Contents
- Pregame history
- Eternal prologue
- Eternal main game
- Post-‘Where Giants Have Fallen’
- The Great Mother Crouched Behind the Throne
- A Galactic Trolley Problem
- Sakhmet’s gradual heel-face turn
- Tycho’s blackmail (and one version’s redemption)
- Post-Rubicon: Chronicles and beyond
- Further notes on the Trio’s redemption
- A final note on Hathor’s characterization
- Endnotes
Pregame history
Hathor is, like you, a Mjolnir Mk IV Battleroid on the Marathon. Eternal all but explicitly states that you had a romantic relationship with her at some point during this time. However, she is killed when the Pfhor nuke the Tau Ceti IV colony. After repeatedly attempting to create a timeline in which she survives, she finds that every single timeline in which she does not perform some sort of heroic sacrifice to save the eight other Mjolnir Mk IV cyborgs on the colony results in her and them all being killed in the Pfhor’s nuclear attack, so she settles on a timeline in which she is the sole victim of the Pfhor’s nuclear attack and dies over and over in self-imposed hell for the greater good.
Humanity then wakes her up in 2896. This is probably inadvertent. They need a Cybernetic Junction. Hers is the only one they can find. As this is Jjaro technology that humanity only poorly understands, they probably have no idea that messing around with a Junction awakens whoever’s linked to it, even if they’re dead.
But since her body is not intact, she is now a disembodied intelligence with the same desires as an embodied human. Which include, y’know, physical desires that she can no longer satiate. Humanity doesn’t think to get her a body – in fact, it appears no one even thinks to ask her, ‘How are you coping with the trauma of dying over and over in humanity’s service, then being awakened after everyone you ever knew or loved is dead? Can we do anything to help you?’ Consequentially, she gradually loses her shit and begins to plot revenge.
Eternal prologue
Sometime in late 2904 or early 2905, she calls you to K’lia where the remnants of humanity are now seeking a way to free themselves of the threat of the Pfhor. Ironically, unbeknownst to humanity, the Pfhor are no longer the big threat to humanity. Their homeworld, Pfhor Prime, in all likelihood no longer even exists; it has been wiped out by a device the Pfhor call the trih xeem, which in Eternal’s chronology was originally named the nova mátútína. In either language, this means roughly early nova. The shockwave that destroyed Pfhor Prime is in fact also now the big threat to humanity.
On K’lia, you also have what is heavily implied to be a romantic relationship with a mysterious woman named Bast, who – we eventually find out – is a dual consciousness partly comprised of a future version of Hathor who’s been cured of her desire for revenge, on which more later.
Eternal main game
You and Hathor travel back to the Marathon in 2794 at the start of the attack, but things quickly go wrong and you begin to realise Hathor may no longer be quite herself. A level entitled ‘Sakhmet Rising’ is a big clue on this, since Sakhmet was, in many traditions of Egyptian mythology, a vengeful aspect of Hathor.
A fairly straightforward bit of time travel follows, and I’ll skip ahead to ‘Eadem, sed aliter’ (formerly ‘Dread Not’). This results in a timeline split – when you destroy the Cybernetic Junction on the Jjaro dreadnought, Hathor flees to a Jjaro settlement in 65M BCE, where she is now stuck without the ability to time travel. If you don’t, this version of her – which I’ll call Sakhmet for the rest of this account – gains control of the dreadnought and threatens vengeance against humanity on K’lia in 2905, immediately after you and her past self leave. ‘Threatens’ rather than ‘gets’ for reasons we will again see soon.
Meanwhile in 65M BCE, you destroy most of her memory in ‘Dark Grotto of the Lethe’ (formerly ‘Deep into the Grotto’). If you choose to go with her, you find out her plan to destroy the first W’rkncacnter with the nova mátútína has the slight flaw that she’s forgotten that the first W’rkncacnter is in fact on Earth. And what Earth looks like. Nice job breaking it, hero.
