narcogen's picture
by Kesh

Okay, after spending four hours going through various parts of theMarathon's Story website (Blam!, Cortana, and the story itself), I'vecome up with a few possible ways to tie Myth and Marathon together.

First off, many people are wondering why there should even *be* aconnection. I wouldn't wonder myself, if it weren't for a comment by MattSoell (sp?) of Bungie:

Matt also had this to say about plot connections in Bungie's games: ...things are often more related than they may first appear. For example, there's no obvious similarity or connection between the Marathon world and the Myth one.... ...but then there's the Great Devoid. The Great Devoid was the big hole in the ground at the end of Myth:TFL. How did it get there?

That sparked my imagination. Just where was he going with that? A furtherpoint was brought up by another reader to the MS site:

Omer points out that the origin of the Great Devoid is given in Myth. Omer writes: MTFL manual p. 46: Great Devoid: A bottomless chasm near Myrgard, created by the Callieach during their final days. Rather than be hunted to extinction by the Trow, the Callieach destroyed themselves and many Trow, leaving behind only the Devoid. This is the only mention of the Callieach ever made.

{snipped}

Hmm. At this point, the question should be, 'What were the Callieach?'.They're never mentioned anywhere else, so we're left to speculate.Apparently they did not get along with the Trow, and were unable tosurvive in a war against them. However, they *did* have the firepower toput a huge, gaping chasm in the planet. So how is it they could be soeasily dispatched when they had such technology/magic? Did they simplynot know how to control it?

Another angle is that this creation story is in error, and something*else* caused the creation of the Great Devoid. That's when something Iwas reading from the story in Marathon 2: Durandal caught my eye:

Tycho's ship has been destroyed. The crater where it annihilated itself on Lh'owon's inner moon is still glowing. There were no survivors. With a focused message laser I burned his epitaph into the surface near the crash site, in letters three hundred meters high: Fatum Iustum Stultorum.

Somehow I get the feeling a large starship dropping onto a moon wouldleave a very deep hole... as another point for this, isn't the GreatDevoid rather near the Cloudspine, the largest mountain chain on theplanet of Myth? I wonder what the peaks looked like from above thousandsof years before the Myth story... ;)

Admittedly, this is quite a stretch. Especially since the Lh'owon starwas supposedly set nova by the Pfhor, and subsequently contained by theJjaro space station in the system (Marathon Infinity).

Another possibility has been brought up before, with the Trow actuallybeing descendants of the Behemoths enslaved by the Pfhor. In this case, Iwould guess that the Callieach were actually the few S'pht trapped on themoon after the battle. I doubt they could effectively fightTrow/Behemoths, so at the last they self destructed all their leftovertechnology in unison, creating the Great Devoid. This would also meanthat the Myth world is Lh'owon itself, and not the moon.

Which brings us to the next item:

I ordered the deployment of the trih xeem. Almost immediately, our enemy then began transmitting ridiculous warnings concerning some sort of ancient chaotic being trapped deep in the Lh'owon sun. Of course, at this point mercy was unacceptable. The time to end the collective dream of the S'pht had come.

Durandal had discovered an anchient being trapped in the star, a W'rkncacnter:

According to the legends of a thousand worlds only a few of which are still habitable, the W'rkncacnter are those things that live in chaos, creating it around them. At the beginning of the universe, they were unmistakable in their entities, but as time has gone by, their existence has become difficult to detect among the chaotic elements of the universe, hidden in stars, trapped in storms, forever looking along the event horizons of black holes. Setting one free in ordered space is difficult and insane.

Of course, it's not entirely clear that the thing was contained at theend of the game. Honestly, I had trouble following the events as they'rerelayed on the MS site. I'll try the game, now that I've got a fastenough Mac to handle it. :)

Back to the story... the W'rkncacnter are apparently creatures of chaos,seeking destruction wherever they go. Isn't that what the Leveller wants?(Albeit on a smaller scale...the planet, not the universe). Perhaps someaspect of the W'rkncacnter is trapped in the 'comet' which appears everythousand years around the Myth homeworld? This allows it to resurrect thegreat hero of old, and turn them into the physical incarnation of theLeveller, controlling the forces of the Dark and leading them in thedestruction of the world.

It also helps explain how magic works on this world, when it's completlyagainst the Marathon paradigm. The other explanation is that the 'magic'is just leftover Jjaro tech that some of the beings surviving on the Mythworld learned how to use.

Which brings us to another point...if this *is* Marathon related, how didthe humans/humanoids get there? I'd guess they're descendants of theleftover colonists which Durandal kept on the Boomer, and released onLh'owon and it's moon while trying to stop the Pfhor and find the S'pht'kr.

Here's the kicker...perhaps the Leveller *is* the same person everythousand years? Might sound odd at first, but here's something else Ifound on MS:

Alex Samaras also writes: The final screen says: You were dead a thousand times. Hopeless encounters successfully won.

{snipped}

Another possibility is that this is referring to something much more immense. The Jjaro were obviously powerful beings. Their power was probably only limited by the closure of the universe. If so, then they may have created the player (us). The phrases Yours to manipulate, destroy and rebuild and You are destiny would take on a greater meaning. Perhaps we are another type of chaotic being, created long ago. We seem to have knack for upsetting the balance of power, cause a little chaos, and create order out of that chaos(e.g. Crush the mighty Pfhor, cause chaos throughout their ranks, and free the S'pht once and for all). There is some (possibly circumstantial) evidence supporting this.

1. The Jjaro were incredibly good at creating cybernetic organisms. The S'pht are obviously the prime example... powerful, intelligent... If they created the player, then they could have given him as much power as they wanted. Even the ability to be dead a thousand times..

2. We are not really recognized as human by anyone (except the confused message from Tycho in Marathon). Even if we were a battleroid created from a dead human, we could still be recognized as human. People w/ heart implants could be considered cyborgs, and they are recognized as and considered to be human.

If we are destiny then perhaps our niche in the universe is to keep any one intelligence (except the Jjaro who disappeared) from becoming too powerful. We do this by being at the right place and the right time to upset the balance of power.

The Leveller comes back every thousand years to upset the balance betweenLight and Dark, each milennia giving way to one or the othersuccessively. Sounds similar, right?

So, if 'you' are the Leveller (who isn't *actually* the hero of theprevious milennia, simply a simulacra, as you can't be fighting yourselfvery well...), then for some reason you were left behind with the otherhuman colonists on this moon after the Pfhor/S'pht war. The W'rkncacntersomehow tainted you, and now you are doomed to forever continually fightas the hero and the villan alternately.

Another idea is that Durandal/Cortana now inhabits something else (theJjaro station?), which orbits this star every 1000 years, and for fun heuses you as the Jjaro intended: to stir up chaos and fighting on theremnants of this world.

The one problem I have with this is that even a cyborg wouldn't survivethe way the Leveller was killed each millenia. That would imply thatperhaps you had been 'copied' into a database, and reconstructed everythousand years for your new role, making you a true simulacra each time,built in the image of the last hero.

Another problem is the destruction of the Lh'owon sun. Perhaps thecontainment of the nova caused it to collapse into another stable star?If not, then this whole theory goes out the window. :) Anyway, that's allI can remember of my theories for now. They're rather sketchy, and onehelluva stretch, but it's fun to speculate sometimes. Any, all, or noneof this may be true.

I'm definately looking foreward to Blam!. :)

Originally posted July 29, 1999