: They did not.
: Here is what Blake says on "This side towards enemy":
: "Durandal's last instructions were for us to
: reactivate a dormant S'pht AI, sealed
: beneath the surface and reachable only
: through teleportation. We hope you will
: succeed where we failed."
: ...
: "You're doing well, but have not activated
: all the personality cells in this area. We
: have been able to find no maps of this
: structure to help you, but the activation
: switches must be nearby."
: ...
: "The S'pht have verified the partial
: activation of the AI. The Pfhor are
: already curious about what we are doing,
: but when they realize what we have found
: they will go insane."
: The context from this should be absolutely clear: the main character is the
: first person to begin activating Thoth. The Bobs don't have maps of the
: area. The S'pht verify the partial activation of Thoth, not the further
: activation of Thoth. The Pfhor begin to take interest in what is happening
: as though this the first time it's happened. The way Blake describes all
: this is as though we're the first ones to do this, and that is clearly the
: intended reading.
: Then on My Own Private Thermopylae: "Your success made us bold again,
: and I took
: thirty men ahead of you to secure the next
: level. There was an ambush; Pfhor troopers
: were waiting for us and we were decimated.
: I returned with as many men as I could, but
: more remain trapped nearby and the area is
: lousy with heavily-armed Pfhor.
: They must realize that we intend to awaken
: this ancient S'pht computer, and whether
: they understand our reasons for doing so or
: not, I am certain the Pfhor will continue
: to make every effort to stop us."
: So, Blake decides to actually have the humans activate part of Thoth
: themselves and are slaughtered by the Pfhor. Then on Kill your television,
: Blake isn't even sure if the cores are at that location. It's clear the
: humans have never been to these places or they simply never reached the
: cores.
: It's obvious from a Close Reading of the text that we are intended to read
: the activation of Thoth as done by the main character himself. We see all
: six cores and all three activation sites in M2.
: There is nothing to indicate that the purpose of Strange Aeons is to merge
: AIs except that you happen to merge AIs there combined with your own
: fanciful thinking. That doesn't mean it can't be, but there's nothing
: indicating that it is (especially when there is a much clearer
: explanation). There's no reference to the Jjaro ever merging AI nor that
: they had technology capable of this. There is nothing in the actual Text
: of the game that suggests this. No, the path leading up to the chip insert
: does not suggest this, it only suggests that that room is designed for
: uploading large amounts of data.
: The cores are designed to look exactly like the cores in M2, so clearly we
: are meant to interpret these as Thoth's cores. This is the simplest and
: most straightforward explanation for what that place is.
: And no, the main character does not find a thousand year old (or whatever
: age) uplink chip floating in the water. Your attempt to force a diegetic
: reason for a chip to be there doesn't make sense and actually contradicts
: itself.
: If the new uplink chip is S'pht/Jjaro and we need it to connect with the
: cores in Strange Aeons due to its interface, then connecting Durandal's
: primal pattern with this chip would face the same problems with connecting
: directly with the cores: the interface of the Jjaro chip would be
: different than Durandal's ship. And if Durandal's primal pattern could
: just be downloaded from the main character's brain into the Jjaro chip,
: then it could also just be downloaded directly to the Jjaro cores.
: So, no, the main character does not pick up a microchip on Hang Brain and
: hide it in his underpants until Strange Aeons where he happens to find a
: thousand year old Jjaro chip which magically connects to the chip with
: Durandal's brain. The chips are clearly there for the reasons of game
: mechanics and representing how the main character contains Durandal's
: pattern in his own brain.
: The only diegetic explanation that would make sense is that the main
: character picks up an actual chip on Durandal's core, stores Durandal's
: neural net in his brain as well for some reason, the chip gets confiscated
: by the Pfhor, which happens to be given to a Pfhor scouting team in Son of
: Grendel, that Pfhor team drops the chip in Strange Aeons when they're
: killed, which is where the main character finds it again.
: However, even that explanation is weak due to the fact that the main
: character has everything he needs to resurrect Durandal in his own mind.
: No chip is actually necessary to accomplish what is happening. If the
: interface would be a problem then it should also be a problem with a
: thousand year old Jjaro chip.
I never considered that if Durandal's primal pattern stayed in the chip you took, the enforcers would have no need to extract the pattern from the SO's brain; they would just take the chip. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a non-diegetic representation, it's just... incoherent. We don't get any scene of the SO plugging the chip into his head to download the pattern or an explanation that he reuploads it to the chip he finds in Strange Aeons. These missing pieces could have been explained with terminals, but Double Aught didn't.
