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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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  • still hates toast

I'm going to sticky this topic because it seems to be popular among you folk. Do not take this act of stickiness as a sign of credibility for the Enkidu site. I am not bungie. I am merely a forum moderator.

  • 04.29.2004 10:08 PM PDT
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it could be a halo. but i doubt it as well. . .

as far as a fanfic goes: it could be. all it seems like we are getting here is a story. . however i do not believe that bungie would allow this much attention to be given to a fanfic that introduces a new and obviously powerful AI with out their knowledge. after all powerfull smart AI's tend to make waves and cause events to occur in the universe. that makes me lean towards legit.

the story, as it appears to me is something like this. a ship is gunned down, whatever. they launch the pelicans, they have a hard fall (will be a transmission evnetually like e or something), but survivors make it out, get to the door where we are now, and break through to find. . . some foreign circutry (reminicent of marathon infinity, where we left some rather intense circutry behind). when they insert enkidu, they wake up MR/MRS smart ai that was reveled in the second? terminal. oh the idea about combined ai. . .kinda makes sence. afterall these are "the enkidu terminals" (a good name?) that were posted under the name enkidu, not some other ai. so it would make sence that the story would be about the birth or "rebirth" of Enkidu (as a new, smarter, and obviously more rampant ai. who introduces him/herself )

on the other hand, this whole story parallels our own HALO story very closely. with the excepthion that whoever enkidu is talking to got left behind. . . (as a note the person enkidu is talking too could just be an upperlevel staff hand right? i mean evacuate to pelicans, unfreeze crew, not the typical SPARATAN work is it?) if it is, that frees up possiblities of SPARAN-type warriors carring enkidu down planetside. so ya back to the story, the ship incounters covinents, is forced to land, a small disshevled party survives, similar curious forrunner structures, covienent are interested in covinent installation . ... it seems like this has all been done bfore (which makes me think fanfic).

one thing i do not see is that a monitor type entity will be found. afterall, if a smart ai was awakened, he would not need to hover up to the ship to communicate. doubtless it allready knows all it needs in order to communicate with a ship . . .

  • 04.29.2004 10:17 PM PDT
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aah we get sticky recognition at last . . .

  • 04.29.2004 10:18 PM PDT
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hehe, by the by, could it be possible that at one time humans were part of the covinent cast, but broke away, thus naming us the heritics to the religion?

  • 04.29.2004 10:28 PM PDT

what is like a sticky thing mean?

  • 04.29.2004 10:52 PM PDT
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thanks for the stickiness stosh...

oneindustriesusa - sticky just means that it will stay at the top of the topic list - so that it's easy to find

  • 04.30.2004 12:03 AM PDT
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has anyone else noticed that the last two transmissions were at "Hangar Terminal Access D" and the rest (except the main screen) are at "Cryobay B Terminal Access"

this could be because JD is responsible for waking up the crew and therefore stationed at the Cryobay - after the boarding action it switches to the Hangar... ?

EDIT: using my old post rather than take up more space...

Had a crack at filling in the blanks in the latest message... most were pretty simple. hopeful it will make it a little easier to read. If anyone thinks I've got it wrong or has a suggestion let us know...

everything I put in is coloured red.

***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM ENKIDU***

Sorry for the lo[color=red]u[/color]sy compression, but we are very low on bandwidth and available power after the accid[color=red]ent. We are cop[/color]ing the best we can.

We are exploring the grounds of a large building, apparently very old. It is shaped like a very broad, split arrow head pointing into the sky with a diamond-shaped gap in the face. It seems to ha[color=red]ve... (unknown)[/color]

Though the atmosphere near the building is much richer in oxygen than the average on Frigid, the crew still require additional oxygen to mai[color=red]ntain acceptable blood-oxygen levels[/color] and power is running low. We have no choice. We must enter the buil[color=red]ding o[/color]r lose more crew to exposure and hypoxia.