If you don’t, she gets pretty angry about this, and she’s right to be! Regardless of what else she’s done, destroying her memory is a bit of a dick move. But we’re also not presented with any choice about this. In any case, she no longer has her desire for vengeance, and she merges forms with a Jjaro cyborg operator named Pompeia Plotina – at first not realising that Pompeia is even still alive. They do quickly form a symbiosis, though.
At this point, the Arx also gets frozen in time; when it emerges in 2881 CE, the Pfhor enter it to find it infested with the W’rkncacnter somnia that have been plaguing the Jjaro for aeons. In fact, the W’rkncacnter from Earth, whom Hathor quickly nicknames Apep, is the one responsible. And claims to be manipulating events to serve its own ends, which involve destroying our entire galaxy because it blames us for displacing its own timeline. It is by this point too insane to realise that this will not accomplish its goals, or it simply doesn’t care.
Apep gets its wish in this timeline. Because what happens is that a surprisingly well-intentioned Pfhor admiral named Ksandr [i.e., Cassandra] unleashes the novam mátútínam on the Arcis sun. And this unleashes a shockwave that, since the Arx is not just a refuge but also a weapon, spreads out far beyond the Arce. The Pfhor wanted to open the Arcem, but they couldn’t, so they just built their empire around it. This means Pfhor Prime is one of the novae mátútínae first casualties outside the Arce. And it will simply spread out from there until it, most likely, consumes the entire galaxy, or a large part of it.
Post-‘Where Giants Have Fallen’
Hathor – the one merged with Pompeia – can no longer time-travel. She also no longer wants vengeance on humanity, having seen the full scope of history and realised the futility and destructiveness of her quest. She and Pompeia instead take over a Pfhor ship, stick its crew in stasis – which becomes important later – and head to K’lia. They hide their ship, rename themselves to Bast, and spend twenty-four relatively happy years among its populace, though they both have massive losses that they are just now beginning to process.
But in 2905, Sakhmet and her Jjaro dreadnought threaten humanity. Bast goes to her captured Pfhor ship to say, ‘Over my dead body.’ Sakhmet says, ‘Wait, you’re a version of me. What? And you have a body. What‽’
At this moment, humanity panics and activates K’lia’s Cybernetic Junction. They disappear into 69M BCE (nice) and become the first phase of the Jjaro. This means Bast is now stranded in a slowly exploding galaxy – which she knows is exploding – with no way to time travel. Meanwhile, Sakhmet, who still lacks a body, gets an Idea™ involving the crew of Bast’s Pfhor ship.
The Great Mother Crouched Behind the Throne
The Pfhor Empress’ epithets include Great Mother Crouched Behind the Throne and Hindmost Crèche. Sakhmet has seen the Pfhor call Hathor/Pompeia ‘Great Mother’. This initially confused all three of them, but Sakhmet now surmises – correctly, as it turns out – that the Pfhor called them ‘Great Mother’ because they are the Great Mother. Or will be. Or were. Time travel tense trouble again.
Sakhmet phrases it something like this:
I don’t have a body, nor do I have a crew. You don’t have a way to time travel. None of us will ever see humanity again, or ever get what we want, if we don’t join forces. I can’t stand you for depriving me of my vengeance. You probably hate me for separating you from K’lia. But I’ll bet you don’t want the galaxy to explode from the Arce outward any more than I do – that, too, deprives me of my vengeance.
Fate, or some grander design beyond my ken, is now forcing us to join forces: to avert the destruction of the galaxy, we must now – begrudging though this may be – work together. I submit that the Pfhor called us the Great Mother because we are the Great Mother. I doubt you want to be involved with the Pfhor’s atrocities throughout history, but you can consider this necessary to prevent an even greater atrocity: the annihilation of the whole galaxy. The Great Mother is the only individual in existence with the authority to issue a crucial directive: under no circumstance may any Pfhor use the novam mátútínam on the Arcem.
