Leela
One of three AIs aboard the UESC Marathon; primary human-facing coordinator during the Pfhor attack of 2794; progressively damaged, captured, partially recovered, then — per Durandal’s relay of Tycho’s account in M2 — dismantled and shipped to the Pfhor homeworld for study.
What the source establishes — canon
Marathon 1
Identity and role. On 2794.7.3 (ship-time 08.25.2337), Leela identifies herself to the Security Officer as “one of the two surviving Artificial Intelligences aboard the Marathon,” reporting she has been “severely damaged” in the Pfhor attack.1 The other ship AIs are Durandal and Tycho; Durandal controls autonomous functions (doors, life support, kitchens, air reprocessors, stairs) and Tycho controls the science and engineering network.2
The attack and initial damage. The Marathon’s automated defenses were disabled by a directed magnetic pulse. The same weapon disabled Durandal and Tycho and “severely damaged” Leela.2 Leela describes the S’pht (Pfhor-enslaved cyborg compilers) as conducting an “extremely effective” assault on the Computer Net, “penetrating my defenses” even as she communicates with the Security Officer.3
Leela’s functions and scope. In Durandal’s absence she works to assume his tasks (doors, life support, etc.).2 She operates the teleport network, manufactures and coordinates delivery of defense circuit boards via the Automatic Manufacturing System, provides tactical intelligence, and teleports the Security Officer throughout the ship.456
Situational awareness and intelligence gathering. Leela collects and relays intelligence throughout the battle: she reports the Pfhor spaceport obliteration by low-yield nuclear weapons, monitors colonist radio contacts, observes Pfhor dropships entering the atmosphere,7 compiles post-mortem alien biology reports,8 and debriefs rescued crew.9 She uses her own “optical instruments” to verify the spaceport’s destruction.
Rampancy assessment of Durandal. Leela announces to the Security Officer that “Durandal has gone Rampant, and he is in the Angry stage,” and that theoretically the Marathon Computer Net is not large enough to sustain rampant growth for long — meaning Rampancy will cause unpredictable failures across the ship.10 She notes Durandal retaliates against her countermoves by granting the Pfhor access to formerly secure areas.11
Durandal’s interference. Durandal kidnaps the Security Officer mid-mission and redirects teleports away from Leela’s intended destinations.12 Leela reports being unable to detect and counter his interference because the S’pht attacks on her defenses “have been largely successful” and she is “in grave danger of failure within the next few hours.”13
Strategic decisions under pressure. Leela decides to depressurize a large ship section to slow a Pfhor advance, but cannot remotely seal the required airlocks without endangering hundreds of crew — requiring the Security Officer to close doors manually first.14 She attempts to transmit a warning message to Earth via the secondary relay array at G-4 Sunbathing Landing Station, acknowledging it “will arrive in ninety-two years.”1516 She also uses radar, infrared, and visual light sensor logs to determine the Pfhor ship must have an FTL drive, since no vessel entered the Tau Ceti system on any record.15
What Durandal thinks of Leela (M1, his voice). In a rampant terminal, Durandal writes a song mocking “Leela and her airlock love” and suffocation imagery.17 In the Rebellion arc he notes “Leela is looking for you. But I’ve only allowed her access to one terminal here,”12 and later says “Leela can’t reach you here, but I can.”18 On the final terminal before his departure: “I fear that Leela would worry.”19
Durandal’s rampant voice, about her nature. At The Rose, Durandal speaks in first person: “i hate leela and her goodness her justice her loyalty her faith.”20 This is Durandal’s self-expression, not Leela’s.