I am surprised to find that this building appears to house artifacts that still funct[color=red]ioning, w[/color]e can see working indicator lights on the doors we have found. Corpor[color=red]al (unknown)[/color] hopes to salvage whatever codebreaking equipment we can from the wreckage of the Pelicans. Then we hope to rig a bypass circuit on the door locks.

There is some sort of RF network data hand-shak[color=red]e protocol preventing remote access to the terminals[/color]![color=red] However, th[/color]ere is a functioning terminal inside Lieutenant Demarais will attempt to interface my mobile unit with it. They need me at full capacity if we are to continue on into this building.

Wish me luck.


[Edited on 4/30/2004 1:33:33 AM]

  • 04.30.2004 12:30 AM PDT
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ok this is my first post but heres what i think is happening...

what if the 3 spartans not on reach when it got glassed were on the lebanon and that is who Enkidu is talking to.

The building the crew enter on frigid could well be part of another halo. Afterall the halo's have been in space quite a while, and this halo could well have malfunctioned, stopped spinning, and crashed into the surface of the planet. And then been covered by thousands of years worth of rock, snow and ice.

Then when the crew seek shelter in the structure they release the monitor of this halo, who then links up to the lebanon (through Enkidu?) and introduces himself to the spartans on board the ship.

  • 04.30.2004 3:31 AM PDT
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I think the building has to have been built on Frigid - something as big as a part of a Halo hitting a planet would destroy everything (including the Halo piece) for miles (probably most of the planet). There is also evidence of other Forerunner Buildings on planets.

But doesn't mean that there isn't a Forerunner AI operating the place - I'd be suprised if there wasn't.

To be totally correct we still don't know if this building really is Forerunner - but it's hard to imagine why it wouldn't be...

[Edited on 4/30/2004 4:11:01 AM]

  • 04.30.2004 4:04 AM PDT
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WoW, gj.

  • 04.30.2004 4:19 AM PDT
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It may not have been the whole halo that fell to the planet. If it was damaged in space smaller pieces could have broken off and fallen onto frigid. but yeah i agree that the whole halo falling into a planet would probably damage the planet as much as halo!

unless frigid is actually surrounding the halo. what if over the thousands of years in space the halo started collecting ice and other debris in space slowly forming into what looks like a normal planet?

  • 04.30.2004 4:31 AM PDT
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I suppose it's a posibilty - I still stick with my simple "they built it on the planet" theory though

  • 04.30.2004 5:19 AM PDT
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Lebanon is the Gateway to the Cedar Forest, where Enkidu must battle Humbaba, the Guardian of the Cedar Forest, alongside Gilgamesh...his friend(?).

We know what Lebanon is. We know who Enkidu is. We have the hint CEDAR to tie the story together. The scale of this event is much larger than I think most of you are assuming...

  • 04.30.2004 6:36 AM PDT
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I think the fragmented nature of the letters seems to be more a progressive data recovery of a rescued ai than anything else.

The ship was attacked and damaged, the ai was compressed and saved to disk, then transported off the ship manually to avoid interception. The rest looks like a mission record, almost like a diary of daily events, made while the ai was in a low power mode forced on it by the adverse conditions on the planet. This record, which was then corrupted at a later date, is now being recovered piece by piece by someone else.

And I don't think it has anything at all to do with 343GS, the poem looks more like an eye than the monitor.

However, this will spin your head. What if there is an ai similar to 343 GS at all forerunner installations, and there's an installation on earth? There could very well be a piece of this ai in every human computer system, keeping an eye on us.

Maybe there's a bigger brother than M$..................................
the paranoia's setting in...
doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo........



  • 04.30.2004 6:41 AM PDT
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thanks for the info Beestee... I believe this is a huge event in terms of the bungieverse... this is cryptic (or not) Halo 2 storyline stuff in the same way that the Cortana Letters and Halo Trasmissions - and I don't think we'll fully understand it until Halo2 ships...

just noticed that the Lebanon, Enkidu, Captain Mathers, etc aren't on any of HBO: Halo Story character/vessel lists - maybe it's time to update them

  • 04.30.2004 7:09 AM PDT
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Just found "gilgamesh" in the source of the poem page. Now, if we could just find out who he is...and where the Cedar Forest is.