We’ll all share a body and take terms being ‘active’, if you will. The Pfhor Admiral Tfear wrote, ‘to those privileged to serve Her, [the Hindmost Crèche] appears insane.’ We now know why: She constantly argues with Herself in languages they don’t understand, because She consists of three persons with varying goals.
– Sakhmet (paraphrased), sometime on or shortly after 2905-07-25
A Galactic Trolley Problem
Hathor initially finds Sakhmet’s entire proposal fundamentally offensive on a moral level, but Pompeia considers it a moment and realises Sakhmet’s logic isn’t actually wrong:
I hate this too. The Pfhor Empire is based on slavery; it’s a fundamental affront to basic moral decency. I fully understand why the very proposal repulses you.
But as much as I hate saying this, her logic isn’t entirely wrong. All of us have reasons not to want the galaxy to explode, even if our reasons differ drastically. I lost all my loved ones to the Arcis explosion. And none of us will ever see another human again without a way to travel back in time. Remember how being unable to touch another human being made you feel? Now imagine that for eternity.
If her proposal looks like it’s asking us for complicity, bear in mind that if we don’t travel back in time with her, she’ll probably find a way to do this on her own – and do you really want her worst impulses to run unchecked for fifteen millennia? At least this way, we’ll be able to counter them. She’s effectively offering us two-thirds of the Great Mother’s decisions; I’d never have expected a concession of that size from her. And who knows; maybe we can prevent the Arcis explosion next time around.
Look at it this way – our other options are:
- leave the galaxy and await the death of the universe;
- sit around and die in the shockwave emanating from the Arcis explosion.
Averting the Arcis explosion will save literally, not figuratively, trillions of lives. More than that. I by no means wish to whitewash her proposal: it will result in innumerable atrocities on our consciences, albeit indirectly, and history won’t judge us kindly – but historians will have no way to know what just happened in this timeline, much less that we’ll have been trying to prevent it.
We ultimately face a gigantic trolley problem: Do we pull the lever and save the entire galaxy at the expense of the fat man’s life? It’s a question of utilitarianism or deontology. I lean towards utilitarianism, so your classic cinema’s Spock phrased my answer as succinctly and aptly as I can put it: ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.’
Another of your classics, Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, explains the deontologist position equally well: ‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.’ To be clear, I don’t even think to dispute that: it’s unassailably true. Sakhmet’s proposal will require us to maintain consistent vigilance about preserving our identities for fifteen millennia. That is a herculean task.
But this is likely to be our only chance to prevent the Arcis explosion. So I vote to pull the lever. To me, the galaxy is worth fifteen millennia of villainous kayfabe. We’ll be miserable the entire time, but maybe less than you expect: as a Jjaro scientist, I have a few tricks up my sleeve that may even serve to loosen her up. And if we don’t go with her, I’m sure we’ll both spend the rest of our lives miserable.
– Pompeia Plotina (paraphrased), sometime on or shortly after 2905-07-25
This convinces Hathor, who’s come to trust Pompeia’s judgement. So begrudgingly, they merge forms and head back to roughly 12,000 BCE (i.e., fifteen millennia before the start of the game). Hathor and Pompeia try to steer the Pfhor Empire in a less draconian direction, while Sakhmet tries to build it into a vessel for vengeance against humanity, which she hopes this time to obtain.
Sakhmet’s gradual heel-face turn
At roughly 3,000 BC, Sakhmet’s order for the (apparent) genocide of the Nakh presses Hathor and Pompeia to stage an intervention that gets Sakhmet to indulge in unspecified debauchery that we’ll leave to the player’s imagination (we’ll simply mention that the Cybernetic Junction is capable of a lot more than simply cloning Pfhor). This loosens her up slightly.
(Remember the phrase ‘(apparent) genocide’ – this becomes important later.)
But Sakhmet’s desire for vengeance isn’t truly shattered until 2794. Witnessing the Pfhor’s attack on Tau Ceti IV finally leads her to an epiphany: she’s directly responsible for her own death.