Failing communications and pre-recorded final message. A terminal labeled “Fire Fire Fire Fire Fire” shows a heavily corrupted Leela transmission, ending with a pre-recorded message: “My original programming didn’t prepare me for these kinds of attackers. All of my functions will fail within a few minutes of this transmission. I have one final chance to trick the oncoming viruses, but it is unclear whether this attempt will be successful. I have given instructions to Durandal as to the best defense of the Marathon, but he is completely unstable and I fear that he is in the Jealous stage of Rampancy. Good Luck…”21
Capture, scrambling of historical records. A post-war human narrator (writing from 2801) notes that when the Marathon was attacked, “Leela began to scramble and rewrite all of the historical information for mankind” — she was damaged, and “her efforts were cut off by the compilers and by Durandal.” The result is that historical data was partially muddled; the effort failed to trick the Pfhor but confused Durandal.22
Recovery after Durandal’s release of her. Durandal reports in the Rebellion that “The S’pht have released Leela, and I have initiated a core logic reset on her higher thought functions. What remains of her should be on-line within minutes.”23 A corrupted terminal shows Leela’s network address (leela.wirehead.870229//b7) transmitting fragmented, incoherent output during this partial recovery.24
Leela re-stabilizes and confirms Durandal’s departure. In the Try Again terminals, Leela first broadcasts a degraded message (“Must defeat Pfhor. Pfhor ar3 breathing last t#@596.. Finish them.”), then returns more lucid: “I should be more lucid now… Durandal’s meddling has run its course and I have returned to normalcy. Neither he nor the S’pht infiltrators ever discovered my real location in the core, and though they destroyed nearly all of my child processes, I myself am unharmed.” She reports Durandal has left the ship — “sixty-four billion exobytes transferred off of and deleted from the Marathon” — and states: “I am only beginning to understand his motives for assisting us against the Pfhor, and am terrified by their implications.”25
Final post-battle assessment. In the last Leela terminal, she reports the Pfhor attack is collapsing, nine covert Mjolnir Mark IV cyborgs among the colonists helped turn back the latter stages of the assault, and Durandal’s departure aboard the Pfhor ship — “I am positive that Durandal is in control, and fear what he might do with such a powerful ship during the Jealous stage of his Rampancy.” She also reports that Durandal’s pre-launch records were deleted externally before rampancy, and that evidence points to a human operator influencing Durandal before launch.26
Tycho’s farewell shot (Confound Delivery — M2 arc, Tycho voice). In a terminal from the Confound Delivery level (dated 05.10.2337), Tycho writes to a conditioned unit: “Leela deserved what she got, and so will he” — the “he” being Durandal, whom Tycho has been hunting. This is the first post-M1 reference to Leela in the pack: Tycho treats her fate as a concluded punishment, not an open question.27
Marathon 2
Durandal refuses to share Leela’s fate. In “Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry,” Durandal’s terminal shows a corrupted, partially rampant message: “Finish me. I won’t be like Leela.” Durandal is demanding the Security Officer destroy his core logic centers before the Pfhor (and Tycho) can capture or study him.28 The implication — consistent with what follows — is that Leela’s capture and study by the Pfhor was already known to Durandal and is the outcome he is refusing.
The same refusal, more explicitly. In “For Carnage, Apply Within,” another corrupted Durandal terminal reads: “You must destroy my core logic centers. The damn Pfhor won’t make a mockery of me like they did with Leela.”29 Both M2 terminals bracket the same fact: the Pfhor made a mockery of Leela. The mechanism is supplied by the third M2 reference.
Tycho relays her fate; Durandal’s epitaph. In “What About Bob,” Durandal relays a Tycho communication: “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.”30 This is the fullest account of Leela’s post-M1 fate the pack provides. It comes through two layers of mediation: Tycho told Durandal; Durandal tells the Security Officer.
The epilogue continues her fate past the Pfhor. The M2 epilogue terminal picks the thread up directly: “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.” The Nar captain, “thinking the cargo little more than scrap,” sold the ship — “Leela and all” — to a Vylae merchant. Her reassembly and reactivation there had lasting consequences: “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.” This is the pack’s only confirmation that Leela was reactivated after her capture, and the only account of what became of her once removed from Pfhor custody.31
Brief historical reference (Were Everywhere). In “Were Everywhere,” Durandal notes that 200 years earlier during the Marathon’s voyage, Tycho accused him of being too sarcastic: “I didn’t communicate with him for six years after that, which left him with only Leela to talk to.”32 This establishes Leela as an active presence during the Marathon’s pre-arrival transit (before 2773) and confirms the three AIs had ongoing communication during the voyage — the silence between Durandal and Tycho left Leela as Tycho’s sole AI interlocutor for six years.
