First of all, apologies to jedichefdave, who, listened when all others switched off, didn't yawn too much when I bounced ideas off him, remained sane under my incessant whinging on and on and on and who really doesn't want me to post this just yet. But my reasons will become apparent.
Ok, so for long enough I've been looking at this on and off.
My first theory was based on fighting your way back across the bridge to the Oni building.
Sadie was forced to do it for her father, Dante, (we've made that leap) had to cross the river Lethe, Bungie even suggested we try to do it way back in one of their weekly bulletins.
In the poem lines like
"Such deliberate disguises"
"In this last of meeting places"
"Gathered on this beach of the tumid river"
gave me the notion of a 4 player onslaught back over the bridge at ONI, the players assuming the characters Rookie, Romeo, Buck and Dutch (deliberate disguises) - Mickey being already present, probably with the Iron skull thrown in.
Our prize for success -
"For Thine is the Kingdom" The blue barriers within Mombasa streets would fall
and/or
"Life is very long" Invincibility, extra over shields.
A few friends of mine and I tried it,,,,, a few times! Sadly with no notable change.
Not giving up entirely, I revisited the poem, like
ColdGlider, I "believe" there is more to this than just some passing references.
So, new analyses required,
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz- he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men Engineers are organic super computers (Dare quote)
We are the stuffed men Huge "hollow" entities wanting to be "stuffed" with data.
Leaning together On Mombasa Streets, found floating in pairs
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless Yup, that's how I'd describe their voices
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion; All of this is used as a description of engineers
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom ODST team have crossed into this Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost Talking again about engineers (4 lines)
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear: Large circle SI glyph - without eyes
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging Another area that contains a pair of engineers.
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises As in becoming the other characters???
Rat's coat, crow skin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting Not the final level.
In the twilight kingdom ..but Mombasa streets
III
This is the dead land Areas with the paired engineers
This is cactus land Monolith with spikes
Here the stone images The henge
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand Fallen Elite by the stones
Under the twinkle of a fading star Beneath a pair of Engineers. I will explain "fading star"
later.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone You waking up alone in Mombasa Streets
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness OK, OK so I'm stuck with this bit lol
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here Circle glyph? Another area with 2 engineers
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms Space tether???
In this last of meeting places Mombasa Streets
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless Circle glyph courtyard, with a pair of Engineers
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only The Engineers are our, ("empty men's"), only hope
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear (If you think I'm getting up at that time of day
Prickly pear prickly pear just to go dancing all in the name of research
Here we go round the prickly pear for SGP... you are mad)
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom Get it right and the barriers come down?
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long We become invincible/extra over shields?
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Now, I have also been pondering this
As you know, this is the original, this is the first, this doesn't have "/" in it. And that, I think, is important. [Editor's Note - The ODST controller has "QTA XII / VI" printed on it.]
QTA - a lot of us, myself included, took this as a Q code in radio ham for Disregard. But disregard what - 12 and 6, from where? The only list we have long enough to disregard anything would be Sadie's story and there's not a lot of point disregarding sections of that.
So what else could it be?
It had been said on the
Bungie forums that it meant Quicktime Application and the numbers where the date for a release of
a Quicktime video for Reach, but the post states this "was solved in ODST," so why then, show it again in Reach.
Quick Turn Around, what if that means the numbers and not a date for completion,
ok that would turn XII VI into VI XII or
6 12 or,
and this is a bit of a stretch 6/2.
Going back to Sadie's story,
Circle 6 Arc 2 gives us a nice little description, courtesy of Dr Endesha, of 6 Engineers removing the explosives from a seven7h. (oh Bungie, you and your number 7.)
And to help with that stretch, the two inter-linked triangles with a no. 7 beside them, found on the ODST themed controller is also found at the start of all the audio logs of Sadie's story, and, the "patch", first announced at PAX 09 was immediately followed by the talk of the involvement of Fourth Wall studios (Some of the 42 Entertainment people responsible for the I Love Bees ARG) in creating Sadie's story, I don't think that was coincidental. Besides, why involve a company like Fourth Wall just to tell a story, surely the in house team could create that.
So... what do I think I've learned.
Similarly to what ColdGlider
posted back in October 09, I think they have used sections of the poem to link the three places that Engineers can be found,
I think that thanks to Sadie's story, we know that 6 Engineers can remove the explosive charge from the one other Engineer (Dr Endesha witnesses this act) , costing them their lives, hence "Under the twinkle of a fading star" as I believe CG eludes to in his post and mentioned above, they know that they will sacrifice themselves to save the seventh.