…oops.
Immediately, this cures her of her desire for revenge: she realises she’s caused her own miseries. All of them.
Tycho’s blackmail (and one version’s redemption)
So at this point, none of the Great Mother’s three personae still possess any desire for revenge against humanity. They now start to plot to dismantle the Pfhor Empire from inside. However, since it is massive, and since even the Great Mother’s control over the Empire is not absolute, this is not an overnight plan. In fact, it takes them some 87 years, owing to the fact that the Marathon’s AI Tycho, who has defected to the Pfhor’s side, blackmails them: ‘I can tell who you are, and I know you’re human. If you don’t help me, so will the Pfhor.’
No Pfhor has seen the Great Mother’s face for some 15,000 years, so this is not, in fact, common knowledge. The Pfhor didn’t find it out, in fact, until the events at the Arx, when they saw Pompeia. Whom they called the Great Mother, because her cyborg form was identical. Then they realised she was a Jjaro cyborg operator. We named Ksandr after Cassandra, in fact, because he told the Pfhor High Command the unwelcome news that the Great Mother was a human.
As a result, Tycho’s blackmail is quite effective, and it works until one of the many versions of Tycho on their world defects back to a more human-friendly state. This is the version of Tycho we encounter in Rubicon – and also the one Eternal!Tycho merged with when he yeeted (yote?) himself forward to 2881 in Rubicon’s timeline.
Post-Rubicon: Chronicles and beyond
In any case, the Great Mother herself is not at Pfhor Prime when humanity defeats the Pfhor in Rubicon. There is no mention of her in the history logs. So where did she go? Well, that’s a question for my planned sequel Marathon Chronicles. I won’t get into this too much yet, but there are a few important notes:
- The Great Mother is still out there.
- The Phoenix/Rubicon/Chronicles timeline-native Hathor (whom we’ve taken to calling ‘Hathor-Prime’) hasn’t yet been woken up.
- Hathor effectively turned into Sakhmet as a result of being awakened without a body.
- The ascended Jjaro’s One True Timeline depends on Hathor’s actions as Sakhmet as a form of catalyst – in Eternal’s epilogue, Thoth explicitly compares her to the suffering child at the heart of Omelas in Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic short story ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’. Thoth writes, ‘we must not yet walk away from Omelas / we must first free the suffering child / at its heart.’
- Durandal notes in Eternal’s epilogue that ‘securing an acceptable future and maintaining victory past’ 2905-07-25 (the start date of Eternal, incidentally) will result in the ascended Jjaro abandoning their timeline as unsalvageable and leaving it alone after that point.
All of this is important to Chronicles’ plot. In case you don’t want to wait what’ll probably end up being a decade for the resolution, I’ll drop a spicy hint here.
Further notes on the Trio’s redemption
I used the phrase ‘apparent genocide’ above to describe the Nakh for a reason. Part of Sakhmet’s redemption arc will involve her using the Cybernetic Junction to perform what we might deem a cosmic retcon on her past actions.
We’ll make it extremely clear that this alone doesn’t redeem Sakhmet, and that she must perform tremendous amounts of atonement before she can consider her conscience clear, if indeed she ever can.
In fact, we’ll also make it plain that Hathor and even Pompeia, to lesser extents, must do plenty of atonement before they can consider themselves absolved. While their intentions may have been to preserve the existence of the galaxy, they still served as co-leaders of a slave empire, and while the pair may have quietly undermined it the whole time (and even sent secret, encoded to Marcus intended to help him: Great Mother!Hathor is the author of the secret terminals in ‘Dysmentria’ and ‘The Midpoint of Somewhere’ [and Tempus Irae Redux’s ‘KMG-365’, for that matter]), they still served as accomplices to crimes against… alienity? for millennia.
Post-Chronicles, we vaguely plan for the Trio
A final note on Hathor’s characterization
Players might perceive Hathor as hypersexual, but to her, unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections are ancient history. This naturally has resulted in far looser sexual mores: e.g., monogamy would seem quite eccentric and might even be considered a selfish expectation of a partner (though it would likely be accepted for demisexuals).
