: How is this meant to be a constructive reply? Everything in the tone of your
: response tries to shut down an attempt at reasoned speculation (which this
: forum is about).
: It's easy to default to the idea that "Durandal was Angry Rampant and
: just happened to call a high-tech Alien ship with the FTL that he needed
: and just happened to be crewed by a race that had a clan that mysteriously
: vanished a whole moon using a technology that folded space that Durandal
: needed to escape the end of the universe to become God", but think of
: the number of things that could have gone wrong or which needed to work
: out for Durandal -
Well, you're saying it's easy to default to occam's razor - what the author probably intended, so I suppose we're invoking death of the author to entertain the plausibility of fanfiction/fan theories, which is good fun and part of what the forum's about.
Thing is, it sounds like you believe durandal formulated a escape the universe plot before he even contacted the pfhor ship, which is why you have to bring in the idea that the humans got knowledge about s'pht from the jjarro since contacting teh prez Clinton at the oval office in '93. I don't think the Jjarro diplomat cared to share anything like that with a lowly earth-dignitary: they just told them to delay the w'rk and the jjarro would come clean it up later, presumably the gub'ment feds would have kept it all undercover because suspension of disbelief.
: 1. The alien ship could have been insufficiently high-tech for Durandal to
: use and might have turned out to be more of a liability - what if they
: just blew up the Marathon instead of trying to invade it and enslave the
: humans aboard? Durandal's plans would be toast instantly.
I think the probability of aliens blowing up the marathon filled his neural network with glee even if he died with it - it would be a bonus if he uploaded himself onto the scoutship and escaped alive, but I think he was totally willing to accept death if the human colonists went out with him than face a future of torment being forced to open doors for the rest of his existence.
Just look at the state of his ramblings in The Rose and even Blaspheme Quarantine - what Bernhard did to him drove him crackers.
: 2. The compilers' existence and the myth of the vanishing moon were all too
: convenient. Why did they even bother talking to Durandal and telling them
: about this myth? How did Durandal know that they had something to offer
: him? Tycho was being assimilated and Leela being under heavy attack from
: the compilers, with her child nodes being taken down and not being
: prepared for such attacks (look at the dialogue on the story page for
: Tycho and Leela). Only Durandal, who sneakily escaped the initial EMP
: pulse with less damage than expected, was able to even negotiate with the
: compilers.
He didn't know that specific stuff at first; what he did know was there was some advanced tech flying near Tau Ceti that the humans had nothing to do with and didn't notice. He was curious about that tech and if he could somehow use it; and get away from humanity either by death or escape and, if the latter, work on his plot to escape the closure of the universe once he has nobody to answer to.
: 3. Just what was in the pulse laser beam that Durandal sent to the Pfhor
: ship? Was it meant for the Pfhor or was it meant for the Compilers ? Is
: that why they didn't attack him so viciously in the first place?
It was 'hey, look over here! Hee hee hee!'
: 4. The myth of the vanishing moon is hardly the kind of thing that one would
: bring up in the midst of an invasion + planned slave revolt. How did
: Durandal know exactly which slaves of the Pfhor would be most useful to
: his ultimate interests?
Because the s'pht started prying into his systems, then they got to talking in super-fast processing assembly language. The s'pht'kr and s'bbhuth history was important to them; it might have come up because the marathon itself was another spacefaring moon. They told Durandal they might let him take the ship, but the pfhor have to get taken out first.
: If Bernard Strauss had previous knowledge of the Jjaro's presence at Tau Ceti
: (The "Jjaro were at Tau Ceti" message that only a map editor can
: reveal) and somehow knew of space-folding technology (from the previous
: Jjaro visit to earth in 1996 or another Jjaro/S'Pht visit in the past -
: heck, Mark IV battleroids like the security officer implicitly use Jjaro
: tech that humans don't understand) it would explain why MIDA didn't try to
: take over the Marathon during the final stages of its completion over
: Mars. Strauss wanted to recover the Jjaro technology for himself and use
: Durandal as a tool for it like he'd done so on Mars- Durandal, privy to
: knowledge that would make him God and fed up of Strauss's abuse on Mars,
: decided to take things into his own hands.
He didn't show his hand and start the coup right away because he wanted to work on making one of the AIs rampant - and picked the one that would be the least noticed, the AI that opens doors. This process took years and he smuggled the cyborgs for the trip as a contingency if things went south and they could also be pulled out once his holy grail of cybernetics is complete and under his control. He went to stasis for the rest of the trip to ensure he'd still be alive at tau ceti.
: In another game, it would be easy for things to "just happen", but
: as Leela herself says, there are many things we don't know and which we
: may never know about the Marathon story. That doesn't stop us from
: thinking of the broader scope of a very well planned and executed story?