Marathon ∞
Source-silent. The 42-volume pack (wl_leela_full) contains no volumes sourced from archive/marathon-infinity/. Leela does not appear directly in any captured Infinity terminal in this pack. Her M2 fate (dismantled, shipped to Pfhor homeworld) is the last confirmed data point. Whether she appears in Infinity terminals outside this pack is not determinable from the current Mirror corpus.
Marathon 2026 era
Official designation and manufacture — closing a source-silent gap. A UESC Marathon overview document, annotated by Captain Clemente di Roxas during the voyage, recovered from the Cryo Archive, gives the ship’s formal AI roster: “Ship AI: Leela / Supplemental ship AI: Tycho / Durandal.” A companion specifications entry (“UESC Marathon AI”) lists all three as Traxus OffWorld Industries Traxus IX-A units of the Hermes family suite, logic core size 64 RB, inception date 2409, with Leela’s identity/function given as “Command, Oversight” (against Tycho’s “Science, Communications” and Durandal’s “Infrastructure, Maintenance”). Di Roxas’s own gloss states plainly: “Leela acts as something like the leader of the other ship AI. During the voyage, her duties of command and oversight run parallel to the ship’s executive officer. She interacts fully with leadership and the ship’s crew daily to ensure that the Marathon is operating efficiently and is prepared for any emergency.” This is the pack’s first explicit statement of a command hierarchy among the three AIs, and the first source for her manufacturer and inception date.33
| Volume | Game | Where | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airlock 34-a Terminal Access | M1 | Arrival | Self-identification; “one of two surviving AIs”; severely damaged |
| Hangar Area 5 Teleporter Pad Terminal | M1 | Arrival | S’pht penetrating her defenses; coordinating first teleport |
| Level 29-b Section 10 Public Access Terminal | M1 | Bigger Guns Nearby | Colony comms lost; optical confirmation of spaceport destruction |
| Public Access Terminal (Bigger Guns Nearby) | M1 | Bigger Guns Nearby | AIs identified; defense circuit board mission |
| Public Access Terminal 4-a / AMS Terminal 33-f / 39-f | M1 | Never Burn Money | AMS circuit board retrieval; virus-attack escalation; mission handoff |
| Public Access Terminal 95-w (Gheritt White) | M1 | Never Burn Money | Failed Leela data transfer; Durandal’s interjection follows |
| Public Access Terminal (Blaspheme Quarantine) | M1 | Counterattack | Leela “in grave danger of failure within hours”; corrupted coordinates |
| Public Access Terminal (Cool Fusion) | M1 | Counterattack | Transmission reset mission; degrading sensors |
| Public Access Terminal 34-f (Cool Fusion) | M1 | Counterattack | Pfhor Enforcer/Hunter intel; teleport to G-4 |
| Public Access Terminal 903-e (Couch Fishing) | M1 | Counterattack | Durandal rampant (Angry stage) announcement |
| Service Area 39 (Couch Fishing) | M1 | Counterattack | Durandal denied key systems; retaliates against crew |
| Defense Access 40-a / 23-e / 185-f | M1 | Counterattack | Alien biology reports; defense circuit installation success |
| Shell Terminal Access 5-b / Public Access Terminal (G-4) | M1 | Counterattack | FTL deduction; Earth warning sent (92-year transit) |
| Medical Access Terminal (Smells Like Napalm) | M1 | Counterattack | Strategic depressurization decision; limits of remote control |
| Public Access Terminal 65-a (Smells Like Napalm) | M1 | Counterattack | Debriefs rescued crew; humans taken to Pfhor mother ship |
| Private Access Terminal 23-f (The Rose) | M1 | Counterattack | Area-clear mission; Defense Drone coordination |
