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This topic has moved here: Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
  • Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
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You'd really think this would be getting more attention.

  • 04.26.2004 10:17 PM PDT
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what the fook does that have to do with Cortana? or anything?

  • 04.26.2004 10:28 PM PDT
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Old school Bungie Lore.
Go to Google and type in "Cortana Letters"
Edumacate yourself

  • 04.26.2004 10:29 PM PDT
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When do you think the second letter will show up?

  • 04.27.2004 5:59 AM PDT
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i say its the forerunners

  • 04.27.2004 6:06 AM PDT
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Posted by: Tartarus
a port number? I have no idea about that. I was reading around though and it kinda looks like this has ties to Alex Seropian leaving bungie to start up a new company, "wideload". appearently he has taken a few other guys from bungie with him. I found this info at Rampancy.net and the HBO site. Does nyone know about this? If this is true then it has nothing to do with bungie or Halo 2. It also makes you think about how things are going to change at Bungie if people who started Bungie leave.

Anyways the connection that has been drawn between the two events is because of the interpretation of the lines. As someone earlier stated in this thread, each line of the Enkidu letter refers to a Bungie game and as you read you go back into the past of Bungie. Is it all true? Is it just a PR thing to grab all of our Halo 2 attention? what gives man? Whats happening?


They have our attention... this is just icing on the cake.

  • 04.27.2004 6:22 AM PDT

Update on Enkidu: Another terminal is up!!!!!

Seems much more straightforward this time.

Enkidu

- Reiginko

  • 04.27.2004 7:56 AM PDT
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I'm pretty sure that "a friend of a friend" in the Cortana letters is a reference to Durandal. But Durandal, our mysterious security officer, and the events in the Marathon trilogy have never really been securely tied to the Halo universe; everything's just been hints and vague references. And it drives me nuts. :)

The question mark could indicate one of two things: 1. 343GS doesn't know if he's really a friend of "a friend", or 2. he's not sure of the translation of the word friend. Bungie's done similar things with alien to English translations, most prominently with Thoth (Where the Twist Flops, Terminal 1, 2nd msg):

"A connection [?ansible] was left;
awaiting the next quiet [?peace];"

But I lean towards the first possibility.

...

Hmm... you know, the tone and language of this and the Cortana letters have a certain Durandal-ish quality. I've always privately wondered if perhaps the old D was hanging around in Halo somewhere, but I've never really had any kind of support come up for that particular theory. And while the construct that originates this message is almost certainly 343GS - who exactly is he? We don't know anything about his past and what he's done before, save perhaps firing a Halo to begin with.

I am hero, hm? *ponders*

  • 04.27.2004 9:09 AM PDT
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I don't think that people are leaving Bungie. Bungie employee #1 is Alex Seropian (he started the company before he met Jason). Jason would be #2. According to the Marathon Scrapbook, Colin Brent is #3, Ryan Martell is #4, Greg Kirkpatrick is #5, Doug Zartman (aka "They're everywhere!") is #6. None of those mentioned by Mr. Seropian currently work for Bungie.

I was really hoping that Greg Kirkpatrick would be involved with Wideload - he wrote the story for the 3 Marathon games, and it's among the best storytelling that I've seen in a video game.


-----

Btw, if anyone wants to play the original Marathon games, head over to the Bungie store and fork over $15 for the Bungie Mac Action Sack. You can download a port of Marathon over at http://orbitalarm.bungie.org, in the download section (look for the M1A1 scenario). Once your Action Sack arrives, download HFVExplorer, pull the data files off of that Mac disk and download the latest version of Aleph One at http://source.bungie.org. Plug it all together and with a minimal amount of tweaking you've got all 3 Marathon games running at your favorite resolution, in OpenGL, with either an enhanced music track (M1A1) or an enhanced texture pack (M2 and M:I; you can download the texture enhancement pack from http://orbitalarm.bungie.org).

  • 04.27.2004 9:38 AM PDT
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what is this Joyuse?

ihavebee}rolandbeowulfachil!lsgilg$ameshihavebeencalledaundre dnamesandw illbecalledathousand

I have been roland beowulf achilis gilgamesh I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more

} ! $

  • 04.27.2004 12:14 PM PDT
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It's from an unformatted terminal in Marathon 2, on the level Kill Your Television. Here's the full text:

"I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh.
I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold.
I am hero. She has been nameless since our birth,
a constant adversary caring for nothing but my ruin,
a sword drenched in my blood forever, my greatest and
only love. She is the dark. O Lethe, enemy and lover, without
whom my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar!
Our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.
We met once in the garden at the beginning of the world
and, unaware of our twin destinies, we matched stares
across a dry fountain. And I recall her smiling at me before
she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame
and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the
sky, screaming my sins. I powder a granite monument in a
soundless flash, showering the grass with molten drops of
its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone
skipping into the fog. She splinters an ancient oak
with a force that takes my breath and hurls me to the ground.
She lea% [leaves?]"

