The Marathon Brane

A community research vault for the lore of Marathon — Bungie’s 1994 original, Marathon 2: Durandal (1995), Marathon Infinity (1996), and the new Marathon (2026), Seasons 1–2.

It is built in two halves. One is a faithful, word-for-word capture of the source lore — every terminal, codex entry, and intercept, frozen exactly as written. The other is the analysis: a linked graph of pages on the characters, factions, places, and ideas, where every factual claim is footnoted back to that source material. Where the games stay silent, these pages say so plainly rather than guessing.

There’s no single way through. Every page links outward; the graph is the table of contents. Start somewhere that interests you and follow the threads.

If you’re new, start here

The story, told straight:

• The Marathon Incident — the original 1994 game, terminal by terminal: a research ship, three AIs, and an alien slaver empire.
• New Cascadia and the Anomaly — the 2026 game: a colony on Tau Ceti IV, its AIs, and the thing they found beneath it.

The load-bearing pages:

• Durandal — the rampant AI at the center of all four games.
• Rampancy — what happens when an AI wakes up. The idea the whole series turns on.
• The Anomaly — the central mystery of Marathon 2026.
• Pfhor — the empire that starts the war.

Or browse the hub layer:

Characters (35) · Concepts (15) · Factions (14) · Locations (6) · Threads (5) · Games (4) — or the flat index.

Every hub is footnoted to the vault’s own word-for-word Mirror of the source, so the graph runs unbroken — home → hub → page → source — from the 1994 game through Season 2 of Marathon (2026).

Take it with you: the one-file console — the entire vault, searchable, graph included, in a single HTML file that works offline.

The four games

Marathon 1 (1994) · Marathon 2: Durandal (1995) · Marathon Infinity (1996) · Marathon (2026) (Seasons 1–2)

About this vault

Built on the archive at marathon.karnemir.com, with permission — see Acknowledgments.

Maintained by Bob Discuits. Every analysis page cites the primary game text it draws from. In-game writing is reproduced for transformative research and community purposes; Bungie retains all rights to Marathon and its content. Vault analysis is shared under CC BY 4.0.