: We definitely shouldn't interpret the map design as hyper literal.
: However, the location of Thoth's cores is not the "nitty-gritty" of
: the map layouts. Their locations aren't slightly off or redesigned,
: they're in completely different geographical and narrative locations from
: each other (except maybe the one underwater in Chapter 1, but I'm too
: tired to check if there's a corresponding location in M2). It's not
: nitpicking to point this out, this is a major element of what's going on
: with them.
He doesn't have multiple cores in two different locations that are able to activate him fully without assistance from the others? Are you suggesting that, not only are events between M1 and M2 changed in these times, but changes go all the way back to Lh'owon's ancient history to where the S'pht (Or jjarro, Sbbhuth, or whoever) decided to put Thoth's installation site? My occam's razor just parsed this as "Double Aught wanted to make new levels instead of reusing maps from M2" and never thought about it.
: If you're going to cite things to disagree with someone then at least look up
: the context for how they occur.
: Here is everything that Durandal says, from various terminals regarding this:
: "You must hurry. The Pfhor fleet is close
: enough that I can identify its flagship as
: the battleship Khfiva. If the Khfiva is
: still admiral Tfear's vessel then there is no
: chance that I can best him in the coming
: battle.
: Tfear is a brilliant strategist and the
: Pfhor's oldest active admiral. I'm sure
: his list of decorations and victories would
: only bore you, so get back to work.
: ...
: Battle has been joined in orbit and Boomer
: is taking heavy damage. I cannot hold out
: for long, but the Pfhor will not soon
: forget the day that a lone corvette
: obliterated half of Battle Group Seven,
: Western Arm.
: ...
: The Pfhor fleet has won, and Tycho is with
: them. My ship is crippled. I am trying to
: make an emergency landing on Lh'owon's
: second moon, Y'loa.
: ...
: Today I have forced the Pfhor Naval Academy
: to update its curriculum. The Third Battle
: for Beta Tear must be dropped from the
: Seven Great Battles which every aspiring
: Pfhor naval officer must memorize and
: replaced with The Humbling of Battle Group
: Seven at Lh'owon."
: So, while Durandal is trapped in Lh'owon orbit, refusing to move to a better
: tactical position because he wants information, he is attacked by an
: organized and prepared Admiral Tfear (aided by Tycho) who see Durandal
: from AUs away...
: And he smashes them so badly that he destroys half their fleet in a battle
: that could be considered a humbling of them . You could take that last
: bit as Durandal just being arrogant, but unless you think he's lying about
: how many ships he destroyed then this was an astounding feat. He barely
: lost and that was while being at a tactical disadvantage and while his
: enemies were being directly aided by an AI that is part Durandal itself.
: However in Ne Cede Malis, Durandal has not explored Lh'owon and so he's not
: trapped in Lh'owon orbit, Tycho isn't with Tfear's fleet to help them, and
: it seems Durandal may have ambushed Tfear (the way Tfear ambushed Durandal
: in the manual chapter) as Battle Group Seven entered the system.
: If Durandal could destroy half the fleet while he was at a disadvantage in
: M2, then it's reasonable that he could defeat the fleet entirely (or
: enough that they'd launch the trih xeem) if he engaged them on his own
: terms.
: This is a very narrow view of Durandal that doesn't match a Close Reading of
: the character. Durandal acknowledging the presence of the S'pht'kr would
: not be out of character for him. A Close Reading of Durandal at the end of
: M2 shows that he is actually proud of the S'pht'kr arriving precisely
: because of his arrogance: He sees the arrival of the S'pht'kr as his own
: accomplishment . Durandal has no reason not to mention the presence of the
: S'pht'kr in the battle because he sees their arrival as part of his own
: tactical brilliance, his own triumph. "Once again we are
: triumphant."
: The specifics aren't stated but from what we see in-game, the most reasonable
: thing to interpret is that Durandal defeated battle group seven (for the
: reasons I mentioned above) on his own due to arbitrarily different
: decisions he makes in this timeline.
: Also, let's be clear. The main character does not control or influence the
: behaviors or actions of other characters in the game. The main character
: would not be able to force Durandal to do things differently.
When you lay it all out like that, it reminds me of when someone told me Ender Wiggin is a Gary Stu, and I can't help but agree when he committed genocide on an entire hive-mind spacefaring species at a much bigger disadvantage, and I can't buy that humans will always have superior intelligence to computers when grandmasters cannot beat a self-learning AI at chess.
But, at the end of the day, even though Durandal did a huge number on them with his AI advantage, he still couldn't win without the s'pht'kr (and still can't win even then because of Trih Xeem).