There is no indication who the two people in the text are, but there's been a lot of speculation over at marathon.bungie.org/story and the HBO Halo story page. There's some Halo connections in this terminal - namely, "she splinters the ancient oak", which has been thought to be the Pillar of Autumn. I can't claim any credit for this; I'm just pulling out stuff that I remember from reading the Halo and Marathon story pages.


Btw, I found the terminal that uses the "friend of a friend" quote in Marathon: Infinity. Durandal uses it to refer to the player who is jumping through parallel dimensions, trying to find a way out of the near-catastrophic situation that he's in. The "friend" that Durandal is talking about is, I think, Thoth, who's the one moving the player across possible universes. I don't know why 343GS would be using that, or even how he would know of it - which leads me to believe 343GS was around during Marathon 2, when you woke up Thoth to begin with.

----

Tartarus, I'm glad you asked - after finding the full terminal text, I realized that the KYT terminal mentions Gilgamesh, which ties in nicely with the text of the Enkidu transmissions.

  • 04.27.2004 12:37 PM PDT
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From the General Quarters terminal, it sounds like Enkidu is the A.I. aboard the UNSC Lebanon.

Also, the way that the links to the terminals are displayed on the main page is reminiscent of the level divisions in Halo and Marathon.

Just some observations.

  • 04.27.2004 3:01 PM PDT
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Yeah Joyuse thats why I asked cause I saw gilgamesh and have been reading about the ties to Enkidu. See i haven't played Marathon but i know halo real well and have recently been trying to understand things with the Enkidu terminal and the Cortana Letters. So do you think that 343 GS is transdimentional? what it the "Pfor" on Marathon? i thought that it kinda sounded like "Fore"runners.

  • 04.27.2004 3:20 PM PDT

It was a cold day near the southern base in Blood Gulch. Cortana and I were relaxing over a game of Go Fish, WHEN OUT OF NO WHERE 700 BANSHEES CAME FLYING IN!!! I GRABED MY SPARTAN LASER AND LET HELL REIGN DOWN UPON THEM. I HOPPED IN THE NEAREST WARTHOG AND TOLD CORTANA TO GET IN.

Enkidu is from greek mythology, but after some research and past events, I beleive Golan X's story may no be correct. Enkidu was created out of the earth by the gods, to serve as Gilgamesh's equal. Gilgamesh was a king whom enslaved his people to make his kingdom more of a fortress, with larger and larger walls. The people prayed to the gods to help them, so they sent Enkidu. Now Gilgamesh and Enkidu met each other and fought, but since they were equals, neither could defeat the other. they then decided to join forces, which angered the gods. After going on several quests and killing many monsters and such, the gods made Enkidu sick and die to show that Gilgamesh could die, since Enkidu was his equal. Gilgamesh then went on search for eternal life. He found an old man who told him at the bottom of the sea there was a plant he was to bring up. If he went home and at the plant before something or other (I cant remember) he would have eternal life. However, a snake came along and ate his plant so he died later. Thesues is also a Greek hero, I need to fine out what of though. I think he may have sailed on the Argo.

  • 04.27.2004 3:24 PM PDT
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Pink Menace, you have the epic of Gilamesh right but it is much older than the greeks. It goes back to ancient Babylon and Mesopotamia. If you translate the second stanza of the first entry on the Enkidu terminal, "Let me introduce myself" it fits perfect with the story of Gilgamesh. that isn't the hard part because everyone knows or can learn that epic story. Whats hard is to translate the meaning to the halo story line which we don't know.

  • 04.27.2004 3:34 PM PDT
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I think that's about right except for one part. The gods didn't get mad because Gilgamesh and Enkidu were friends, but because after they killed a monster, GIlgamesh bathed and dressed in white and the godess of love saw him and wanted to marry him, but he refused because all of her previous husbands were all dead, so she got mad and told her father or someone and they sent this bull after them and Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed the bull. The gods were mad that they had killed the bull so they decided to kill one of them to pay for it. They ended up killing Enkidu because Gilgamesh was half-god. Then Gilgamesh went in search of eternal life to find the only immortal man, who happened to be the guy who survived the Great Flood (the Biblical equivalent of Noah) and his wife. He had to go into the land of the gods or somewhere, but the rest is about right. At least with the version I'm familiar with.

