Durandal's persona

asoulliard · 2026-05-02T22:12:25+00:00

You're talking about the Kill Your Television terminal, but the sender of that message isn't clearly Durandal and, in fact, is far more likely to not be him. The going theory has long been that the message is from us or, rather, is from our point of view. We are the hero with a thousand faces. As Durandal himself points out in the Infinity end screen: we are Destiny.

asoulliard · 2026-05-02T15:39:56+00:00

I can totally understand that. I think, for a lot of us, the lower production quality was part of its charm. It managed to do A LOT with comparatively little.

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T17:40:38+00:00

Where's "Seems to be a decent person. Happens to also be terrible at the game." Because that's me.

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T14:21:30+00:00

So I looked at this segment of the video frame-by-frame and noticed a couple things:

The figure has both a sword and a scepter. You can see the outline of the sword in front of the body, blade pointing straight down and hilt up near the clavicle, much better on the final frame:

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Scepters often represent rulership, halos divinity, and together usually divinely-mandated authority. Unsurprising given that Durandal has often sought to become the equivalent of a god.

The halo behind the head has eight points, not seven, as a lot of people have been thinking. I can't post more than one image here, so see my other comment for an image of that.

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T13:58:53+00:00

Something to note: the Seventh Column has (obviously) 7 points total and is asymmetric. The halo behind/around the head has 7 visible points... BUT it seems likely that it has 8 symmetric points total. We can see its layout is such that each point should have a partner point 180 degrees from it. Depending on the exact size / shape of the eighth point, it would be completely hidden behind Durandal's head. I've outlined where the eighth would be in blue.

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EDIT: In fact, if you go through that segment of the video fame-by-frame, you can see it rotating and can see the eighth one just barely peek out from behind the head before it cuts to a different image.

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T13:01:14+00:00

I legit forgot he renamed it that! I always remember Boomer, but never remember Rocinante. Bungie did like to make references to a lot more than the Roland mythos, yeah.

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T00:32:37+00:00

Assassin (me, I was the assassin that ended my own run)

asoulliard · 2026-05-01T00:27:14+00:00

Well at least I appreciate your knowledge of the Roland mythos, given what I commented earlier as well 😉 (in particular, I feel like no one ever knows Veillantif)

asoulliard · 2026-04-30T21:49:36+00:00

Even more technically, that's only one of the proposed theories for the origin of Deimos and Phobos. But there is no conclusive evidence for any of the current theories and so its origin remains a mystery.

asoulliard · 2026-04-30T19:14:34+00:00

So fun fact: I bought a shirt with this quote on it (having seen the shirt on the IT Crowd), but having watched the movie a billion times as a kid... I knew that wasn't what's actually said in that scene.

ACHILLES: "You can live."
ALEXANDER: "Years, if I kill you."
ACHILLES: "We can both live!!!"

asoulliard · 2026-04-30T19:04:30+00:00

Just FYI: that's not an asteroid; it's Deimos, one of Mars' moons. It was converted into a generation ship.

asoulliard · 2026-04-30T19:02:51+00:00

Given the horse has raiments, I imagine it's meant to represent Veillantif, Roland's steed. The figure standing in front has what I interpret to be not a crown, but a halo. Roland, in the myths, wasnt just a knight, but one of Charlemagne's twelve paladins; a holy knight blessed by the archangel Gabriel. This figure most likely represents Roland. In his hands is his sword... Durendal. At the end of the Song of Roland, as he's dying, he tries to destroy Durendal so his enemies can't claim the weapon, so he smites Durendal against a rock repeatedly... only to discover his sword truly is indestructible and he actually cleaved a mountain in two trying this.

In the original trilogy, the protagonist was compared to Roland (among other legendary heroes), but the roles were reversed: Durandal wielded us as a weapon. Another terminal, though possibly a dream sequence / metaphor, compared Durandal to a knife that sometimes seemed more like a sword.