My guess is we need, somehow, to get the Engineers together, this would actually follow the story line as well. Take an ODST group, dressed as the lead protagonists, (and yes, I know you don't physically look like any of the other team members except in fire fight - but that doesn't mean to say the program code isn't looking for it in your settings tab.) and cover the three pairs of Engineers all the way from a their henge to Kikowani.
So the next question I found myself pondering was this, why then, hasn't this been accidentally discovered? In all the time we have been playing or researching plinths, J banners and all the other things, why haven't four people just blundered into one of the areas and triggered two engineers into "setting off" for Kikowani? I think the key word there is "trigger." We must have to do something to set these events into motion.
But what?
Going back to the very beginning and the SI wall papers which started the whole thing off, we can find things that have been with us all the way through ODST, the Ubiquitous Number is there, as are a lot of references to unique file extensions. One of these really caught my eye KKU.DDL, its not a huge leap to see KKU as Kikowani. I think this file is looking for a list of criteria to be met before initializing the event.
Now as to the criteria,
First of all, there are three orange yellow electronic billboards on the level Tayari plaza, (I would love to include a screen shot here, but Bungie have stopped doing it and Halo No-waypoint isn't, so you'll have make do with this off the net)
(thanks to Neanderthal 487)
This is the first one you pass, just through the "arch way" were you meet a group of Brutes, just after meeting some soldiers with the crashed warthog. (your looking backwards in this picture.) The second one is at the top of the hill from this picture, next to the security door for squid henge. And the last one, at the top of the stairs in Tayari plaza just right of the door you exit after the cut scene with Dare's helmet.
These billboards seem to be made up of writing in layers, they also have a Bungie logo on them, which is what made me look in the first place. Now, top left running down to just past half way, and bottom right running up to just over halfway on the yellow section are two pale yellow bands, imposed over these bands in the back ground colour are the letters and numbers of Lumumba 0624. Beneath this layer are the reversed or mirrored words found in some of the Subliminal Message SI wallpapers, this, I think is a hint at mirroring the camera location from Lumumba 0624, of which there are two to be seen in level cut scenes.
The first of these starts Tayari Plaza, the second is at the end of Uplift reserve and can be mapped to the Kikowani district matching the clue found on the ODST themed controller, Kikowani 0624 23:03:28:30 as argued
here and
here by Imppa. Now combine this with what was found on the back of the ODST game box by
twiztid420 back in June 2010. Looks like the shape of a J banner with a blue square to the left that resembles the Jotan corporation logo. The "J banner" box contains what appears to be the same time stamp, i.e. 23:03:28:30. Followed by a No. 2 and a SI avatar. Combining these two related clues gives us a location and a time to be stood there.
Now a couple of things for me to note here.
First of all standing on the steps at this location looking straight across the square there are two things to see, a single J banner above the SI arms cache on the right and in front of you a Jotun building, so will the J banner change at this time? Or does the Jotun building divulge a clue?
Secondly, whilst researching this location, I've spotted something no one else seems to have reported. Standing in this afore mentioned location looking across the square at the Jotun building in the distance, you can see, below, one of the exit doors from this district. It has the usual green electronic sign above the door (damn I wish screen shots worked) If you travel here through MS, all will be cool and green, however, if you get here after playing through Kikowani station, loading in to the street outside the station doors and then battling through all to get here, you will find the door sign is now showing video static like the other video panels dotted around the streets. At first I wondered if this was another loading glitch, move too close to the door and as the game starts to load the next district, the green "route open" sign will pop in - but now I'm leaning towards the notion that at the right time (11.03pm) with four players, the SI will use this panel to give us the nod towards fetching the engineers... the said "trigger."
The problem I have with all this, and my reason for posting, is, I can no longer get a four together to test this out. Jedichefdave is always up for a little light sleuthing, but everyone else I know is either to busy, hasn't got the game anymore, or some other very valid, but useless reason not to take part. I think this is something akin to a Vidmaster challenge. It needs a team of four players, "disguised" as the squad, they need to run through the Kikowani station level, on legendary, Iron skull on, and be out and up to the steps over looking the square before 11.03pm (this is very do-able, I've done it on my own several times) and staring at that door banner.
So this is why I've passed it all over to you - jedichefdave and I can't get enough people together to look into this, I'm sure some of you guys can, all we ask is should this all pan out, should some or all of this work, don't forget me and jedichefdave.
Please, feel free to "pick holes in", ridicule or just generally flame any or all of the above.
To those who try it for me... Good luck.
