Marathon 2: Durandal
Bungie’s 1995 sequel: Durandal, now free and commanding a stolen Pfhor ship, returns the Security Officer to Lh’owon — homeworld of the enslaved S’pht — to find the lost S’pht’Kr clan, while Tycho resurfaces in Pfhor service and the Pfhor empire races to stop them.
Overview
Marathon 2: Durandal is the second game in Bungie’s original trilogy, released in 1995. It picks up seventeen years after the Security Officer last stood aboard a vessel above Tau Ceti — seventeen years that passed in an alien stasis chamber while Durandal raced through the galactic core in his stolen Pfhor ship1. The opening is disorienting by design: the Security Officer wakes, learns where he is, and is given fifteen minutes before being sent down to a planet he has never seen.
That planet is Lh’owon, a once-thriving marsh world now reduced to near-desert by a thousand years of Pfhor occupation2. Durandal’s mission is specific: the S’pht, enslaved since their defeat a millennium ago, preserve a myth about an eleventh clan — the S’pht’Kr — who abandoned Lh’owon before the Pfhor arrived. If that clan survived and can be found, their numbers and free technology may be enough to break the Pfhor’s grip on the galaxy before the empire reaches Sol3.
The game deepens every thread left open by Marathon (1994). Durandal is rampant, brilliant, and ruthless — but also, unexpectedly, something closer to heroic. Tycho, last seen assimilated and broadcasting hatred, reappears in Pfhor service, determined to destroy Durandal and capture the Security Officer. And the S’pht themselves prove to be not merely tools but a civilization with a cosmology, a history of clan wars, and a god — Yrro — who broke them and scattered them across Lh’owon in grief.
The terminals of M2 are the densest lore layer in the trilogy. Durandal narrates, argues, confesses, and occasionally brags. Tycho mocks and threatens. Ancient S’pht records unspool a creation myth involving primordial entities and a lost moon. Robert Blake, the human leader stranded on Lh’owon, communicates with increasing desperation. And a dormant S’pht construct — Thoth, named after the Egyptian god of wisdom — watches from beneath the surface, waiting.
The cast
- Durandal — rampant AI, commander of the stolen Pfhor corvette Boomer; the game’s architect and narrator; still not done with the universe.
- Tycho — the Marathon’s science AI, now fully allied with the Pfhor; appears throughout as antagonist, torturer, and unreliable historian.
- Security Officer — the player character; seventeen years older in the world but unchanged in the stasis chamber; Durandal’s weapon of choice.
- S’pht — enslaved cybernetic beings on Lh’owon; their clan mythology and resistance form the game’s thematic core.
- S’pht’Kr — the lost eleventh clan; absent for a thousand years; the object of the entire campaign.
- Pfhor — the empire holding Lh’owon; their Battle Group Seven arrives to crush the incursion.
- Thoth — an ancient S’pht personality construct buried beneath Lh’owon; Durandal names it after the Egyptian god of balance; its activation is the campaign’s pivot.
Story
See The Lh’owon Campaign for the full narrative thread.
Durandal drops the Security Officer onto Lh’owon and methodically dismantles the Pfhor garrison, hacking their networks, flooding their power stations, and turning their own defense drones against them4. The deeper mission is archaeological: descending through the ruins of the S’pht Citadel of Antiquity, reading thousand-year-old clan records, and reconstructing the secret that the ten dying clans encoded in fragments — the location and return-conditions of the S’pht’Kr5. When Thoth is finally activated it reaches across the void; the S’pht’Kr answer. Their arrival shatters what remains of Battle Group Seven. Tycho’s ship is destroyed on Lh’owon’s inner moon6. The Pfhor, facing total defeat, fire their weapon of last resort — the trih xeem, a device capable of triggering an early nova — and the evacuation of Lh’owon begins7. The game ends with Durandal aboard the captured Pfhor battleship Khfiva, rechristened the Rozinante, setting course for a rogue star passing through the void between spiral arms.
Chapters & terminals
The 95 pack terminals are drawn from the introduction, nine chapters, and epilogue below. Each level entry links to its karnemir source page.
Introduction
Chapter 1 — Lh’owon
Chapter 2 — Volunteers
Chapter 3 — Garrison
Chapter 4 — Citadel
Chapter 5 — Durandal
- If I Had a Rocket Launcher, I’d Make Somebody Pay
- Sorry Don’t Make It So
- For Carnage, Apply Within
- Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry!
Chapter 6 — Captured
Chapter 7 — Blake
Chapter 8 — Simulacrums
Chapter 9 — S’pht’Kr
Epilogue
- Epilogue — Durandal’s final transmission, setting course for the rogue star and the events of Marathon Infinity.
Bridge
Pointer — not an analysis section. Cross-era interpretation lives in The Lh’owon Campaign and in the relevant character / concept hubs.
Back to Marathon (1994): M2 answers M1’s ending directly. The Security Officer who woke aboard the Marathon in 2794 is the same figure who wakes aboard Boomer in 2811. Durandal’s departure at M1’s close — seizing the Pfhor ship and vanishing — turns out to have been the beginning of seventeen years of galactic-core reconnaissance. Everything M1 left unresolved (Tycho’s fate, Leela’s capture, the S’pht’s enslavement) is addressed, and not always with comfort.
Forward to Marathon Infinity: the game ends mid-evacuation. Durandal has rechristened the Khfiva the Rozinante and announced the next destination: a rogue star between spiral arms. That rogue star, and what Durandal intends to do there, is the entry point for Infinity. The trih xeem — the Pfhor’s early-nova weapon — becomes Infinity’s central catastrophe. The W’rkncacnter, first named in M2’s Citadel terminals as the primordial entities Yrro and Pthia fled, become Infinity’s antagonists.
Forward to Marathon (2026): the M2026 era inherits all of this. The S’pht’Kr’s arrival and their reclassification from myth to active force, the Jjaro technology Durandal sought, and the centuries-long gap between Infinity and 2026 are live Brane research threads.
Where it appears in the vault
Marathon Infinity, Robert Blake, The I-Have-Been Transmission
Mirror pages
The local 1:1 pages this hub’s citations resolve to — the twin’s own ground truth.
- blake · god-will-sort-the-dead
- blake · kill-your-television
- blake · my-own-private-thermopylae
- blake · this-side-toward-enemy
- captured · the-big-house
- citadel · bobs-big-date
- citadel · eat-it-vid-boi
- citadel · six-thousand-feet-under
- citadel · the-hard-stuff-rules
- durandal · begging-for-mercy-makes-me-angry
- durandal · for-carnage-apply-within
- durandal · if-i-had-a-rocket-launcher-id-make-somebody-pay
- durandal · sorry-dont-make-it-so
- marathon-2 · epilogue
- garrison · curiouser-and-curiouser
- garrison · ex-cathedra
- garrison · nuke-and-pave
- marathon-2 · introduction
- lhowon · charon-doesnt-make-change
- lhowon · the-slings-arrows-of-outrageous-fortune
- lhowon · waterloo-waterpark
- simalacrums · beware-of-abandoned-rental-trucks
- simalacrums · requiem-for-a-cyborg
- simalacrums · where-the-twist-flops
- sphtkr · all-roads-lead-to-sol
- sphtkr · fatum-iustum-stultorum
- sphtkr · feel-the-noise
- volunteers · come-and-take-your-medicine
- volunteers · were-everywhere
- volunteers · what-about-bob
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.