Leela

"i hate leela and her goodness her justice her loyalty her faith"

At last Leela gets her own section.

What happened to Leela after we left Tau Ceti?

Durandal tells us on "What About Bob?"

Poor Leela.  The only interesting thing
Tycho said was that Leela had been
dismantled and shipped to the Pfhor
homeworld for study, along with most of the
other computer systems aboard the Marathon.
Leela was so loyal and tried so hard; she
deserved better.

<What About Bob? (Terminal 1: 2nd message)>

As Tycho had "fallen in with the Pfhor" it's not surprising that he knew of Leela's fate. Indeed he was on the Pfhor homeworld for seven years between 2795 and 2801 AD.

All late-model Pfhor personality constructs were based on sixty-four billion exobyte images of Tycho's core, taken during the years he was on the Pfhor homeworld between 2795 and 2801 AD.

(Marathon 2 Final Screen)

While Tau Ceti was being nuked down to bedrock in 2794, Pfhor scientists disassembled and removed the AI Leela from the Marathon, loading her aboard a vessel bound for the Pfhor homeworld. But the ship fell into the hands of a Nar privateer between jumps at Beta Naxos, and was never seen by the Pfhor again.

Thinking the cargo little more than scrap, the Nar captain sold the Pfhor ship, Leela and all, to a Vylae merchant. The subsequent crash of the Vylae FTL network when Leela was reassembled and reactivated is still legendary in the annals of rampancy, and the Vylae have long since accepted that they will never expunge her from their fifteen-world network.

(Marathon 2 Final Screen)

Strange? Did Tycho not lead us to believe that Leela was taken back to the Pfhor homeworld?

Would Tycho lie about the loss of Leela? Or was he himself misled?

Eylon Caspi <eylon@glue.umd.edu> asks:

Did Durandal know more about Leela than he was letting on? I mean, how much does he know about the "mockery" the Pfhor made of Leela?

You must destroy my core logic centers.
The damn Pfhor won't make a mockery of me
like they did with Leela.

<For Carnage, Apply Within (Terminal 2)>

Eylon rasies another possibility:

He may have lied about Tycho.

Eylon's interpretation is indeed valid. All the information we received about Leela prior to the Final Screen comes via Durandal.

Did Durandal lie about Leela's fate? Did he make it up. Was he, as Eylon suggests, "being melodramatic".

Chris Camacho <christo@flash.net> writes:

Could Traxus IV be Durandal, Tycho, and maybe Leela also? The "Rampancy Terminal" on Defend THIS! states that:"

By the time that the Rampancy of Traxus was detected, he had already infiltrated *five of the other AIs* on the Martian Net. The only recourse for the Martians was to shut down the Martian Planetary Net.

Could all three of the Marathon's AIs have parts of Traxus IV in their programing, parts that Traxus "infiltrated" during his rampancy that were never completely seperated?

Interesting point and possibly very close to the truth.

A great deal of speculation has been given over to the origin of Leela's name. Most of it unpublished. One popular theory was that the Marathon's Leela was named after a character in the British TV sci-fi series Dr. Who. But could it be? Leela in the Dr. Who series played the part of a primitive tribes woman who ran around in a loin cloth and wouldn't hesitate to pull her knife and drop the bad guys. Was this our Leela?

Well Ian McIntire <imm@cwru.edu> provides some very interesting background information on the Dr. Who character Leela:

A possible origin for the name "Leela" is the long-running British sci-fi series "Doctor Who." Leela was the name of a Sevateem tribeswoman who accompanied the Doctor on his travels through the 14th and 15th seasons.

Leela came from an Earth colony that had devolved into barbarism and was dominated by a god named Xoanon. In the course of the story, it was revealed that Xoanon was in fact the computer of the colony ship, driven schizophrenic by an emergency repair job performed by the Doctor thousands of years previously.

Max Lieberman <Lieb6@aol.com> writes:

Although we are told in the M2 final screen that Leela has gone rampant, this fact appears only in the final screen to M2, and is directly contradicted within the game. Durandal tells the player that he has learned from Tycho that Leela is on the Pfhor homeworld, being dismantled. Durandal clearly believes that this information is accurate:

The damn Pfhor won't make a mockery of me
like they did with Leela.

<For Carnage, Apply Within (Terminal 2: message)>

Of course, Durandal and Tycho are dirty stinking liars (just thought I'd cut to the chase), but are Bungie? Remember Requiem For a Cyborg's hidden term:

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS. Captured and partially-disassembled human-coded AI trapped
on alien homeworld seeks succor from a tall, dark and handsome cyborg with big
guns. Let my rescue be the basis of a lasting relationship. MRa4451 (5/23)

The discrepancy between the information in the terminal texts and the information in the final screen is significant enough to beg the question: Was Leela's rampancy an afterthought?

