Halo story

The science fiction phenomenon of Halo is the Star Wars of video games with a galaxy just as vast and complex and has a growing history that expands the franchise’s audience each day. Like Star Wars, Halo fiction is spreading into other media including prose novels, graphic novels, anime, and live-action. The Forerunners Long ago in our galaxy, there lived an advanced alien race called the “Forerunners.” In their wisdom, they called themselves Forerunners because they rightly saw themselves as precursors of things to come and that someday they would be outlived and replaced. When seen in Halo fiction, their faces and bodies are hidden in armor suits which protect them and allow them to live well beyond their normal lifespan. All Forerunners with armor are guided by artificial intelligences called “Ancilla.” They saw it as their “Mantle” to preserve life in the galaxy and be the guardians of that balance. However, they found themselves threatened by the expansion of the human race. Forerunners, especially the supreme commander of their military, the Didact, saw humans as a violent race in contrast to their own peace-loving ways. With centuries of development ahead of the humans, the Forerunners defeated humanity and de-evolved them to their primitive state on their native planet. Despite this, Forerunners saw humans as their successors and those who would reclaim this world. To reflect this view, Forerunner technology is operable by humans as well as Forerunners while it rejects other species. The two species resembled each other so closely that Forerunners believed humans to be evolutionary cousins. Opposed to this idea was the Didact, who believed that the Forerunners should wipe out the violent race. Humanity would re-evolve to eventually live in huts and primitive Homo sapien societies.

The Insurrection and the Covenant Wars 100,000 years later, humanity has re-evolved into space explorers who have colonized foreign planets to such a degree that few humans have been to or know someone from Earth. While some colonies thrive, some struggle to get by. Some of the thriving colonies rebel against the central government for independence, while the government taxes them for the good of humanity and believes that humans are in this together as a race. The military organization called the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) began a super-soldier project called the SPARTAN program. In later versions of the SPARTAN program, the UNSC kidnapped children, who were more receptive of military teachings and grooming to become the soldiers that the military needed to fight the Insurrection. One of these children, John, later known as Spartan-117 ranked Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (the highest enlisted rank of the UNSC Navy), is the character gamers play as in the original Halo Trilogy. While the battle against the Insurrectionists waged on, a theocratic alien alliance known as “the Covenant” began a genocidal campaign against the humans in the year 2525, declaring them an affront to their gods. In attacking humanity’s last major stronghold beyond Earth, Planet Reach, the Covenant destroyed the vast majority of Spartans. In the video game Halo: Reach, the player is a Spartan apart of team Noble, whose objective becomes to evacuate a unique A.I. named “Cortana” who holds information about the Halo rings. Covenant aliens had discovered remaining Forerunner artifacts and used the ancient technology to increase their military might above that of humanity. The Covenant believed that the Forerunners were gods that had achieved transcendence by activating the Halo rings and attempt to activate them in order to achieve their own “Great Journey” of transcendence. They call the Forerunner A.I.s “oracles,” though their main objective is to control the outbreak of Flood. In the first game, Halo: Combat Evolved, Master Chief John-117 is paired with the A.I. Cortana and destroys Halo Installation 04, but not before the Covenant accidentally releases a Flood specimen and the parasite is set loose to envelope the world once again. In the sequel, Halo 2, the Covenant attempts to dig up the Forerunner artifacts in Africa left behind by the Librarian and they find another Halo ring. Master Chief tracks them down, killing one of their prophets in the process, though he is cast into the ocean. Meanwhile, the alien who had failed to thwart Master Chief from destroying the first Halo ring (whose race is called “Elite”) is condemned to death by the Covenant high council, accused of heresy. The prophets, the true rulers behind the cloak, instead make him “Arbiter” –the will of the prophets. Like every Arbiter before him, he is to make their will be done constantly in battle until he is dead. They send him to fight heretics who have learned the truth about the Halo rings and the Great Journey. After the new Arbiter assassinates the heretics, he is betrayed by the alien race known as “Brutes” by order of the prophets. Both he and Master Chief are rescued by the new Flood Gravemind, who sends them to stop the ring from being activated. The Covenant is added by the A.I. 05-032 Mendicant Bias, who leads them to the Ark facility –from which they could fire all Halo rings at once. In hitching a ride on the Covenant ship, Master Chief is forced to leave behind Cortana on the ring with the Gravemind who attempts to corrupt her in the same way his predecessor corrupted Mendicant Bias. In Halo 3, Elites have learned the truth thanks to the Arbiter and fight alongside humans. Master Chief followed the Covenant to the Ark where he re-encounters the A.I. “oracle” Monitor of Installation 04. He rescues Cortana from the Gravemind, who was beginning to drive her insane. In one final act of war, John-117 destroys the Covenant leadership, the Ark facility, Monitor of Installation 04, and the Gravemind with the help of the Arbiter. He and the Arbiter escape the Ark’s explosion aboard the space-vessel UNSC Forward Unto Dawn which splits in half. The Arbiter makes it back to Earth, but Master Chief and Cortana float aimlessly in space. As Master Chief puts himself into suspended animation sleep, he tells Cortana “Wake me when you need me.”