Okay, I was on my way into school today, reading a thread when an idea popped in my head, and I haven’t been able to shake it since. I’ve made a little post here, and a little post there to see if anyone would bite to help me flesh out what I was thinking but no one did. So I’m going to try to do a lot of summarising in a short time, and give you guys all the links I can think off to see if what I’m thinking holds water. To start with the thread I was reading was “[url=http://www.bungie.net/7_JOYEUSE-IP-Formula-inb4-reveal/en-us/Forum/Post?id=3440571]JOYEUSE IP Formula (inb4 reveal)[/url]" by Cortana Five. It was a little trip down memory lane that brought me back to the hype up for Halo 3. I had recently become a member of the Bungie community and somewhere along the way I was put onto the scent of the connections between Marathon and Halo. I looked feverishly to find all of the parallels I could, there were many, but none more intriguing to me than the link between Durandal (the Rampant AI from Marathon) and Cortana. You see they are both swords which belonged to legendary figures in ancient European history. In fact on Cortana are inscribed the words “Of the Same Steel and Temper as Joyeuse and Durendal”. Sorry if this is review for a lot of you but I’m hoping to paraphrase for people who are just tuning in. Count Roland’s (to whom Durendal belonged) story has many parallels to the story of Marathon, and there are some similarities between the sword and the AI. Not a perfect fit mind you, but if you look at it like a mood board, or a starting point, something to hang a new story off of it fits within reason. Ogier the Dane (the wielder of Curtana) likewise has a number of things in common with Master Chief, and again Cortana shares some similarities with her sword counterpart. That brings us to Joyeuse, the sword that belonged to Charlemagne. You see where I’m going with this. There has already been a reference to Charlemagne in the game, so it’s not too big of a leap to think that there may very well be a Joyeuse. [url=http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/34563]All of this talk about Durandal[/url] got me thinking about Marathon, and somewhere I read a little snippet about how Durandal was only killed by the collapse of the universe, that he was trying to escape annihilation by escaping the universe and by doing so becoming a god. Enter Thoth, an AI construct created by the Jjaro. By the looks of things he can travel in and out of space and time, he was left behind to balance things out, look after the weak. The Jjaro were able to move planets as well which I feel is worth mentioning. Now before I go way off the rails and start suggesting that perhaps the fifth and mysterious race is the Jjaro. I’d just like to bring Egypt into the Equation…. Okay, I wrote an[url=http://destinyhub.net/threads/317-Osiris] entire post called Osiris[/url] both here and on Destinyhub.net. I had a great time writing it, but I’ll leave it to you to read instead of writing it all out here again. But it was the existence of a Faction as well as the implication that there was also to be an NPC named Osirs that got me thinking. Basically Osiris is an Egyptian god, who is kind of blue/green in colour (similar to the Awoken), he is associated with the moon, there is a planet named after him, and there are Onyx Pyramid Ships in some of the concept art. I thought it was fascinating to look at on the off chance that any of it turned out to be some of the inspiration they used to build the game from. To me there were to many nods towards ancient Egypt to accept it as just coincidence. So where am I going with this? Thoth is also the name of an Egyptian God.... another coincidence? Now what? I’m not sure, but I’m seeing an awful lot of coincidences here. Will Charlemagne and Joyeuse be featured in Destiny? If so in what capacity? If we are all unique character, heroes all of us, then how can we all have Joyeuse as an AI companion? Or how can we all be Charlemagne? There was a reference to the “lost treasures of Charlemagne”, so it’s entirely possible that in this world Charlemagne is a historical figure from the golden age, but if he existed then I would imagine so did Joyeuse. Will Joyeuse take the form of an AI again? Who’s to say? They could simply be using them metaphorically. I’ve seen a couple of people make the suggestion that the Traveller could be Charlemagne and the Last City beneath it is called Joyeuse. Thoth also is an interesting character to consider given the Egyptian references in the game, as well as what Thoth was in Marathon. Could the traveller be Thoth? I guess if I’ve come this way I may as well take a wild stab into the Darkness and see if it pans out. If I was a betting man I would suggest that Charlemagne was THE MAN back in the golden age who lead and fought valiantly during the collapse and had with him an artifact of considerable power named Joyeuse (a ship, a gun, a sword, an AI… who knows, but man made). I’m also going to suggest that perhaps the Traveller is known by different names from species to species, and that one of its names may be Thoth, and that it is somehow associated with Osiris and the Onyx Pyramid Ships. I hope this wasn’t too cryptic, it’s all very fresh in my head. Please ask questions, get picky with it, and help me flesh this out. I've been hoping for a unifying game ever since I was put onto the idea that Halo and Marathon were somehow connected, perhaps each existing within separate cycles of universal expansion and contraction, or maybe all of them happening within one cycle but millennia apart. Now that hope appears to be our Destiny.