  • 04.30.2004 7:24 AM PDT
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we know who Gilgamesh is...

  • 04.30.2004 7:53 AM PDT
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cedar forest?

ENCR1024-PUBKEY: CEDAR

was found on the last transmission

  • 04.30.2004 8:13 AM PDT
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Is Gilgamesh the one receiveing the message? Could the Cedar Forest be Earth? Enlil has a role also, but I can't remember the specifics, something to do with a deluge(flood).

  • 04.30.2004 8:30 AM PDT
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it's on all of them

1024 bit encryption
public key: "CEDAR"

it's like the password used to access the terminals...

  • 04.30.2004 8:32 AM PDT
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you might be taking this a little to literally... bungie wouldn't be that obvious.

Gilgamesh is one of the main characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh (the oldest known Epic poem) the other is Enkidu.

so far Gilgamesh hasn't been mentioned in any of the transmissions only in the source code... and probably only there as a link to Enkidu's history

  • 04.30.2004 8:41 AM PDT
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Have you looked into the story behind the Marathon and PiD series much? Nothing from bungie can be taken too literally.

Also, it is obvious that there is a connection between the stories, you cannot deny that. Is it coincedence that the ship is named Lebanon? I don't believe so.

I would like to make a prediction that at some point in this story, we will see a compound, and perhaps rampant AI, interface with a Spartan. Perhaps in Halo 2, we will have to battle this rogue "Super-Spartan."

  • 04.30.2004 9:06 AM PDT
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Has anyone thought about this? Prior to the pelican evacuation, Captain Mathers and a few crew were going to sling shot the Lebanon around a star so that it could make it to Frigid. i understood it as they were going to attempt a crash land like Keys did with the PoA. however, is this crash land still going to take place? Or, did the covie boarding party kill captain mathers and the lebanon is going to float away?

so why does this matter? Well the riddle entry on the terminal was made locally and most people here believe that it is made by something other than the human AI Enkidu. SO, if the Lebanon doen't crash land, then whatever makes the riddle entry has to come to the Lebanon where JD is.


  • 04.30.2004 9:30 AM PDT
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Now, I may be WAY off key here (cause' I haven't read EVERY post on this thred), but it sounds to me like this Enkidu is just a smart AI who was designed for the captain of the Lebannon, who decided to name him/her/it after the ancient epic. I don't think that this is from the view of a monitor, or from the view of some "super spartan, AI fusion" thingie.
It makes sense though, that these are the three unnacounted Spartans who weren't on reach. However, they CANNOT have survived this mission, that they are currently on, BEFORE Halo 2 takes place, because the UNSC intelligence only knows of ONE planet that the covenant did not immediately glass, Reach, and information regarding secret covie activities on a planetoid, especially one so close to reach (as Enkidu mentioned) would not be something that wouldn't just be dismessed. So whatever is going on in this story either ended in the death of the crew on the ship, and on the plantet, or it is still going on throughout the Halo storyline and the Halo 2 storyline.

That's just what I get out of it.

  • 04.30.2004 9:36 AM PDT
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I've been following this and reading everything you guys have been saying and there are some really valid points and some not so valid. Great thinking guys! Anyway, I just wanted to point out something small because I haven't seen anyone post a thing about it. In the latest transmission, "Whether Forecast," look at the spelling of "whether." You'd think it's supposed to be "Weather." Now if this is official from Bungie, they would not make such an obvious spelling error. This word is a clue to the story. As to what it is, I have no idea just yet. But if this is not official and is fanfic, it could very well be the said spelling error. Hmmmm what to believe....

  • 04.30.2004 9:38 AM PDT