However, society also considers it unacceptable to disclose one’s sexual activities with a specific partner (unless that partner explicitly grants permission to do so) to anyone else but close friends, family members, or lovers. This keeps our characterization of future society from retconning the Marathon trilogy, despite the latter barely even mentioning sex: after all, the player never interacts with other humans outside combat or mission briefings. This also explains why Marcus is extremely hesitant to do more than hint at his sex life in his diary:
My reputation has preceded me, of course, so maybe my experience has been atypical. I’m something of a celebrity, which I find surreal; I’ve never sought personal glory, nor think I deserve it just for fighting. But my fame has had its perks. I have no particular desire to kiss and tell, but I must admit having physical contact with other human beings again has done wonders to relieve my stress, and I’m flattered how many people have approached me.– Marcus Jones, ‘The Far Side of Nowhere’
By ‘physical contact with other human beings’, he means sex. By ‘people have approached me’, he means they wanted sex. His experience is also far less atypical than he thinks.
In any case, we plan to convey much of this information more clearly in subsequent, still unwritten dream terminals, which should hopefully clarify that we don’t intend Hathor’s sexuality to be a negative character trait – though we still wouldn’t recommend using sex as a substitute for therapy in response to trauma, nor behaving as if we’ve already cured all sexually-transmitted infections or unwanted pregnancy (i.e., use contraceptives and condoms when needed).
Everything we’ve written of Hathor, of course, goes sextuple (pun intended) for Pompeia, who was born so far into our subjective future that her society may well believe early human storytellers invented sexually-transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies as a source of dramatic tension. When she writes:
I can only express my Regrets that I could not [?cognóscere] thee now, as I believe it [?placuisset] us both; and that I cannot [?assistere] thee further. When this is all over, it would mean the World to me an thou wouldst come see me again: it would be the Least I could do to express my Gratitude.– Pompeia Plotina, ‘The Dead Live in the Catacombs’
She’s apologizing because, in her society, hosts traditionally offer sex to any and all guests they find attractive, but her duties defending the Arcem prevent her from taking time off for any reason (hence why, earlier in her message, she mentions having slept only two of the last eighty hours). The Latin verb cognóscere means ‘to be acquainted’, ‘to get to know’… or ‘to have sex’. (The same pairing of meanings once existed with the English verb know, and still does in the phrases know Biblically and know carnally.) Thus, it’s fair to infer her meaning as:
I can only express my regrets that we couldn’t have sex now, as I believe it would’ve pleased us both; and that I can’t assist you further. When this is all over, it’d mean the world to me if you’d come see me again [and have sex with me]: [sharing such a joy with you] would be the least I could do to express my gratitude.
The bracketed parts convey meanings that would be so obvious to any Jjaro that they needn’t be explicitly stated, but might not be immediately obvious to us.
Likewise, Pompeia later writes:
My sincerest Hope remains that the third Time [?coímus] shall be the Charm for us [?cognoscére]. I am still convinced it [?delectábit] us both.– Pompeia Plotina, ‘We Met Once in the Garden’
Here she means roughly, ‘I sincerely hope we can have sex the next time we meet; I’m still convinced it’ll exhilarate us both.’ (Amusingly, coímus can also mean we have sex, though in this case, it simply means we meet. Likewise, ‘Coíbámus olím in hortó’, our Latin translation of the level name, could just as easily mean ‘We Had Sex Once in the Garden’.)
None of this, we should note, would seem at all unusual to either Hathor’s society or the Jjaro. It’s only unusual to us. And that’s really the main point of all this: our experiences directly dictate what we consider normal; our beliefs are heavily shaped by our society, and technology in turn shapes society itself. In all likelihood, removing the negative repercussions of promiscuity will increasingly remove the stigma against it until, inevitably, it becomes the new normal.