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Rubicon Volunteers - Wading in/Drinking Vitriol
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 7/9/02 3:44 p.m.

First of all, I've made some editorial decisions about how I'm going to handle posts for the final levels of both planks in the Rubicon Volunteers series. Because the levels Wading in Vitriol and Drinking Vitriol are virtually identical, I'm going to discuss them together, even though the latter appears in the Salinger Plank. I will handle Sucking Cherries and Blasting Cherries the same way. Because the historical screens that appear in the two vidmaster levels are the same, however, I'll handle those together at the end of the Volunteers series for the benefit of those who may not be able to successfully navigate the vidmaster levels but would still like to read them. I will not discuss the credits terminals, however. I believe that some things are meant to be left for game play, and one of these is not all that hard to reach if you follow my Rubicon Secrets Guide. Credits terminals are a very personal sort of thing and I think that the authors generally want the player to work to find them.

Wading in Vitriol starts where FUD left off. You start in exactly the same room as the ending room from the last level, but the switch that wasn’t active and the door that wouldn’t open are fully functional now. Before you leave the safety of this alcove with it’s supply of ammo and it’s 3X shield recharger, take a moment to read Durandal’s terminal once more:

I've been sifting through millions of pages of documents on the Pfhor network ever since I gained control of it . . . Unfortunately for you, it doesn't appear that the Pfhor have kept any record of what the high council looks like. . .

So Durandal has been making full use of his access to the Pfhor network, and has likely used it to plan your strategy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s also been using the network to foil the Pfhor attempts to stop you. Durandal also has some news for you regarding the S’Pht’Wr:

Apparently the S’pht rebellion aboard the Marathon made the Pfhor very hesitant to use the S'pht for slave labor on Pfhor prime, so Pfhor scientists developed a genetic hybrid between the S'pht and the pfhor. These creatures are partially mechanical, but mostly organic.

I hate to be critical, but it surprises me that a society with the technology to create such genetic hybrids would have any need to enslave others to serve as client races. If they’re interested in acquiring their territory, an approach more like the assimilation used by the Borg in Star Trek to me would make more sense. But then, this is all science fiction, isn’t it? Anyway, getting into the Pfhor High Citadel is a major challenge, especially in the vidmaster version. But, then, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? It is heavily guarded and there a couple of lockouts to defeat, one of which involves Durandal’s help:

The door wouldn't open? Couldn't you just blast it open? There. I've opened it for you.

Again, if you want to get some weapons and invincibility to help make it through this level and you can’t find the secrets on your own, check out my Rubicon Secrets Guide. Eventually you’ll reach the chamber of the Pfhor high council. The pattern buffer and 3X shield regenerator are definitely wisely used here! Once you eventually jump down, if you get a chance to read Durandal’s terminal before getting killed, you’ll read his take on the council:

Hmmm... They don't look quite the way I imagined. I wonder what those curious energy balls they sit on are for. Have you found them all? Are you sure?

Of course, only a fool would jump right down into the midst of the council itself. You’ll want to take out as many of them as you can from above and, if you’re smart, save some shield strength and SPNKR or mortar ammo to jump back up at least once to save and recharge. Setting foot on the chamber floor will set off a whole cascade of releases of enemies who will try to take you out, not to mention exposing you to the numerous lookers who live down there. It may not be macho, but jumping down, taking out what you can quickly and jumping back to safety is just plain smart. You can then work on the waves of new monsters from above, jumping back down only once they’ve all been dealt with. If you’d rather brave it from below – fine, it’s doable, but difficult. At some point you will have to take out the majority of the council members from below. Watch out, though – when you get to the far end of the council, you’ll unleash some S’Pht’Wr.

Do take a moment to look at the council members as you blow them away, though. You can see why Durandal was so intrigued. You may not notice it at first, but the glowing blue and green balls of light that fire energy projectiles at you are not the council members themselves. Look closely (if you can) – the council members are tiny, insect-like creatures that sit on top of the energy orbs. Could these really be the Pfhor elite? And why are some of them sitting on the less powerful blue orbs. Are these council members less influential?

I have some thoughts about the council in general. At first thought, the size of the council members seems ridiculous. How could these miniscule critters possibly command such fear in the hearts of every member of Pfhor society – energy orbs not withstanding? How could these tiny beings possess any degree of intelligence by even Pfhor standards? It’s certainly possible that they aren’t intelligent at all and are worshiped for no more reason that our forbearers used to worship stone idols. It’s hard for me to imagine such a structured society based solely on a form of idol worship, however, and we have constantly read on Pfhor terminals of orders coming from the High Council. I think that these critters are intelligent. If you think about it, how large would you be if you didn’t need any infrastructure to digest food, to burn energy or to get you from one place to another? What’s more, if you could remove those parts of your brain that are involved with the all of those functions, you’d be left with something that could fit inside the base of that iMac in front of you. (if you’re lucky enough to have one). So assuming that the council members get all of their energy and physiologic needs, and communicate entirely using these strange orbs they sit on, they could be quite intelligent indeed, even being such a deceptively small size.