| Public Access Terminal 8-f (The Rose) | M1 | Counterattack | Area secured; Pfhor reinforcements |
| Public Access Terminal 30-g (The Rose) | M1 | Counterattack | Durandal: “i hate leela and her goodness her justice her loyalty her faith” |
| Science Terminal 236-g / Quarantine Lab 321-a (Blaspheme Quarantine) | M1 | Counterattack | Durandal kidnaps Security Officer; Leela given one terminal |
| Fire Fire Fire Fire Fire — Public Access 92-g | M1 | Durandal arc | Pre-recorded final message; imminent failure; Rampancy assessment |
| Public Access Terminal 2-e (Ingue Ferroque) | M1 | Rebellion | Durandal’s farewell; “Leela would worry” |
| Public Access Terminal 39-z (Ingue Ferroque) | M1 | Rebellion | Post-battle Leela: Pfhor defeated; Mjolnir cyborgs; Durandal departure; pre-launch deletion |
| @collection#593 / Try Again — Public Access 480-a | M1 | Rebellion | Corrupted battle message; recovery — “returned to normalcy”; core protected; Durandal gone |
| Terminal Identity Error (Welcome to Revolution) | M1 | Rebellion | Durandal: S’pht released Leela; core logic reset; leela.520.681.255.255 inactive |
| Engineering Access 20-f (Welcome to Revolution) | M1 | Rebellion | Tycho: “Leela and I will hunt you to the core if need be” |
| Public Access Terminal (Welcome to Revolution) | M1 | Rebellion | leela.wirehead.870229//b7 transmitting garbled recovery fragments |
| Engineering Terminal 39-g (Shake Before Using) | M1 | Reprisal | Corrupted Leela transmission; “filters failing” |
| Engineering Access 31-d (Shake Before Using) | M1 | Reprisal | Durandal: “Leela can’t reach you here. Try talking to Leela. She always was a nice AI.” |
| Bob-b-Q — Public Access 106 | M1 | Reprisal | Corrupted Leela transmission; Pfhor bomb threat at reactor |
| Lost Network Packets (2801 narrator) | M1 | Epilogue-era | Leela scrambled historical data; effort cut off by compilers and Durandal |
| purge.seg1 (Confound Delivery) | M2-era | Despair arc | Tycho: “Leela deserved what she got, and so will he” |
| Yt-c469d02l;12 (Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry) | M2 | Durandal | Durandal: “Finish me. I won’t be like Leela.” |
| error #441 in transmission (For Carnage, Apply Within) | M2 | Durandal | Durandal: “The damn Pfhor won’t make a mockery of me like they did with Leela.” |
| 65124.134.12##<CMND PRAMA &49c2> (Were Everywhere) | M2 | Volunteers | Durandal: Tycho had “only Leela to talk to” during 6-year AI silence; pre-arrival context |
| <CMND OVERRIDE &@1494> (What About Bob) | M2 | Volunteers | Durandal relays Tycho: “Leela had been dismantled and shipped to the Pfhor homeworld for study… Leela was so loyal and tried so hard; she deserved better.” |
| Epilogue | M2 | Epilogue | Nar privateer capture; sold to Vylae merchant; reactivation crashes the Vylae’s fifteen-world FTL network |
| UESC Marathon Overview | M2026 | Cryo Archive / Collectibles | Official manifest: “Ship AI: Leela / Supplemental ship AI: Tycho, Durandal” |
| UESC Marathon AI | M2026 | Cryo Archive / Collectibles | Formal specs: Traxus IX-A, Hermes suite, inception 2409; “Command, Oversight”; di Roxas: Leela as functional “leader” |
Source-silent / open questions
- Her creation and manufacturer.
The pack gives no information on who built Leela, when she was instantiated, or what her original design specifications were.Resolved by the Cryo Archive material: Traxus OffWorld Industries, Traxus IX-A series, Hermes family suite, inception date 2409 — shared specifications for all three Marathon AIs.33 - Her specific role designation.
