Voice of the Condor is a fanfic in The Mysterious Cities of Gold, set in an Alternate Continuity version of Season 3.
Just as Esteban and his friends are about to land in Japan to find the third City of Gold, the Golden Condor suffers a short-circuit and crashes. When Tao fixes it, he also activates a slew of new functions within the craft, which change the course of our heroes' journey forever.
Completed as of September, 2020, it can be read here
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Voice of the Condor provides examples of:
- Aerial Canyon Chase: Towards the end, where the Golden Condor dogfights against the Dark Condor in and above the Gorge of the Four Winds.
- Apocalyptic Log: When Ambrosius first tests the Golden Condor's hard drive on his printing machine, it prints out a transcript of every event the Condor ever recorded, back to its first discovery in season 1.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Orichalcum, as in the show.
- Auto Doc: Valoran, a praying mantis-shaped orichalcum robot that Muran'Kel directs to finally cure Athanaos of his radiation poisoning. It requires an anti-toxin and a stem cell donation from Esteban to do it, which Valoran carries out using an array of automated medical instruments in the room.
- Back from the Dead: When Ambrosius returns to the Fort of Patialla, he's immediately surprised to find Doctor Laguerra, Malinché, and Teteola alive and well from season one, if a bit scratched up from the Olmec attack. They explain that Teteola saved them, and had to lay low to make their way across the ocean.
- Black Box: The Condor's hard drive passes as this, since Ambrosius connects it to his factory to allow Cibola to interface with it, in the hopes of creating stable orichalcum. It works.
- Brain Uploading: In various flavors.
- Malinché uses the Crown of Sundar to implant her mind into the Dark Condor's hard drive, but her body dies from her head wound just as the process completes.
- In the City of Kumlar, Muran'Kel had her brain fused with orichalcum to become the Custodian of the Cities.
- Chekhov's Gun: When building the Dark Condor, Cibola slips a hidden program into its orichalcum. Near the end, Laguerra triggers the program, which wipes all the data inside the Dark Condor, causing it to melt into inert orichalcum sludge.
- Color-Coded Emotions: Display monitors in Mu vehicles change color depending on its helper's emotions. The Thalios' turn magenta when Mirada is sad, and the Golden Condor's take on a shade of red when Cibola chews out Esteban for nearly crashing the Condor.
- Cyborg: Dorad Elo turns out to be this, with orichalcum substituting for half his face that was burned off in a fire, and green Electronic Eyes that were implanted after a conquistador stabbed out his eyes.
- Energy Weapons: In various flavors on the different vehicles in the story.
- The Olmec Machine's Death Ray, which can be adjusted from non-lethal electrical blasts, to full-on molecular disintegration at maximum charge.
- The Golden Condor turns out to have a solar-fueled laser gun hidden in its belly, and Cibola first deploys it to scare Lord Shimatsu.
- The Black Suns, which can melt rock in seconds.
- The Tumi fires pulses of blue plasma, and Dorad Elo carries a stun pistol that causes short-term paralysis in targets.
- Enemy Scan: Cibola's targeting system also acts as an I.F.F. in this manner.
- Evil Knockoff: Ambrosius talks Cibola into copying over his blueprint to the Pyramid of Mu, which results in the creation of the Dark Condor, a silvery, sleeker version fitted with Black Suns. And Malinché elects to fly it.
- Evil Matriarch: Malinché is this to Laguerra.
- Expy: Dorad Elo, a High Priest of the Incas who appears in a golden starship called the Tumi.
- Fusion Fic: With the space-shooter Inca.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- When Ambrosius leads the children out of the Mountain of the Moon, Laguerra decides to stand up to Malinché and kicks her off the stone stairs, causing her terminal brain damage on impact.
- The Doctor follows Laguerra's lead toward the end, when Malinché holds Tao and Zia at gunpoint with her Condor's Black Suns. This motivates him to overtake Ambrosius later in as well.
- Hollywood CB:
- The heroes can use a radio-like system built into the Condor without having to push any buttons. Presumably, Cibola handles this for them.
- Averted with Ambrosius' crude transceiver on his ship, which only works when in range of Patiala or the Olmec ship.
- Keet: Mirada.
- Killed Off for Real: Tetsuo and Ashiko, a pair of villagers in Japan help Esteban's team find the way to the next city, only to be fatally stabbed by Ashiko's own sword, courtesy of Ambrosius.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Mendoza comes up with Cibola's name by having heard the term from an Inca wise man as a false city of Gold.
- Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: Outside Waga Fayat's shop, Mendoza finds himself bringing a sword against the Doctor's flintlock. When Mendoza realizes this after the Doctor points it out, they resort to a fistfight instead.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Ambrosius gives Athanaos a story of his son's fate. Athanaos responds by pounding Ambrosius in the face until his nose bleeds. He admits he deserved it.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: Twice, both with the Golden Condor.
- The first time happens when Ambrosius' men misfire the Olmec Machine and cause the Condor to crash. Tao has to fix the Condor's circuit board to get it working again.
- The second time, when the Condor's hard drive is stolen, Zia can't fly it very well because its safety protocols went with the drive.
- Plug 'n' Play Technology: Zigzagged with the hard drive. It connects to the Olmec ship with no trouble, but Tao and Ambrosius have to cobble together a primitive wiring board and camera to be able to use the hard drive in the factory.
- Ragnarök Proofing: The heroes lampshade this when Mirada explains that the Thalios had been docked under a volcano for 9,987 years, and still functioned perfectly.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- When Cibola leaks a recording of Laguerra recounting her abusive mother's acts, the Doctor promptly gives a counterargument to Malinché's claims, ending with, “You, the only place for you...is in Hell. Goodbye.”
- Muran'Kel gives Ambrosius one after the Doctor stops him from robbing the grave of Rana'Ori, bringing up video evidence of his crimes as she manipulates the sand to hold Ambrosius in place.
- Red Alert: In this version, Sundagatt sounds an alarm when it starts to collapse, coupled with a woman's voice on the city's P.A. counting down the minutes before it seals back up.
- Relationship Reveal: Malinché reveals herself as Laguerra's mother when she and the Doctor raid Waga Fayat's shop. Laguerra struggles to deny it.
- Schizo Tech: Ambrosius' orichalcum factory is run by wooden structures and manpower, and relies on a difference engine to program the material. He also attempted an experiment to output the Pyramid of Mu to a mechanical printing device, without success.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Shortly after arriving in Hormuz, when Mendoza stays to help the children, Pedro angrily refuses to join him, and leaves on a galleon for Spain. Played again when Sancho realizes Pedro's true intentions, and takes a lifeboat in an attempt to go back.
- Significant Anagram: When Zia reads a quipu Dorad Elo left for the heroes to find, Mendoza notices very quickly that it also reads as "El Dorado". Dorad himself explains at the end that he invokes this as a guise to throw greedy conquistadors off the trail.
- Spaceship Girl:
- The Golden Condor's helper, Cibola, being programmed to protect its crew whenever possible.
- Another example turns up with Mirada, who goes out of her way to keep the Thalios clean, and give her crew maximum comfort.
- Dalán, the Tumi's helper also counts, though more robotic and simplistic than the rest.
- At the end, Muran'Kel is revealed to be this as the Custodian of the Cities, an AI that can exist across every City of Gold through its networked mainframes.
- Shout-Out:
- When Sancho starts fighting Pedro on the galleon, it ends with Sancho pulling on Pedro's arms like Buzz Lightyear did to Woody.
- When Malinche has Tao and Zia cornered with the Dark Condor, Athanaos utters, "I have you now!" before blasting it with his ship's energy beam.
- Chapter 41 is simply named "Deep Thought", fitting the computer network linking the Cities of Gold.
- When the children hear a woman's voice singing in Kumlar, Zia starts singing a few bars of "Show Yourself", and Esteban and Tao join in.
- Cibola's first words when achieving his lumino-projection is "Ohhhh yes!"
- Tractor Beam: When the children enter Kumlar, the Golden Condor and Tumi are drawn into the city by this, with Cibola locked into remote override. Humorously, Athanaos is also pulled along one when clutching the Pyramid of Mu.
- Walking Disaster Area: Dorad Elo's main job defies this trope by repairing ancient sites to keep them from collapsing, making the trail less lethal for the Chosen Ones than strictly necessary. Muran'Kel also goes out of her way to keep Ambrosius out of Kumlar, through the use of the city's orichalcum sand.
- Where It All Began: As Pedro arrives in Barcelona, he reflects on all the things that happened when the adventure started.
- You Have Failed Me: When preparing to leave the Oasis of Manfurah, Ambrosius warns Laguerra that her rebellion has made her his primary target, and he will kill her when they meet again.