The other major question to me is as to how the council members got to be council members. Were they born this way, or were they altered to be this way? Do Pfhor of willful rank have the ability to advance through the ranks and eventually become a high council member? Remember our first experiences on the Marathon, where Leela tells us that the Pfhor seem to consist of multiple species? It’s possible that the Pfhor are able to physically alter one’s physical makeup at will, but in a society where the individual is so unimportant and expendable, I doubt it. I suspect that, as the Pfhor are made up of different clans and species, the high council is a separate species of Pfhor, more than likely a result of genetic engineering, that the Pfhor have chosen to create to serve as their leaders. Which begs another question – if they are born this way, who raises them, and do they then progress from the blue to the green orbs as they gain experience? Perhaps they even start out on yellow, orange, red and purple orbs before they get to sit on the council. And if you kill all of the council members, might some of the juveniles be able to step in, so to speak, and take their place? Another intriguing possibility is that they naturally metamorphose from juvenile fighters to projectile fighters and, due to certain biologic cues, some of them eventually shed virtually their entire bodies to become the members of the High Council.

Well in any case, you will kill all of the council members, or die trying. Once they’re dead (or even before), you’ll have the opportunity to log onto one of two secret terminals to read the credits for Rubicon and be taken to the vidmaster level, Blasting Cherries, which we’ll be discussed along with the regular level, Sucking Cherries, when we get to the end of the Salinger Plank. If, on the other hand, you play the vidmaster level Drinking Vitriol, you’ll find it identical to Wading in Vitriol in every way except that the monsters are significantly more numerous and more aggressive. The survival strategy by necessity must be very different and those secret invincibility power-ups are essential. There’s also a cache of additional mortar ammo that comes in handy. The terminals are directly from the Rubicon Team to you and they tell the story of the development of Rubicon, which we’ll discuss at the end of the Volunteers series. There is only one secret terminal in Drinking Vitriol, and instead of being a credits terminal (which you had to read to get here in the first place), there’s a copy of one of the now largely-debunked papers on cold fusion by Fleischmann and Pons - very interesting reading ;-), but there are still believers out there.

On the other hand, if you forego the secret credits terminals in Wading in Vitriol and read the terminal on the floor of the High Council chamber itself, Durandal tells you:

Leela would be proud of you. She always had a special thing for you, her knight in shining armor. After nigh-singlehandedly saving the Marathon and rescuing it's colonists from the harsh life of a subservient Pfhor slave race, it's little wonder she wanted to keep you all for herself.

Yeah, right. Leela’s the selfish one.

Then again, I can hardly blame her. We've accomplished so much since then... if you had stayed with her, wouldn't you have missed reading my rampant poetic messages to you in the dark halls of the Marathon, or our resurrection of the eleventh Spht clan and crippling of Battle Group Seven? I've tried to keep you busy, and Leela would've probably returned you to guard duty in some outerworld colony.

Another plot hole! Again, these events happened in the M2 time line, which was a dead end that lead to the release of the W’rcacnter and the destruction of the universe. We remember these events, but to the rest of the universe, they never happened. Remember, in the final, successful time line in Infinity, we were abducted by Tycho, conditioned by the Pfhor, served the Pfhor empire under the direction of Tycho and helped him to destroy Durandal. Durandal, for his part resurrected Thoth without your help, with the aid of the Bobs alone, defeated or at least savaged Battle Group Seven on his own and failed to destroy Tycho. He discovered the means to contact the 11th clan without your help, thank you, but still ended up being disabled, presumably still on one of Lh’owon’s moons, having his core plundered by S’Pht compilers. It was only after you received Durandal’s chip, presumably containing his most basic essence, and uploaded it to Thoth that you were able to bring the Jjaro station on line and contain the W’rcacnter. In this time line you missed these key memories that Durandal says he shared with you. So is this a plot hole, or did the Rubicon Team have something else in mind (I’d love to hear from Chris or Scott on this)? Is it possible that Durandal, too, has a memory of the other time lines? Perhaps the combined Durandal-Thoth entity had an awareness of the other time lines. Until I hear otherwise, this is my best guess for the answer, but it still doesn’t let the Rubicon Team off the hook for the plot hole in Bump and Grind. In any case:

The UESC invasion force is landing in the central Pfhor Prime metropolis as we speak. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised to find the situation planetside well under control.

The central metropolis. Why do all science fiction stories have only one major city on each planet they visit? And what would make this metropolis central - is it buried in the planet’s core? I think that the Rubicon Team meant to imply the Pfhor capitol city, which makes a lot more sense. So what comes next? Will the UESC occupy Pfhor Prime? And where in the world have the S’pht’Kr been in all of this? Durandal will have something to say about that in the Salinger Plank, but why weren’t they involved in the capture of Pfhor Prime? Didn’t the M2 final screen say that it was our combined forces that sacked the Pfhor system? Oh well . . .

No rest for the weary, however; you and I are needed far from this toppling empire. Ancient Sph't myth has long foretold the existence of a great tear connecting another reality to our own. I already know where our search will begin. See you in no time, old friend.

This sounds quite a bit like the end of M2 in which Durandal talks about visiting a rogue star and another ruined world in the void between the spiral arms of the galaxy – a reference cited elsewhere in Rubicon. But this time he’s not letting you go. He’s putting you in stasis and taking you with him. What about this great tear. Could this be related to the rift that takes us into another reality in Marathon Evil? As you may recall, however, Durandal was nowhere to be seen in Evil. Could this be the rift that took us to another reality in Pfh'Joueur? In that case, however, it was the W’rcacnter’s release that lead to the formation of the rift. Maybe this is just another attempt by Durandal to find a way to escape the closure of the Universe. Regardless, we’re coming back to Pfhor Prime several hundred years from now to learn about the consequences of our actions during this time period. Let’s go to Toadstools to find out.



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