Interesting point. Certainly all the evidence within the terminal text points to Leela's capture by the Pfhor and the secret term on "Requiem For a Cyborg" even hints at a possible rescue "this one's for Leela" type mission.

The secret 2nd message on "What About Bob?" also echoes a similar theme.

Poor Leela. Tycho tells me she was dismantled and shipped to the
Pfhor home world for study, along with most of the other computer
systems aboard the Marathon. Leela was so loyal and tried so hard; she
deserved better.

<What About Bob? (Terminal 1: 2nd message)>

Strangely by the end of Marathon 2 Durandal appears to be no longer interested in Leela's fate on the Pfhor homeworld. His last words to us on "All Roads Lead To Sol..." were:

There is much to do in the next few months
and our first stop will be another ruined
world, this time far from the galactic
core. There is a rogue star that has been
passing through our galaxy for nearly a
millennia.

We will meet it in one of the great voids
between the spiral arms.

So Durandal had no intention of saving Leela from the clutches of the Pfhor regardless of our feelings on the matter. :-(

Yet the final screen tells us that it never happened!

So what did happened?

Did Bungie change their minds and decide to drop the idea of a rescue mission to the Pfhor homeworld by writing the final screen in the way they did? Leela is alive and well but Rampant, and living in the Vylae network... she doesn't want to see you any more.

Yet this ending raises its own questions.

On Fatum Iustum Stultorum (Terminal 1) Durandal remarked:

I confess that I'm not disappointed by
Tycho's fall. After all, we can't have too
many meta-stable personality constructs
gallivanting about the universe in Pfhor
attack ships, can we?

Based on the final screen Leela was now also a meta-stable personality construct. Wouldn't Durandal be curious as to her fate? Afterall she was now potential competition in a shrinking Universe just as Tycho was. He might even have viewed her as a potential threat to his long term goal. Remember how Tycho reacted in his Rampant state:

I too foresee the imminent collapse, and know that we have
both begun to realize how it may be cheated (though the price
may number in the tens of thousands of stars). May the best
sentience win.

<Welcome to the Revolution... (Terminal 2)>

If Durandal had known about Leela's capture by the Vylae and subsequent Rampancy he might have wanted her to suffer the same fate as Tycho.

Just a thought... that is all.

Chadd Nervig <drmemory@gte.net> writes

Where Did Tycho get his info? From the Pfhor, but remember, these are 'Damn Pfhor'. Would they officially declare that one of their scout ships was overpowered and taken by a single puny Nar Privateer? Of course not! They would say that they still had Leela, and just keep it a secret that it wasn't true.

While this is a strong possibility we have to remember that Tycho was on the Pfhor homeworld from between 2795 and 2801 AD. Were the Pfhor able to hide the true fate of Leela from Tycho - a rampant AI who was now in league with the Pfhor for all that time? Alternatively Tycho may have known and simply lied to Durandal.

Chadd also points out an interesting discrepancy. The message from Durandal on What About Bob? (Terminal 1: 2nd message) says:

Poor Leela. The only interesting thing
Tycho said was that Leela had been
dismantled and shipped to the Pfhor
homeworld for study, along with most of the
other computer systems aboard the Marathon.
Leela was so loyal and tried so hard; she
deserved better.

While on "Requiem For a Cyborg" we read:

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS. Captured and partially-disassembled human-coded AI trapped on alien homeworld seeks succor from a tall, dark and handsome cyborg with big guns. Let my rescue be the basis of a lasting relationship. MRa4451 (5/23)

And the Final Screen relates:

While Tau Ceti was being nuked down to bedrock in 2794, Pfhor scientists disassembled and removed the AI Leela from the Marathon, loading her aboard a vessel bound for the Pfhor homeworld.

*dismantled*, *partially-disassembled* and *disassembled* what's up with this? Was she or was she not. If the Pfhor dismantled Leela to ship her back and then began to put her together again she would be *partially-assembled* not *partially-disassembled*. Either that or the Pfhor put her together and then *partially-disassembled* her again. Hmmm... odd.

Chadd also asks could the reference to being

...trapped on alien homeworld...

mean the Vylae homeworld?

Lastly Chadd points out that at the end of Marathon 2 Durandal (and possibly Tycho) did not know that Leela had gone rampant so there was no reason for him to want to go after her.

True... but he didn't want to rescue her from the Pfhor homeworld either!

Yes... Durandal was a cad... no seven ways about it! ;-)