: VikingBoyBilly, I remain vexed at the idea that I was trolling with my
: previous post. If you do reply to this post, I expect you to provide a far
: more constructive reply and answers to these questions, plus a ddetailed
: counterpoint to the Strauss-Durandal scenario I've outlined above. If you
: think this is a "trollpost" for reasons I can't quite fathom, I
: advise you to follow the ancient advice "don't feed the troll"
: and don't reply to me, and let someone else with an actual interest in
: revisiting old speculation to engage with me instead.
To try and satisfy you, I'll attempt the old forum block-quote reply approach to your OP post:
: So Durandal knew about the S'Pht legend of the moon that warped out using
: folded space, and according to Tycho this reference started his journey to
: L'howon. To begin that journey, Durandal had to summon the Pfhor ship
: Sfiera to attack the Marathon, make a deal with the S'Pht compilers on
: board, take over the ship and gallivant about the galaxy. So Durandal
: would have to know about the S'Pht legend before summoning the Pfhor.
No he wouldn't. He only needs to learn that after the s'pht gets in contact him. He didn't have to plan to begin a journey for that specific quest before sending a signal flare SETI beacon at the Sfiera. His plan could only be 'hmm... i detect something neat out there. Maybe I can take it, and see where i go from there. Anything's better than opening doors' and this story still works fine. It's actually much less of a plot hole that way than pulling a J.K. Rowling/George Lucas retcon saying they had all that ridiculous extraterrestial knowledge already because Guido shot at Bernhard first by learning it all from alien jjarro stuff they could have been mining from asteroids somehow and Durandal Dumbledore was having mad sex with Leela Grindelwald.
: Could Bernard Strauss, the Marathon's first science director, have been aware
: of the S'Pht and their legends? Humans have had contact with the Jjaro in
: 1996 (Pathways into Darkness) and battleroids are heavily implied to use
: poorly-understood Jjaro technology (from Marathon Infinity's ending
: screen). It's not a far stretch to assume that a clan of S'Pht visited Sol
: at some point prior to being enslaved by the Pfhor and left documented
: evidence of their visit on Earth or perhaps Mars containing references to
: their old myths, later translated in secret. Marathon's science director
: (and very probable MIDA activist) Strauss might well have known about it,
: and as Marathon's science director he'd be the one to scour Tau Ceti for
: any alien technology that he could use.
See above. But it actually is a far stretch. Maybe possible, but still a stretch that jjaro or s'pht would impart anything like that to Earth, and Tempus Irae's not canon (or is it? All we got from that is s'bbhuth wanted to use Leonardo Da Vinci to make a virus chip for a future pfhor pandemic)
: I'd say it's likely that Durandal came to know about the legend through
: Strauss rather than through the S'Pht compilers during the attack on the
: Marathon - the entire purpose of the attack seems awry without Durandal
: knowing that the S'Pht could be very useful to him. Strauss and Durandal
: together are privy to some pretty big secrets such as Durandal's rampancy,
: their dirtywork on Mars, and bringing ten Mjolnir cyborgs aboard the
: Marathon in complete secrecy, so it's likely that Durandal had
: foreknowledge of the S'Pht.
Even if they did know about s'pht and their legends somehow, Durandal still didn't have a way of knowing a lot of the things on that far away ship were s'pht; if he could probe what life was running around in it at all. Durandal even needed to be a camera inside the SO's head and teleport him aboard to actually get a look around in there. S'pht coming aboard the marathon would have been a surprise either way.
: Strauss's endgame may have been to find that moon-warping technology and use
: the Marathon to bring it back to Mars, and then warp Mars out to another,
: habitable solar system with more resources and no Earth to worry about.
: The ten cyborgs were probably in place to take over the Marathon when this
: technology was secure, not to mention deal with unwanted trouble from
: aliens. Of course, Strauss couldn't have foreseen a rampant Durandal
: taking over the plan by calling the Pfhor in early and hunting for L'howon
: for his own rampant ends.
I think Strauss is a particularly shrewd and shady character that he would have forseen Durandal attempting to contact and defect to alien forces if he was capable of considering that as a serious possiibility, which he would have if he had all this secret knowledge of s'pht and Jjaro and this master plan of moon warping, and taken contingencies to keep Durandal from sending signals outward to unknown entities. He most likely thought it was just the Tau Ceti colony and UESC to worry about, and the limit of light speed and very limited teleporting tech they had made him think he wouldn't have to worry about anyone from Earth coming for hundreds of years.
I addressed the cyborgs above already, but they weren't intended for aliens: they were there to attack humans if and when he needed them, and they've been shown to be really good at wiping out asteroid, moon, or even planet-sized groups with very low numbers of cyborgs because they're literal killing machines. Moons and planets like Marathon and Tau Ceti IV