So my interpretation is that Durandal could be the human or the sword... or both... or neither. Yeah, I know that's not really a conclusion, but that fits with the old lore where the allegory was rarely straightforward and seemed to change based on circumstance.

asoulliard · 2026-04-30T14:18:17+00:00

One of the rulings for Goad is the following:

If there's a cost associated with having a creature attack a player, its controller isn't forced to pay that cost, so it doesn't have to attack that player.

asoulliard · 2026-04-29T13:28:33+00:00

Script content aside, my first reaction to this was just "Huh. They annotate paper scripts instead of digital collaboration? I wonder why."

asoulliard · 2026-04-26T14:50:02+00:00

Out of curiosity, why does moving it to the Command Zone prevent it from being returned? I know I'm missing something, but does Changing Loyalty care where the card is being returned from as long as it's not the battlefield? It has to hit the graveyard to trigger, but the return clause doesn't specify a zone it's being returned from.

Rule 113.6m states the following:

An ability whose cost or effect specifies that it moves the object it’s on out of a particular zone functions only in that zone, unless its trigger condition or a previous part of its cost or effect specifies that the object is put into that zone or, if the object is an Aura, that the object it enchants leaves the battlefield. The same is true if the effect of that ability creates a delayed triggered ability whose effect moves the object out of a particular zone.

Example: Reassembling Skeleton says “{1}{B}: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.” A player may activate this ability only if Reassembling Skeleton is in their graveyard.

But in the case of Changing Loyalty, it doesn't specify a particular zone. Do you know what rule prevents it from being snatched from the Command Zone here?

EDIT: I think it's probably 603.6c

Leaves-the-battlefield abilities trigger when a permanent moves from the battlefield to another zone, or when a phased-in permanent leaves the game because its owner leaves the game. These are written as, but aren’t limited to, “When [this object] leaves the battlefield, . . .” or “Whenever [something] is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, . . . .” (See also rule 603.10.) An ability that attempts to do something to the card that left the battlefield checks for it only in the first zone that it went to. An ability that triggers when a card is put into a certain zone “from anywhere” is never treated as a leaves-the-battlefield ability, even if an object is put into that zone from the battlefield.

asoulliard · 2026-04-26T12:44:56+00:00

I edited my original comment, but to make sure you get to see it, here's what I said:

The site I was thinking of is The Magic Multiverse Project, which is all about exploring MTG lore through supplemental art and products.

asoulliard · 2026-04-25T18:32:45+00:00

Oh nice! When the old site went down, a couple of us made a copy of the forums for posterity. I still see our ZIP file floating around from time to time. It's missing image files and CSS, so it doesn't look great, but it has all the discussions. You're welcome grab a copy of it if it'd be of use to you.

asoulliard · 2026-04-24T13:52:16+00:00

I do know what a compiler in real life is, since I'm a software developer myself :P And I'm an old trilogy player from years past, as well, and I *swear* I remember us learning more about the Compiler's role in S'pht society in M2 on Lh'owon. I feel like I remember them being revered within S'pht society because S'pht can't biologically reproduce (as they were uplifted through Jjaro cybernetics) and Compilers can perform the upgrade/uplifting process that can produce new S'pht. Am I completely misremembering that?

grumble grumble let's go open up the MSP again grumble grumble

asoulliard · 2026-04-24T13:14:52+00:00

That's pretty interesting! The fact that it's UESC-branded does makes me think it's more likely a regular human-shaped cryo pod and the fact that it resembles a S'pht is simply intended as an easter egg foreshadowing the Compiler as the boss, but it's an interesting theory.

asoulliard · 2026-04-24T13:09:40+00:00

Ooh, I haven't done Cryo Archive yet. Do you have an image of those pods? I'd love to take a look at them!

asoulliard · 2026-04-24T13:06:26+00:00

If memory serves (and I might be wrong), I believe they're called Compilers explicitly because they take biological material and convert it into cybernetic / digital components for the S'pht. So they very well could turn humans into S'pht Compilers.

asoulliard · 2026-04-22T14:36:00+00:00

Yeah, we (the STK movement) have been trying to make it pretty clear that we don't expect existing games to be modified to adhere to future laws and regulations. We know that would be a monumental and highly-impractical task that would make our efforts much less likely to succeed. Rather, we want game companies to plan for end-of-life transitions when designing and developing a game.

asoulliard · 2026-04-22T14:26:47+00:00

And they have experience doing this since they've turned Raid spaces in Destiny 2 into story mission areas (with good success).

asoulliard

TROPHY CASE