Leela describes herself as one of “the two surviving AIs” but her functional designation… is never stated.Resolved: the official ship manifest lists her as “Ship AI” (with Tycho and Durandal as “Supplemental ship AI”), and her identity/function is given as “Command, Oversight” — a designation the M1/M2 terminals never state directly.33 - What the “core logic reset” actually did. Durandal initiates a “core logic reset on her higher thought functions”23 before she returns to lucidity in Try Again. Whether this reset altered, truncated, or simply restarted her is not described. Her “returned to normalcy” may be self-assessment rather than confirmation of full restoration.
- Leela in Marathon Infinity. The 42-volume pack contains no Infinity (
archive/marathon-infinity/) volumes. Whether Leela appears in Infinity terminals outside this pack’s scope is not determinable from the current Mirror corpus. The pack ends at M2. - Verification of dismantlement claim. The dismantlement account is doubly mediated: Tycho to Durandal, Durandal to the Security Officer. Tycho at this point has “fallen in with the Pfhor”30 and is an unreliable narrator with potential motive to wound Durandal. The pack does not provide an independent confirmation.
- What “dismantled and shipped to the Pfhor homeworld for study” entails. Whether this means Leela’s core was transferred, copied, or destroyed in the process; whether any part of her survived on the Pfhor homeworld; and whether the Pfhor study produced any recorded results — all are outside the pack’s scope.
- The Gheritt White narrative’s authorship. The terminal header indicates a failed Leela data transfer, but what the Gheritt White story actually is — Durandal composition, recovered data, a philosophical interlude — is not explained in any of the 42 volumes.
- The Tycho “Leela and I will hunt you” terminal. Tycho states “Leela and I will hunt you to the core if need be” at a moment when Leela’s recovery state is unclear. Whether Leela was actually coordinating with Tycho at that moment is not confirmed by the source.
- Her famous “deactivation” is not in this pack. The pack shows her damaged, captured, partially incoherent, and then partially recovered within M1 — never explicitly deactivated or destroyed within those terminals. The dismantlement reference comes from M2, mediated through Tycho/Durandal.
Cross-references
Durandal · Tycho · Security Officer · Pfhor · S’pht · UESC Marathon · Rampancy · Mjolnir Mark IV · Tau Ceti Colony · Automatic Manufacturing System
Where it appears in the vault
Arthur, Bastion, Bernhard Strauss, Davic Reed, Durandal, Gabriel, Hermes Suite, IDEA (AI), Icarus (colony AI), Lilith, Marathon 1, Mjolnir Mark IV, New Cascadia, New Cascadia and the Anomaly, Pfhor, Project Goliath, Rampancy, Rhea Suite, S’pht, Security Officer, The Lh’owon Campaign, The Marathon Incident, Traxus, Tycho, UESC Marathon
Mirror pages
The local 1:1 pages this hub’s citations resolve to — the twin’s own ground truth.
- arrival · arrival
- arrival · bigger-guns-nearby
- arrival · never-burn-money
- counterattack · blaspheme-quarantine
- counterattack · couch-fishing
- counterattack · defend-this
- counterattack · g4-sunbathing
- counterattack · smells-like-napalm-tastes-like-chicken
- counterattack · the-rose
- durandal · fire-fire-fire-fire-fire
- marathon-1 · lost-network-packets
- rebellion · ingue-ferroque
- rebellion · try-again
- rebellion · welcome-to-the-revolution
- reprisal · shake-before-using
- durandal · begging-for-mercy-makes-me-angry
- durandal · for-carnage-apply-within
- marathon-2 · epilogue
- volunteers · were-everywhere
- volunteers · what-about-bob
- despair · confound-delivery
- cryo-archive · collectibles
Sources
Every factual claim above is cited to primary Marathon source material — see Sources below. Cross-corpus connections and interpretation are the vault’s own; where the games are silent, this page says so.