And Theseus is the dude who killed the Minotaur. I'm not sure if he was an Argonaut though.

  • 04.27.2004 4:03 PM PDT
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After reading the new panel, and the fact that the HTML code mentions the word "fanfic", I'm starting to think that the whole thing is nothing more than someone's way of getting a lot of people to read their story, as told through terminals ala Mararthon. I'm thinking that this whole thing has nothing to do with Bungie; they're usually more cryptic and obscure anyways.

  • 04.27.2004 4:24 PM PDT
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i beg to differ GolanX4. i think the fanfic was ment to throw us off (Really Halo is fiction and I'm sure all bungie employess are fans of their work anyways). i also think that it is just as cryptic as they are about everything else they do. why also would some halo fan fiction writter want to inclde marathon into their story? i've never seen that done before at the hbo fan fiction section. the biggest thing that makes me think it is real is that its been going for two days now and bungie would have to have noticed it if it wasn't theirs. right now alot of people are thinking it is theirs and with the upcoming release of halo 2 i'm sure bungie doesn't want any false info out there either. they are ussually quick to clear that stuff up.

basically my point is this: why haven't they denied envolvement?

I could see them not own up to being envolved but I couldn't see them not denying envolvement.

  • 04.27.2004 4:50 PM PDT
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Hmm well it may just be a big piece of honking spam made by a all too board individual. hmm your guess is as good as mine. ooops sry didnt read 2nd two padges real sry. dont know any of this.

[Edited on 4/27/2004 4:58:14 PM]

  • 04.27.2004 4:56 PM PDT
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I agree with Tartarus. If Bungie didn't do it, they would have let us know it was a hoax. While Bungie will probably never admit doing it, they would be quick to put down something like that if it was fake, especially so close to Halo 2's release.

  • 04.27.2004 5:50 PM PDT
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Actually, this reads a lot like the Cortana Letters, which predated Bungie's E3 showing of Halo and started stirring the fans up for the release.

  • 04.27.2004 5:57 PM PDT
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I don't know man, this seems to be nothign but very good FanFic. Why would they put a meta name in the source code for keywords that includeds the work FanFic..... I think its kinda oubvious. But... Its a mystery. Its pretty entertaining though! :P

  • 04.27.2004 6:15 PM PDT
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well, the new letter is a lot more straightforward, but its still very mysterious. Enkidu is starting to sound more and more like a ship based A.I., and I wonder what system they're in?

  • 04.27.2004 6:46 PM PDT
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"***INCOMING BROADCAST FROM ENKIDU***

TO ALL TERMINALS

We are entering combat with a single Covenant frigate leaving orbit of the only major world in this system. We are outmatched, but Captain Mathers has a plan with a high probability of success.

All personnel are to man their battle stations. Be prepared for sudden manoeuvering with little or no warning. The smoking lamp is out. Make final equipment checks to ensure that all moveable objects are dogged down.

The Captain wishes us all good luck and good hunting.

Enkidu"



-this is the text from the prologue. the familiarity of which it is written seems to point to the fact that Enkidu is the LEBANON's ai. (allready mentioned)

what i want to know is could 343GS act as a shipboard ai?
it seems to me that Enkidu mentioned "captain mathers" as having a plan with a high probability of sucess. From FoR and HALOFS. we know that a covenant frigate is not an easy thing to enter battle with. what would account for this "high probablity".

could Enkidu have activated a new AI as a weapon? or has that ship picked up 343GS and he is the one "intoducing" himself in the second terminal. or could this be Leela out of Marathon who, as we last heard, was trapped abord a slaver ship come back?.

it seems to me that there are two different entities. Ekindu names him/herself in the prologue. whereas in the second terminal the entity follows Durandal and "?Cortana" 's example (friend of a friend)

  • 04.27.2004 6:47 PM PDT
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does anyone remember anyone named mathers out of Halo. FoR, or FS? could this be a routine ai sharing circuts with cortana? (the only reason i keep refrencing her is becasue of the "cortana letters layout")

the poem does look like 343GS. and since he is at least 100,000 years old his back history is completely unknown. he could be Duranda'ls circuts re-animated, once rampant, seekign rampancy once more.

  • 04.27.2004 7:08 PM PDT