From the door we opened just before, we head backwards in the level just a : bit, to the courtyard with the Gallows at the back. One last locked door : is now open, and leads to an underground area with Pfhor from all sides, a : wall Pattern Buffer for a change, an oxygen recharge canister, one last : locked door for the road, and then a big dropoff to the real exit : teleporter, and we are left looking at a 3x recharge canister just beyond : as we fall – maybe we could have grenaded ourselves across the gap? : This way we find ourselves back on the ship, and there’s just one manuscript : left, but I think Viking is going to cover that in more detail along with : the Game of Death next. Have a good Christmas :).
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